RBP4 [SPOILERS] - Shaka of Zulu (sunrise089, regoarrarr, and friends)

[darrelljs]

I'm pretty sure you're not remotely close to qualifying for "nearly the same" in the FFH game.

Yeah, but Ilios and rego didn't know that, until you spilled the beans .

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Plako not amused

You might wonder why it has taken so long to respond. I've had some difficulties to respond after I heard rumours that the real initiator of "the Plako problem" initiative is you. Needless to say I was less than thrilled to hear about this. Pretty clever to threat us joining when you're the one building it up.

Basically this means no more friendly favors. I'll close my borders and allocate my EPs as I like. At this point you can only buy favors from me. Long term deal including ~10-20 gpt+Gems+NAP would make it worth my while to keep borders open and find another target for my EPs and give us a chance to rebuild some trust.

Plako

I can't imagine why?

Hopefully this pasted-in correspondence was short and simple enough for even the most simple folks to understand

[regoarrarr]

Chat with Lord Parkin last night

Me: so here's my biggest problem to going with the longterm alliance
and maybe you can answer in caht or via email as i'm about to go afk
the more i crunch the numbers, the more i 'm concerned that you are the #1 power in this game
much ahead of plako
so
while on some levels that is good
on other levels
how do i ensure that when we have crushed the rest of the world under our collective boot
that i have a fighting chance to compete with you on whatever stage we agree to?
Lord: Right, which is why it is that I'm offering the freebie incentives to make sure that we're on more of an even keel
I don't actually think you'll have much of a problem there
Me: secondly, according to my "sources", you don't have any yof the basic military techs (hbr, archery, construction, machinery)
so while you're a fast researcher (see point 1)
it will still be awhile to acquire anything that can crack longbows
Lord: As long as you don't drastically fall behind in city numbers, you're going to keep up with us throughout the game
Me: anyways #1 is most of my concern
feel free to typ ein here or send an email
brb
Lord: Those are all 1-3 turn techs for me
well Machinery maybe a bit more
I have never had reason to go to war yet, but if I was committed to one then I would of course pick up all those techs quickly
Just because I was focussing on economic techs before entering an alliance doesn't mean that I wouldn't research the military techs once I'm actually in one
In essence, if you're worrying about me playing the "useless ally" by never researching the military techs, you don't have to worry about that.
Sent at 20:15 on Sunday
Lord: I'm already offering the OB which I will almost certainly never profit from, just because I think that as the nation that's presently slightly ahead we should offer incentives for a long-term alliance.
besides, we're really not that far ahead, and you already have a larger empire and apparently more expansion room than us
plus your cities are probably about to enter mass expansion mode
So I'm pretty sure your current standing in the rankings is very misleading, and you're really not that far behind us at all. In fact, with the freebies I'm offering, perhaps I should be more concerned about pushing you into the lead before our agreement ends. :P
Me: oh whatever :-P
well in any partnership, it's based on communication
and making sure that there's a plan in place for what to do if one poewr gets too far ahead of the other
harder to switch courses in civ than it is in say a game like diplomacy
but still not out of the question
Lord: We're certainly one of the more communicative players in the game, I think. I've been in many alliances before, and I've almost always been the most communicative guy. People can't shut me up. :P
Well, that's why we set the potential end date for cooperation, so nearer that time we can re-evaluate and decide if we still want to continue working together or part ways.
Me: hmm i don't know plako hsa more posts in his thread than you.....
Lord: that's because he has ASM as a dedlurker, who posts almost as much as him
Me: ok i checked
Lord: I'm around on chat a lot more than plako is
Me: you have more posts than him
with 585
in your thread
not NEARLY as much as SOME people, who have 587 :-P
Lord: lol
in my experience being available on chat is by far the bigger factor, as it's a practical necessity for a successful alliance
The best and most satisfying alliances I've ever had were with players who were around every day to chat about what to do on the present turn.
Hence why I think you and I would make a great team.
Sent at 20:26 on Sunday
Lord: Anyway, get back to me as soon as you can
Sent at 20:34 on Sunday
Lord: Maybe an alliance with a stronger civ seems like a dubious move, but unless you happen to be exactly even with someone, there's always going to be a stronger civ. Plus, I'm offering incentives like free OB to ensure we're on a pretty even footing. And you and I both know that you'll be skyrocketing in score once your cities grow, so you can't pretend you're that far behind us.
I think it would make great sense for both of us, anyway. But let me know what you decide.
Sent at 20:37 on Sunday
Lord: Your relative position to us in terms of power is only going to get stronger as the game progresses, as well. So it does seem to make a lot of sense to go for a NAP while you're not as strong, so that once it ends you're in a position where you're very strong.
brb

Summary for the simple brained:

I told him one of my concerns about working with him is that he would just become too powerful. So he of course had answers to that, which are above. I won't summarize them because they're all the obvious ones.

Of course, given plako's earlier email, I may not have a choice.

[sunrise089]

Wait, wait, YOU are criticizing ME in terms of thread updating?

Careful with the all caps, what will you use when SUNRISE accuses you of the same thing?

Re: the Parkin issue, I don't see it having a huge impact either way, but it'll be nice to get trade routes with him to counterbalance the one's we're loosing with Plako.

I don't buy Plako's "shock and horror" for a bit btw, everything he's done for the past 20t suggests he'll invade us as soon as he thinks he can get away with it.

EDIT:

Summary for the simple brained

Be nice or you might ruin the good cop/bad cop thing

[darrelljs]

Some of us need cliff notes...I only read the summary .

Darrell

[Maestro]

I am also simple brained and appreciate the tl;dr summaries.

[scooter]

Life is too short for unsummarized chat logs.

[regoarrarr]

Logged in and Plako has indeed closed borders with us, as well as founded the city that I posted the pic of yesterday.

All day I was trying to rack my brain for a witty acronym that would "stick it to us", but when I logged in the city was only named "Shanghai". My vote was "KMA"

CivStats also said he founded another city but not sure where that was - might have been over in the ex-WK lands.

[regoarrarr]

FREAKIN POPPED ANOTHER ONE!!!!!



For those of you who are not old-timers, that comes from Sirian somewhere. I think maybe it's in the epic SG Cuban Isolationists but I'm certainly not wading through like 5000 posts, including like 10 full pages where Sirian describes games of chinese checkers he's been playing while waiting for his new computer

Anyway during beta testing, I believe Sirian was saying that the random popping of metals should be turned off because it always happened to him, but one of the other testers said it should be buffed because it NEVER happened to him (I may have the roles reversed). Anyways so then Sirian would always send something to this other tester whenever it happend "Popped another one" "Still never happened" "Popped another one" etc. etc.

The most hilarious part about this is that we have been following the crazy whip strategy, so we have not been working mines at all during this game. I counted them and we have 9 (!) mines in our entire empire, almost all of which are either at the capital from our GLH run or were built in the last 2-3 turns.

In fact the new silver mine LITERALLY WAS JUST FINISHED LAST TURN! THIS WAS THE FIRST TURN WE WERE WORKING IT! (You can even see the worker who finished it still sitting on it!)

[SIZE="5"]FREAKIN POPPED ANOTHER ONE INDEED[/SIZE]

[regoarrarr]

Not to mention that silver would be the absolute best metal for us to pop as we don't have any (hooked up). So that's a +2 happy in every city with a forge.

You'll also note that our good friend Lord Parkin built the church of the nativity, and he also founded Islam too, so he is going religion happy. Which is good I guess