[SPOILERS!] Pericles of Babylon. Kyan, Twinkletoes, Whosit.

[Kyan]

I see no reason to trust Mali yet. They may well prove to be good allies, but they need to do just that, prove it. We have to have the settler there before we discuss for these reasons.

1) We have already won (and thus avoided) a settler race.
2) We get Yellow Dot up as soon as we can if they agree.
3) If they say no to both, we take Purple Dot before they can respond.

This is where we find out if we can trust Mali. If they are unreasonable then who cares, we send Novice and find their other neighbour and be nice to them. Just because they are our only contact right now, doesn't mean that they are de-facto best buddies.

I really want to leave it until we are on the way and we have two warriors (Banshee and Warrior 2) around the city for some protection.

And the extra *top secret* bonus we have of having Novice going west of them, is that we can both find out what resources they don't know about yet, but we can maybe sneak behind enemy lines if they do take umbrage with us.

We HAVE to take this spot, whether nicely or against their wishes. Its our Pink Dot moment. Our negotiations when they come should be strong. Ideally I'd like us both to be involved in the chat, simply for double strength and we can react to any unforseen occurances.

ALSO, if it comes to war, we will be on the defensive. Bowmen will be fine for defense, and we may have Axes if we are lucky with BW

I agree we need to found here. I fully intend us to. What i'm saying tho is we have reached the moment you're describing.

Settler born next turn, moves for two turns and founds the next turn. We're there already. you mentioned having two warriors nearby for protection but we can't. We agreed, as per your request, to send Novice away to scout. Banshee has to go solo for now. Thought, once the settler is built, if you really want i'm happy to send wyrmsbane over that way as we can easily speed up the 4th warrior in case of contact.

[Kyan]

Emperor Capac,

How are the proud Malinese on this blustery morning? You may have noticed Novice moving around your border. He got a bit confused by the brown haze before him that seemed to mysteriously mark your border. He will soon be on his merry way to try and find more civilizations. We will keep you updated with his progress.

Thank you for your recent screenshot. We have thoroughly scouted the land between our two fine civilizations and our cartographers have worked extremely hard to map the land so as to provide you with this information. We have located four key resources between us so far. There are two areas where pigs are fairly prevelant, there is some ore that our miners insist will be later useful and there is naturally developing corn farm just outside of your current territory.

Our proposal, therefore, is to split these in half judging by proximity to capital. The best spot for us to found would be on the plains hill 1W of the pigs. That site would offer a substantially better site, especially in the long term. However, in the nature of being fair-spirited and trying to be diplomatically amenable with yourselves, we have come to the following compromise:

http://s849.photobucket.com/albums/a...2.jpg&newest=1

This is the best we have come up with. It is worth pointing out that our proposed location is two tiles nearer our capital than that of the splendid Malinese nation. We are not aiming for a 'pink dot-esque' maneuver here and this spot generates minimal culture towards any of your key resources. This layout gives minimal overlap with any other cities. Our respective capitals would have no overlap, nor would we with one another. We would also like to stress that we would make no effort to fight a culture battle at this location. If we truly wish to become allies than i'm sure "our close borders spark tensions" will not become an issue allowing the Kysit and Malinese people to live long and prosperous lives.

Your Friends,

Kyan
Kysit's Periwinkles

thoughts?

[Twinkletoes89]

My plan was to send Banshee and Wyrmsbane, we have 7 hammers worth of hills (or a slave's whip soon) for producing another defender should we need it.

I think the time is when our settler is 1 move from the spot, then they have 1 turn to miss before they are too late with negotiations. We can't give this away yet. If our settler is due, theirs could be too, and we could lose out by a turn if we aren't careful.

I know you want to seem reasonable and give them as much of an inkling that 'we come in peace', but we know that they have only scouted towards the marble so that WILL be their 2nd city spot too if they can get it. We aren't really being very reasonable with our 'Purple Dot' plan.

I also think that if we force them into a corner where it is difficult for them to say no, we reveal a lot more about their intentions. If they cave to us quickly, we know their military must be weak. If they put up a fight, we know we are level. We must aggressively push for Purple first so we can look 'reasonable' if they doth protest too much. If they cave to Purple, which may work (though unlikely) we get our best city site and we know they are prob running more of a farmers' gambit.

Lets make them worry about us for a bit. Strength is key.

EDIT: Just please hold back on the mail. I think we are conceding way to early. I want us to start strong and try and make diplomatic arguments for Purple Dot. We don't want to cave unless we have to. We don't know if we could get Purple Dot unless we try.

[Kyan]

My plan was to send Banshee and Wyrmsbane, we have 7 hammers worth of hills (or a slave's whip soon) for producing another defender should we need it.

Yeah ok that's cool. Feel free to move Wyrmsbane in that direction if you catch the turn.

I think the time is when our settler is 1 move from the spot, then they have 1 turn to miss before they are too late with negotiations. We can't give this away yet. If our settler is due, theirs could be too, and we could lose out by a turn if we aren't careful.

A compromise? Perhaps we send a basic 'we received your msg and will respond soon' email now. Send the above message next turn. That gives them two turns to respond.

I know you want to seem reasonable and give them as much of an inkling that 'we come in peace', but we know that they have only scouted towards the marble so that WILL be their 2nd city spot too if they can get it. We aren't really being very reasonable with our 'Purple Dot' plan.

Agreed on both points. Especially the second.

I also think that if we force them into a corner where it is difficult for them to say no, we reveal a lot more about their intentions. If they cave to us quickly, we know their military must be weak. If they put up a fight, we know we are level.

Diplomacy from the end of a sword. Let's play a role-reversal game. Say Inca suddenly threw down a city that bordered our capital without asking first. There's bugger all we could do about it so we'd accept it. We'd play all nice and friendly to them but in reality, we'd be upset about it and would harbour that throughout the game. First chance we got to 'get revenge' we would do it.

We must aggressively push for Purple first so we can look 'reasonable' if they doth protest too much. If they cave to Purple, which may work (though unlikely) we get our best city site and we know they are prob running more of a farmers' gambit.

Half agree. I still doubt the merits of purple over yellow. Yes it's a better hammer city and secures the same resources and is on a hill. It's also further from home, harder to reinforce in case of attack, wastes tiles on a map where land is sparse and causes all kinds of diplomatic problems. If purple secured some other resource then i would be happy to play along but we're going to anger our closest neighbour for a couple of hills.

I would much rather an inclusion like i edited in-to the reply. Re: we want the purple site but we can appreciate their point of view. Theoretically down the line if we want to be their allies (and not saying we do), allies don't just think about their own well-being. This way we come up smelling of roses. Even asking the question of settling purple is too cheeky for my liking. If someone did it to us i would be narked.

EDIT: Just please hold back on the mail. I think we are conceding way to early. I want us to start strong and try and make diplomatic arguments for Purple Dot. We don't want to cave unless we have to. We don't know if we could get Purple Dot unless we try.

Of course i'll hold back the mail. We're a team. I really don't think we're conceding anything. From their PoV, we've met one other civ and immediately planned to expand far in their direction. It just looks like a land-grab.

I understand what you're saying but find me some good arguments about why they should find purple dot reasonable? How would you edit the above e-mail to show that?

If it wasn't clear, i'm personally against purple dot. Really against it. But i'm only one cog of the Babylon machine, if you two really want to try then i'll do what i can to try and persuade them. I think that we're being too eager to progress short term without a thought to the long term. The whole point of the oracle/MC snatch is to allow us to be very economically sound thanks to representation. If we upset our nearest neighbour, we will have to focus our attention on military instead which defeats the entire purpose. If we just take purple dot, which i think we easily could, it would open a big can of worms/resentment on their side that i'd rather we not have to deal with later down the line.

[Twinkletoes89]

I understand what you mean, but Mali is still just one team of many. We do not know how they will develop. They may be a strong team who we piss off through this and we regret it. OTOH, they could get stomped early by neighbour number 2 and all the good relations in the world will make no difference.

I don't want to compromise our plans so early before we know what the wider scope is. We could end up with allies who do not include Mali in the trading bloc. We may find that our other neighbour (or Mali's other neighbour for that matter - we could meet them before they do) is much more attractive to ally with and can offer us more.

If they are pissed with both Yellow and Purple, well we take Purple. Being on a hill will count big time if we end up with war. What happens if we end up taking Yellow and Mali gets stomped by and aggressive neighbour in 10 turns or we ally with their neighbour and stomp them together?

I think we should fight hard for Purple and get novice to Mali's neighbour ASAP (as long as he survives the barbs! This is why I wanted Novice to go west. If we find their neighbour and they are strong, why can we not destroy Mali together for some nice lebensraum?

I am very unwilling to concede anything to Mali unless we really have to. They could be a non-entity in the game and we've sacrificed something for nothing. If we want this Oracle/MC plan to work, we need to be strong and not waver from this aim for anything, especially early doors. If we do not succeed short-term, we will not succeed long-term, simple as.

Right now, when the diplomatic landscape of the game is still a long way away, I don't care too much if Mali bears a grudge. We have enough of other teams who we could work with later on, and if we succeed in grabbing MC from the Oracle, we won't be short on customers!

[Kyan]

Are you alright for me to send at least a confirmation email back? to confirm receipt.

Also, if you want us to fight for purple dot- ok, can you give me some good reasons to use to try and persuade them?

[Twinkletoes89]

Confirmation of message email is fine - give me and Whosit some time for good reasons

[Whosit]

Confirmation of message email is fine - give me and Whosit some time for good reasons

Whoa! Aren't you asking for a bit much!

I'm not sure we'd really have anything to "persuade" them with other than "we can take this land if we want to." I know that TT wants to wait until the turn off settling, but we can probably get away with sending the message in . . . well, maybe 1 turn or 2. But basically, we should say something like "we have a settler in position to settle on this hill here. It's the best spot available to us right now. What do you say?" Or however you guys think the sentiment should be phrased.

If we're testing their reaction, perhaps we should also say "we are determined to secure the Marble because it is an important resource." If they argue about the Marble . . . well, that could suggest they wouldn't agree to our fall-back site, either. Dunno if we want to push that button immediately, though.

As far as the value of each site on their own, I still think the hill site is stronger overall. There may end up being a few wasted tiles, but they are plains. Even riverside, not terribly strong. We could probably put down a filler town at some point if we really wanted to use them.

I think that TT's strongest point is that there are still a lot of fish out in this pond. If we anger Mali, we can probably find someone just willin' enough to oblige us in their destruction. I see Mali as a rival, anyway, because of their economic traits. I suddenly have this grand vision of eliminating as many of our economic opponents as possible so that all the warmongers have to come to us for techs . . . . Ahh, pipe dreams.

I think that the odds that we have metal of some kind is decent, what with all those hills. Of course, if it's Iron and not Copper, we might be in trouble, still. Eh. Too bad we can't get BW in a bit faster.

[Twinkletoes89]

Right, looking at the dotmap in depth I'm not certain what we should do.

I really like a hill site and a desert site isn't ideal, but the city just needs to get the Marble short term. Genesis and the Watchman Hill cities will be our main production centers, with WH I think being our Oracle city.

Earlier I think I was getting a but to carried away with getting some fierce negotiation going, but after taking a step back and seeing England play crap against Italy, I think I can concede Yellow Dot.

A hill would be good if they really hate us for pinching the Marble but then the hill gives them 2 causes for complaint rather than one. Send the mail, but with the image, block out the name of our city and what it is building, and what we are teching, I don't want them to have that information!

I apologise for being stubborn, sometimes the slow pace of PB gets to me, I want to get stuck in!

[Whosit]

but after taking a step back and seeing England play crap against Italy, I think I can concede Yellow Dot.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

But it looks like this is the start of a kinder, gentler team Babylon. I would still say that we'd like to settle the hill site, but maybe like you said Kyan, say that we're willing to step back. If they complain, well, that'll change things. Marble is most important, as TT said. And as Kyan noted, Yellow is closer to the capital.