[SPOILER] Asoka of the Vikings (Nakor & Gaspar)

[Gaspar]

Yeah, I just caught up on the diplo. I'm sorry I've been a little absent, the early game has been painfully boring and I've been a little frustrated with our Civ pick. Nonetheless, we're still in fine enough shape, so I promise I'll check in minimum daily from here on out, as I agree, 2-heads is better than 1. We balance out pretty well anyway, since I'm irrational and you're rational.

Re: Locke - I really don't want to give him the southern land bridge. He'll get at least 2 cities and be able to attack our capital via Navy. We'd get... a 2nd copper we don't need. Of course, hard to say, we don't know where Iron is yet either. Maybe we can discuss splitting that peninsula?

We can't give plako the corn/oasis site, it'd block us off heading north. I think we need to kindly remind him he's already got more than his fair share of land to his east, we had no such luck to our west. Any settling agreement we have with him has to have access to the middle, since the only other way we can get there is by boat or by war, and cities you can't reinforce by land are cities you're going to lose eventually. I'd be tempted to just throw a settler on both land bridges and see what either of them are going to do. Any war at this point is pure stalemate, so they'd have to think long and hard before getting violent.

Bottom line, anything that plako does that blocks us off from the northeast peninsula = casus belli. Its that simple - he gets that access, we don't, we have to go to war with either him or Locke soon, or we get choked off to irrelevancy. He needs to understand that our situation is not as fluid as his and we can't let ourselves get boxed in. Hopefully his desire for a friendly neighbor outweighs his desire for extra land so early. I suspect we'll eventually have to fight him down the line, but I'd really rather not go to war before the economy gets going a little bit more.

Thoughts?

[fluffyflyingpig]

Didn't you guys make a 'fair' border agreement with Plako ages ago? How do you feel about that agreement now?

[Gaspar]

Yeah, fair is one assessment. :P The problem with settling agreements, and why I don't like them, is they're never fair unless both sides have perfect map knowledge. In a mirrored map game, like PBEM13, no problem. In a game like this? Well, not so much. Here's the problem area, visually:



The yellow line is the agreed to border. Now when we signed this (I should note when I say we I mean Nakor, as he handles diplo for our team, because I'm a bit too... well, read PBEM12 if you want to know what I'm a bit too.) When we signed this, we had no idea how much land was to the north, and more importantly, how many access points there were. If you'll note, all the peaks circled in green block access to the middle area. Right now, the only access point to the middle that is not already in plako's culture is the red circle. As it turns out, since he's creative, each turn we do nothing makes it even more likely that we end up blocked out of there totally.

The only option we have that is currently within our settling agreement is to push a settler to that brown dot on the hill in between the two peaks. Now that would be a crap city, and we'd have to dump culture into it to maintain access, but it could be done. Note that its arguable whether or not our settling agreement implies that 2nd-ring culture should end at the border, as plako's gold copper city does, or whether it simply means plant inside the borders. Complicating things, plako sent us this the other day:

Hi,

Congratulations of meeting everyone in the game ;-). I think you were 2nd one in that category.

Luckily those jungle tiles are pretty far away so there is plenty of time to tech IW and your assesment concerning the map seems quite right. The land bridges are somewhat random e.g. Rego hasn't yet met his western neighbour Lord Parkin.
This might be a bit premature, but T80 is not that far away anymore. Would you be willing to negotiate continuation to that? Meanwhile I've also scouted a bit NE from your capital and maybe we could make a more detailed settling agreement there. Especially I'd be intrested in to discuss about the Corn tile near the 1E from oasis with 2 tile lake east from it. That tile is on your side of the border and by default in your area of influence. However would you be willing to sell settling rights in the area so that we could settle behind the lake and you wouldn't settle any city so that its 1st ring contains the corn tile? What would be the price of this, if you're willing?

Best regards,
Plako

I bolded the key part. plako would like to settle a city on the green dot on the map. If he settled there, he'd have free reign to plant all the way up if he wanted to, and we would officially be bottled in on all sides peacefully, in the west by Locke, in the east by plako, in the south by the edge of the map, and in the north by peaks. We could of course load up galleys and skirt the peaks that way, but that makes those cities unable to be reinforced by land. Not a deal-breaker on settling them per se, but we won't have those kind of resources for some time. I don't really believe plako is out to screw us per se, I just think when you've already neutered one neighbor, you naturally start looking to the next. Reasonable play, but ultimately it will lead to war.

I'll follow this up in a sec with some communique to Nakor on the subject.

[Nakor]

Let''s try to be honest with Plako and explain our situation. I'd like to see a map of his north (or scout it) to see if he can expand there.

I'll wait for your thoughts before sending Plako a message back.

What should we do with Locke?

[Gaspar]

Just checked out the save. I'll leave unit shuffling to you, we haven't been discussing the micro to the extent that I'd like to take a chance at screwing it up. I did reply to a short message from LP where he indicated he was moving his warrior to a more advantageous spot to move west from, but nothing of consequence was said. I also let the axe finish making its way to Dorestadt, as I didn't want to tempt plako, who has a scout nearby.

We should probably order up a round of workers everywhere after Pottery comes in. Nothing is going to do more for us than getting cottages down quickly. Then afterwards around of Granaries, which we should slave at the first opportunity. Hopefully by then, writing is in and we can move onto Libraries.

Re: Locke - lets try honesty. Tell him we're boxed in by plako in the east, so that peninsula is of strategic importance to us, if we're going to give it up. Tell him we need to scout north of the copper a bit, and let's agree to both not settle any more cities in the contested area without arrangement. The Horse city that we're settling this turn is critical, because we need horses.

[Nakor]

Send messages of to Locke and Plako.

Horseland founded near horses. It got a road connection already, so costs us no extra gold. Vinland started on a worker before going Granary next turn. Horseland will put 1t into a worker before swapping to Granary as well next turn. I'm letting Greenland grow to size 6 before going for another worker/settler.

[Gaspar]

at Horseland.

This was the quick reply from Plako:

Hi Nakor,

This is alright. I just asked and I totally understand, if you're not intrested. I'll probably then settle on the coast in that area i.e. 1 tile further east than in my original proposal.

There are few spots in the north, but there is lot of water there.

Kind regards,
Plako

Let me translate:

Hi Nakor,

No problem. Thanks for letting us know you don't want to get blocked off into the north. Now we're going to block you off from the north. Sucks to be you, you shouldn't sign settling agreements before you know the whole map area. Enjoy last place, suckers.

<3 Plako

We're, um, gonna have to go to war with plako. Do me a favor, and at least don't sign a NAP with him until we figure a way out of our box.

I'll think on this, come up with a crazy plan, you'll shoot it down, and we'll move on. Best for everyone if we go through the motions though.

[Nakor]

Pottery in, so I changed Horseland's build to a Granary.
Stopped most mine-builds to start more cottages next turn.

We're number 1 in soldier points!

5 cities is also the max for everyone, though Rego is still at 2 cities.

[Gaspar]

More diplomacy with plako:

Hey Plako,

I don't think you completely understand me.
I think we need to re-open the discussion of our settling arrangement.
If we keep the current one, we can't settle north by land, only by sea and that gives us a huge disadvantage.
There is only one way north from our lands, and that's past the blocking peaks up north.

Do you have a suggestion?

Kind regards,
Nakor

Hi,

Oh, I guess we misunderstood. So the Barbs managed to restrict your expansion North-West correct? This is a very odd map with respects to expansion paths.
You're asking quite a favor here e.g. the area contains our only source of spices. However we've a good relationship so I'm willing to negotiate. If the price is right, we'd be willing to cede you a path to North around the mountains. My minimum requirements are:
* You position the city/cities in the area according to my instructions. I promise they will be ok positions. I just want to make sure they interfere as little as possible with our current and planned future cities. Especially there is a spot in the north connecting multiple bodies of water that we strongly consider ours. There should still be room for you to get to north
* I can settle above the spices, that basically means our cities will have minimum distance since your city would be just behind the lake
* You offer us a compensation preferarably in the form of units e.g. workers or militaty units. Please tell me what you consider fair price for the land

We should probably also trade pictures and potential dot maps before signing the deal.

Kind regards,
Plako

So, basically, because we made a settling agreement on T10 or whatever, we should:

• Let him make our dotmap
  
• Allow him the choicest sites
  
• Pay him for the privilege
  

Why, pray tell, shouldn't we just slap out a couple settler/Axe pairs and tell him to go jump in a lake if that's what he's offering? He might be well ahead of us at this point, but its not like he's Spulla in PB2 ahead.

If I were doing our diplo, this is the reply he'd get:

Dearest plako,

So let's get this in the plainest terms possible. You're saying because we signed an agreement early on before any decent map knowledge was had, an agreement, mind you, which was entered into with the intent of making a friend, and an agreement, mind you, which allowed you the security to go rush your neighbor and give you the complete upperhand in the east while gaining us precisely nothing other than a few turns advance notice of a copper location. Because of that agreement, you want to bust our balls and tell us you own the middle, and not only do you own it, but you want us to pay for the right to settle by your dotmap? That's not very friendly there, now is it?

Just so you don't think you're negotiating from some position of immense strength, do you think you're so far ahead that we couldn't put together an army which ensures you can't win this game? I mean yeah, we're not going to win either, but if we let you block us out of the north, we're still not going to. So why not say lets go ruin plako's game and let someone else we like better win? There's zero reason for us to sit around, get boxed in, and watch you gobble up all the land. You motivate us to negotiate on your terms if that's what you want.

Love and kisses,
Gaspar

I understand that's too aggressive and will accomplish nothing, but I really can't believe he's trying to extort that level of concession from us.

What do you think Nakor? I think our options are such:

1. Do nothing, focus on the area we can still expand to and then prepare to take a route into the middle by force.
2. Rush a settler out on the land-bridge now, ask questions later.
3. Prepare to get a bunch of units out now and take his gold city.
4. Do nothing, and prepare to ferry some settlers out into the outer reaches via Galley, while maintaining peace with plako for the foreseeable future, be prepared that those cities will be completely unreenforceable in the event of military action from any of the northern civs.

2 and 3 will lead to war soon. We don't really want that, but then again, neither does he. 1 is a passive play, and now that we've tipped him off, he's certain to settle that area aggressively. 4 is a fool's play, but the easiest of them.

TBH, we really don't have any good options. Its unfortunate that plako has managed to be less of the quality neighbor we had hoped, but the combination of WarlordDr's substitution for the more reasonable WarriorKnight along with the fact that he was able to be so quickly decisive made our friendly relations less valuable to plako. This probably means we'll have to cave with Locke though, can't afford two angry neighbors.

Perhaps we should also reach out to WK and see if he has any plans for exacting retribution from plako.

[Nakor]

Le't's play it a bit harder then we did so far.
I can mail Plako telling him that if this is how he wants to work with us, we consider all deals so far made cancelled.

When we hear his reply, we can talk about going to war or send a settler to block the north from him. We can easily whip a settler from Greenland for that purpose.
What do you think?