29-03-2003 20:10									#211
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quote: What is iron going to be worth to GoW anyway?

I can't see them surviving till GunPowder (and they don't have all that great of terrain for Saltpeter) without it.

	29-03-2003 20:39									#212
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About 1)- i just don't like the thought of having to go to war on someone elses terms. We can't tell if and when Vox will attack GoW- and what is an attack anyway? only settling near the borders? i hardly believe we would accept it- again this would create disappointment in GoW- raising and discussing this idea when we are sure to reject it in the end.

I'm also against a tech research trio- too difficult to control, and too vulnerable, even in chemistry it is well known- a cyclic molecule made from three core atoms is alot less stable than a linear one made from two... I'd be against anything set in stone right now, though the option of gpt for tech might work, but will have to be negotiated in the future.

I also don't think GoW will pay that much for Iron- its a backup source for them, but i'll ask them about it nonetheless.

	29-03-2003 20:47									#213
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Are we sure it's a backup source for them? ND seems to have both the sources in the area tied up. I think GoW is Ironless, and unless ND takes pity on them, they will have to look for it elsewhere.

	29-03-2003 21:00									#214
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If we and Lego (and maybe Vox) try to go in a tech partnership that squeezes all three Bobian civs out, that could easily push the three of them together. I'm far from convinced that we could win that race, especailly with at least two of the Bobian civs having at least one library each if I'm interpreting the culture graph correctly. (I'm guessing Vox is the other civ that's ahead of us in Literacy Rate.) But if we, Lego, and a Bobian civ team up, we can almost certainly pull ahead of the other two Bobian civs.

Nathan

	29-03-2003 21:03									#215
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quote: 2) Tech alliance with GoW? worth discussing IMO.

They buy tech grom us and only from us at a very low price and can't trade it.

quote: What is iron going to be worth to GoW anyway?

survival...

	29-03-2003 21:11									#216
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quote: Originally posted by alva They buy tech grom us and only from us at a very low price and can't trade it.

The problem is that half the tech we'll get will come from Lego. That means that any reasonable deal with Lego would need to let them in on that aspect. (And an unreasonable deal could make a mess of our efforts to leverage a tech partnership with Lego over the long haul.)

	29-03-2003 21:46									#217
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quote: That means that any reasonable deal with Lego would need to let them in on that aspect.

Of course,
So, we give half of the profit to Lego...

	29-03-2003 23:53									#218
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libraries / culture: I'm far from convinced there are 2 libraries out there, that culture graph looks like a couple of temples to me. Maybe ND has 1 temple + 1 lib, and maybe RP has built one, but I doubt it. The F11 graph is hardly to be trusted when it comes to literacy, in the Euro game I'm at 29%, and I have yet to build my first library (except the great one, of course)

One thing is obvious: we should not attack ND before doing something about our culture, and also Vox is becoming problematic. Culture Flipping is becoming a serious risk fast.

GoW tech deal: please, no alliance, in which we promise to sell them everything. I know it will make the deal on GoW's side a lot easier to get, but it will create tons of problems with other tech suppliers. With Lego in on this, we might be able to strike such a deal, but again, no 3-way deal (no stable cyclic 3-atom molecules either, even if I smiled a bit at the comparison, as stable cyclic 4-atom molecules don't really exist either ), only a bunh of 2 way deals. And in this case, I suggest we first negotiate a common price tag on techs with Lego, and share profits if possible.

Iron: if they have no iron at all, it will be invaluable to them, but only if they akeep enough of a tresaury to upgrade horsies to riders. Those riders are the problem, of course, if we are the ones trading iron, and GoW uses it to declare war on ND, I doubt that ND will like us afterwards. Even if no war gets declared, our image with the other Bobians might fall anyway, so we need adequate compensation from it

As to 1): I still feel that we should find out exactly how much they value our protection against Vox, although I agree that we should say that we are not interested in becoming pure mercenaries, so if it clashes with our goals, we can't honorably do it.

DeepO

	04-04-2003 17:15									#219
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Re: selling Feudalism to GoW:
I suggest that we announce to GoW that the rumors are true, and that we can make them the first civ in the game to acquire Feudalism after us, in just 8 turns or less (is this prediction correct?), for as little as 12 gpt. Additionally, we can increase our research rate and chop a few more turns off of our ETA of Feudalism; if GoW would be willing to pay, the price would be one additional gpt per every turn (e.g. if we deliver Feudalism in 6 turns, by putting ourselves into a deficit, GoW will have to pay 14 gpt instead of 12 gpt).
(I'd add something along the lines of "while your neighbours will be just crawling out of anarchy, you would already be ready to upgrade your units to Pikemen and Medieval Infantry, and be the first on Bob with the ability to research Chivalry)

What do you think of this?

Last edited by Shiber on 04-04-2003 at 17:26

	04-04-2003 17:29									#220
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GoW paying us with gpt would be an easier pill for them to swallow- but paying 240 gold for a tech might be hard for the GoW, who are used to ground-level tech prices. But there's no harm in trying.

We'd like to include a NDA, or not?

	04-04-2003 17:33									#221
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Good point. Let's throw in an NDA of 5 turns into this deal; we can also offer GoW to get an exclusivity of 10 turns for, say, 4 additional gpt.
As for the price: it isn't too terrible. In fact, 240 is 31.25% of the first-researcher cost! IMHO we should mention that when we bring up the price.

	05-04-2003 00:49									#222
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keep in mind that you essentially offering them a loan. If you would take 25% as a reasonable interest rate for lending money for 20 turns, you would get 200 gold for the tech, not 240 (as 40 would be interest)

That's a decent price, I think, but I wonder if they would go for it.

DeepO

	05-04-2003 01:11									#223
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Now that RP is interested too (and ND might be interested as well), perhaps we should just offer each party Feudalism in 8 or 7 turns (Aeson, could you please provide a more accurate assumption on when we could get Feudalism, assuming that we continue at the current research pace?) for a uniform price. How does 12 gpt sound?
If one of the parties would refuse to accept our price and ask for a lower price, we could tell them that this is the same price we are offering to every civ that we'll sell Feudalism to - they'll realize that if they refuse, their neighbours will have Feudalism many turns before they will and take our proposal.

	05-04-2003 01:20									#224
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Could be a good idea... if we get 4 such interested parties, we would get some 800 gold out of Feudalism... not bad at all, that's more then we could gain by saving up cash in those 8 or so turns we'll need to complete the tech.

However, if a few of the teams won't go for such a price, saving cash would be better...

DeepO

	05-04-2003 01:20									#225
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dp

	05-04-2003 01:34									#226
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I won't be able to put together an estimate for a few days probably. I'm swamped helping get the GOTM17 results together for the weekend, and my mind just isn't working well at the moment.

	05-04-2003 01:50									#227
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Well, we're at 9 now, we are not going to be worse then that at our best... anything sooner might not be called for.

DeepO

	05-04-2003 02:01									#228
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quote: Originally posted by DeepO However, if a few of the teams won't go for such a price, saving cash would be better...

IMHO you're neglecting something important: if not enough teams buy Feud. from us to completely repay its research cost, it doesn't necessarily make this option worse than just stockpiling gold; getting paid for something by another civ is always good, because you take away some wealth from other civs. So if, for example, we only manage to sell Feud. to three different teams and we don't make all of our investment back, we can "take comfort" in the fact that three different civs now have considerably less gold in their coffers thanks to us, and this, IMHO, would make it worthwhile.

	05-04-2003 03:26									#229
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I was aware of that, Shiber, and I agree. If we would have 3 teams on 200 gold each, we would do much better to research it our own. It's with 2 civs that it becomes a problem.

We do offset the gain a little, if we distribute it earlier: the civ researching it themselves will be advantaged, and civs waiting to trade from them the same. They would receive the tech after us, and all who we trade with, but still sooner and at lower expense then with us saving gold.

DeepO

	05-04-2003 05:02									#230
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If another civ pays us less than what we spend minus what we get, they gain ground on us. If another civ pays us more than what we spend minus what we get, we gain ground on them. So if sales prices get too low, we'll be better off letting others research and buying the techs than trying to research ourselves.

	05-04-2003 05:22									#231
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If we can get part of Engineering (RP?) + Theology (Lego) from it somehow then full steam ahead. Both those techs are +4 cost (96 beakers), so we'd need something else to offer too.

Who all has MT/Republic anyways?

	05-04-2003 05:31									#232
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Don't forget Lego- we'll get something from them as well...

What do you say about setting the price to 200 gold, or 12gpt. If we just ask for them to offer- we take the risk of bargaining on relatively low prices. But if we set the price and state that everyone gets it for the same price- we'll definitely look bad when we won't deliver the goods.

Since it seems like you're in favor of trying to sell it, i'll reply to Togas, and send something to GF as well.

You want to try and sell this to Vox as well?


Also, does anyone have an email address of someone from ND that i can make contact with- Darekill hasn't answered my PM yet...

	05-04-2003 13:10									#233
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Price: 200 gold or 12 gpt looks good to me.
Vox: yes, there's no harm in that. We might get some gold out of them, as well as allow them to build pikes, which means that their beachhead on Bob would be better defended.
Loan: GoW is interested in a loan - that is good news. I suggest that we ask them when they'd like to see cash; if it's in the next few turns, then perhaps we could couple the loan into the selling of Feudalism. I'm thinking a deal where we would provide GoW with Feudalism and later Chivalry in exchange for gpt while they set their science to zero and hoard the gold they need for their upgrades would be a good idea.

	05-04-2003 14:24									#234
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Vox: no gpt deal to them! Don't even suggest it, and if they ask, we should avoid it.

Lego / theo: I was going to keep that for the chat. No matter what, Lego will be interested in getting it from us, if there are no other parties to get it from, so that should be the easiest negotiation.

More GoW comments:
1. no downpayment on iron makes things a lot more difficult for us, as we can't rush a harbor sooner. It will delay our possibility to trade.

2. interest rate: as long as no war breaks out, 25 percent interest seems reasonable to me, it should be the bottom price we aim for. If war breaks out, everything becomes riskier, so logically our interest rate should rise, to e.g. 33%.

3. Vox: tell them that we are not encouraging to settle Bob, also not in pricate communication. Some of us did post favourable comments when Vox settled Bob, and we still believe that some consideration should be taken, seeing that their land is many times smaller then what could be found on Bob. It would alleviate tension between us GS and Vox if Vox would find another direction to expand. However, we are not actively asking them to find more territory, it's their decision, which we do not influence.
So, although advising them to settle Bob is out of the question, we are not going to advise them that they can't settle Bob, as in the long term we know that it will create additional problems for them as they have no room to expand to.

4. Amount of gold we could loan to them: it depends. If they really are looking for a bank, we should need to cash in money first. That is possible, but it will delay Feudalism. If they are looking for e.g. 500 gold, they should say so now, so that we can adjust plans to get it.
As we can only do that if we don't rush for Feud, ask them who else would be researching it, and if it would be worth something to them if we delay the world getting to knights (we can do that).

5. they more or less ask for an eta on feudalism. I would say that, seeing that we are the only ones in a republic right now, it would be save to assume our research power is 50% greater then anyone else's. We could easily get Feudalism in less then 10 turns from now, but we are debating whether we need to be so fast, as it would be at least 5 turns before anyone else could get it, even at 100% science. Add this to the loan question, and our eta is variable, and can only be set after our negotiations on the tech end.

6. Note that one of the necessary conditions for trade is certainly going to be an NDA on Feudalism. We know we are going to be in the time-advantage if we aim for it, we want to exploit that to the maximum, not having to deal with some one reselling the tech.

Shiber: chivalry + feud for gpt from GoW: could be, but I don't know if we shuld mention to them right now. The thing is, we could very well gain from delaying knights, we could need the cash at that moment, there is a lot what can change before we can trade away chivalry. Right now, it's too early to mention anything like that to GoW

DeepO

	05-04-2003 16:52									#235
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DeepO- i wouldn't want us to tell GoW that we jusify Vox's actions- so i'll tell him we discouraged their actions, but that Vox's territorial problem is where our members' comments came from. Telling them we "do not advise" to settle Bob might imply they have a reason to think we are.

	05-04-2003 16:55									#236
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2. I disagree. 25% could scare them off. I'd offer them 19% during peacetime, 29% during wartime (notice that I'm using the infamous 99 dollars and 99 cents technique).

Last edited by Shiber on 05-04-2003 at 17:36

	05-04-2003 18:49									#237
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Shiber, that would be too low. It's because I like GoW, that I would offer them 25% as a low interest. that's 20 turn of not having the money with you, and if you take devaluation of money as a good bases to measure interest rates on, I'm certain that in civ, gold devaluates near, or even more then 25%.

Techs you research now, cost e.g. 1000 beakers each. in 20 turns, the then-current techs cost 1250 beakers to research, even more. We also need to gain something from it, instead of offering it to them as a gift.

One comment on the send proposals: I didn't see these before posting mine to Lego, and offered them the same but with a 10 turns NDA. That does make a bit more sense, as it would surpass the turns needed for someone else to catch up using beakers instead of gold. Could we still change this to 10?

DeepO

	05-04-2003 20:25									#238
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I would tell them that we offered Vox no encouragement, either public or private, in their decision to settle on Bob, but that some GS members as individuals viewed the choice as reasonable and wanted to discourage war over it.

	05-04-2003 20:27									#239
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I'd rather save loan arrangements until closer to the time when GoW will need the loan. Too much will depend on how quickly we push ahead with research (which could easily leave GoW somewhat in debt for techs received) and on what strategy we pursue after we get Chivalry.

	05-04-2003 20:38									#240
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GoW will need the loan 1 turn before getting Chivalry, I believe. That's some 15 turns from now... but a lot will depend on how much they want to lend from us.

Also, tell them that if they want to use the money to wage war, it's only normal that as their bank, we should have insight in their monetary situation to better assess the risk to us. Otherwise it would be impossible to precisely see how much we could lend them, how much they can pay back in reasonable time. We're not going to settle for payments of 40 gpt if they only gain 30 gpt, and hope to win territory soon.

DeepO