RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Irgy]

For the record, we're on normal speed here, not quick. Will check through the rest later.

I keep forgetting that. Anyway, that doesn't make so much difference to my point either, except probably that 5 turns delay for the worker arriving on quick needs to be translated to 7-8 turns delay for the worker arriving on normal. I said I might be out by a factor of 2, right?

[Lord Parkin]

Yeah, that's about what I would have expected.

Number of cities comparison for turn 71:

Us - 6
Plako - 6
Locke - 5
Luddite - 5
Mackoti - 5
Nakor - 5
SleepingMoogle - 4
WarriorKnight - 4
Rego - 3
Adlain - 3

So others are definitely catching up to our lead. As for the ones further back:

SleepingMoogle seems to be playing a bit of a slow game, not quite sure why. Perhaps he's just overcautious about expansion - as his early Chariots we've seen seem to suggest.

WarriorKnight obviously had the early war with Plako to blame, but he actually seems to be doing semi-alright now, all things considered. Still a little behind the pack, but not too much.

Rego is deceptively far behind at the moment, but I expect that to change rapidly as he spams cities now that he's got the Great Lighthouse backing his expansion. I'm keeping an eye on him, he's potentially going to be a concern later.

I think Adlain is screwed if he doesn't seriously change his game, and soon. Three cities this late, and not even a war or (as far as I'm aware) wonder attempt to blame... I don't understand how that's even possible. What's he been building all this time?

[Lord Parkin]

Nakor sent a message informing us that they worked things out with Plako for now, so looks like there won't be any conflicts opening up between them too soon. Oh well.

He also brought up the topic of a NAP extension (from our previous 1 AD agreement).

Hey LP.
We managed to get an good and fair deal with Plako.
Now maybe is the time to talk about our mutual expansion south and north and a possible NAP.

Hope to hear your thoughts soon.

Kind regards,
Nakor

I was only too happy to see them bringing up the NAP, as I'd been thinking about it too. Since we've got a long-term arrangement with Plako sketched out (see next post), it makes sense to ensure the sole remaining civ bordering us doesn't get any ideas about harrassing us while we expand. Works for them as well as they probably also want to expand right now. (I'm pretty sure we could take him, but there's no sense in stunting our expansion to fight a war over cities that we don't really want - i.e. that are too far away for now.)

So, I proposed an extension to turn 160 and mentioned that we wanted to settle as far south as possible, hinting that we might consider dealing to Plako if they agreed. Of course, we're not likely to be doing that anytime soon, but if it'll encourage them to accept the long NAP and not contest our claims down south, then so much the better.

Hi Nakor,

That's good to hear you managed a fair deal with Plako. I presume you made sure to get a decent NAP to eliminate any possibility of him sneak attacking too soon as well.

Basically our intention right now is to head south to settle a strong border as close to Plako as we can manage. It's probably no secret that we're keen on dealing with the chief runaway at some point, and we're not going to be able to do that if he founds a whole heap of cities up north and west of his current empire (which he mentioned to us that he intends to do).

It's good that you brought up the NAP actually, because we were thinking the exact same thing. Our existing NAP expires at 1 AD (turn 115), which seems like it's coming up awfully fast. Moreover, as we've had long-standing good relations for many years now, and we seem to have a common interest in reigning in the Plako monster at some point, it seems to make sense to extend our own NAP much further. Especially now that we're contemplating plans to deal with Plako, we'd be keen to sign a very long NAP with you so that we can feel secure that there's no possibility of anything funky happening while we might be dealing to the runaway.

How does extending our NAP by 45 turns (to turn 160) sound to you? That's 1000 AD... a very nice round number, which makes it good in my books! That should give us plenty of time to work out mutually profitable arrangements and deal with our common problems.

Let us know what you think, anyway. We're happy to negotiate.

All the best,
Lord Parkin

[Lord Parkin]

After a lot of discussion yesterday (several hours' worth!), Plako and I seem to have come to an arrangement. Basically we're signing a very long NAP (to turn 180 for now), and in the meantime are going to pretend to everyone else that we're hostile to one another. It's what everyone else will expect anyway, and we can draw out the "cold war" idea over time to further reinforce their expectations. Then, just as our power graphs are spiking and everyone's expecting a massive war between two of the pack leaders in the game, we divert over forces and invade another neighbour (or neighbours) unexpectedly.

So essentially, it's a convoluted method of attempting to hide our eventual power spikes from the intended victim(s). Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but it seems like it'll be fun along the way regardless.

We also managed to get a reasonable division of the land south of us along with the long NAP. Plako won't contest the Pig-Gold site, so providing we can beat Nakor to it (and we should, considering we can get there in about 15 turns), that'll be part of our southern border. We couldn't agree on the Fish site to the east of the Pig-Gold site, so decided neither of us will settle it for now. (It's a filler spot anyway, so it doesn't really matter.)

So basically, the agreement is that for now, Plako's northernmost city (for now) will be on a canal just over 1/3 of the way up the map, which seems pretty decent for us. We get the lion's share of the limited land in the middle, even though most of it is admittedly crappy jungle for now.

Here is Plako's summary of the arrangement. I'll probably agree with a few minor tweaks and clarifications.

Hi,
Sorry I've been a quite busy today. Partly because of our legthy discussion yesterday ;-). I've given this more thought and in general this seems like a good idea. However I think we still need one more step before acceptance i.e. writing up all the terms we've agreed upon

Ingredients are something like this, but maybe they need to be written with more care:
* NAP until T180 - Probably no right right of passage unless agreed separately
* Confidentiality i.e. no info from plans or discussions to others
* Maybe some kind of "fake diplomacy" clausule. Although I don't know what it could contain.
* Neither of us settles the city with fishes on BFC
...

FYI. We got also border deal finalized with the Vikings. They'll be settling near or at the choke point west side of the lake.

Kind regards,
Plako

[Irgy]

Sounds like fun. Are you planning to do a whole lot of active misdirection to the other players or just be subtle and let them draw their own conclusions? Have you any idea what sort of timing or era you expect for this proposed "power spike"? Maces? Cannons?

[Lord Parkin]

Sounds like fun. Are you planning to do a whole lot of active misdirection to the other players or just be subtle and let them draw their own conclusions?

I think subtlety for the majority of the time, building up to be more and more active misdirection when the preparations begin and power starts to spike.

Have you any idea what sort of timing or era you expect for this proposed "power spike"? Maces? Cannons?

Still too early to say. I'm hoping for Rifles/Cannons as it'd probably be the most efficient route, but it depends on how our GNP develops relative to other civs' GNP's. Macemen could be a possibility, but probably come a little early judging from to the sheer amount of land we still have to settle first.

[Lord Parkin]

Tigris connected to the empire. Finished the Granary in the capital, started on a Library. Growth to size 6 next turn. (Sorry for the mess of signs everywhere, by the way. Most will be gone later.)



Axeman underway in Magadan. First cottage built - pretty late for it at turn 71, but we'll be building up to half a dozen more just over the next few turns.



Exploration through Nakor's land has revealed a very badly placed Horse city with no food. Seriously, I can't imagine what he was thinking... I guess that the hill was very important to him? Maybe he's anticipating trouble with Locke. Even so though, that's a horrible city considering it could have had a 6-food resource if placed 1E... a 6-food resource that the other city doesn't even need right now. Oh well, his loss I guess... just a shame he's making such fundamental mistakes given his back-of-the-pack position at the moment.



Taking a short detour down to see where Plako's borders go. I'm also interested to see where WarriorKnight's capital is.



Exploring in the northwest, we've found that Luddite seems to have a much better Silver spot than us... Fish and Sheep compared to tundra-Deer and tundra-hill-Deer.

[Lord Parkin]

Someone's shot up to 97 in GNP... geez, that's crazy. I'm guessing it's Plako... will be able to confirm in a couple of turns with the graphs. I guess he's hired a whole bunch of Scientists, and is running on a huge deficit that he can't keep up? I hope so anyway. Hard to explain how he shot up 30-40 points beyond his already high GNP in one turn otherwise. If this is the new "norm" for him then we need to up our game, and fast...

[Lord Parkin]

Reply received from Nakor about the NAP to turn 160.

Hey LP,
We did get a good NAP included in the deal with Plako.
We'll both be settling north eventually and agreed on sharing the land there.
That means we'll both run into you at some point.

We'd be more then willing to sign a NAP untill T160. Thanks for offering!

Kind regards,
Nakor

So, he agreed. Well, that was easy.

Now we just need to make sure we keep an eye out for his settlers, and contact him if it looks like he's trying for any troublesome locations.

[Lord Parkin]

Oh, had another typically one-way conversation with Rego a couple of days ago.

Rego: Hey we just met your scout james cook in the great SW (at least....OUR southwest ;-) )
Is there a connection further west? Where does that end up?
me: The land continues to the west of your Warrior, yeah. Keep going that way and you'll find Nakor's borders. There's a little bit of a loop around a lake north of plako - just head NW then SW to get around it.
What does the land look like to the east/north of where our Scout is? Any recommendations on paths to avoid potential dead ends?

Rego requests information, Rego gets information, then Rego ignores. Classic.

I don't know if he thinks he's being "crafty" with this style of diplomacy - but honestly, it kind of makes him seem rather self-interested and... well, like a bit of a jerk (in-game anyway - I'm sure he's a nice guy outside the game).

My impression so far is that with Rego, it's all about what you can do for him. Not what you can do for each other... oh no, forget about that.

I'm not sure if he's oblivious to what he's doing, or if he just thinks everyone else is. Perhaps he's just really slow at replying when it's to do with something that he's not interested in talking about. Perhaps he'll finally reply if I badger him enough.

Point is though, I shouldn't have to, and it leaves a better impression if he doesn't leave it up to others to press him to return favours all the time. It's mostly been over small matters so far, but what happens when it comes to the big matters? By acting like this over things that don't really matter, he's eroding some of the trust people might have for him later (at least me anyway) for no real gain.