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

[darrelljs]

Unsurprising letter from Rome:

While you do a good job defending your honor you also indirectly agree to having breached the negotiations with Tech by taking matters into your own hands. The acts you have described to us can indeed be considered generous, but on the other hand we do not consider you entitled to run shady diplomacy just because you are a generous bunch. Sending a settler to a location that is still under negotiation is optimistic at best and bad conduct at worst. Exploit have been nothing but reasonable in establishing a border agreement with SsS, and while the coin always has two sides, we cannot help but view you as the bad guys of this incident. In the light of what has transpired we hereby declare that we will make no further attempts to join your alliance, as we do not believe that SsS and DJ have a future working closely together. Maybe one day, when our borders meet in what is now Sumeria, we will engage in glorious combat to determine supremacy over the neighbourhood.

Regards,
Sandover
Team SsS

[darrelljs]

And from Exploit:

I am not angry. I am merely being prudent. I have no intentions of attacking DJ Civ but I am wary of a possible DJ Civ/Cath Bruig joint assault against me. I am reasonably confident that your two civs along with the Aztec are allied together.

As for approaching Portugal, I misread one of your earlier emails where you mentioned that one of your "teammates" was for a shorter cool-down period and one for a longer period. I originally mistook "teammates" to mean Aztec and Cath Bruig. I now realize that you meant the other members of DJ Civ. I will negotiate directly with Portugal.

As for the border/settling arrangement, I had already proposed one that I thought was fairly thorough. Other than the Tech city being settled northwest of the stone tile, I do not see any other areas where our two civs are likely to compete for the same settlement tiles. North of the city Tech intends to settle is a large mountain range that prevents settlement and all movement for that matter. South of Bison Pass is most likely Cath Bruig land. That means Tech intends to have only two cities bordering DJ Civ. What else is there to discuss about borders and settlement locations?

Unfortunately, EP spending in this game is nearly irrelevant given that its only use is passive. Given our close borders, it makes sense that we both initially concentrate our EP against each other. Once another civ's borders reaches Tech's borders then we intend to split the EP amongst our neighbours. Graphs and research visibility are fine but the only real espionage power in this game is city visibility and the only cities that I truly need to see belong to the civs that closely border Tech so that I have advance warning of impending attacks.

Regards,
Exploit

[darrelljs]

Draft reply to Rome:

I guess we see things differently. The area was never under negotiation, we had always planned to settle there. It is in our sphere of influence as defined by distance to the capital. That was made quite clear to Sumeria. We were hoping to find an amicable solution, offering far more than we felt warranted in the name of good relations. I guess Sumeria felt those two plains forest tiles were more important, for whatever reason.

We find it odd that Rome, based on this minor incident, is giving up all that we might have done together in the future. It is of course your choice, but it sure is puzzling.

[darrelljs]

Hey rego...quick question. When you were talking with Rome, do you remember who said this:

T: Exploit seem to have some nice land...
me:
T: oops, did I say that out loud?
me: lol!

I know Square Leg a bit outside of RPB3, and I was thinking of IMing him and trying to find out a little bit more on what's going on. I know its stupid, I know the situation is what it is, but it just bothers me. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't add up, and I really want to find out why.

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Hey rego...quick question. When you were talking with Rome, do you remember who said this:



I know Square Leg a bit outside of RPB3, and I was thinking of IMing him and trying to find out a little bit more on what's going on. I know its stupid, I know the situation is what it is, but it just bothers me. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't add up, and I really want to find out why.

Darrell

I think that was Sandover - As far as I can tell, T is TJ which has always come with notes that are signed Sandover

[regoarrarr]

Draft reply to Rome:

I guess we see things differently. The area was never under negotiation, we had always planned to settle there. It is in our sphere of influence as defined by distance to the capital (4 tiles from ours - 8 tiles from Exploit's). That was made quite clear to Sumeria. 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. The settler had been produced to go to that stone spot before we even MET Sumeria. In fact, we have had talks since about Turn 20 of settling that tile - it was going to be our 2nd city before we instead founded Happy Hour. We delayed as long as we could, but in the end, felt we could hold the turn no more.

We find it odd that Rome, based on this minor incident, is giving up all that we might have done together in the future. It is of course your choice, but it sure is puzzling, yet not entirely unexpected.

We've felt for awhile that you were not really interested in working with us, and while disappointing, it's at least good to know where we stand.

As you said, perhaps we will have cause to meet later on in this game.

I expounded a bit on the first paragraph, and then also added the last 2 - though I'm not sure if we should mention that we've kind of felt that they weren't going to work with us or not

[regoarrarr]

The only thing I'd talk about with Exploit is that it takes 185 EP currently for City Visibility on his city, which means if he keeps running his 4EPT against us for the next 40 (!) turns, and we run nothing on him, THEN he will finally get city visibility.

This has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever read

[darrelljs]

This has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever read

Yeah...it made no sense.

Like your changes to the Rome mail, I'd say go ahead and send it.

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Sent the Rome draft

[sunrise089]

Rome's logic sure is lousy - we can't settle even if we're entitled to the spot and are being more than fair in our offer because negotiations are still ongoing? Can we open negotiations for 100% of the land outside Rome's current borders? We may not get many concessions from them, but I feel like keeping those negotiations open for the whole game

Also, Rome is pulling a Jowy. They're assuming the worst about us because Exploit dealt well with them. Roman error 1: Exploit hasn't been any kinder to Rome than we have, so using past actions towards Rome as the measuring stick doesn't require them to believe Exploit and not us. Roman error 2: As RBP2 has shown, it actually makes sense for a civ to be friendly to one neighbor and hostile to another. If Exploit was friendly to Rome that should give Rome more reason to believe he may be acting aggressively towards us.