[SPOILERS] Team SsS

[Square Leg]

So much has happened in a week!

Got some catching up to do!

[Sandover]

Maybe you should try to check in more often.

[Square Leg]

I know - I was called away for work for a week though so couldn't be avoided - this is why I didn't sign up to be more involved.

[scooter]

Welcome back Square Leg! Glad to have you back - we're getting into interesting times and all additional input is very helpful .

Some diplo messages:

Dear Team SsS,

Obviously we are disappointed with your choice, although we haven't given up on your team yet. Part of the reason that we hope you may yet come around is that we believe you have been given a false representation of the situation between Tech and the DJs. As far as we can tell all of DJ's cities have been planted very close to their capital, I think they have learned their lesson from PB2 about aggressive settling. They have also assured us that the stone tile in dispute is just 4 tiles from their capital and 8 from Exploit's.

Anyway, this message wasn't meant to defend the DJs as we are fairly separate from that situation. I would instead like to focus on the relationship between our two civs. You have mentioned twice that you appreciated our change in tone and found us more open, I would say that we have been open with you from the very start. We have continued to provide you with a lot of specific information about the alliance and the map and our roles within it, yet we have received very little information in return from your team. We have yet to be given any idea how close you really are with Exploit (given the recent developments we have to now assume you are very close diplomatically) or any idea of how you see your own role within any alliance or even any response to our map information. You continue to tell us that you need to consult with advisors and then return a couple of days later with what amounts to a no or a request for even more information.

You said before that while you are Agg Rome that does not make you invincible and with 15 remaining rivals on a very cramped map every team needs allies to have a chance, and we are offering you many!. Even if you don't consider allies necessary militarily, then they are at least required technologically what with the combination of maintenance costs at emperor, toroidal wrapping and the sheer cost of research. Exploit can not be counted as a true ally, all his communications to us suggest he is trying to remain neutral and would not put himself out to help others. This, therefore, is a request and a pledge that you do not need to consider your current choice permanent. You are free to review your current decision and change accordingly if you decide your previous decision was not the best course for team SsS (something we very strongly believe).

Mukha & Dantski

I've tried to think of how to respond to that, but I'm a little stuck. From hearing about the Exploit/DJ situation a few times now, I admit I have some doubts on how shady India's move actually was (I sympathize with them a little bit), but Exploit is our ally, so it's not really relevant... I can see a few different routes we could take (or a combination of them).

1. Try to turn them away from their alliance. I thought I remember Rego making some comment about eventually taking out Portugal, and I am tempted to use something like that to try to sway them away from their bloc. In other words - communicate to them that some of their alliance members view them as dispensable.
2. Tell them very plainly that we viewed their attempts to recruit us as very confusing and vague, which is true. Possibly quote a few of their old mails. Basically we were here in our thread debating what in the world they were trying to get us into, because we just didn't know. They were trying to get us to sign up without giving us details, which we did not feel was prudent. India finally gave us the info we needed to decide, but that took quite a long time.
3. Let them know that there's no real way to know for sure about the Exploit/India situation, but we have made our decision. Similar message to what you sent to India - saying we decided but we will reconsider if need be.

I'm curious what you guys think on those ideas for a message. Also, a very positive message from JANK:

Hello Babylon and Rome,

This message is going to you both as you are the only civ's we know to be fully involved in the "reject camp". If there's another name for what we have just let us know.

We have met above and beyond yourselves the: Aztecs, HRE, India, Ottomans and Portugal. We are currently at war with the Aztecs as you know and have whipped our civ into the ground. We now have 5 Axes I think (3 in Aztec land) and 7 Quecha's (2 in Aztec land). Our remaining Axes and future units will all be devoted to choking the Aztecs and taking them down.

We received an e-mail from India previously which proposed an attractive offer to sway us to their side to hopefully end things between us and the Aztecs. After some discussion we feel it would be more beneficial to fully entrench ourselves with the "rejects" and bring down a member of this "uber" alliance. Besides we met you guys first and you guys made us aware of it all. So that being said, I doubt there's much aid either of you can provide in terms of the war, but we would like our actions recognized by the rejects, in that there is a greater purpose to our attack now then what we started it out to be. Hopefully everybody understands we're going against our natural traits to do this and we are hoping not to be left behind in things like tech and what not. We've killed any early chance of a REX and our current teching ability so will not be able to provide much help to others from that standpoint also, hence why hopefully we'll be kept aloft by our friends for the near term.

If the ultimate goal is to have the Aztec's destroyed it would only make sense to get some AGG Praets running around there sooner than later, but perhaps that discussion can be held one on one with the Romans.

Please forward this on to all known "reject" members.

Athlete for Team JANK

[scooter]

Draft for a JANK response. We could consider supplying an aggressive axe from scooterville. I'm not sure that's necessary at this point, but it's an option. I didn't mention it in the draft but we can add it if that sounds like a good idea.

Team JANK,

Thanks for the update on your situation. How much damage do you think you can do to Aztec? Do you think you have enough to wipe them out or just a choke? Glad to hear it sounds like it's going well. At some point down the line we can probably supply some Agg Spraets, but our ETA on Iron Working is around T75ish - so given the time to hook up iron (hopefully we have some nearby!), that's a little ways away at the moment. Even if it doesn't come to complete destruction of the Aztecs, we can maybe consider trading you a few aggressive Spraets for some of your cheap workers/settlers sometime down the road. Just an idea to keep in the back of our minds...

I can't speak for the entire alliance, but from our team's perspective we completely understand your situation on the tech front - I think it's completely fair to acknowledge that you can't provide as much by way of techs given your war situation. In our minds, your war on Ruff is a big contribution in and of itself, so I don't think anyone intends to pay you back by leaving you behind tech-wise .

Oh, and if you haven't figured it out - over here we have a mild obsession for the letter S - so "Spraets" was not a typo .

Regards,
scooter - Team SsS

I feel like there's something else I wanted to say... Anything I'm missing? It's getting late here so I'll just post this here so you can see what you think and do what you want with it when you see it.

[Sandover]

You make some fair points about how to respond to Cath Bruig. I'll cook something up for them later today.

I don't think we should sound to eager to supply troops to the Inca front. It's fine speculating about the possibility of doing so, but please add that we're probably going to need those troops to carry out some military action against the Hydra on our own, and that we will be able to put some pressure on their two ringleaders by doing so.

[Sandover]

Here's my attempt at a response to Cath Bruig. I didn't send it yet since I don't think it feels quite right;

Dear Cath Bruig,

I will not discuss the conflict between DJ and Tech in detail in this message as I believe that would become a much too lengthy discussion. I'm sure you are able to partake information directly from the both sources as we have and can make a sound judgement of the situation on your own, despite the diversity present in their stories. What I will say, however, is that we have made our bed and now intend to sleep in for better or for worse. We foresee DJ growing strong at the expense of Tech through help from the alliance, and the doubts we have regarding their diplomacy is enough to have us worried about such a situation. Sure, they are being friendly to us now, but what will happen once our unique unit is obsolete and our borders meet theirs?

Moving on to our relations now. In all honesty we found your initial attempt of trying to recruit us to be rather amateurish. You approached us without much of a real plan (or so it felt anyway) and were extremely vague and somewhat confusing at first. Considering this, I really do not find that we are to be blamed for coming back asking for more information. If you want, we can share with you the terms of membership we had in mind before the DJ-incident occured.

While we agree that you have been generous in sharing map information with us, we also believe that we have been equally generous in that regard, doing our best to try and set up a meeting between Cath Bruig and Tech, much like you tried to introduce us to DJ. I do not remember sharing much of any other kind of information with you, but then again, neither do I remember you ever asking for such information up until now.

We are currently on friendly terms with Exploit, though we surely would not mind if his territory were to be part of SsS in the future. We have a rough settling agreement in place, and accepted an inquiery for open borders a few turns ago. We have now also made contact with the Incans to our west, who seems to be engaged in a war with the Aztecs at this point. But I'm sure you already know all about what is going on on that front.

We agree with you that securing technological import will be vital, but then again, with so many civs around there has got to be someone that wants to supply us with techs for some reason. If this is indeed a toroidal map, which we very strongly believe at this point, there should be plenty of civs to our north that we can trade with in the absence of membership within your trading bloc. We are in a strong position during this period of the game with or without allies, and do not yet feel worried about ever being completely locked out of the action.

Regards,
Sandover
Team SsS

Thoughts?

[Sandover]

Picture Update:

Time for a first look into the second city of the SsS Empire - Scooterville! The wheat and copper are the core tiles of this city, providing it with a healthy base of food and production. It will be able to work a nice amount of riverside cottages down the line, and the lack of hills therefore makes this into a natural commerce city. Scooterville's infrastructure, a granary and a barracks, was recently finished and it will now build a saxeman while growing into its current max size of population 4. Once there it will either produce the designated iron-settler or continue to spawn units, though that is yet to be determined.

[scooter]

Alright, diplo thoughts. First, here's a proposed revision of the JANK email - let me know what you think:

Team JANK,

Thanks for the update on your situation. How much damage do you think you can do to Aztec? Do you think you have enough to wipe them out or just a choke? Glad to hear it sounds like it's going well. Currently our ETA on Iron Working is around T75ish, and on top of that we might have our own conflict on our hands in the near future, so it's unlikely that we can commit any troops to your front unfortunately. An alternative idea though is maybe we can maybe consider trading you a few aggressive Spraets for some of your cheap workers/settlers sometime down the road. Just an idea to keep in the back of our minds...

I can't speak for the entire alliance, but from our team's perspective we completely understand your situation on the tech front - I think it's completely fair to acknowledge that you can't provide as much by way of techs given your war situation. In our minds, your war on Ruff is a big contribution in and of itself, so I don't think anyone intends to pay you back by leaving you behind tech-wise .

Oh, and if you haven't figured it out - over here we have a mild obsession for the letter S - so "Spraets" was not a typo

Regards,
scooter - Team SsS

Does that sound about right? Also, I like your email to Portugal, and here's a few things we might consider adding to it. I've bolded them:

Dear Cath Bruig,

I will not discuss the conflict between DJ and Tech in detail in this message as I believe that would become a much too lengthy discussion. I'm sure you are able to partake information directly from the both sources as we have and can make a sound judgement of the situation on your own, despite the diversity present in their stories. What I will say, however, is that we have made our bed and now intend to sleep in for better or for worse. We foresee DJ growing strong at the expense of Tech through help from the alliance, and the doubts we have regarding their diplomacy is enough to have us worried about such a situation. Sure, they are being friendly to us now, but what will happen once our unique unit is obsolete and our borders meet theirs? And in addition to that, what will happen to you guys after a round or two of tech trades? Do you trust them to not dump you and move on?

Moving on to our relations now. In all honesty we found your initial attempt of trying to recruit us to be rather amateurish. You approached us without much of a real plan (or so it felt anyway) and were extremely vague and somewhat confusing at first. In our own thread we were guessing at what exactly it was your were trying to get us to agree to, because we honestly had no clue. We suspected some kind of tech alliance, but we didn't even get any details on that until we met and talked to India.

Considering this, I really do not find that we are to be blamed for coming back asking for more information. If you want, we can share with you the terms of membership we had in mind before the DJ-incident occured. I hope you don't feel like we are putting you down or being unreasonable or anything - we are just hoping to explain where some of the disconnect/confusion was from our perspective.

While we agree that you have been generous in sharing map information with us, we also believe that we have been equally generous in that regard, doing our best to try and set up a meeting between Cath Bruig and Tech, much like you tried to introduce us to DJ. I do not remember sharing much of any other kind of information with you, but then again, neither do I remember you ever asking for such information up until now.

We are currently on friendly terms with Exploit, though we surely would not mind if his territory were to be part of SsS in the future. We have a rough settling agreement in place, and accepted an inquiry for open borders a few turns ago. We have now also made contact with the Incans to our west, who seems to be engaged in a war with the Aztecs at this point. But I'm sure you already know all about what is going on on that front.

We agree with you that securing technological import will be vital, but then again, with so many civs around there has got to be someone that wants to supply us with techs for some reason. If this is indeed a toroidal map, which we very strongly believe at this point, there should be plenty of civs to our north that we can trade with in the absence of membership within your trading bloc. We are in a strong position during this period of the game with or without allies, and do not yet feel worried about ever being completely locked out of the action.

Regards,
Sandover
Team SsS

Obviously those are all just ideas - I'm not sure if they help much or not. The email has gotten a tad long, but there's a lot to address so it's understandable I think. I added 3 sentences and split up paragraph 2 into two different paragraphs. I also made one spelling adjustment to ease my OCD (inquiery -> inquiry) None of the things added are essential really. Here's what I had in mind with each of them:

Sentence 1 - Cast a tiny little bit of doubt in their minds about their own place in their alliance.
Sentence 2 - Clarifying our confusion from our initial conversations
Sentence 3 - Making it slightly less confrontational so they don't feel like we're talking down to them - which we aren't.

Agree/disagree? I'm not really sure what is the best course of action there, so that's just the things that came to mind...

[Reagan]

Moving on to our relations now. In all honesty we found your initial attempt of trying to recruit us to be rather amateurish. You approached us without much of a real plan (or so it felt anyway) and were extremely vague and somewhat confusing at first. In our own thread we were guessing at what exactly it was your were trying to get us to agree to, because we honestly had no clue. We suspected some kind of tech alliance, but we didn't even get any details on that until we met and talked to India.

How would you feel if another civ told you they thought you'd acted in an amateurish manner? Were I in your position, and assuming a desire to maintain a civil level of interaction with CBE as the game progresses, I'd consider a softer way of making the points raised in the quoted section.