Diplo with Pirates

[HitAnyKey]

Sounds good to me.

[TheHumanHydra]

Okay, message sent!

[Lord Parkin]

From the Pirates:

TheHumanHydra

We really would like to put this war behind us and move forward. Talking-Parrot cramps our position considerably and basically cuts off access to horses for quite some time. The only other source available to us is on our far-eastern lands (on our border with TEAM). Therefore we can only agree to give up settling west of Barbados if you will promise to gift us horses upon request for the duration of the NAP or until we acquire our own source. We will of course agree not to use any mounted units that are produced with your horses against you in offensive war.

If you agree to this condition then we are willing concede the territory west of Barbados and agree to an NAP until T100. Please see attached screenshot with the border agreement: We agree to settle no cities west of Barbados, you agree to leave at least 2 tiles of neutral zone between us before settling (although culture may of course expand into this zone).

Pirates

[HitAnyKey]

I think we can fully agree to their proposal. I don't see any problem with their request to be gifted horses for the duration of the NAP....after all, I don't think we'll even get horses during that time. I expect our next couple cities to not be in any place for getting the horses. By the time we have horses, and need to use them, the NAP will probably be over.

[Lord Parkin]

Do we actually have a second source of Horses? It seems like their proposal allows them to cut us off from our only source at any time they wish (e.g. when someone else invades, or simply all the time).

Also, that border line stretches quite a way down to the south. Are we really content to be permanently blocked off from settling more than 1 city diameter east of our capital? That seems ridiculously restrictive. Surely a fair line would continue diagonally rather than dipping south like that?

Not sure of the context of the situation, just seems like a pretty lopsided deal from a brief skim.

[HitAnyKey]

Yeah, I wasn't really paying much attention to the line they drew. But yeah, it would need to continue diagonally to the water.

As for the horses, I'm pretty sure we have another one to our SW that is within easily reachable spot. But in either case, this is just a deal that would be for during the course of our NAP. There would be nothing permanent about it anyway.

We should also suggest that they settle a city on that grass hill 3W of Barbados or the Grass 1NW of that one. That way they can have a city that reaches the horses on their own across the water, to which they can just continue their road for hooking it up.

EDIT: Yes, we have another source of horses:


So there are the horses directly north of Talking Parrot and then that spot on the shore to the west. Which we may want to think about settling sometime soon....that's a lot of good resources over there. And it would also help use secure the stone.

[TheHumanHydra]

There are also Horses to the south-west, along the coast. Horses are actually fairly plentiful in our region.

We definitely need the border to be a bit different down in the south; we want those Deer at the very least, and Lord Parkin's right that we don't want to be eternally cut off from settling to the east.

Hopefully I'll be able to draft a reply later today, but I can't right now. I'm excited that these negotiations are finally going somewhere; I think switching to a conciliatory tack was definitely the right course!

[HitAnyKey]

I realized my original thought of telling them to settle a city on their side of the water to get the Horses themselves won't work. Their city of Port Royal is in the way.


I did have another thought though, so that we don't have to give them horses. Why don't we tell them that we'll be ok with them settling a city on either of those two tiles north of the Horses? It allows them to go west of Barbados, but I think I'd rather let them have a city there than have the agreement be that we send them horses. A city of theirs in the spot won't really interfere with us too much, and that'll have that road outside of our borders for connecting their cities.

[TheHumanHydra]

I would be okay with that.

[TheHumanHydra]

Proposed reply:

Pirates,

We are happy with this proposed agreement in principle; there are just a couple details we'd like to work out. We wouldn't actually mind if you settled a city 1NW of the horses north of Talking Parrot in order to gain your own native supply. On the other hand, we are a bit concerned about the proposed border cutting us off from access to the centre in the south. Would this amendment be okay?



TheHumanHydra

I find it interesting how they blacked out the area at the south-east of their screenshot, and how their proposed border cuts us off from it. It must be another of those rich border regions we've noticed between all the players.