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I'm a decidedly less calm person than some more rational people here, and agree that the NAP was the main objective. But we're being frequently dicked around by CFC, don't lose sight of that. If they're willing to be inflexible and difficult over the small things (and they always are), they're going to be impossible to deal with on the big things. Yeah, the marble may not be a big thing since we just threw it into the deal, but it's just how they operate that they'll take only exactly what they want from any deal they write because the spirit or intent is irrelevant to these guys. They only care about what is expedient and what they think they can get away with.
We know we're headed for war T175. I would suggest we minimize any further benefits they get from us and start making a cold war out of this now. Rally our own alliance and then beat them over the head later when it's time. We can't really do business with these guys on any kind of even footing.
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I would disagree that the Marble provision should be so easily discarded. Given the amount of rules-lawyering CFC is using in the agreement, I have no problem with bending the terms to benefit us in turn.
Anyway, since they offered to change the terms, are there any other resources they can offer that we might be interested in? Otherwise we can just settle for cancelling the resource trades and leave the rest of the agreement intact. That would basically force them to use their engineer on the Notre Dame if they want it. I can live with that. 
We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. - George Bernard Shaw
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Saw their note, that is really some twisting of facts to say we agreed to taking the marble now
Suffer Game Sicko
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FWIW, if we want to play diplomatic hardball and say "we'd like to call off all resource deals and leave the NAP in place" and dare them to complain about it, we could probably get away with it given our current drafting spree.
I'm not advocating this, I'm just saying it's an option that does exist.
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I'm in favor of that but i think you need to negotiate a brand new NAP on top of it. Otherwise you're leaving open the risk of them coming in at t170 or whenever before the NAP currently ends amd saying that it was broken with the resources and we had been operating without one.
Cue the "I am altering the deal; pray i don't alter it further" clips
Suffer Game Sicko
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(May 15th, 2013, 08:30)T-hawk Wrote: Yeah, they're doing nothing wrong. The agreement does say that the marble timing will be arranged around CFC's convenience of not using it, not at any time RB is actually ready to use it.
So our options are to just take it now anyway, or to point out that we don't need it now post-Taj and renegotiate for something else instead.
Completely agree with this. Let's just accept the marble and move on.
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Heck, I don't care that much about the marble. But I care about winning the game, and I don't care one whit about the diplomacy style that comes out from CFC.
But mainly it comes down to realpolitik. CFC is currently one of the main contenders against us. They have received, and are receiving, quite a lot of stuff from us. Now they want to give us one of thing they said they owe us entirely on their terms. I think that's bad, both from a psychological and a realpolitik standpoint.
If they want to give us something else, instead of the marble, that's fine.
Furthermore, I consider that forum views should be fluid in width
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Any claim that we must take the marble now and that we had agreed to it is absolute bullshit and must not be tolerated.
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Reiterating what I said above, I think we should consider an amendment to our NAP treaty that would cancel the resource deals and release them from the need to give us marble which we don't need. In the process we clearly spell that the NAP is still in effect.
I think we should not take marble now on their terms given that we don't need it.
Kalin
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(May 15th, 2013, 12:37)kjn Wrote: Heck, I don't care that much about the marble. But I care about winning the game, and I don't care one whit about the diplomacy style that comes out from CFC.
This. Let's disrupt their plans if we can but its not worth risking the NAP. That's why I advocated asking for it in 7t instead of 5t.
Darrell
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