RB PBEM #1 - Mehmed (SPOILERS!)

[Sullla]

I have no idea where this is going, but I love reading it. Thanks for keeping us notified.

[Dreylin]

t39 - Worker (Mike) completes & Istanbul starts on Oracle. 18t w/o chops, but Mike moves SE to start chopping the roaded grasshill forest. Bear Slayer heals some more, but spots a Lion in the distance. Daisy starts roading the FP tile ahead of moving to the Gems. Tim has finished his cottage, so moves to the Desert Hill for mining next turn.

Big news is that Wanderer has found sooooo's borders - across the mountains to the NE of Death Valley. He also kills a Lion between turns without being hurt. Finding sooooo has changed how I'm looking at the map again; I'll re-do the big map and post some thoughts in the near future.

[Dreylin]

Well, this is where it's going right now...

Dreylin,

Firstly, I was joking re your settling towards me. I would have settled to pick up the gems too. BTW: What is a pre-calendar happy resource? I cannot see any of those anywhere near my start.

Firstly, re the tech deal - I am still short writing too, so we have a few turns before we need to ink this. Can I pencil you in for HBR / Maths trade?

Re the Prophet - it is 5gpt for a settled Prophet plus 2 hammers (IIRC). To be honest, I had no idea what would balance out such a trade. You offer of a settler plus 5 gpt sounds a little light. Let me just throw down some other suggestions ...

- 5gpt is indexed based on my coin multipliers in my city
- settler comes with an escore
- I get to pick the spot
- you found the city, next turn I gift GP, turn after you gift city plus military cover - you walk GP back home
- you are responsible for making sure my cities all receive the religion of the shrine you create (works both ways - you get coin, I get religion) (need to discuss timing and situations where this requirement is void, etc)
- you agree to close borders against an opponent of my selection at my request (2 times only)

Obviously, all ofthese are open for discussion or not.

Ruff

Wow. OK, so that's a lot more than I'm willing to pay! Maybe I should have offered less as an initial bargaining position!

[Dreylin]

What!?!? Ruff has now passed me in posts, guess I need to spam my own thead more!

Anyway, here's the reply I sent to his previous message; I think it's pretty straightforward.

Hi Ruff,

Guess we're going to have to work on our communication if one of us is going to misconstrue every other e-mail! 9-)

I must admit that I'd assumed that each start had a pre-Calendar Happy resource based on what I've seen so far of the map. Maybe your Scouts have been too busy enjoying roast pork in my neighbourhood to spot the shinies in yours.... 9-)

Tech: well I'm not sure if HBR is my first choice from the options to research tbh, I really referenced it since it's the only one I can start research on right now. If you've taken Maths & sooooo Alpha, I think Monarchy may be my preference. If you're pencilling anything in, I think that's what you should put me down for.

Prophet: I'll tell you up front that I looked at your proposal and thought that even if it might be fair value for the GP, it's still far more than I'm willing to commit to at this stage of the game. Maybe by the time you get your second Prophet, I might be in a position to agree to some of your terms, but right now that sort of commitment would stunt my growth far too much for the return I'd get. Let me give you my perspective on your individual points and see if you think that there still might be room to negotiate a deal:

- I have no idea how my brain made 2h/5g into 2g/5h, but where 2gpt (with multipliers) would have been a decent deal (since I get a return of 2gpt right away), 5gpt is going to cost me in the short run, and won't start paying me back for a lot longer.

- I could probably agree to supply a Warrior along with the Settler - not that you need it since you have a Wall to protect you from Barbs.

- Clearly you don't expect me to give you a carte blanche to choose any spot to settle, so I'll assume you mean that if the location is in any two civ's border zone, we will agree to where the city will be placed. *Actually, I'll come back to this later*

- Responsibility for Religion spread is not a cheap task to expect me to undertake with no bounding parameters. certainly I could be persuaded to contribute a set number of missionaries on a particular schedule - e.g. one every 20t for the next 100t - but cannot agree to anything as open-ended as you suggest.

- Closing Borders on demand has to be a flat-out no in this situation. Without a longer-term cooperation agreement in place between us, there is absolutely no way I can allow you (or anyone else) to dictate my foriegn policy. Now if your intention was to deny ROP through my lands to access yours - to prevent an enemy attack - then I could certainly agree to a clause along those lines.

Going back to the city site, the biggest asset I can offer right now is land; I know we're getting into RB/Templars territory, but ultimately our border will come down to where we both are willing to reach to in order to claim land, or where we negotiate them to be. We can take a Templars/Imperio approach and draw an arbitrary line at the half-way point between our two Capitals and say that land is rightfully ours, but I'm not going to take that approach because a) it's a stupid idea, b) I don't actually know how much land is available to you, c) that line probably doesn't generate defensible city sites. So my suggestion would be that we look at the area along what is likely to be our borders, and I make some concessions about what land I ultimately claim as mine. Maybe the city I plant for you is along that border, and acts as a sign of good faith in the border arrangement.

BTW, given our recent misinterpretations I want to make clear that I in no way intend any of that previous paragraph to be taken as a threat; I'm just trying to say how I see the situation, and get an idea across about how we can deal with it.

If you think that there's still a chance of us swinging a deal, maybe we should take this into chat and negotiate in person - though I'm quite happy either way. You know where I am on Gmail....

Cheers,

Dreylin II

[Dreylin]

So I had a bit of a chat with Ruff this morning; mostly focused on trying to get the turn from him before I had to leave for work. Turns out you can't open a 3.19 PBEM save with 3.17 and it takes a while to either back-pedal, or create a dual-install. So no morning turn which is a shame since I would have found out whether I was going to grab Judaism!

Anyway, also received another e-mail from Ruff:

Dreylin,

Lets pencil in Maths for Monarchy - no commitment either way but an understanding that this deal might be made in future - ok?

Re the GP, Let me summarize your statements so that we are on the same page ...

1) Gold - to expense to start with
2) warrior - ok
3) location - lets work on it to see if we can arrive at a suitable location
4) missionaries - ok, but with a max cap
5) Close Borders at my order - NO! Maybe an anti-war restriction

I hope that I have captured what you are saying. My feedback - pretty much what I expected. As I said, I was throwing things out there to see what might stick. Do you have any further 'crazy' ideas that might work?

I think the summary at the moment is that giving up the GP costs me a fair bit of grunt (5g/2h is huge at the moment) and paying for that would hurt you too much in the short term. Maybe your 'lets discuss when you get a 2nd GP might be a better option - something to consider down the track.

Re LAND. No way do I want any 'line on the map' silliness. However, I do want to locate my city sites to support the natural defensive nature of the land we find ourselves in. I'm still busy mapping out the silly place and trying to grapple with dot maps. There are areas of the map that I totally think of as MINE and no doubt there are areas that you think of as YOURS. I don't think we are going to reach any hard and fast resolution to this - guess we just keep talking and seeing how our two civs can work together.

That said - when I first got a feel for the map, I thought that I would hate to be in your place - 4 civs to guard against. However, as the map has taken shape, I have found little pockets of protected land, even in the middle of the map. I think that Sullla has provided us with a very nicely crafted map.

Ruff

Seems like we are pretty-much on the same page.

Ruff,

1) Maths - Monarchy in pencil.
2) GP: correct on all counts and I think it will be worthwhile to re-visit once you get to GP#2.
3) Agree to continue talking about land, and will certainly contact you if I'm eyeing up any potentially contentious areas.

I'm not sure yet that I don't hate to be in my place, but I agree that the way the map is chunked up makes it possible to claim and defend areas.

In our chat this morning, you mentioned something about an e-mail asking me to pass on a message to athlete; I don't seem to have any other messages from you in my inbox (and I have checked my bin just in case). You didn't send it to mh instead? I assume you're looking to feel him out about the 5-way proposal?

Dreylin II

[Dreylin]

Very little substance in these, mostly just chatting:

DUH! Yes, I did meant mh. I have to line up 3 lots of names now (civ4 leader, internet handle, real name). Sorry about the confusion but maybe you could reach out to Athlete too re tech trade - nudge nudge - you know you want to .

Oh - and I found banana lake - a good name.

Ruff

Hey Ruff,

I'll send out a feeler to athlete and see what he says, though you shouldn't be too far off finding him yourself by now.

BTW: I notice you've leapt 10posts ahead of me in the last couple of days; I suspect you're just spamming your own thread just to up the post count! Stop it! 8-)

Dreylin II.

[Dreylin]

Oh-oh, I've just received a declaration of War from Ruff:

Oh - its a post count race too. I post the emails I get, the turns I play and some ramblings about the game and stuff. I haven't managed a THIS MAP STINKS post yet.

Ruff

PS: that is another post for me!

[Dreylin]

So having learned his trick....

Aha, that's my mistake! I've been posting your message and my reply in the same post rather than giving them separate posts ... will have fix that from now on! 9-)

Of course this also plays into his game of giving him more excuses to post!

[Dreylin]

Right, in order to get back ahead of Ruff, I'm going to need to talk with some of the other players!

Hi athlete,

How's things going on your side of the lake? Ruff asked me to get in touch and feel you out on the proposed 5-way ... not that there's been a lot of commitment from anyone to it at this stage. I just noticed that you'd posted a suggestion that you could get Monarchy, and wondered how firm your commitment was to that as I had tentatively penciled in the sametech.

I also wanted to see what your thoughts were on how our relationship might develop in the future. Clearly we are going to be sharing borders at some point, so I'm wondering if you want to go and formalise those at an early stage, or just let them develop naturally.

How's your exploration going, any luck meeting the two Eastern civs yet? If you need directions, I'm happy to help.

Dreylin II.

[Dreylin]

me too.

It is usually ...

email from so and so

blah blah blah

and my reply

more blah

Guess I just email more people. I think the ratio of Ruff to non-Ruff is about 10-1

Ruff

OK, I'm going to call it quits at this point I think!