[Spoilers] Victoria of Korea - Mardoc and SevenSpirits

[Mardoc]

Just got contact from luddite:

So, my scout came into contact with you this turn. You're the first civ I've found so far. It looks like the starting locations are really far apart. Have you made contact with anyone else yet?

--
-Charlie Pye

Here's what I plan to send in response, but would like to get input from SevenSpirits and novice if you're both around:

Glad to finally meet! Do you prefer to go by Charlie or Luddite or something else?

We've met two other civs so far, Amelia's Sumerians and Gold Ergo Sum's Zulu - Amelia to our NW and GES to our south.

Finally, SevenSpirits has figured out the general map layout, we believe, with the help of some information from GES. Are you interested in seeing what we've come up with, as a show of goodwill on our part? We want to attach a non-sharing clause to this information, though.

- Mardoc

I think the information we're giving away is pretty much all stuff we've discussed already - the layout and contact info are both things that he'll find out soon anyway, but might be a good start to a diplomatic relationship. Especially since we're training warriors next, I don't think we can really be harmed by sharing this info anyway.

I assume our info would be pretty much the ABCDEFG diagram with no names, and we'll check with GES before we offer (although I don't expect him to object). We did, however, promise him not to share it without checking first, so I expect to get a slight boost to our mutual trust by conforming to that agreement.

We've also gotten some more screenshot info from GES, which I'll post tonight along with the turn report - this should be a big turn, with both Agriculture and a worker! We also ought to meet whoever's at E, unless that's luddite Which ought to put us at 4/6 civs met, enough to get a tech discount on anything popular

[novice]

Looks good to me, I've got nothing to add.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm back from my trip. Everything looks fine to me! Now I need to go rest.

[SevenSpirits]

Played the turn. :neenernee

Really, I just wanted a chance to see where we were firsthand, and I realized too late that slightly different warrior/scout moves were plausible. So, sorry if I screwed up your screenshot posting plan. Instead, I will have to provide some myself.

The scout move finds Luddite:



And the warrior move finds Tatan:



Now, we'd already learned from GES that Plako is G and Adlain is F. So we now know everyone - and in fact it's double-checked since we know every location, which is one more than necessary.


World map, with current locations of our scout/warrior.

If we send our warrior down/right, to the bottom of the triangle below Adlain, and our scout up/right, towards Plako, we will circumnavigate in four turns. If we're lucky, that's fast enough! Plus, it will let us meet Adlain and Plako pretty soon after.

We also got a worker this turn:



I named him Boxer, going with the famous Korean Starcraft players theme for them as I think more bridge terms would cut into our city name list too much. But we can change it if no one else likes that theme. Anyway, Boxer starts the farm and we grow while building a warrior.

Meanwhile, in diplomatic news:

You can call me Luddite

Sure, I'd be glad to see what you've come up with. I won't show it to anyone else, and I'll check to see if it matches with what I've seen so far.

Luddite,

Here's what we believe the world to look like; so far we haven't found anything to contradict it.

The turn hasn't yet come around, but I'm curious - where did you meet us? Did you find our scout, or our home? And if you're willing to share - which direction did you come from?

- Mardoc

Yeah that matches well with what I've seen so far. I moved my scout up southeast of your home, i can just sea one tile of your territory right now, on the hill.

Hey Luddite, great to meet you, Seven here.

Where are you relative to us? We'd like to avoid our warrior wasting three turns, or our scout wasting one turn, approaching your borders for contact because we think they are someone else's.

Seven

This was all before we got the turn. As you can see, Luddite was either being paranoid by not telling us his location, or extremely lazy, or just a jerk. I guess we will find out better with later diplomacy, but I'm guessing mild jerk, i.e. wanting to keep every advantage he can. Not a great harbinger of future alliance. I sent him another note after playing the turn saying "never mind, we found you already". Don't want to give him the chance to give us a useless gift.

I have not contacted Tatan yet. As we've met him with our warrior who is three turns from his capital, we may have the potential to cause him moderate annoyance (have to work a 2-hammer tile for three turns) depending on where he's kept his warrior. So let's consider our options. I don't want to ruin anyone's game, but I am certainly interested in making someone feel thankful to us for not ruining their game.


Edit: Also sent to GES [with our scout and warrior screens, plus the world map update sans red dots]:

And here are the screens from our turn 10.

We found Luddite right after he found us, and we also found Tatan in the expected last possible place. As we now know where everyone is, so I've also attached a world layout of players. I'm not planning to share this with anyone else.

Seven

P.S. Neither Amelia nor now Luddite has seemed particularly friendly so far. I'm so glad we ran into you first!

Edit again: One last item of note - one player switched to working a grass forest. Presumably they wanted to get a warrior out a bit sooner and didn't care that they would have less food overflow upon reaching size 2. But even if that were the case, this is sloppy micro as they could instead alternate a 3/0/1 tile with a 1/2/0 tile.

[Mardoc]

Played the turn. :neenerneeSo, sorry if I screwed up your screenshot posting plan.

Mostly what I had intended to post was the latest info from GES as of last night. I'm fine with you often playing the turn, that ought to keep us both in the loop and also make sure we're never the culprits for holding up the game - a minor but real diplo boost

Doesn't look like really enough info yet to plan a dotmap; fortunately we still have time.

Now, we'd already learned from GES that Plako is G and Adlain is F. So we now know everyone - and in fact it's double-checked since we know every location, which is one more than necessary.

If we send our warrior down/right, to the bottom of the triangle below Adlain, and our scout up/right, towards Plako, we will circumnavigate in four turns. If we're lucky, that's fast enough! Plus, it will let us meet Adlain and Plako pretty soon after.

This sounds like an excellent plan - beeline for our hopeful circumnavigation (which I think we have good odds on - GES has conceded that by taking his scout home, and the little bit of info we've gotten from Amelia and luddite suggests that they're only railriding with scouts. Realistically, if GES hadn't made the scouting deal with us, we'd probably have had to keep one unit nearby to explore with anyway.

Our only piece of unlikeliness would be if someone went directly for circumnavigation instead of contact, in which case so be it. Now, immediately after circumnavigating or failing, I do want to meet the last two for tech discount purposes if nothing else. Plus, once we start talking, we may be able to find a third friendly person.

We also got a worker this turn:

I named him Boxer, going with the famous Korean Starcraft players theme for them as I think more bridge terms would cut into our city name list too much. But we can change it if no one else likes that theme. Anyway, Boxer starts the farm and we grow while building a warrior.

That's fine, although I don't know any Korean Starcraft players, so you'll have to be in charge of naming or at least providing names. I didn't think the 52 cards + Jokers would really run out that fast, but I'm ok either way.

This was all before we got the turn. As you can see, Luddite was either being paranoid by not telling us his location, or extremely lazy, or just a jerk. I guess we will find out better with later diplomacy, but I'm guessing mild jerk, i.e. wanting to keep every advantage he can. Not a great harbinger of future alliance. I sent him another note after playing the turn saying "never mind, we found you already". Don't want to give him the chance to give us a useless gift.

This, unfortunately, I agree with. He asked us direct questions, to which we gave forthright answers, and then he evaded or ignored our questions. I could see that if it were important info, something we wouldn't have found out otherwise, but since it wasn't even that, I don't have a lot of confidence here.

I'm not sure if we want to keep playing clueless, talking a lot to him and sharing inconsequential info, or give up on him diplomatically. The one advantage to sharing frequent unimportant info is that that lets us slip a dagger in his back without him suspecting anything; on the other hand, it might convince him we're weak or gullible and move us up his target list. Do we fear a Jaguar rush? That does seem like the one main benefit of no metals required, that he could potentially get them out faster.

I have not contacted Tatan yet. As we've met him with our warrior who is three turns from his capital, we may have the potential to cause him moderate annoyance (have to work a 2-hammer tile for three turns) depending on where he's kept his warrior. So let's consider our options. I don't want to ruin anyone's game, but I am certainly interested in making someone feel thankful to us for not ruining their game.

I think, honestly, that our odds aren't the best here - he's probably training a warrior anyway, or kept one home. Plus he's ahead of us in the turn order. Yes, we could potentially slow his growth, but we certainly couldn't even plausibly threaten a kill. Meanwhile, the turn timer is ticking on circumnavigation, and on future tech discounts for knowing people.

If you can figure out a good way to phrase 'we could inconvenience you, but we won't, cause we're such nice guys', I'd be happy to send that message before the turn comes around, but realistically I can't think of a way to send that message - we can only cost him 3 food, not delay his worker or walk into his capital, and that assumes A - he sent out his warrior and B - he reacts the way we want to a threat. I don't think that's worth doing when the threat is mostly toothless. Especially since he's Aggressive and our potential attack would be across a river.

Really, though, I think the only good times to issue threats are when we can back them up, or when the other player at least believes we can. And he's got no reason to believe we can do any more than inconvenience him without crippling ourselves. And also, when we have something worthwhile to gain from the threat - give us a long-term NAP while we attack someone else, or back off on the settling, or etc. I can't see a threat improving relations pretty much ever, so I figure they're only worth issuing when there's something tangible to gain.

Finally, if his warrior isn't near home, there's a good chance it's out on the rails, and we'd sure look silly if we did something like that, only to have him show up on our borders next.

And as a last note on the subject,

I think I have to agree with novice on Tatan; he could potentially spoil someone else's game, but I don't see him as a primary contender here. We'll have to be careful it's not *our* game he spoils, but short of that we can probably relax.

I don't think slowing him now is important in terms of beating him in the end, but it could be enough for him to decide we're the ones that need to be spoiled.

Finally, we just got a couple diplo messages from GES:

Plako has actually been very friendly and appreciative of the initial gesture.

I am glad I ran into your two civs then. Sounds like I made the right moves. I'm LEET at finding friendly civs in the fog.

I'll play soon and get the screens to you. Hopefully I can find some more resources around our opening cities.

GES

Found some stone in the NE. Looks like every civ has the option of double speed wonder construction for both stone and marble wonders.

GES

Looks like the comments on Amelia/luddite are already paying off! And we're quite lucky that GES took Industrious, not us, since it's only a 25% bonus when everyone has a doubler. Not that there's any wonders I want except maybe Great Lighthouse, but it's nice to know we've got the option if we outproduce him.

[SevenSpirits]

You're absolutely right about not attacking Tatan. Actually I didn't mean we'd actually move farther towards him, or even threaten him, just perhaps make him worry a little before assuaging that fear. (In fact my intentions are entirely benign; I don't even want him to be forced to defend himself, rather just to realize his potential problems.)

Since I got your input, and thought about it a bit more, I sent off this message:

Hi Tatan,

Our warrior found your borders last turn. Well met! No trouble so far, I hope?

I want to assure you that we come in peace. There's no need to rush out a warrior if yours is not nearby, as ours will make an about face next turn. (Promise.)

SevenSpirits (and Mardoc)

Completely sincere, yet it's possible Tatan will doubt my sincerity and prepare for possible attack for a turn. In this case he will find his lack of trust minorly punished, and hopefully avoid distrusting us in the future. If he trusts us and finds his choice rewarded, that's good too!

Note: if his warrior is not home, he's in the following non-terrible predicament. He has one hammer in a warrior and needs to work a 2-hammer tile for the next three turns in order to outpace our own warrior. That would be fairly irritating, though of course not fatal.

If we'd wanted to actually surprise and pershaps eliminate an enemy, we could have snuck up on their lower left BFC corner instead. (Our warrior could easily have done that.) Hopefully no one's doing that to us!

Edit: The 52 cards won't run out quickly but I'd also rather have something more distinctive for our workers. It's going to be really easy to get the different card names confused, and that is a bigger deal for workers than for scouts.

[SevenSpirits]

His quick reply:

Bonjour!

Je suis un--just kidding, I took like two years of French in middle school. Anyway, greetings! I'm glad to see you come in peace, I did not expect contact with someone else so soon. Good thing my starting warrior kept nearby my city anyway.

This map is pretty... crazy so far. My scout is already almost across the world! If you don't mind, may I ask which direction your lands are in [since you already know where mine are]?

-Tatan

After a bit of soul-searching, I decided to not be a jerk in any way, and responded promptly:

We came from your northwest.

Btw, I figured out the layout of the whole map a couple turns ago. (It was pretty fun, and the grossly mistaken version I'd come up with one turn earlier is pretty hilarious in retrospect. ) Let me ask Mardoc if I can send you the diagram. (Assuming you'd find it useful, of course!)

Seven

So Mardoc, are you OK with me sending him the diagram?

[SevenSpirits]

Message in from Luddite:

Hi Seven,
I was wondering, do you guys have a corn and gems like I do? If you do, I guess it's safe to assume that all the starts are exactly the same.

Yeah, I'd be pretty surprised if our BFCs at least were not copies of one another.

Btw, you have come across as a bit unfriendly?/selfish? so far. I mean, so far, we have given you a good deal of information, you have failed to give us the only real piece of info we asked for, and you haven't even said so much as "thanks".

That's not a complaint (and I'd be blowing it out of proportion if it was), I just thought it would be nice to let you know, particularly since I think it's your first PBEM and it's always hard to know how you're perceived.

Um, here's hoping Mardoc doesn't kill me for sending this message without prior discussion. :D

Seven

What can I say? I hope that rational human decency isn't a terrible idea in-game. If it is, we can always pull me off of diplomatic duty I guess.

[Mardoc]

So Mardoc, are you OK with me sending him the diagram?

Why, yes, I am willing to be your diplomatic foil when you want to delay

Now that I see what you meant on Tatan, that's a much better move than I'd been thinking. Even though we never had any intention otherwise, doing what we tell people we'll do ought to help diplomatically.

Speaking of which - we did agree with GES to check with him before sending out the layout, right? So please send him a quick note that we found Tatan and are planning to send him the map.

And now we have either confirmation that Tatan only has his scout out exploring as well, or else that he's willing to stretch the truth when threatened.

And on luddite, you're right, not fair to write him off after 2 turns and 2 messages.

[SevenSpirits]

Our last agreement with GES on the matter was:

...

I think similar messages would help both our teams make better friends more quickly. So here's my suggestion: we give each other full permission to send such messages to the other players. (For now, just Amelia and Plako of course.) The only information we share is the attached diagram and optionally our own home location in relation to the contacted player. Sound good? I'll let you know if we meet anyone so we don't both try to give the same person the same gift, heh.

Seven

SevenSpirits,

Great idea. I will let you know that I met someone before I send it out.

GES

So I think sending it to Tatan is just fine without asking again. (We said we met him; the map gift possibility is implicit in that.)

Meanwhile, we had this from Luddite:

sorry;; can i blame it on being totally sleep deprived right now? I had to fly across the pacific 2 days ago, and my sleep schedule is still toally off.
What was the info that you asked me for that i didn't give? I guess you asked me where I was, and i would have told you but then you found me anyway before i could respond. I do appreciate the map- thanks a lot for that. I just don't really have a lot to offer right now since I haven't met anyone else yet.

Yeah, I meant your relative location to us. (Mardoc asked you earlier, and you responded but ignored that question.)

Don't worry about it, get some rest, etc.

Seven

I think we can reserve judgment for now. (It's not like we have a chance to get any other information from him for a while.) I'd like to avoid what I've seen happen in some other PBEMs where tiny misunderstandings escalate into giant conflicts because people keep their annoyances secret.