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

[regoarrarr]

Oh and for @Rowain - here's the email they sent

Dear DJ Civ:
Well, obviously this stinks.
I suspect the humorous tone we prefer to take in diplomatic e-mails (the milk bit was because of kittens' fondness for milk, etc.) wouldn't be much appreciated at this point, so I'm going to cut it out and talk as RefSteel instead of "Ref Eriksson" or Ragnar or our charioteer.
I'm sorry - we're sorry. We don't like this even a little, and we wouldn't have even considered attacking except that the alternatives were even worse. I know it's little consolation now that Salthi has indeed decided to "stop by" (...sigh...) but we're really unhappy (REALLY unhappy; you should see the logs of the chats between Maniac and me) that our civ had to attack yours, as well as with the entire game situation as it's developed.
For what little it's worth, the message I sent earlier today was meant in good faith, though I now regret having sent it, in light of the outcome; it was all I could think of that we could try. I was on the way home when you sent your reply, and it looks like I was about to arrive when Cull logged in and did the deed. I had thought we at least had another hour - until the turn was about to roll - but team communication broke down, and I got home to see the damage done. Don't put all the blame on Cull though: After the message you sent us, I'd have had to attack too. If I'd been there to say something, we still would have attacked.
Ten teams?! The problem isn't a lack of focus; the problem is the same one everyone had with tech alliances in RBP1. We want to play our civ, not one finger of a giant superentity. Your reply made it so obvious you were so deeply invested in this ten-player alliance (and of course you would be; one of your ten teams is obviously going to win the game) that there was no hope of friendship between us so long as we were outside of the alliance.
And confound it, we don't want to play RBP1 Alliance Madness Mark 2; we want to play Civ! So, I'm sorry - for all the good that does. But I don't feel we had any choice.
I guess it's going to get ugly for us at this point. I wouldn't blame you for doing what you can to trash our civ after what we did to slow down yours (and thus your superalliance's - however slightly). We'll have to deal with that as best we can. But we just couldn't live with the alliance you're talking about. For how many teams does it ruin the game? How many outside the alliance? How many INSIDE the alliance who wanted to play their own game but realized that joining up was their only way to stay relevant in the game? (sighhhhhhhh...)
If it helps: We've been agonizing over the question of attacking for days. As you surmised, Exploit was very friendly to us, but asked our civ to attack yours almost from the moment we made contact, with his reasons, with Salthi already close to your borders and heading in that direction anyway. We spent a long time convincing him that there were better ways for us to help his civ than executing that kind of attack. But we still hadn't heard from you, and when Salthi moved last turn, we saw that your city was on flatland, with only one warrior in place, not even fortified yet. Our arguments against attacking you no longer held water when we had >90% odds of razing the city that was to claim your only copper. We tried to think of something anyway, but none of us could until this afternoon when I came up with the idea behind that e-mail and sent it. I hoped to broker a real peace between you and Exploit, and forge a friendship with you in place of what seemed at first blush like inevitable war. (...sigh...) I guess it doesn't matter at this point what I hoped. Especially when that letter came....
You're irretrievably bound up with a ten(!)-player alliance. That ... I don't know what to say. Ten teams?! It's just too much. No one wanted it, going into the game. (Well, *almost* no one, I guess.) I realize now that it's the way to win a game like this one, and therefore was probably inevitable, but ... we couldn't live with it. Even if Cull had waited, it would have been the same. It's just about the last thing we wanted to do ... but the *very* last was what you were proposing. I'm sorry; I hate having done this, but I don't think we had a choice.
So ... this probably doesn't help; you may not even believe us. Deep down, I may be writing it just to make myself feel better - and it isn't working, to be honest. If it'll make things any easier, you can send us a "drop dead" e-mail, and we won't hold it against you; we'll see your point. We really, really, REALLY didn't want to do this. In the end, we felt we had to. But this stinks.


-RefSteel
P.S. We moved really, really late in the turn, so I assume we're playing in the second half. If you'd rather take second half yourself, we're okay with that too.
Sorry.
Again.
For what it's worth.

[regoarrarr]

Okay here is my draft.

My main question is how much we say about our Exploit plans.

Hi Friendly Kittens,

I guess regoarrrarr is getting famous for his "drop-dead" emails, huh? He posted some interesting thoughts in our thread but we'll try to keep him muzzled, at least for now :-)

A few thoughts:

Mostly what these series of games have never seen is the war-quick peace-work together move. I guess they came a little close to the end of PBEM1 (I guess not a spoiler now that the game is over). Frankly, our team is of two minds on your email. Half of us believe that you are being sincere, and half of us think that you are blowing smoke at best, and being outright disingenuous about being "really really sorry" at worst. As always moves and actions play louder than emails and words.

So here's a thought - how about you let us borrow your chariot. We've got a few things in mind that he could do. Plus it lets us feel a little better that he's not going to continue to attack us, and that your attack was only executed at such great odds to cut off our copper. We'll borrow him for a few turns, and then march him back to your lands and re-gift him (or pay you with some sort of alternate compensation). If you're not willing to do that, how about peace, a NAP and a promise not to gift the chariot to anyone else? As we stated before, we have no desire to march across the desert and attack you.

As for your points about the 10 person alliance, of course it's not tenable. Let me repeat that - OF COURSE IT'S NOT TENABLE! I'm sure that in some ways it's breaking up already. But you're right that it's inevitable, and was decided when you and us and everyone voted for the game settings. I don't understand how this is much different than 3 civs deciding to work together in a 5 team game.

I think you're wrong to compare this to RPB1 though - the differences in that were twofold - not enough teams (so the remaining folks were able to form a counter alliance that teched even better) and the civs were so far away that joint military cooperation was impossible.

We know that 10 teams is a lot. But it really can't be any (much?) less. What would happen if say 5 teams started trading and "outed" themselves as an alliance? The other 12 teams would band together and take them out. But I don't expect it to last the whole game - that was why we also offered to include you as kind of an "alliance within an alliance"

So anyways, here we are. I guess at this point it's up to you guys. But what do you want out of us? I think that's the part of things that burns the most for the folks on our team. We feel like we bent over backwards to work with you but it wasn't good enough. So if you say you really REALLY REALLY didn't want to do this, and would have preferred working with us, what would you want from us? What could we have said? What CAN we say/do now? If the answer to that is "nothing" and "nothing", well I guess you know how we feel then.....

DJ Civ
India

You'll note that I signed DJ Civ AND India, so people will know who we are

[regoarrarr]

Ottomans asked us what happened and I sent a quick note explainign things.

Also sent a quick note to Portugal

Well as you may have already heard, Maya declared war and razed our city of T-shirt contest.

We are still hoping to go ahead with the attack on Exploit, but REALLY need some help from you. We are whipping and chopping our citeis into the ground and really could use some backup support from you, especially given that the city we lost had our only copper.

What is the ABSOLUTE fastest you could get some axes and spears our way?

DJ Civ
India

[darrelljs]

Draft looks good to me.

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Draft looks good to me.

Darrell

Okay sent it.

[Rowain]

Thanks for posting that e-mail.
If they are honest (and I confess I have my doubts) I really wonder what they gain with this 1 chariot attack (read: what Exploit offered them).

[sunrise089]

We just got a turn reload, so the timer is back at 22 hours left.

I take it we need to decide by ~15 hours left if we want to go first or second. Hopefully they will agree to one of our options before that.

[sunrise089]

Thanks for posting that e-mail.
If they are honest (and I confess I have my doubts) I really wonder what they gain with this 1 chariot attack (read: what Exploit offered them).

"Hey, you can basically take out a city for free. You loose diplomatically, but you don't want to be in their alliance anyways go you? And what are they going to do, send warriors across the map to counterattack?"

[sooooo]

Their "10 civs omg!" reason I suspect is not their main reason. I think they just wanted to raze our copper with no risk, presumably because exploit was repeatedly telling them to in-game, and then thought-up a reason that we might sympathise with. I think that subconciously they didn't want to disobey exploit - when you talk in-game it becomes more personal and you have a stronger connection than with someone you talk to by email. With emails you can pick out certain parts that you don't like and convince yourselves of whatever you want.

[regoarrarr]

Okay email from Ref of Maya

Okay, let me give that another try. I was one part shocked, two parts baffled, and a little bit shell-shocked when I wrote it, and I think I totally screwed it up. Which is typical of my day yesterday. So:


That message I sent after the DoW wasn't meant to excuse our attack, nor to ask for reproachment nor to keep options open for friendship between our civs in the future (I didn't think it would be possible at that point; maybe I'm wrong, I guess, and I'll certainly talk to my teammates about it, but that's not the point of this message) ... and looking at it now, I think it seems like it was trying to do so. Worse, I tried to explain, but tried to do so without (of course) giving away our civ's plans or goals or the details of our reasoning; in-game secrets about our civ have to stay in-game secrets.


That was stupid of me.


It took away the entire point of the message and made it look like something else (specifically, like a diplo message). I don't blame you for being skeptical; if (as a civ, even in the meta-game) we didn't want to attack, all we had to do was NOT alt-click (or whatever) and NOT send Salthi into your city. Move the stupid chariot elsewhere or just leave it in place even. Easy. Well, we didn't do that. Obviously, in-game, we wanted to attack more than we wanted not to. Yes, when I sent that earlier letter from work, I still had hope (mainly for out-of-game reasons, unfortunately) that we could find a way not to fight. I cleared it with Cull, who liked it. I sent it, and didn't regret it until I saw your response (and literally five seconds later noticed Cull's report that he had razed your city; that was a really weird juxtoposition, and a big part of the reason for my confusion). Now that I've seen the fall-out, I realize that message was a stupid move. Maybe if there'd been time ... but "if" is hopeless. Anyway, it was a diplo message, and intended as such. If you want to believe it was a trick and wasn't meant in good faith, I don't mind that. You can read about my actual (horrible, deeply flawed) reasoning for sending it after the game.


After the DoW what I should have done was to send two messages: One from Ragnar and one from me. I think I wound up mixing them up, which was (again) stupid of me. Ragnar's happy with the way things are going. He loves sacking and looting things. He'd have preferred to do things differently, but he takes his opportunities as they come. He's the one in whose voice I was (should have been) saying, "Arrrrrr! Ye be forming a ten team tech alliance! We'll get ye for that! Down with alliances! Up with independant pillagers!!!!!"


The stuff about regretting it, about being really sorry, about hating having to attack - that was not meant to improve (or affect) our civs' relationship at all. That was dead serious and 100% on the level, from Maniac and me. I could dig up some of our archived discussions and send them to you (I'd have to cut out the "secret" bits about our civ) - we were agonizing over this thing. I didn't want you to play your civ differently or pull any punches as a result of what I said. I just wanted to let you guys know, player to player instead of civ to civ, that we know it really stinks that we attacked you, and we really didn't like doing it. It made sense for our civ (so we believed and, right or wrong, still believe). We had to do what was right for our civ, both for the integrity of the game and for the same reason you do what's best for your civ. But for us, our success in the game is independant of out-of-game relations, and vice-versa. We know you guys have a history of getting attacked early on and seeing terrific plans fall into ruins, and - as us, not as the Kittens or the Mayans - we're sorry we had to contribute this time.


For that matter, as a player, I'd be happy to see your plans come to fruition this time, and congratulate you even as Ragnar curses you, as you pull off the brilliant surprise attack that destroys our civilization.


-RefSteel