Niccolò Machiavelli's Thread

[pling]

Chat with Old Harry (from Gillette). Please let me know, if you think I'm being too nice and give out too much info or that NAP is bad idea. If we go for NAP. How long you would suggest?

They're hinting about potential problems with M3. Not sure how seriously to take them before discussing with M3 ourselves.

The thing that strikes me is that they could have exactly the same convo with M3 about us - "we're scared of their axes so we want to be nice to you". Along with a nice dropping in of how they're hooking horses ASAP with the disclaimer about being scared of M3 rather than us (which is easily reversed when talking to M3). Gotta be a bit nervous for Gillette at the mo, with the two teams that just "won" wars and have large standing armies being the ones next door.

On the one hand we have a load of axes, might be nice to use them for something. On the other hand, if they're getting horses hooked up soon we probably can't do much with them other than hopefully get a better deal than we otherwise might. So being nice is probably better long term than being aggressive

Our original deal was no cities in the neutral zone, in the spoiler cut is the pic I've got in the history thread of that - no cities between the two yellow lines:

We actually still don't know much more about the land between us, which is a shame for negotiations - perhaps something we could talk to M3 about is if they give us a screenshot of what they know of Gillette's land & the land between us & Gillette we'll give them a screeny of what we know of TEAM's?

Maybe we could press to get a city for ourselves across the line either north or south of the neutral zone? Either to get the ivory south or another chunk of the middle to the north? And then to encourage them to settle up on M3 if they're "already a problem"?

[plako]

Discussion with HitAnyKey. Some intresting info. Main point is that they're asking for OB to move their scout through our territory and benefit from trade routes. Any opinions should we accept and what would be sufficient payment. Of course we could just ask for NAP and take the potential good will coming from the deal.

I would be ok just taking the deal with NAP until T110. Good will is payment enough at this point and we might get the info for free afterwards.

hitanykey: Heya. Figured I'd toss you a quick chat, since I see you're online. I'll try to have us send a diplo email soon as well, but wanted to get a thought going for you guys right away so we can maybe get a response before we need to play our next turn....

me: hi

hitanykey: We are wondering if you guys might want to sign an Open Borders agreement. Our need right now, is that we'd like a quicker way for our scout to get east towards TEAM. As you can see, he got cornered by your borders and is having to backtrack to the west again.

me: I need to ask from team, but preliminarily could work. Need to follow our directions though.

hitanykey: yeah, that would of course be understood. And if there's anywhere towards team that you would like us to explore for you, we would almost definitely be open to that as well.

me: If you've scouted the areas SE from Gillette that would be could exchange

hitanykey: plus, I see you guys have ocean access via a river. And OB will get us Trade Routes to help us both out with income

me: You've Sailing?

hitanykey: yup

me: ok - That eould be just one sided benefit

hitanykey: oh, didn't know that.
well, our next city will be about 9-10 tiles from the border of your NW city. So it shouldn't be too difficult to make a road connection at some point in the near future.

me: Quite a while. Of course, if you could offer something in exchange of OB commerce it could make us more intrested. Are you planning to build GLH?
Just FYI - we're not competing
Just would need to know
Because it affects the desicion
Of course info stays on us
Won't give it away

hitanykey: any information of that level is something I would have to discuss with the team first, but I'll post some of your questions in the forum so that we (it's really just myself & TheHumanHydra...with LP sometimes chiming in) can do a quick discussion.

me: That would be great. Information like this could be enough as a payment
After all we'll eventually get sailing too

hitanykey: I just wanted to get a quick initial mention of the OB topic out to you now. Will post more stuff in detail in our forum for discussion, and then get an official diplo message to you guys today.
yup, that's true.
Is your 3rd city on the water, or will that be your 4th would be on the water?
actually, you already have 4 cities.
I keep miscounting based on what the diplo screens show. lol

me: Yeah - capital is missing there.
It seems you did well against Pirates.

hitanykey: Decent enough. Took a couple bad military losses, (like losing a double-promo axe at 98% vs a quechua ), but overall it went well enough.
We got the city and a border has been agreed upon...at least for how. Hopefully it sticks for awhile.
You guys got a city from TEAM, right?

me: Yea, but we paid market price for it

hitanykey: ah right, I remember you said something about paying with a settler & workers.

me: yeah - We just grinned our teeths and paid since any other alternative would have lost the game for both of us

hitanykey: I'm guessing it was an agreement where they pulled back their military to let you take it, without conflict as part of the trade? We almost had one like that with the Pirates. And they also wanted a Settler in trade.

me: It was gifted. We'll settle them a city soon and gift it back
So how is your relationship with Gillette? They've been able to develop in peace
Landed religion. Maybe heading towards Oracle

hitanykey: We started off with a good relationship...and were in the process of setting a border (scooter was going to make a dot-map proposal), and then he lost interest. So I'm going to have to work up a map of my own I guess to propose to whoever is handling their diplo now.

me: ok - they've been pretty silent lately

hitanykey: I'm hoping we don't end up having border contentions before we can get something solidified.
Yeah, he said their team (especially the veterans) have pretty much all dropped out.
just like what happened to our team kinda.
Mortius (our most active player) just vanished on us without a word.
I was happy when THH came to join our team. Since otherwise it'd basically be just me.

me: This game didn't fulfill expectations although mine weren't even originallt that high . I've seen few times how these games play out
Our team is still pretty functional though

hitanykey: yeah, I didn't have much of an expectation either. It's basically just turned into a small "teams" game...as opposed to a democracy style game

me: It is quite natural. The ones having most intrest and time to deveote to the game dictate and the ones who just write every now and then lose gradually intrest
At this point desicions startto require quite alot of insight what is going on in the game

hitanykey: Hmm, looks like it's our turn. Guess I should go post some stuff for THH & I (and maybe LP) to discuss, and get a message sent off to you guys once it's been agreed upon what we'll say.
And I'll need to decide what to do with our scout for this turn. Heh

me: sounds good.

hitanykey: Do you think it's likely that an OB agreement could be forthcoming?
If so, I'll send the scout back NE so that he's on the far eastern border of your territiry for minimal entrance

me: Can't say. I need to put this on our forum. If it nets us something in echange then I'm definately intrested. It doesn't need to be much e.g. map somewhere a sligthly lopsided border deal (we'll probably shaare a border in the center) could do be ok

[zakalwe]

You're doing great, Plako. I agree with your thoughts. I think we want good relations with Menagerie so we can gang up on Gillette, if necessary. And push them for more land.

[pling]

Yeah, nice work plako

I agree with your thoughts that good will & a NAP is actually enough, tho it would be nice to have a map of land between us & Gillette, but probably not nice enough to be irritating M3. If that makes sense

One thing about NAP timing - if we get a NAP with Gillette that's "the same length as last time" it'll run out T110, so maybe the one with M3 should run out on a different turn? T120 or something?

[DaveV]

I think it's worth giving away a little bit to make a friend, especially if that friend is aware that we're doing them a favor.

[darrelljs]

I would also take the deal as is.

Darrell

[plako]

OB accepted. Discussing NAP and other deals might be in order.

Their scout is SE-SE-E from our capital at the moment.

me: OB accepted. NW-N this turn
N-NE the turn after and you're through

hitanykey: Ok. This turn was actually my moving NE-NE back to the spot he's on. It's next turn that would be the NW-N, with the other the turn after that. And that's what I expected you to request for movements.
Hence why I moved him to that spot this turn.

me: yeah. I just logged in to check its positioning

hitanykey: yeah, just noticed that. I'll next up confirm which pieces of info they'd like to share and what map screenshots to send you. I'm assuming you're wanting to see the Gillette area to your SW as part of it?

me: We accepted without conditions. Share whatever you want
SE from Gillette intrest us most though

hitanykey: ok. And as something I can pretty much guarantee THH & LP would be ok with...if there's any particular direction towards TEAM or area around TEAM that you'd like us to scout for you (especially anything you haven't already seen), let us know.

We would be more than happy to move our scout eastward in a way that helps you get some info about what TEAM is doing.

me: We've most of the map info between us and TEAM. We've focused our efforts on that direction. You might need to ask passage a bit later either from us or TEAM

[plako]

Message from M3. BFF .

It seems the Open Borders agreement progressed quickly; thank you very
much for that! HitAnyKey has whipped up an image of what we know of
the area south-east of Gillette that he will send you since you
expressed interest in seeing that.

Thank you very much for the information about your peace deal with
TEAM; for our part, as HAK alluded to, we took the offending Pirates
city by force, and have just now signed a "blank peace" and
established a neutral zone between us. Just out of curiosity, I'm
interested to hear how your war with TEAM started - in our case, the
Pirates settled aggressively toward us (I wouldn't quite call it a
pink dot, though), and we responded by declaring war. Gillette, in
contrast, informed us of their settlement plans beforehand, and we
were looking to be able to establish a borders agreement quite
amicably, at least until scooter left - now it's kind of in limbo.

You guessed correctly that we're going for the Great Lighthouse; thank
you for letting us know that you're not also going for it. Are there
any other wonders you're interested in pursuing in the not-too-distant
future (you don't have to tell us if you don't want to, of course!)?
We're currently deciding about our future tech path and wonder
priorities, so you might be able to influence our choices! It seems
Gillette will get the Oracle ...

Anyway, if there are any other agreements you are interested in,
either now or down the road, by all means let us know! Our
communications may be a little slow as we are somewhat short-staffed,
but we will always get back to you as soon as we are able!

It seems they're giving Oracle willingly to Gillette too bad there isn't much we can do about this.

[pling]

Message from M3. BFF .

It seems they're giving Oracle willingly to Gillette too bad there isn't much we can do about this.

I don't know that I read that like that. I thought it was more them giving us a heads-up on what they thought was going on (in case we were planning on our own Oracle, or maybe to prod us to try & grab the Oracle), not that they were happy about it per se. In a similar spirit when we reply should we say something about how we think TEAM might be heading for the GLH? I'm not sure how to word it, coz it's speculation rather than any solid facts.

[zakalwe]

I like it. I think we should follow up with another unsolicited piece of information, and share our speculation that TEAM is going for TGLH. Just tell them that our peace treaty included open borders, on their request, and that we think they have both sailing and a coastal city.

Also tell them that our NAP with Gillette is about to expire, and we'd like to coordinate our negotiations with them. Gillette will be trying hard to get NAPs that end on different turns. If we coordinate our negotiations, we can make sure to squeeze them dry.

(If we want to use e-mail, I can help draft a message.)