Niccolò Machiavelli's Thread

[darrelljs]

Darrells options 1-2 are not my favorites and especially 1 would be very bad. Why would we want to get game long enemy at this point of the game.

Sorry plako when I say second city I don't count our capital, so it would be our third overall city. This is the "cave in" option .

I'd like a bit more discussion on this topic, if possible. Our communications with Gillette have been fluff so far, but what we do here will set relations with them for this game. I'll send a quick "we are discussing" note and draft up a full response in 24 hours. Important considerations brought up so far:

1. Gold is our best available spot and in our sphere of influence, so why does direction matter? Note that this perspective favors option #3 IMO.
   
   
2. We need to be careful to not divulge information on when tGL will fall, as this exchange could be their way of fishing for information. I think even an attempt by us to "fish back" on their date is risky.
   
   
3. Encouraging tensions with Menagerie might be worth a small FOP sacrifice.
   
   
4. I don't think we want to mention our next site is still up for debate, because one "soft" reason we can use for settling Gold next is we don't want to redo our micro plans, which happens to be true . In that vein, micro team if we settle tGL city next a) what is our date, and b) what does it cost us due to lost Gold commerce? Best guess, no need to run a sim.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Two replies come in while I'm typing my own response . Keep the discussion going guys.

Darrell

[Nydaeli]

We'll never cede the gold spot to them. So what's the point in settling it third instead of second?

To make a nominal concession in the name of good relations, that won't actually set us back too much.

[novice]

I guess we could get TGL a bit faster by going copper city first, but it might require skipping pottery... But of course I don't really know anything without my sims.

[DaveV]

Since we're not financial, I don't think we should give up gold.

[plako]

Backyard city isn't anything special. Great lighthouse is the reason, why we're settling it early. We would be better of settling towards our neighbors otherwise (there are probably good spots also north from us).

For this reason we should seriously consider our GLH plan and if just focusing on early pyramids and land grabbing would give us better position. GLH will come with a big price tag in it and losing it would leave us way behind. Because of it we're delaying AH a very long time and settling it 2nd would probably require delaying Pottery also.

[pling]

I guess I'm inclined towards option 3 of Darrell's options & negotiating a border. Would it help to tell them that we haven't scouted towards our other neighbour & thus we won't know what's good over there until too late for our next city? So they're asking us for a much bigger concession than it sounds like they are.

Also can we make settling where we've actually decided on sound like a concession? Like that the "best possible" site is our original provocative site across the midline into their sphere of influence, but we're willing to settle our city in a second best site which has all of its BFC within our sphere of influence?

Which makes me wonder - are Gillette are offering what sounds like a concession but isn't really? I.e. they weren't ever going to settle towards us, coz they have a nice forested/coastal site north of them that they are planning on building the GLH in? Tho I'm not sure if they're our biggest rivals for building it - my first guess was yes, as they already have Fishing, but they lack BW so have to invest a lot of beakers before they can chop a wonder out (and my current guess about the direction of their research is that they're doing Pottery atm).

I'm ambivalent about our building the GLH, which is why I've not commented on the discussion about it at all - can't figure out what I think. Do we have points in the plan where we can bail with minimal losses? I guess what I'm trying to figure out is when we're committed to going for it, and what we want to look for (in C&D terms in particular) before we get to that point. Are we committed as soon as we start to research Fishing? (that was pre-city 3 I think?) Or are we not committed till we settle the third city? Or later in the plan?

[plako]

The desicion point is coming soon. We shouldn't research Fishing unless we plan to go for GLH.

[pling]

If we weren't going for GLH would we go Pottery next? If so, then we can push the decision point out another few turns by reversing the order of those two techs?

[novice]

I'm pretty sure Gillette are planning to settle away from us regardless, as that's the direction their river is in. So they're basically asking us for a freebie.