[SPOILERS] Team SsS

[scooter]

Well this just got very interesting... Interesting to see Portugal finally being talkative. I guess we've been somewhat guarded with information too so I sort of understand their hesitance. I get the feeling we're wanted in just so Portugal (financial) can tech away in peace. No one really cares if we slack off a bit on the tech/gold gifting front, as long as we leave the techers alone in peace and eliminate other member's enemies.

Basically what I'm saying is we have a lot of leverage here, everyone wants us in almost entirely because they know we carry a lot of weight, and if we get left OUT of the tech alliance, they know we will take it out on Portugal, and if we do that, Portugal is dead. I'd be curious to push them a little more to see if they would allow both us and Exploit in, just to get us through the first round of techs. I think it's generally understood that the group of 10 will get smaller in time, so why not be the ones who initiate that!

One thing I did notice was the lack of including Inca, which is good. It keeps our options open, we can join with Exploit and take out Inca to our west, or we can screw the alliance, set up tech trades with Inca and whoever they know, and take out Portugal.

I do want to figure out why everyone is against including Exploit... Everyone seems to be afraid of him or something but they won't tell us why.

[Sandover]

I said I would post some thoughts, but first some more emails. The idea I had in mind is basically displayed in this email to Exploit;

Dear Exploit,

This is just me throwing some ideas around. I'm not sure how realistic this is, but bare with me. What if SsS negotiates its way into the alliance under the following terms;

-SsS will act as a military barrier at the border in exchange for techs. The only tech that will be traded around by SsS will be Iron Working, and SsS will be free to do whatever we wish with our gold supply.
-The alliance guarantees the neutrality and right of trade of the nation Tech, under the pretext that SsS does not want Cath Bruig nor DJ to expand into a position to threaten SsS, nor having a weakened neighbour that can easily be conquered by someone else than ourselves.

I think the above might be possible to accomplish, though only by virtue of fear for our Spraetorians. The idea of this plan is for SsS and Tech to grow strong by using the alliance to our benefit, rather than being threatened by it. It will maintain the SsS desire to be a warmonger as much as Tech's desire to be a neutral trader. We should both be able to get hold of a necessary amount of techs to keep up, and SsS will build up a gold supply that Tech may take advantage off at a later date. This sort of arrangement will only be available as long as our unique unit is still the bully of the neighbourhood though, as these terms will no longer be possible to maintain once that grace period is over, upon which we will have to look elsewhere to secure our position.

Am I being crazy here or do you think this could be worth a shot? I need to come up with an official answer to them soon, so please do your best to paint a picture of what you believe to be the best course of action for SsS/Tech at this point.

Regards,
Sandover
Team SsS

At this point I assumed that Tech and DJ had reached a settling agreement since they both admitted running some long discussions about it yesterday, and DJ recently planted their city. As it turns out, however, DJ decided to plant the city while completely diregarding the ongoing negotiations. It reminds me of their play in RBP2, where they plant aggressively first and offer concessions later. Exploit obviously wants to see some blood here, and I can't blame him;

Dear Sandover,

DJ Civ just stuck me in the back while pretending to engage me in negotiations (as per the email that I forwarded you). I believe they are probably doing the same with you. Their smart play would be to divide us up by making an offer to you that keeps you neutral while DJ Civ and Cath Bruig gang up on me. The two of them could then jointly gang up on you probably after the Spraetorians are obsolete. Its classic divide and conquer strategy which Regoarrarr proved extremely adept at in RBP#1.

From a geopolitical situation I believe if we go with your idea that we may buy ourselves a little time however the DJ Civ alliance will simply be waiting for the balance of power to shift until they have a decisive advantage over us and then they will discard us. They may play nice while you can bully them but they will eventually want revenge for being bullied. We both have ancient era unique units so we are best to strike early in the game.

I think our best bet is for you to attack Cath Bruig while I attack DJ Civ. Village Green should be engaged by the Incans (you may want to encourage the Incans to press that attack) which will keep them busy. I doubt the other alliance members will come to Cath Bruig or DJ Civ's aid so it should just be a two on two battle with us having the unique unit advantage.

We should hold off revealing our intentions to attack until we are ready. How long would SsS need before getting ready to attack Cath Bruig? When will SsS have Iron Working researched?

What do you say? Ready for war?

Please note if we do go the dual war route, I will simply provide you with all the tech I can for free. I want my allies in a war scenario to have the best military units and be as strong as possible. I can see the borders of my northern neighbours and I will meet them in 1 or 2 turns so we will have other possible trading partners shortly.

Regards,
Exploit

Now this is quite a shame, as I had envisioned us working with the alliance for a period of time, doing the "looking for an alliance within the alliance" thing DJ was talking about in the meantime (probably even trying to ally with DJ), while letting them enjoy the prospect of not having to fear SsS aggression. I definitly don't blame them for running some subtlety in their diplomacy, I'm doing quite a bit of it myself as you've seen, but I've kept the option of joining the alliance open from the beginning so it's not like I've been running diplomacy purely in bad fate. I've avoided answering some questions/statements, hinted at wanting to attack Exploit (I said he seems to have some nice land, which he does!) and kept the agreement with Exploit secret without ever lying about it. Exploit has kept me in the loop regarding his discussions with DJ, and there were definitly some very serious negotiations going on up until the point where DJ took matters into their own hands. I also recieved and sent one message from/to DJ before getting the response from Exploit btw, and here they are;

Hi guys,

You may have seen darrell's post in the email / tehnical thread - but he managed to misclick some warriors due to lag and the net is that our warrior that was supposed to be "partying with" our worker near our latest city has decided to seek out booze in another location.

So, while I doubt that you would try to snipe it so far from home, we'd offer a short term 10 NAP. We'd also be willing to allow you a declration of war if you want to use that to pass through our lands (rather than taking the long way home), if you agree to the NAP

I get the feeling that you are kind of on the fence with this whole thing, but it's hard to tell if that's just natural reluctance or just the slowness of trying to coordinate with multiple teams and multiple members in a team.

I thought we had a pretty good chat ths morning but if there's anything else that you'd like to talk about, let us konw. As you probably saw, Exploit will be teching Alphabet T72, so it would be ideal if we could kill /c ripple him before then. With you, us and Portugal triple teaming him, we should be able to take him out quickly with a few chariots each. That will leave your Praets free to work elsewhere.

Anyway that's my thoughts - let us know and PARTY ON

DJ Civ

Dear DJ,

Firstly, I can assure you that your worker is in no danger. In fact, Smash has already moved away to a less threatening position. SsS may be fighters, but we fight honorably.

Secondly, SsS is not interested in making a joint attack on anyone at this very early age. We are set on using our unique unit to our benefit, and intend to do so on our own as we do not believe any help will be required and prefer not to share the spoils of war. If you do decide to carry out an attack on Exploit in the time frame you have suggested, you will do so without the support of SsS.

The reluctance you are describing is caused by a combination of general scepticism among our team regarding the gameplay offered by being in a large alliance, and Cath Bruig's initially quite amateurish way of trying to recruit us. It is only today, based on Cath Bruig's last message and our chat, that we first got the information we actually needed to make a sound decision. We are at work coming up with a suggestion for how a SsS membership within the alliance should look like, to make such a membership satisfactory to us, but that does not just happen in an instant.

Regards,
Sandover
Team SsS

As you can see Exploit's perception of what DJ is up to is crystal clear, and in the long run we can't really afford to have a team that tries to gang up on everyone in sight as Exploit's neighbour. If I were to describe talking diplomacy with regoarrarr, I would summarise it as talking to a snake-like creature. First he goes something like "we probably want to attack Exploit down the line but we might have a go at Dantski as well," and then shortly thereafter it changes into "Dantski and I are going to make some chariots and zerg down Exploit, I assume you are in?" Based on him being able to change tone in a hearbeat like that, the way he handled the settling of Karaoke Tuesday and his way of trying to get us into an "alliance within the alliance" before we're even in the actual alliance makes me think he's just going to take every opportunity he can to better his situation, and at this point I do not feel that I can trust DJ. This is quite sad, as Cath Bruig finally upgraded their way of running diplomacy making me think we could work well together with them, and I actually had the intention of negotiating ourselves into the alliance.

So now what? I believe it's time for the grand alliance of SsS/Tech to gear for war. Exploit's suggestion that he deals with DJ while we charge into Cath Bruig is a sound one. DJ got horses but so should Exploit soon, and at that point he will have the advantage as long as we can hook up iron and supply him with our copper. All he needs to do is keep an even score until we can free up some Spraetorians from our campaign to help him out on that front. The alliance doesn't yet stretch into the northern regions, so if we can get an explorer or two out there to help Exploit find some suitable trading partners we should be set for the future. It's bit of a shame that we'll end up attacking Cath Bruig anyway as I finally had my mind set on working with them, but hey, they make their own bed, right?

[Sandover]

scooter, you obviously have a say in this as well (Square Leg doesn't seem to be around much, probably because of his participation in PBEM2), but I take it from your last posts that you are ok with this option. I won't decline joining the alliance until I hear from you, but I will start some planning with Exploit while waiting for your approval of the attack plan.

[Sandover]

Sent this to Exploit;

Dear Exploit,

I have asked the SsS council to approve your request for war. I expect the request to be granted in due time, but I feel that time is of the essence here and will from here on act as if it has been granted, though I expect you to keep the influence of the council in mind nevertheless.

I was looking for a way to work with the alliance, but since the acts of DJ are so poisonous I now share your opinion that we need to rid the neighbourhood of their presence. It is somewhat a shame that Cath Bruig will have to go in the process, as recent developments in their diplomacy made them seem a lot more cooperative than in the past, but so it will be.

We expect Iron Working to finish around turn 70-75, and hope to have a settler ready at the same time or shortly thereafter. Getting an initial strike force ready will not take long once Iron is being gathered, but the traveling distance needs to be considered as well. Under the best of circumstances (fast research and Iron already within our borders) we can probably be ready to enter Cath Bruig's territory around turn 80-85, but I honestly expect more of a challenge getting hold of the Iron so turn 90-95 may be more feasible.

How soon will you be ready to produce chariots? Beware that DJ already have horses and just now asked us to join an attack on Tech together with DJ and Cath Bruig. SsS neglection to join their alliance will most certainly prevent such events from transpiring, but you must be ready to defend yourselves properly as soon as you possibly can nevertheless. Archery may not be a bad idea after all, depending on when your next settler is due. We will provide you with copper once it is appropriate and possible to do so, which should hopeully give you an advantage on your front.

We do not plan to crash our economy due to warfare so we will be able to provide some additional techs after Iron Working, as was initially intended even if it will not happen at great speed, before gearing for gold collection on your behalf.

Regards,
Sandover
Team SsS

[scooter]

I'll hopefully write more when I get the chance, but yes I approve of the plan. Kind of a bummer it turned out like this, but that's life.

[Sandover]

It's a bummer indeed, though it was a long-shot trying to get the best of both worlds. I'm happy with our current position anyway as I prefer being allied to Exploit rather than the alliance, and we have gained a whole lot of information about what's going on in the known world.

[Sandover]

Turn 55-56:

Slacked a bit with the turn reports due to the heavy amount of diplomacy lately, so bunching these two together. The first screenshot is from turn 55, the second one from turn 56.

Smash has witnessed the dishonorable founding of Karaoke Tuesday.
Stitch is still healing.

Sandograd finished a granary this turn thanks to a 2-pop whip. The barracks will be completed rapidly due to a forest chop.
Scooterville is soon done with the granary, and the barracks won't require a lot of work after that since it's almost done already by virtue of pre-pottery production.
Both cities will produce some saxemen once the infrastructure is ready. Need to decide which city will build the settler, though there is ample time for that still.

Exploit had offered open borders in-game and I accepted.

[Sandover]

I drafted a message to Cath Bruig. Is it okay or should I change anything? The transcripts I mention is a short email chain between Exploit and DJ that he forwarded to us.

Dear Cath Bruig,

A diplomatic backstab has occurred to our east. The nation of DJ have betrayed the sanctity of ongoing settlement negotiations with the nation of Tech, by dishonorably sneaking in to found the city of Karaoke Tuesday on a spot that was still under negotiations. The nation of SsS have received a series of transcripts signed by the leaders of DJ, which confirm them having breached the negotiations, and we have no reason to believe that said transcript is a forgery. One of our explorers was even there to witness the dishonorably founding of the city and can confirm that it is a spot that should, in my mind, only be settled under agreement with Tech, as it will inevitably form the future DJ/Tech border.

In the light of this event SsS have decided to officially withdraw our desire to join your alliance, despite our already having finished a draft of terms for our membership, as the behaviour displayed by DJ is not one that we wish to be asociated with. Should there come a time when DJ is excluded, or their honor restored, SsS will then again be open to discuss a membership. Until then we shall look for trading partners elsewhere, and will make sure to be prepared to put up a fight in case the alliance decides to come after us in the manner you have decided to operate under. We honestly believe that it is a shame that we do not get to work closely with Cath Bruig, as we appreciated your recent change of tone and saw a lot of potential in our relationship as our empires would be able to complement each others nicely, but we simply do not wish to be part of an alliance where the word of senior members cannot be trusted. It does, once again, make us doubt the alliance's true intentions of working with SsS.

Regards,
Sandover
Team SsS

[scooter]

That looks perfect, send away. If we're lucky, we may either see reparations for Exploit and/or cause some infighting in the alliance.

Also, I think we need to immediately start talking more with Inca and see if they are interested in tech trades with ourselves and Exploit. We declined their NAP obviously but let's make it clear that we have no intention of attacking them, and would actually prefer to work with them. It might even be beneficial to share with them the list of civs involved in it, stressing the need to work together on a tech front to keep from falling behind.

[Sandover]

One thing that struck me is that we probably should give DJ the chance to give us their version of the story before we outright decline membership. I'm certain we'll stick to Exploit's version no matter what they have to say, but in the name of fairness we probably should let them speak up first. We can still send Cath Bruig that message as is. Just need to shelf it for a while.