Domestic update tomorrow, I had way too crazy of a day.
However there is time to do something I forgot, a foreign relations update.
Here's a list of players, what's happened between me and each of them?
Lord Parkin - Churchill of Zulu(CHM/PRO,agri/hunt)
As you know I declared war and then suddenly he could only play after 24+ hours every turn. That's a lot of pressure on me, and I was able to log in within a few minutes of him finishing most days but I would prefer to have a little more flexibility in play time without impacting the other players. Because of this I offered peace to him about every other turn, but he declined my offers. My offers included a couple where I paid him 15 gold, for his lost scout. However he was not willing to settle for less than 30 gold, and I couldn't bring myself to reward him that much for taking what seemed like an average of two days on every turn when he's in the first half.
Lord Parkin was recently replaced by Grimace, who immediately accepted my peace offer du jour.
HitAnyKey - Wang Kon of Spain(FIN/PRO,fish/myst)
You already know the story here.
Haram - Ragnar of Mongolia(FIN/AGR,hunt/wheel)
Haram continues to be the most perplexing opponent in diplomacy I have ever SEEN let alone faced. Remember when he randomly declared war on me and didn't do anything else. Now there's more! We had a dyes for fur trade going for quite some time. A few turns ago, he cancelled the trade. Huh? I look at his resources and now he has 2 furs and 0 dyes. OK. So after one turn of re-offering the deal with no response, I sold my dyes to GermanJojo for 6gpt and soon after bought furs from Mackoti for 4gpt. Note: I think the price difference is totally fair. The furs are worth almost nothing to me, only something in 2 cities, while GermanJojo is really short on happiness throughout his empire.
But it's not just the resources that concerned me. Haram has had steadily rising power over the last turns and I know he has Keshiks, Catapults and War Elephants. In fact, when I attacked HAK's capital, I dropped below him in power rating. So I was concerned that he might decide to attack me for some reason. Maybe that could somehow explain why he cancelled our resource trade. HOW it would explain it I have no idea, I just surmised they could be related. So long story short, I offered horse to Haram for horse. To me this signals some sort of declaration of military harmony. I thought: maybe it will signal to him that I am aware he could potentially attack me. Or, maybe it will prompt him to do something so that I know more of his intentions. Well, he re-offered horse + 8g for horse + 8g. Great, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. But I had one-turned a scout in my border city with him and it detected a rather large pile of troops fairly nearby, so I thought it couldn't possibly be a real indication that he wants to attack someone with me in 8 turns. That is way too many turns away. So I figured it's probably a bluff, and started building spears and war elephants and sending over archers towards the border. Oh but I did accept the deal, why not. I have no idea if he is reading something into my acceptance of it.
Now the current turn. His force, which I have been monitoring, is on the move. The one-movers are a turn away from either entering my borders or entering GermanJojo's borders. The two-movers are actually IN MY TERRITORY where they can strike at another GermanJojo city. So indications are that he is attacking Jojo and I judge this to be 75% likely. However, he COULD still attack me. He could declare war, and his horse archers would teleport back to his main stack, and he could invade and definitely conquer my border city, which is a really strong city. Of course it wouldn't do him much good and then I'd start fighting back in earnest, but I have no idea how this guy thinks AT ALL. Oh and guess what? Alongside the troop movements he offered me furs for dyes. I declined because this deal would be worth -1 happiness for me. My interpretation of this is that he either wants to feign friendship or he actually decided I'm not his enemy after all, and on top of that he is fairly clueless about diplo (seeing as my resource trades are visible to him in the diplo screen).
Anyway, please declare war on someone, I want to know whether I should stop sending cats and HAs to my NW.
Mackoti - Charlemagne of Germany(IMP/PRO,hunt/mine)
I met Mackoti with an exploring sentry chariot a few turns ago. I proposed OB and him giving me fur for 4gpt. (I also proposed fur for 4gpt by itself in case he didn't want OB, and I proposed fur for dye in case he didn't want that either, but he took the first deal.)
SevenSpirits - Pericles of Russia(CRE/PHI,hunt/mine)
I like this guy, he always proposes perfectly fair, mutually beneficial trades.
Gavagai - Willem van Oranje of Ethiopia(FIN/CRE,hunt/mine)
I met him in the last couple of turns, and I think we have OB now.
Donovan Zoi - Napoleon of Vikings(CHM/ORG,fish/hunt)
Not much going on here. I gave him a spare health resource that he was lacking because maybe it would be useful to him.
retep - Elizabeth of Egypt(FIN/PHI,agri/wheel)
Met him recently. Dunno if we have open borders.
Gawdzak - Boudica of Rome(AGR/CHM,fish/mine)
I had traded marble to him for stone quite some time ago. I lazily built moai, made a half-hearted attempt at Hanging Gardens (I didn't have an actual good place to build it), and put some hammers into the Great Wall. After I finished Moai I waited several more turns and then cancelled the deal. I figure he must have finished his epics a long time before and was just politely waiting for me, but I was going to stop building the GW anyway so I thought I'd be polite and let him have it back. I did re-offer the trade in case he wasn't done but he didn't take the offer. I didn't realize before this game that it's really difficult to tell if your opponent is keeping a deal active because they think it benefits you or because it benefits them.
Kuro/Wetbandit - Tokugawa of India(AGR/PRO,mine/myst)
For some reason, wetbandit doesn't like getting free money by having OB with people. He only has OB with 2-3 players, which is maybe enough for him to get 2c routes but no more. Whatever you want to do, I guess that's fine.
GermanJojo - Cyrus of Khmer(CHM/IMP,hunt/mine)
Nothing more to say than I've already said, I think.
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