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

[darrelljs]

I'm 90% sure Krill will not give away Alphabet for a Chariot and a NAP for India. I don't really think he should. Let's face it, Krill's sig is way off. We've become the #1 dogpile choice for CANT. As long as the Aztecs/Ottomans keep the Incans busy, and HRE/Portugal keep Rome busy, I think we (well, sunrise) can beat off both Byzantium and Maya while still killing Sumeria. We won't be able to tech or grow much, but we'll definitely be doing our part for CAN. Let's just hope everyone else realizes that while we mooch techs.

I'd probably send Byzantine a short note keeping your first paragraph, then in a second paragraph express confusion on why they are frustrated with India given we've just met (maybe some comment like "Surely you don't blame us for the tech alliance, like everyone else the map chose our trading partners for us), and say we can't offer alphabet in trade since no tech brokering is on but we'd be interested in at least a NAP.

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Okay how's this

Hi again,

Unfortunately several of our team members have thread subscriptions so we saw your post before you edited it. I don't think there should be any type of "penalty" other than the fact that we saw a note that, on the whole, you'd probably prefer that we didn't. Don't worry about it - we've all been there...

We're a little unsure as to why India is bearing the brunt of your frustrations - surely you don't blame us for the tech alliance, like everyone else the map chose our trading partners for us. I do find it frustrating that in games like this (where no contact is allowed until meeting in-game) that geography and who you randomly happen to start next to is so important. Perhaps PBEM#2, with email contact allowed before in-game meeting, will show us a different way of how things work with that setting. For all we know, our 2 civs are perfectly matched to be long term friends and we hit it off immediately, but just due to the randomness of the God Sullla's map geography :-), we didnt' end up meeting till T64 (or whatever turn it is now)

Now, to talk specifics - as you probably are already aware, due to the No Tech Brokering setting on this game, we actually can't trade you Alphabet since we did not research that ourselves. I believe Hunting and Masonry are the only techs that we self-researched that you guys lack. We are interested in working with you closer and if you don't like our offer, we'd be happy to discuss something that would work better for you.

Would you ( and/or Maya if you'd be interested in working together with them) be interested or able in a chat later on today? There's a lot of things to discuss, and email often is not the most efficient way to get it done. We'd definitely be interested in figuring out how we could have some "Fair and forthright trade" or maybe "Mutual military struggle" bonuses with you!

PARTY ON!
DJ Civ
India

[darrelljs]

Looks great!

Darrell

[sunrise089]

Mayans moved their chariot up. Next turn we'll move a 2nd warrior into the city to make sure it lives. We also can finish another warrior in 2t, but I think I prefer getting a turn of production into an archer so we can 1pop whip it if needed. In fact, if the Mayan chariot attacks next turn I will slave the archer last-second, putting us in position to kill the char in 2t.



EDIT: I have also ended turn, since I don't think there will be any more surprises this turn (next turn Sumeria, Rome, or Byzantium may DOW us though).

[darrelljs]

I think with Ruff getting peace with the Incans we need to request some of his troops.

Also, the latest e-mail from Mayans makes it pretty clear they are in it for the long haul.

And finally, I'd be pretty shocked if the Byzantines don't attack us as well. We need to survive two Chariots in that case, and be in a position to counter attack both so I think we want 4 Warriors in Karaoke?

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Very brief chat with Ruff, whom I had asked earlier for military assistance:

Darrell: u there?
Sent at 7:07 AM on Thursday
Ruff: yes but leaving in 2 or 3 mins
[COLOR="Red"]I have archers
and I can prob send you copper next turn[/COLOR]

I think we'll have enough gold to upgrade a Warrior to a Spear in 2 turns :D.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Final spam post...looks like Byzantium whipped something.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Ruff's peace deal:

Hi All,

Athlete and I hammered out a peace deal. It doesn't include any of you so you still have options on that front. Here are the terms ...

1) Inca pays Aztecs 30g as soon as either team gets currency
2) All units return to Inca land by quickest route
3) NAP thru to T100
4) Inca claim stone location between Inca and Aztec land

1) is payback for the pillaging they did - probably massively undervalued (oh well).
2) is to stop them walking on India or Ottoman.

The stone site is flat and can be attacked diagonally by 2 movers without having to cross a river. I don't see that city surviving very long in the next war.

Ruff

[darrelljs]

Mayan's "Sir Aiduan" e-mail:

Dear DJ Dudes:

Yeah, Ragnar is often a jerk, I'm afraid - especially when he's drunk. That's the danger of partying too hard, I guess. (Or maybe he's just doing it wrong, and he needs some lessons from the experts down in India. Something to think about.) Anyway.... I'm afraid this message is going to mix up real life and in-game stuff a bit, just because they both affect the game. Unfortunately, there's no way to escape that - but I'm not going to give you any blabber about misclicking while remoting in. Worse yet, it's not going to include a specific proposal. I wrote one up too late to clear the details with the other Friendly Kittens, so it won't end up getting sent until tomorrow when they've looked it over. (Yeah, we can do diplo individually, but with a proposal like this, I'd better at least make sure WE all agree to it before I waste YOUR time!)

So: If you don't care "what we wanted from you" or why we did what we did over the last few days, you can skip the rest of this letter. This is just an attempt to answer some of your questions from a previous e-mail. If the Kittens can come up with any kind of peace proposal, one of us will send it later today, under separate cover. Don't expect something simple, unfortunately; our declaration wasn't a simple decision, and this isn't a simple game.

What did we want when I sent that letter Sunday afternoon? Well, what I *said* we wanted, though I said it poorly: A real friendship between our civs on such terms that it wouldn't isolate the Friendly Kittens from such friends as we had made already. My initial idea was to broker a NAP that would extend beyond just our civs. But I didn't word it very well and didn't make the proposal clear from the start, and your reply made it pretty clear that there was no hope: We thought we could make deals with you as DJ Civ. We knew you would have allies by this point in the game, but I figured that would be at least a little bit fluid, that deals could be worked out on the side, that we might carefully negotiate a NAP that would exclude proxy wars and the like, and ... I underestimated the situation.

So you told us that you had a 9-team tech alliance going, and wanted us for team number 10. That was crushing. We Kittens couldn't join it, even if we wished to, without betraying the few friends we'd made ourselves. Even if we thought joining would make us more likely to win (and we didn't - not by a meaningful margin, at least - given the circumstances in which the invitation was made) we couldn't do it. Friendly Kittens - at least, *these* Friendly Kittens - don't betray their friends. That seemed to mean our only hope against your alliance was to weaken it as much and as swiftly as we could. When I saw your message, I was stunned for a moment; I had planned to spend most of the hour and a half remaining before the turn rolled, if necessary, chatting with any of you who might have been online, trying to work something out. But what could I work out in the face of that? I wouldn't be negotiating with DJ Civ, but with a single piece in a giant alliance that would have Alpha in a "VERY few" turns. Oh, I thought I was still going to try to do something - there wasn't enough time, and I wasn't thinking clearly enough, but I was going to try - but literally seconds later, I saw an update from Cull: He had already attacked a few minutes before, and T-Shirt Contest had been auto-razed. By the way: It turns out that he attacked early because he had to leave for the day, and he was worried I wouldn't get home in time to play. If I understand the timing right, I was literally walking to my apartment complex from the train station at the time. So by the time I logged in, no negotiation was possible; there was nothing to do but let you know we were at war, and - as a completely out-of-game gesture that I thoroughly fumbled - apologize.

At the time, I didn't think it mattered that we'd lost the chance for absolute-last-minute negotiations; given the CAN, I didn't think we could have worked anything out anyway - certainly not in time. Unfortunately, I was probably right about that, and apart from the time factor, the situation has only gotten worse. (Because, you know, we attacked and razed one of your cities.) So ... yeah, we'll probably end up continuing to harass you, and you'll probably end up wiping us out. (See? At least I'm rational about what your enormous and presumably growing tech lead means.) Sorry for the delay to the specific peace proposal, especially considering how much of a long-shot it's likely to be.

-Ref Eriksson for the Friendly Kittens

[darrelljs]

Byzantine e-mail:

Howdy,

Bobchillingworth here for the Spectres. I think the accidental post was a little bit more "honest" than either of our civs would have preferred, but perhaps in the end it serves as a useful point for discussions. As you now know, we are not interested in quite so underwhelming a tech offer as your propose. As you are also aware, we are somewhat nonplussed about the current diplomatic and trading structure; hopefully this is somewhat understandable, given our less-than-desirable position in it. Strange as it sounds, consider our ire toward your civ in particular as a tribute to the combined remarkable civ skills of your team; it's difficult to imagine such a large trading group forming without yourselves playing a formative role. Of course, we may be entirely mistaken, but we don't have too much intel to go on at present.


Of course there's no reason why we can't find ourselves working together in the future; indeed I get the impression that you guys enjoy shaking things up from time to time. Who wants to let their giant, evil alliance get stale, right?


I'll be on chat for another hour or so if you want to talk, otherwise I look corresponding with you later!

Darrell