[SPOILERS] Catherine of China

[plako]

It is quite likely he has a neighbour in the east we would want to meet. I'll continue to north then. However I try to avoid spots that would give him 2v1 on flat ground so it might be that I won't use shortest route.

C1 won't be connected to capital without a road or sailing. Actually river connection to C2 might make it worthwhile to found before C1. This game is full of options .

[plako]

Nakor/Gaspar found. Now this looks much better. At least I've a possibilities to investigate what I'm against here. I probably need to go through their PBEM12 thread now to see what they're doing together. In PB2 Nakor was playing builder game and a quite sneaky in his diplo. Lying directly to me (in a spot where he was easy to get caught) and pretty much ignoring his defensive pact with Whosit.

I'll keep all our espionage points towards Warlord.

[plako]

I did send a pretty standard greetings message to Nakor. I obvivously hope we can be friends or at minimum sign a NAP, because of the wild card in the east. However I try not to be too pushy, even if I definately would like to see us signing a longish NAP and border agreement immediately.

[antisocialmunky]

You know, I've made up my mind. I'd take 1E. With 2 food and 4 plains hills, that's going to be a great military production center later on that naturally builds units instead of whipping for everything. I don't think it would be very easy to hold a second city planted on Nakor's side of the ocean so that city will basically be as far as we get on his continent. If we're going to go for a strong city site, I rather have it near someone who talks and is 1st ring. If Warlord wants to settle aggressively then he's going to. We'd be trying to pre-empt his second city with our third and that's not going to happen without roads or workers to make roads.

As for Nakor, I think we should get a settling deal with him for only 1st ring cities. That is, no one settles past or on a horizontal line 1 W of Crabs. I'd also request directions for contacts and a NAP like you said.

[plako]

Diplo with Nakor/Gaspar. It seems we're going to get our secure our NAP pretty easily. I go pretty straight in to business. From prior experience we could easily send several mumbo-jumbo peaceful coexistence messages back and forth before getting in to a business, but if I think I can avoid that I'll skip it mostly.

My opening:
[COLOR="Lime"]I'm happy to tell that we've met in game and I'm glad to see you as a neighbor again Nakor. After logging in you'll see my scout NE from your capital.

If you're intrested, I would be willing to open a dialogue to share some intelligence info. Furthermore maybe you would be intrested in negotiating some mutually beneficial deals e.g. what is your opinion concerning NAP?[/COLOR]

Vikings:
[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Always to have an old friend as a neighbour!
I think we both learned lessons from PB2, though we did come in second and third.

To be honest, I would have hoped to be a bit farther away from you...
Are you at 4 cities already?

Okay, stop fooling around. Can you tell us how far your capital is from us and if we can decide on a logical border between our civs? We can have our scout moving towards you next turn.
I'd like to get that settled before signing a NAP, but we are interested in a NAP as well, especially since our UU will blossom at the same time.[/COLOR]

Me:
[COLOR="Lime"]My capital is in the east. Have you met anyone else yet?

There is 9 tiles between our current borders. The natural border would
be the 5th tile from our current borders.

What about short term agreement so that we've time to scout and and no
need to fear being aggressively settled ;-). That could be e.g. Short
NAP and no settling on the horizontal middle line (5th tile) or past
it. This would give us time gain more map info and we could finalize
the border agreement after that.[/COLOR]

Vikings:
[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Talking business?

We haven't me anyone yet, just scouted our land. We are at the southern part of the map with our Capital about 7 tiles form world's edge.

Let's go for that natural border. We'll send a scout there to take a closer look at good sites for our bordercities.

Are you directly to our east or more NE?

If we can agree on not settling past that 5th tile, we can make a NAP untill T80 or so for now?
We can talk about how to settle best once we have more info indeed.

Let's include the usual clauses with the NAP, ok?
1. No ROP
2. No map info to others
3. No gifting of units for an attack
4. Confidential correspondence

Ok?[/COLOR]

and my latest email:
[COLOR="Lime"]Yes straight in to the business ;-). That is how we Emoticonialists
like it. Fast and efficient. As long as you see happy faces our
relationship is good. I wish this is a starting point of long lasting,
peaceful an mutually beneficial relationship.

I like your ideas concerning NAP and I'm willing to accept the deal as
is. So after your confirmation we've a deal. Recap of the details:
* No settling on the middle column between us or past it (5th column
east from your current border and correspondingly 5th column west from
our current border)
* 80T NAP i.e. no active aggression
* No ROP
* No Map info to others
* No gifting of units for an attack
* Confidential correspondence

Our capital is directly to your east. There is just narrow land
passage connecting us together.[/COLOR]

[plako]

Other news. Warlord has finished 3rd warrior last turn and is now following our warrior with 2 of them. Below is the situation after his turn. I also changed the name of our warrior there to ;-|

Our scout will get to Warlord's neighbour as soon as the warrior would so I've strong preference keeping him between us.

[plako]

Hmmm. The current ruleset seems to allow double move in a situation like this for Warlord and potentially he could attack our warrior on flat land that I wanted to avoid. I kind of hate the idea that we need to wait for 6h before moving, but I guess this is how this game should be played. Maybe we should declare war then and move our warrior E-NE in so that we can claim 1st half. What do you think? It will get eventually toasted, but getting visibility to his capital would be reasonable end result.

[plako]

After further thinking I think declaring is the best option now. If he wants peace we can negotiate it, but I can't let him double move me now. In the future I'll probably follow the 6h mark very closely to avoid situations like this.

The problem is how to get message through to Warlord. I probably need to send it as in game message since I really don't want to go on public with this.

[plako]

Alright I declared and took the 1st half of the timer. Main reason is that I want to permanently go 1st, if he is playing cat and mouse with my warrior and threatening with double move. I clearly should have declared when he just had 1 warrior, but I hoped for dialogue then.

Screenshots are here:

[plako]

I'll probably park on forested hill south of his capital just to see what he is doing. I doubt we can get pillaging opportunities.