Niccolò Machiavelli's Thread

[DaveV]

Doesn't anyone else see a disturbing similarity between this game and certain proposals in another democracy game?

[plako]

Based on civstats it seems like Pirates lost a city to M3. Also had a short chat with Lewwyn. Not sure why he haven't accpeted yet, if he hasn't got any comments:

Lewwyn: hey

me: hi, sry had to be going very soon

Lewwyn: sok
We'll probably accept the deal
or at least I will

me: I think we can go on pretty much like original deal without much changes

Lewwyn: Nobody has said anything so I'm just gonna do it.

me: ok - TEAM is not very active - too bad
Gets lonely - been there in MTDG1
at CFC

Lewwyn:
I think theres an epidemic tho
thestick is running the pirates mostly alone I think, and Scooter apparently is doing gillette alone beyond a post or two from seven every now and then
LP is gone so its basically HAK and mortius

me: We've still few actives although turns going so slowly not much going on in the forums lately

Lewwyn: so I don't think my situation is unique
yeah

me: Pretty normal how these things go I guess
So had to go - Please send me a final ok so we can sum it up and accept
cya

Lewwyn: kk

[darrelljs]

I read that as he has accepted the deal .

@Dave - Nope, but then I've been pretty slow lately!

Darrell

[plako]

No word from Lewwyn. I guess he has either pretty much given up or is just fooling around with me. Had a little chat with Novice and we can still manage 1T of delay without whipping the Axe. We should get 5Axe+spear against 2 Archers on T58, which is as good as it will ever get.

Nevertheless I'll wait until tomorrow morning before playing in case Lewwyn becomes active.

[plako]

So I got confirmation from Lewwyn that this is ok:

NAP to T100
Open Borders, No RoP without additional agreement.

TEAM:
Capture worker T54 and offer Peace + Gift Losing

Trolls:
Build Settler T59 and settle site 2 East of northern deer after. Gift city that turn.
Gift worker ~T80

Border Agreement:
Trolls will settle Marble site, TEAM will settle Stone site, to wit:

Trolls settle 2 S of northern Sheep. 2nd ring food (sheep, deer) may not be 1st ring settled. Sheep and Deer may be 2nd ring contested.

TEAM will have a city 2 East of the deer.

No settling on the peninsula area East of Losing before T100 unless a deal is reached.
Current tentative settling plan includes Trolls on PH 2S of furs and having the furs being contested. Possibly having TEAM settle the hill west of the stone and then having Trolls settle south of that again if food is present.

Trades:
Possible 10T marble and stone trades back and forth.

Of course we need to do some minor adjustments since couple of turns has passed from when this was written, but I play it out like we would have this deal.

[plako]

I sent Lewwyn a message that sums up all the upper points, but postpones all times with 1T. e.g. NAP until T101 and settler finished on T60.

Now this peace gives us options in the coming negotiations with Gillette. We've relatively big army and peace treaty that both should improve our position. Also the knowledge of the peninsula or cape in the NE probably means that we might have similar land form SW from us between us and Gillette. Not sure we've a realistic way to claim anything there since it is clear that entrance would be a lot closer to Gillette than us.

So how do you feel concerning the Gillette? Main alternatives:
* Friendly. Our goal is just good relationship based on our previous deal
* Neutral. We try to leverage our standing army to get a deal that is better than the original one. We don't care, if we piss of Gillette
* Aggressive. No negotiations. Just attack.
* Something else...

[pling]

Can we gain anything by being aggressive? I mean, TEAM took us by surprise and got pretty much nowhere. We do have an actual army (unlike TEAM) but I guess I'm just not sure that it wouldn't end up that we'd march our army over there and they'd whip a bunch of defence and then we'd get a not particularly favourable peace treaty.

[plako]

Attacking might not be good idea, but settling aggressively towards then and forcing them a bit out from their sandbox to build some military might be beneficial to us.

[DaveV]

Let's look at the state of the game: Menagerie and Pirates battling and probably completely out of the running. TEAM giving us a city; their team and ours spending lots of time and money building military. Gillette: farmers gambit all the way.

I guess it's a good time to figure out what we (meaning mostly plako and pling) want from this game. Gillette will surely win if we don't send our kittens over to foul their sandbox, but will we win if we war against them?

[zakalwe]

What's the geography again? Menagerie is winning the war on Pirates, but who borders Gillette, and who borders TEAM?