Okay, diplo update. First, my response to Gaspar. In case you don't feel like scrolling up to remind yourself of what he sent, his original message from yesterday is in the spoiler:
Gaspar Wrote:scooter,
No real idea whether or not I connect to Lewwyn directly, it was a theory posited solely on the idea that my positioning would be a little unfair if I didn't have a second connection to the rest of the world other than through Sandover. If I do not in fact have such a connection then I'll throw a tantrum in my lurker thread and move on, but it does seem reasonable that there is one. As I said, I'm still quite underexplored at the moment, so I'm mostly just spitballing.
Re: Sandover - I think any attempts at ciphering the intentions of the Pharaoh are going to be misguided, from my reading of PBEM3, he sort of makes it up as it goes anyway. I have no doubt he has plenty of lurkers goading him into attacking any and all of us, and if there's one thing you can count on from Sandover, he loves to entertain. I don't think any game that features Serdoa and Sandover is going to be much of a peacemonger game - not to mention your Cataphracts or Mr. Charismatic over there. Honestly, after the snorefest PBEM12 was, I'm looking forward to a little conflict. Hopefully that doesn't mean I'll end up on the wrong end of 40 War Chariots sometime soon (though I suspect as the most likely Civ to build spears, he would have more logical targets were that his intent.)
As far as cooperation, I certainly agree with the premise - making friends with players you're unlikely to share a border with makes a lot of sense. As you said, not a whole lot we can do for each other right now, but as the world turns, I'm sure opportunities for mutual involvement will present themselves. I concur wholly with your distaste for the glacially moving early diplo, I'd rather just be up front about as much as possible from the start.
Gaspar
scooter Wrote:Gaspar,
First, a word of congratulations on landing Buddhism! I was debating between Buddhism and Polytheism (I'm about to land Hinduism), and I ended up choosing Polytheism. If I had chosen Meditation, it would've been awfully close, so I'm happy to know we didn't race.
I completely agree with your statements about this game not being boring... I was quite happy with the signups for this game, as I think pretty much every player has at least a few aggressive bones in their body... I might have the least, so I took Byzantium to hopefully compensate a bit . I don't necessarily have some big huge plan for immediately rushing Cataphracts at someone, but it's certainly nice to have that option should conflict arise. Serdoa and Sandover are definitely not shy about war, and from reading his PBEM6 thread it sounds like he has a bit of a warmonger streak as well. Should be a very fun game.
scooter
I feel like I'm a little lost as to how to approach diplo with Gaspar, which is mildly unusual to me. He's tough to read. It's something I should remember too...
Message back from Sandover:
Sandover Wrote:Scooter,
I had a surprisingly quick response from Gaspar this saturday myself so I guess he had itchy fingers for a while there or something. The norm has been 48hrs+ so far.
Yeah, friendly for sure. He hasn't pissed me off yet so I guess that he either made his homework or just isn't the type.
Oh, he's certainly trying to play me off against you. I haven't decided if it's working yet.
By the way, you should get yourself a title. Tatan, GES and Mist just helped me improve mine.
His Dark Lordship, Pharaoh Sandover
scooter Wrote:Sandover,
Haha okay, well at least I know it's happening . I just suspected he might try before I even met him (as he followed PBEM3 and Serdoa/Lewwyn not so much), so when he was asking if there would be a grudge in the very first message, it made me wonder if he was doing the same with you.
His Dark Lordship? Does that make you a Sith Egyptian Pharaoh or what? Perhaps just for flavor's sake I should be Scooter Skywalker or something. The only problem is that it requires me to switch to typing my name uppercase, which I'm not sure I'm willing to compromise on. Perhaps I'll ask my lurkers.
Also, do you really have 3 ded-lurkers? If so, I'm mildly disappointed, because I thought I had the most with 3 of my own. Not sure how to get ahead other than somehow tricking one of your lurkers into reading my thread too. So for the lurkers reading this paragraph in Sandover's thread - just know that my thread is much more fun and it's not too late to swing by. :P
in-search-of-a-title scooter
Apparently Sandover thinks I need a title. Any suggestions? I'll probably ignore his advice and stick with my standard signature, but if someone is creative and has a fun idea, I'll consider it. Not sure how to tie a title in with board games, but maybe someone has some brilliant idea.
Re: Gaspar - looks to me like he'd actively rather not buddy up with you except so much as it takes to make sure you keep Sandover busy, rather than just being non-committal, but I may well be putting more emphasis on "premise" in his "I certainly agree with the premise" line than is intentional.
Re: titles: All I've come up with so far is "strategos scooter". Greek for commander-in-chief of the army, also used in the Byzantine Empire later on, and riffs off the idea of strategy games. (And give you don't like capitalising your name, just don't capitalise the title either ...) It feels like there're loads better ideas tho, just hovering just past the edges of my thoughts ... *goes to find a butterfly net for catching thoughts*
pling Wrote:Re: Gaspar - looks to me like he'd actively rather not buddy up with you except so much as it takes to make sure you keep Sandover busy, rather than just being non-committal, but I may well be putting more emphasis on "premise" in his "I certainly agree with the premise" line than is intentional.
Bingo. This was my exact thought as well... I think it's as I said to Sandover - Gaspar is trying to play us off each other. He doesn't want to jump on board with me so quickly because he knows Sandover could kill him early on due to his wonder start. On the flipside, he might very well be trapped in Africa (I feel like he's being coy on "I don't know if there's a passage!" because I gotta think he'd know by now), so he needs to get out somehow. So his best bet is to get Sandover and I to fight, which means he dangles the revenge carrot in front of Sandover and being nice but noncommittal to me. Pretty predictable actually, now that I look at hit from his perspective. I think he has the map script figured out despite downplaying it when I pressed him about it... So he knows he's got to get into the Middle East somehow, as I'm really starting to doubt there's any sort of Gaspar-Lewwyn passage.
I have two approaches basically to handling diplo with Gaspar:
1. Push him harder to be friends with me. Be mildly aggressive and push things like an MDP against Sandover to prevent aggression, an intel sharing deal, etc etc. Spend some effort convincing him to align himself with me. I think this is doable, but difficult, and it's possible to come across as desperate.
2. Ignore Gaspar for awhile, pursuing relations with Lewwyn as my preferred route to containing Sandover. Use Janissaries + Cataphracts in a medieval war (if necessary), and both of us settle towards Africa to carve out Asia for us and Serdoa to split. Lewwyn appears to be a competent strategist in war, so I'd be happy to work with him should it come to that.
I'm leaning towards option #2. The best part is in option2, it's very possible to eventually bring Gaspar on board if it did come to a big war against Sandover. I'm not necessarily opposed to working with Sandover, however he's handled opening diplo with me differently than he did last time around, so I'm not naive enough to think he's going to ever work with me extensively this game. It's easier just to try to isolate him honestly.
Okay, on to more important stuff, like my title:
Bobchillingworth Wrote:"The Game Master"
I like this a lot, so I'm strongly leaning towards this. I'm throwing out all Star Wars thoughts, because I just got this from Sandover:
Sandover Wrote:in-search-of-a-title scooter,
Tatan made a reference in the PBEM3 lurker thread that I picked up on. I was the Dark Lord, and you the elves. I don't recall seeing any elves in Star Wars so I think you need to guess again. And that lowercase 's' is nothing but junk. The sooner you throw it out the better.
Oh, so you've got 3 deadlurkers? How unselfish of them to give you that extra help you need to be on pair with the other players!
Actually, neither Tatan nor Mist is a deadlurker of mine (as far as I know), but I can't really blame them for preferring my thread over yours now can I? I've only had two sign-ups as deadlurkers so far in Krill and GES, and an important related fact is that one of them is a complete idiot who couldn't keep his egoistically inflated head out of the map thread. But so it goes.
His Dark Lordship, Pharaoh of Egypt
1. Ahh, so Dark Lord = Lord of the Rings, not Sith Lord. That makes more sense.
2. Some humorous banter in there... This is why I enjoy having Sandover in a game.
I responded in kind, though it's not a terribly important message:
scooter Wrote:Sandover,
Ahh, I guessed wrong then. I'm using a city theme based on board games, so I may be incorporating Bobchillingworth's suggestion of "The Game Master" but now that I have new info on the meaning of Dark Lord, I may give some thought to something Elven. I like the Game Master idea though, so I may go with that.
Touche on the ded-lurkers... Just remember that the Dark Lord loses. And now that I think about it, the Pharaohs kinda died out too. Board games are still going strong - you should try it sometime!
"AND MY AXE!!!",
scooter
Threw in the (in)famous Gimli quote for the fun of it. Not much else to say though.
More silly diplo banter with Sandover - his emails make me laugh. Feel free to skip, as it's totally irrelevant, but just a look at what's going on behind the scenes:
Sandover Wrote:Scooter,
I imagine you spent lots of time playing board games in PBEM3 while I was off conquering the world, so you should probably go with Game Master. It fits your modest nature for sure.
Also, what you say about Dark Lords and Pharaohs might be true - but have you ever seen i two-in-one version before?
Didn't think so.
scooter Wrote:Schizophrenic Dark Pharaoh Lord Sandover,
Two in one version? So basically you get your ring finger chopped off AND you get turned into a mummy? That's cool I guess.
Off conquering the world? More like being handed the world. I seem to remember that I conquered as many cities as you did in that game, and I did it against the 2nd place person rather than the last-place person :P.
scooter
Then a quick message a few minutes later when I remembered there was something moderately legitimate to talk about:
scooter Wrote:Sandover,
In actual in-game seriousness (yes, there's an actual game going on here) - I have noticed Serdoa's scout headed southwest towards Lewwyn's borders, so it seems you will be able to meet him near Lewwyn after all. I'll try to arrange for him to find you somehow. Where are you with respect to Lewwyn's borders?
Alright, I'm going to pursue the "Plan 2" thing with Lewwyn. He sent me a message this morning which reminded me that I need to get on that. Here was his message:
Lewwyn Wrote:Hey Scooter,
Question about Serdoa. What was up with your early war if you don't mind my asking? Did try to rush you? Steal a worker? Should I be watchful for aggression from him?
Also, I've met Sandover now. Hopefully, Gaspar is on his way.
Lewwyn
I had a moment when I saw him asking about the Serdoa war... It never even occurred to me that people might think it was a real war! I mean I guess it should be obvious, but you get my point. Anyways, I decided to lay things out pretty clearly with him. Now that it's becoming somewhat clear to me that there's something to this Sandover-Gaspar thing (both of them have been flaky in diplo for those who haven't followed my thread closely), I need to get on the ball with Lewwyn, especially now that he's met Sandover. If Sandover manages to isolate me from Lewwyn as well, that will be quite embarrassing.... And really unnecessary honestly, as some sort of agreement with Lewwyn makes a lot of sense geographically and strategically. So here's my stab at a message:
scooter Wrote:Lewwyn,
Hah, I hadn't even thought of the Serdoa thing confusing other people. I had his scout somewhat boxed in with my culture, so I allowed him to declare war if he followed a careful route through the edge of my territory. Once he made it through, we made peace... So I'm sorry to say it wasn't anything alll that exciting . Well either way, I hadn't sent you a message in a couple days, and I've had some new "developments" (not quite so dramatic, but still) and I wanted to discuss something with you and kind of feel you out on your thoughts.
I've caught up a little better on what's going on with Sandover and Gaspar, so I'd like to fill you in a little better. Basically, to your east is a sub-continent of sorts - its another continent but it's connected to this giant one by a narrow (in comparison) stretch of 5-6 tiles. The continent is an oval-like shape from north to south - being taller than it is wide. Sandover is in the northern half of it, Gaspar is in the southern half. Note that I have not actually confirmed this myself, but if Sandover and Gaspar are telling the truth, this is what it loooks like. The unusual part is that Gaspar is slightly boxed in, however he and Sandover seem to be pretty close the more I sniff at what's going on.
Basically what I wanted to make you aware of is that it really feels like they are looking to be quite close in their relationship, probably carefully splitting their continent...which means they (Sandover especially) would be wise to consider rushing east into the land west of you and south of me for land. Even if he doesn't do that, my point is that myself and you will likely have a neighbor named Sandover in the future, and it's becoming more and more obvious to me that his other neighbor might be aligned with him.
So I guess what I'd like to discuss with you is some sort of containment strategy in regards to Sandover. To what extent we carry something like that is wide open for discussion as far as I'm concerned... It's just that frankly, if war comes to the region to my south and your west, I'd honestly prefer that we not be on opposite sides, especially since we both have UUs that will be around by the time land has filled out a little bit more. There's lots of things that are on the table in my mind, and I guess I'm sending out this message as an exploratory thing - to see if you are interested at all. If not, I understand as it's early, but if so, I'd be happy to discuss further - chat is possible too if you'd like that. I'll be around in about an hour for chat if you'd like, but this is early so this conversation's not in any rush at all.
I'm not sure why you're seeing plans 1 & 2 for dealing with Gaspar as necessarily mutually incompatible? I mean, if you try to do both then don't you either end up with Gaspar as friendly (so have really isolated Sandover) or by looking taken in by the smokescreen (so letting them get overconfident if they are ganging up on you)? Enlighten me, oh Game Master
pling Wrote:I'm not sure why you're seeing plans 1 & 2 for dealing with Gaspar as necessarily mutually incompatible? I mean, if you try to do both then don't you either end up with Gaspar as friendly (so have really isolated Sandover) or by looking taken in by the smokescreen (so letting them get overconfident if they are ganging up on you)? Enlighten me, oh Game Master
I guess I don't necessarily view them as incompatible... It's more like I poked Gaspar in a "so are you interested" way and I got a polite "not really"... So while I probably would have talked to Lewwyn in a similar manner, Gaspar's message makes it more important to do so. I know the way Sandover is, and even if he and Gaspar are close, it's very possible that could change rapidly. The gist of it is that I took the mild rejection (not a flat rejection, he certainly kept the door open, he just shut it most of the way) from Gaspar as a chance to step back and decide if there's another way to handle the containment of Sandover. I definitely have not written off Gaspar in this game, but top priority is making sure Sandover doesn't isolate me from Lewwyn too.
I think an alliance with Lewwyn would work quite well, so I wouldn't take my email as "well, Gaspar's an enemy, so let's try Lewwyn" - rather, "I'm a little more nervous about Sandover than I was previously, so I need to speed up my effort in befriending Lewwyn" if you follow that. Does that answer it?
Sorry, I'm having trouble explaining in writing - it makes sense in my head.
. I don't necessarily have some big huge plan for immediately rushing Cataphracts at someone, but it's certainly nice to have that option should conflict arise. Serdoa and Sandover are definitely not shy about war, and from reading his PBEM6 thread it sounds like he has a bit of a warmonger streak as well. Should be a very fun game.
