[SPOILERS] Don't mention the war

[plako]

So the story.

Mackoti had kept the save for almost 24h and asked, if we could chat. He suggested a peace deal there that I took. It costs me some, but on the other hand I think I now have even remote chance in this game. Here are the details from my email where I try to summarize things:

So here are the things I think I agreed with the dogpile group:
* NAP until T100
* Rough border deals. Specifically my silver city (N from me), deer city (NE from me) gems city (S from me), Mackoti's city in the gras hill NW from my silver city, Serdoa's gold city

And here is our deal addition:
* NAP until T120
* gems gifted now and in exchange I get dyes when they're hooked
* I loan 200 after your Currency (ETA?) paid back after you get Calendar that you research at 100% and then collect gold at 0%

We didn't talk about these, but I'd like to have these too:
* Open borders
* No EP points between us

He also admitted that they were behind the dogpile effort, but that didn't mean much to me when we 2 are prbably the last ones.

I'll try to settle gems and silver sites ASAP and naturally dispand at least all the warriors and maybe a bunch of unpromoted other units to get my economy rolling again.

[Rowain]

I think every Roman-player in the future will stay away from attacking you

[Krill]

Yeah...impressive stuff. Ruthless.

[plako]

T60

Played the turn yesterday, but didn't remember to take any screenshots. Peace was offered and I accepted and gifted gems to Rome. TMIT didn't remember to ask for pace so I offered that too.

There really isn't much I could build while growing so I dialed up 2 workers and 2 settlers. Now that I've Masonry I probably should take Monotheism to enable OR and spread my religion. Mackoti also asked, if I could deliver a missionary for him. I just need to figure out how to get a Prophet to get me the Shrine.

I also disbanded all warriors and also couple of Archers. Unit maintenance is still 13. There aren't many unpromoted units around and I'd like to use Chariots for filling up my map info so I guess I need to accept the costs.

[regoarrarr]

Great job getting out from under the dogpile plako!! I was rooting for you and will continue to root for you to win despite it.

[plako]

Thank you for the support Rego.

T61

Great Scientist was born and now I'm not totally sure what to do with it. Short term settling will be way better than Academy (gold deal with Mackoti) so I might do that. Originally I was prepared to bulb Mathematics with it to get Construction fast, but luckily I didn't need to do that. I also switched tech to Monotheism and start spreading the religion. So far I've got 0 free spreads .



Suprisingly our agreements weren't as clear cut as I thought they were. Before playing the save I got this from TMIT:

With the chat as it is to stop the war and my allies deciding that we're all to sign a t100 NAP, I'll make good on my earlier claim of working with you in this scenario, if you're still interested .

NAP on Rome is t130 for me. t110 with WK and long with Serdoa (I can't realistically attack him soon). Rome made part of our NAP clause not to plot war on each other (similar to the shenanigans that led to declaring on you).

Now, onto some points:

- I will obviously join you on a dogpile against anybody who looks to be running away once a NAP expires, unless that happens to be you or me lol.

- I'm not sure what the heck WK is doing, because Serdoa got all the wonders despite what is going on and WK power is low (similar to mine after you spanked my forces). My guess is straight basic econ (city growth etc).

- If you want to add the "no war plotting" to our NAP to mimic what OleMack is doing with everyone, I'm game.

- I settled the silver site, but am open to discussion about the area to the east of that (north of you), although Serdoa is a factor in that region as well.

- Want to open borders to farm trade routes? I forgot to propose it last turn.

BTW - very impressed by your reaction to the early pressure. I was thinking that with that token force from me + serdoa we could split your forces/screw you, but a few mistakes on our part and excellent play by you ended that notion...rather thoroughly.

I had to admit that I should have been more active towards TMIT and keep him informed. TMIT's message did sign a warning bell in my ears and when I opened the save he had settled 1E from the silver basically ruining all my chances to settle strong city N from me. I was pretty annoyed by this and sent this:

WTF. That positioning is totally unacceptable. You did know about our
deal including the border agreement. I consider our NAP null and void.
Only way to avoid war in 10T is huge compensation in the area south of
me.

Somethies it pays to be cranky. TMIT was ready to negotiate and I actually gave him more than was asked, but I should get that city next turn. Here is his message:

I wasn't given any information on a border agreement at all, just a 10 turn NAP. Truth be told, I was only informed of the stoppage of war after the fact. Now I'm hearing that I was also put into a border agreement and not even told?

However, that isn't your fault. What compensation do you have in mind?

Also, I'm going to read my email logs very, very carefully. Because I am almost 100% certain that Rome/Serdoa didn't utter a single word of any border agreement to me, and only suggested that I discuss this city site with you at the time I was settling it. As you can imagine, not even knowing about deals that were made without my information is not something I enjoy.

Consider this an honest mistake on my part, but keep in mind that if Rome was setting me up to be screwed this way I will not be amused and won't be particularly inclined to honor my deals with them to the letter. With that in mind, we could take a few more creative solutions to this as well (IE you gift settler I gift city, or we do something nasty to Rome as a team 30 turns earlier than he'd expect pressure from me, etc).

Let me dig through my logs quickly. If I knew I was violating a border agreement I wouldn't have done it...and I might have reacted differently to this situation initially also.

I'd really rather not get involved in a war that will slow us down, considering we're already behind relative to the farmers. I don't suck nearly as badly as you saw in our first fight, but I'd still suffer a war vastly and we both know it. I think you would too, to a lesser extent.

Rome hadn't informed TMIT about the deal! I think that dogpile group has broken for good. 2nd message from TMIT:

Checked my logs. The only thing mackoti gave me in terms of this war stopping is as follows:

"Hi,
I supose you didnt read that the atack on Plako failed he had like 10 dogs) and we agreed a peace with him(we had no choise).So i get no cities so the distribution of land which we agreed before the war its not good anymore.So before you are using your setler beter discus with plako , serdoa..
Regards,
Mackoti"

Serdoa had some things to say but also had nothing beyond NAP and that it was largely Dave/Mack who worked out the deal.

I see no language about a border agreement at all. If you can demonstrate that it was a concrete part of your deal, I will have serious beef with Rome .

My response:

Sigh. I was under impression Rome was your speaker and you definately should have discussed with me before settling as was suggested to you. This was my message to Rome 2 days ago that I thought was accpeted by the dogpile group:
* NAP until T100
* Rough border deals. Specifically my silver city (N from me), deer city (NE from me) gems city (S from me), Mackoti's city in the gras hill NW from my silver city, Serdoa's gold city

It left the exact positioning open and I was ready to fight culturally for the tiles, but your current positioning makes it totally impossible to claim silver and makes it very hard for me to settle in the area at all. I'm glad you're amicable so we probably can find feasible solution that would work for both of us. Gifting the city would be obvivously good solution and I'm ready to pay more than a settler for it e.g. I could add worker to the deal, but I can see also other potential solutions.

TMIT is ok with Settler+Worker:

Okay, I'm about to head to work but I'm encouraged by what I see here. I was prepared to suicide whip in an attempt to survive, but this is a critical period in the game where we really need to reach important technologies ASAP to progress at a competitive rate. Even if I were to survive, I don't think I'd last through the catapult era well.

It was a bit rough of me to settle the city immediately, but obviously it's a good site I really was only given a concrete NAP as information and nothing else. With that, I figured to be safe from attack for a while and that I could get away with the city site. If the border agreement was COMMUNICATED to me as part of the deal, I'd have not settled there. If Rome functioned as our spokesperson, it was also his duty to communicate the agreement in its entirety to the other civs. The failure to do so was pretty gross; that border agreement is fully half of the deal and I didn't see a word of it!

If you're willing to give me a settler + worker for the city, we can work this out. Here is my suggestion:

-Immediate gift of the city over to you
-Immediate open borders (we might as well get trade routes and this will give us a trade network )

For:

-Next settler you have/make and a worker along with it.
-Retain NAP t100

Is that acceptable to you?

Also, we need to sort out the rest of the area. I think it's fair that the land north of the silver city lake is reasonable for me, but we have a kind of dead zone area between you/me/serdoa. For strategic reasons I'd rather not allow a city that immediately forks my capitol + eastern city, but aside from that I'm open to suggestions

Finally I sent these 2 to him:

This sounds good to me so we've a deal. Settler was just finished from
Felix Leca so you'll have it and I send you a worker too.

I've no ambibtions furhter north so we pretty much need to agree upon
the areas douth from me.

Just forget to mention. OB is alright. I'll take a look at the map a bit more closely in the evening so we can start also more detailed border negotiations.

I also checked from Mackoti that me taking the city is alright to him and promised 4 Missionaries from him in exchange because originally I was supposed to leave him spot NW from the corn that he can't settle now. Our relationship feels "pleased" at the moment.

[plako]

T62

TMIT gave the city and it is expensive. costs raised 13 gold/turn. I also forget to set what to build there so lost 1 hammer there. I settled the Great Scientist to my capital. I considered moving him to Felix Leca (in case I put Academy there later), but even if it is great city now it doens't have much growth potential.

I'm building Temple of Artemis since I don't have anything better to build. I researched Monotheism so I can start spamming missionaries next assuming I can bear the expenses of Organized Religion.

[spacemanmf]

So are you going to settle a bridge city in between?

[plako]

So are you going to settle a bridge city in between?

yes - As soon I can afford it. This city has decent economic potential so it is relatively high in priority list. I'll position it almost certainly on the jungled Wine tile and hope that it can culturally keep control of the pig tile.

btw. Pyramids are big in this map so Serdoa will soon be clear leader of the pack.

[NobleHelium]

How does the city location compare to where you would have settled it?

SE of the pigs for the other city looks best but that's ignoring defense considerations. What about on the desert? North of the wines that I'm guessing the location for since it's really hard to see.