RPB3 SPOILERS Bismarck of India (regoarrarr, darrelljs, sooooo, sunrise089)

[darrelljs]

Interesting...Cull was logged in from 7:12 to 7:38 EST but the Chariot remains unmoved. Unfortunately, Exploit was logged in from 7:23 to 7:35. Based on the logout times we can assume they were chatting in game.

I've moved all our units. DO NOT END TURN. We grow next turn and a chop can come in as well. I'm thinking we want to end turn last, then whip a Warrior. That way the city won't look like it grew and we whipped. Of course civstats will give it away, but maybe they won't check it .

I'm hoping this is all unnecessary because I think a reasonable cost/benefit analysis will keep the peace. They gain much more by joining our alliance, and even if they don't razing that city will set us back but not cripple us. Why make a game long enemy for anything less than a clean kill? Still, to be logged in that long and not move the Chariot means they are at least thinking about it.

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Could we put our worker (or maybe the warrior?) on the tile NW of the city?

I.e. the tile between the chariot and the city tile. I was trying to think of a way that they'd have to attack our warrior, and then not be able to attack our city that turn, buying us the turn we need to get another unit or two in.

Should we send them anything?

Have they even met Exploit in game?

=====

Logged in to answer my questions - the chariot has 2 paths to our city and from F4 yes, they've met and have Open Borders

[darrelljs]

They have two lines of attack in game, so no blocking. I just logged in and checked the diplo screen, they have indeed met.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Doh...should have read the rest of your answer!

I would say if we can reach them it would be great, but the best way is to IM at this point. Another note will sound desperate .

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Yeah I checked too.

In thinking about it, I think we absolutely need to send them something. Here's a draft

Hi guys,

Pardon the additional message before you guys have had a chance to respond to our first one, but you will understand that tensions are running a bit high with Salthi "hanging around" our city. The general consensus of our team is that there's not much risk that you would attack our city, since it seems odd to attack someone halfway around the world without killing them, since it could easily lead to a game long enemy when everything else about our civs (far distance away) indicates that we should be good allies!

One of our team members noticed that you and Exploit were logged in to the game earlier for about 20 minutes, and wondered if he was using that time to poison you against us, or even urging you to attack T-Shirt contest! We've been attempting to have peaceful relations with the Sumerians, but for some reason he seems bent on conspiring against us, despite being friendly from appearances.

He already has apparently sabotaged our relations with Rome with his story of our (Exploit and our) attempts to negotiate a border. After we told Rome our side of the story, they told us "I must admit that your last message has put a doubt in our minds. It could be that we jumped the gun on this one, and that this is one of those situations where a clash of pre-made assumptions on both sides of the table caused the negotiations to be doomed even before they began. We will, however, keep an eye on what other nations have to tell us about their dealings with you and Exploit with hope of being able to establish for certain whom's diplomacy is worth putting our trust in."

So since you may have already heard the Sumerian's side of things - here is ours. We have had our eyes on a stone site 4 tiles NW of our capital since about Turn 20. It was going to be our 2nd city but we ended up settling for food / horses first. We had a settler for the site in production when we first MET Sumeria. We told him of our plans, and he said he was planning on settling a city 3NW of the stone, and wanted us to settle either S or E of the stone, so our cities would not overlap. We originally had planned to settle 1W of the stone, but agreed to settle ON the stone to minimize overlap (it now overlaps only 2 plains tiles with his proposed city). That still was not enough for him - he wanted us to settle 1S on a floodplain, which we could not do due to needing that FP for sufficient food (it does not have a food resource).

We were hoping to find an amicable solution, offering far more than we felt warranted in the name of good relations (offer to let him culturally control the tiles, offer to timeshare the wine tile, offer to peridodically give him stone for wonders). We really feel like we bent over backwards to preserve amicabilty. I guess Sumeria felt those two plains forest tiles were more important, for whatever reason. In the end, we already had the settler in the area, ready to settle that turn. We delayed as long as we could, but in the end, you know how Krill gets whenever you're last to play!! :-) so we felt we could hold the turn no more.

So that is our side of things. In the name of good relations, we would be willing to gift you an early tech (Do you have Hunting?) whenever either of our civs discovers Alphabet, to be accompanied by a 20 turn NAP starting now, with all the standard clauses (no letting other civs use either of our lands to attack the other, no gifting units to civs at war with the other, no active espionage, etc). We'd also be interested in exploring additional trading opportunities (or as we like to call them, PARTIES!) with you.

DJ Civ
India

I wasn't sure how much we should go in detail about future trading. We could certainly add a bit more there if we think we need to.

Darrell if you like it or want to tweak it, feel free to send. I will be leaving in about 10 mins and won't be back for quite awhile

[darrelljs]

Only thing I did was take out which tech we offerred. Hunting might be much smaller than what Exploit could be bringing them with. Also added a request to chat to speed up communications.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

No reply still. We are the only two teams who have not ended our turn. I would now be shocked if they aren't plannin an attack .

sunrise099, I think you need to take over turn player duties. I also think we need to see if Portugal can loan us a spear.

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Email from Maya

Dear Rockin' DJs:
Out-of-character warning/heads-up: Maniac is traveling. I'm at work. Cull has spotty connectivity on weekends. I'll be able to play the turn when I get home if Cull hasn't done so by then - according to civstats, I'll definitely have time before the turn rolls. The trouble is, I can't go in-game or use chat until then.
I can do e-mail - sporadically, and I'm loath to do so from work. But this is important, so let's try. Really sorry this is such a last-minute thing; if I could roll back time, I would.
You mentioned a tech when one of us gets alpha, together with a NAP, en route to (here I'm inferring, but this would be the most important bit from our perspective) much closer cooperation between our civs. We're very interested in pursuing something like this, but obviously don't have a lot of time to work out the details. We REALLY don't want to get involved in an early war, but as you can imagine, certain parties are very eager for us to do so. We'll avoid it if we can, but it would really, really help to have a concrete alternative that doesn't end with us being totally isolated.
Questions I'm hoping you can answer, from least to most important: What tech did you have in mind? When do you expect to have alpha? Are you prepared to form a serious alliance with our civ that will last deep (a hundred turns or more) into the game?

I see darrell has a draft started which I think is good. I'll be back around in about 15 mins after I get the kids to bed.

I think we should not only include them in the big alliance but also offer to include them in an "inner" alliance.

I know that kind of conflicts with our HRE/Aztecs/Ottomans deal, but I feel like this is more important and we can work it out later on.

Plus it may not REALLY conflict, depending on how things go. I think the more teams that we have close diplomatic relations with, the better

[darrelljs]

I really apologize but we needed to get something out. I sent out this without getting any feedback:

Ah, this is good. My friend, if you are wanting to, you are in the tech alliance. I'm going to be out-of-character frank as well because time matters. So, right now there is a 9 team tech alliance. I've been authorized to make you team #10. That means, in *very* few turns we will have a pool of techs the same size as the alliance. I can give you the details of members and techs involved once you accept the offer, but suffice to say the teams in the alliance are going to be way ahead of the teams not in the alliance. Also as part of the alliance, you'll have NAPs with all the teams. Its the opposite of isolation :-). If you want a longer term NAP with us, its yours. We've got other fish to fry. They'll get fried without us, but with us the frying is faster. As a result, I have a feeling any promises made to you won't come about.

Assuming you accept the most important thing is for you to start making contact with the other alliance members, so you can trade for your techs, and for you to plan what tech you will be contributing in the second round of trades.

Darrell for India

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Okay - another message I'd like to send off with some more detail

A few other thoughts - that first message was sent by just darrell, because he felt (correctly I'm sure) that time was of the essence and wanted to get SOMETHING out to you and none of the rest of us were around.

Everything he said was true and accurate and we have been looking for one more team in the alliance, and hope you'll be that team.

A few other things.

a) Some of your neighbors are in our group, and some are not. So either way you go, you'll have some "safe" and some "not-so-safe" flanks. But since that's the case, wouldn't you want to be in the group that has a tech lead?

b) I'm glad you're reluctant to early war, and we understand the diplomatic balancing game that you're trying to walk. We're not saying that we would declare bloody "to the death" vendetta on you if you attacked our city, but obviously losing that big of an early hammer investment is something that will severely hamper our chances to win, so if we have the option down the road of working with you or another civ, obviously we're going to favor the one that DIDN'T attack one of our cities, if that makes sense :-)

c) We understand if you might be worried about being in such a large alliance. Obviously a large alliance has quite a few things going for it, such as 1) more techs, 2) less people out to get you. But there are also some things that aren't so great, such as a lack of focus. We would understand if your initial reaction is worrying about being kind of on the outside, since you're a little later to the party. But we would not want that at all - we've actually been looking for someone further away - someone across the globe that is not a direct neighbor of ours that we can work with kind of "behind the scenes", somewhat of a "sleeper" alliance for the mid-to-long game. It's in both of our best interests to make sure the other prosper, rather than say, one of our immediate neighbors. And we would not forget that you demurred on an early attack when others were pushing it and I'm sure it could be viewed as advantageous in some respects.

Hopefully this answers some of your questions and we'll be happy to provide as much detail as we can

DJ Civ
India

I'll send this in about 20-30 mins (845 or 9 EST) unless I hear otherwise