RBP3 [SPOILERS] Team Nice Shot - Pacal of Carthage

[novice]

A little micro trick if you're timing chops: You can put some turns into the cottage while the forest is still there, then finish the chop, then finish the cottage.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Bad news... France met us this turn. They proposed open borders which I accepted, but I have no plans of sending math their way. Their greeting e-mail:

Greetings Team Nice,

Very good to meet one of our allies, we hear you have travelled far to be here today.

We have offered open boarders so you can visit us to rest or just take a shortcut through our lands.

Could you tell us what tech you are researching, we are currently on Mcasting, although are not sure if this best. No one from the alliance has given us much guidiance in these important matters.

Look forward to speaking with you at length

Regards

Morgan

Anglo-French

So they are still under the impression that they are part of CAN. I feel genuinely sorry for them. But at the same time, if no one has given them guidance about what techs are out there, they should be seeing this coming. Hmmm.

And the fun... we received IW from A4 this turn. It is in the 100-culture ring of Lakewood, in an awkward place. We could get corn+ iron in two different locations but I'm not a fan of either. I'll post a screenshot when I can get back in game and take one, and we can discuss the various merits of the north when you get back - no need to press it.

Bad news, too... Boring didn't have enough for a 2-pop whip this turn. Thanks to the chop, the whip will happen next turn, which puts everything off one. That means no border pop until T78. I guess the good thing about that is that it gives one more turn for a northern chop to come in, and might keep our settler build time at 2 turns.

[Shoot the Moon]

A little micro trick if you're timing chops: You can put some turns into the cottage while the forest is still there, then finish the chop, then finish the cottage.

Thanks for the tip (I never knew that before!). It could work, except that the forests we are planning to pre-chop are outside of our current cultural borders. For the future though, that is a really nice tip.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

You may know this already, but Yaz is out. 17 started, and we are already down to 15... I knew that it wouldn't take long to eliminate him, but dang, that was only a couple of turns!

I will send out a congratulatory e-mail in a little bit, after figuring out France. But first, a couple of screenshots:



The location of iron. My intial thought is to let it go, and pick it up when Lakewood expands far enough. It's one of those spots that just doesn't fit a dotmap. If we decide we want it sooner, we could settle 2E or 2E1N of the iron. But both of those spots are pretty bad until civil service. Then again, civil service isn't all that far away nowadays. It's a discussion to be had next week.



2 barb warriors appeared outside of Boring this turn. I am scrambling the military to make sure both workers are safe, but this illustrates why we need a sentry net. Good thing is, we should be looking at an active sentry net in 10 or so turns thanks to St. Paul starting to come online. It looks like, thanks to the granary, we can whip a unit there every 3-4 turns and stay at size one until the borders are ready to expand at which point the whip will start to become less effective.

Oh, and HBR and archery just came in last turn. We have HBR right now, and have requested archery from CHASM. So it looks like chariots may be obsoleted before even 2 can be produced. How crazy!

On another note, Ruff is trying to make contact. I think we can have the warrior in DIM territory swing north toward Rome and meet him in 6-7 turns. Alternatively, the first chariot out of Centralia could hit Ruff's borders in roughly 13 turns if we use the CAN map for guidance.

And now to think about France...

[Mr. Nice Guy]

From France:

Greetings,

We would like extend the friendship between our great nations and cement our place in the alliance.

Our diplomats held urgent talks with Mukha of Cath Bruig this morning, I hope these talks have restored confidence and will allow us to be a fully paid up member of the allience, i hope the Cath Bruig support our urgent request for Maths, we would lose 20 hammers bonus if we end turn without it.

We would like to propose a NAP to build trust and bring our nations closer, since we are allies.

A Prosal for a NAP between our gloroius nations, please feel free to make any amendments or changes;


1. NAP till t100 inclusive of t100.
2. No RoP for enemy units
3. No gifting of units someone who is planning or is at war with either of us.
4. No sharing of map information, or any other sort of information like graphs etc or plannning details with others


Please indicate your agreement or any proposed changes.

Regards

KM

Ang-french

And from Krill regarding France:

1) Ignore him until Sunday, claiming you aren't around much at the weenend (you are GMT-7, he is GMT, so not easy to meet anyway)
2) when he contacts you, be ambiguous, because of 3)
3) Say that you weren't aware that they are in CAN, you never had any imput into that decision, and you aren't giving out maths until you know what they are researching, and until you have some sort of security - say that France are just receiving tech, aren't giving anything out, so you aren't happy with up front trading.

Krill

I am half tempted to send France a response along the lines of "we will trade Maths for 3 workers".

[Mr. Nice Guy]

This is the least I have ever said in a diplo e-mail:

Good evening,

Please forgive the tardiness of my reply. My work life is very hectic right now with many unplanned projects popping up, and Shoot the Moon is out of town for a week. So if diplomatic things go slowly, please bear with us, we are trying as best we can.

Regarding the NAP, what do you think of a looser, simpler NAP more along the lines of "will not attack the other party" to start with, and we can build more onto it as we go. After all, although an NAP is a serious thing it can also be a living document with amendments throughout its course. That is what allows for a strong connection between teams and allows for trust to be built.

Additionally, I typically prefer to share any significant diplomacy decision making with Shoot the Moon through our team thread. So consider us ready to discuss further NAP options, and we will await your thoughts regarding a simple NAP to start.

Just so you know, Shoot the Moon has made a comment in our team thread that he will be away from internet through Sunday night. Unfortunately my work schedule will make it difficult to have any team discussion until late night Monday night at best, so probably Tuesday-ish your time.

But rest assured that we will be in touch and look forward to further communication between our great nations.

Until later,

Mr. Nice Guy for Team Nice Shot

So we are officially stalled through Tuesday. Hopefully the war will be on its way by then, and we won't have to stall any further... doing this gives me a bad feeling. But this is part of the process.

Then Portugal signed on, and we had a brief chat. Most important part:

me: we received a note from France that mentioned "urgent talks with Mukha", but its very vague. are you at liberty to discuss?
willemofo: yeah, they were desperate for maths
9:23 PM so they were holding the turn in the hope that you would log in
me: desperate, huh? and yet they've ended turn now?
9:24 PM willemofo: I think the turn timer ran right down
they ended turn with just a couple of minutes left I think
me: oh i see
willemofo: heh anyway, we aren't fussed
how are things in your area?
9:25 PM I can forward an email I just got forwarded to me that should show the dynamics of our region
me: aside from a couple of barb incursions, nothing too spectacular. obviously the major world events are far removed from us
willemofo: and it should explain why we are such poor techers at the moment
we have to continue to focus on food and prod to have any chance
one sec
me: ok
willemofo: just emailing you now
9:26 PM ok sent
9:31 PM me: first thought: sucks to be you guys... sorry to read it. but second thought... we clearly have a strong and important ally in kyan to forward this
willemofo: yes definitely, kyan has been great to us
9:32 PM so don't tell him just yet that I shared it with you, need to make sure it's cool to share the things he's been telling me
me: i don't even have contact with him yet, sadly. but i would keep this in confidence anyway
willemofo: ok thanks

I'm not sure if they are knowledgeable about the French war. So I let that topic slide. The note they sent was originally from Rome directed to the CANT. It detailed Rome's plans to attack Portugal. The interesting thing is seeing the forwards.. first from Rome to CANT. Then from one of the CANT members to Bab/Mali, then from Bab/Mali to Portugal. CHASM has on several occasions pointed out what an asset Babylon is. Now I have seen it with my own eyes, and realize why a Carthage/England/Egypt/Bab/Mali alliance is such a good idea.

[Shoot the Moon]

Well, we have a nice Internet cafe right down the street from
where we are staying.

Remember in Boring we have a 30 hammer overflow coming in next turn. It might be an alright idea to not get archery quite yet so it 1 turn completes a chariot. I can't quite tell, so I'll let you asses the hammer/military situation on whether to do chariot or NC.

The diplo all looks good. The one thing I was thinking is where is our NAP with the Ottomans at? I feel like if we were to happen to be backstabbed by a CAN, it would be from them, as they have no CANT member close. However, we also wouldn't want to lock in too long of an NAP that would constrict us after CAN breaks up.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Some diplo while the pause/reload issue is worked out. First, a response from France:

Dear Team Nice Shot,

Thanks for your reply, I understand work issues and RL are hectic for all players at the moment.

We are happy to build a NAP and associated treaties as we go, the document we sent was a draft we have discussed with other teams - a basis for opening negotiations. We would very much like to start a process to build mutual trust and accelerate the good relations between us.

We would welcome any questions or queries you have, Murkha of CBE was under the misguided impression that we had been speaking with the Romans to the detriment of the the CAN, I want to make it absolutely clear we have had no contact the Romans what so ever, None. They are an uncouth race who did not even reply to our initial friendly greeting email. Usually the Ang-Fr would not comment on such unfounded rumours, however as you'll be aware these rumours have cost us a place within the tech trading group, I'm sure your aware of the detriment that has on the development of our Empire. We wish to rectify this at the earliest opportunity.

We have taken a number of screen shots of the known world, we offer them as an exchange for any screenshots you may have. please consider this an open offer - we understand that you may wish to handle a matter like this further down the road.

Best regards

Morgan
ANG_FR

I will likely wait until after work tomorrow - 10pm or so - to reply, and at that point only something to the effect of "We don't yet no much of the world. So while we would love to trade screenshots, it is probably in France's best interest to hold off on giving us your shots." My hope is that we can make the diplomatic discussions revolve around screenshots rather than techs and alliances. If we can spend 3-4 days discussing screenshots, the war will have started before we are put in a position to tip our hand.

Next, the following note sent to A4:

Greetings A4,

We thank you for the gift of Iron Working. Although we admit that we aren't crazy about our iron location, we were hoping it would be in one of our existing BFCs.

But at least we aren't aggressive Rome complaining about iron

We hadn't realized it with more pressing diplomatic matters and the fact that we are in a teching alliance, but our original NAP has come and gone. What do you think of signing a new NAP for another 20 turns, to last through T91? For our part, we are sorry that we overlooked this for so long. Let us know what you think.

Finally, regarding next techs, it looks like we will be researching Construction. We believe Babylon is researching Currency, but aren't 100% on the tech assignments of all the other teams

I thought we had T82 NAPs with everyone in the world. Turns out A4 could have backstabbed us any time recently. Of course, relations are still warm, and they gifted us iron working ... so I don't think they are a backstab threat presently. This also goes to show how much more important actual diplomacy and cooperation is than silly NAPs. Still, though, we do want to keep our northern border secure using one...

Lastly, I had a brief chat with CHASM. The only thing of interest is that they will not have any use for NCs. So it looks like barring a backstab, our choice of civ will be a total bust - bad starting techs for our land, useless UB for the map, and a UU that will not likely see any important military use. Oh well, our leader has performed far beyond expectations.

[Shoot the Moon]

In regards to the France screenshots, one possibility would be to check with England if France's screenshots would be worth it to them at the expense of France getting our map's knowledge of England's land (ie give the screenshots to England). I do have some reservations though about being that deceptive.*

I haven't seen the IT thread, but this would be a really bad time for a pause.*

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I haven't seen the IT thread, but this would be a really bad time for a pause.*

It is