21-02-2003 14:02									#1
	Casual Conversations Put an end to popups!

I will report here various things that may be said in my presence. It seems to be happening quite a bit lately. Some of you may find similar exchanges happening in front of you.

	21-02-2003 14:02									#2
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This exchange occured midday (GMT-8) on Feb 20.

oliverfa is a member of RP
Panzer32 is a member of GoW
BigFurryMonster is a member of Lux

{BigFurryMonster} Yes. Aidun and I live within 5 kms of each other
{OliverFA} wow that's really close
{OliverFA} Well english settlers are as good as any other settlers!
{BigFurryMonster} I should visit him one time.
{OliverFA} he seems a nice person, at least in the forum
{BigFurryMonster} Yep. We exchanged some PMs in Dutch, too.
{BigFurryMonster} Too bad he is at RP ;-)
{OliverFA} Well you should be at RP too then
{Panzer32}
{BigFurryMonster} I don't think so.
{OliverFA} By the way, GS is not doing bad
{BigFurryMonster} Oh? How so?
{OliverFA} it looks like you are giving some problems to Vox
{BigFurryMonster} Euh... what do you mean by "you", exactly?
{OliverFA} you= the team
{Panzer32} BFM is Lux...
{BigFurryMonster} Are you sure you're not mixing up teams here?
{OliverFA} ops!
{OliverFA} i got confused!
{BigFurryMonster} Well - we are causing troubles everywhere, too ;-)
{OliverFA} I was thinking BFM was from GS!
{Panzer32} I heard GS and Vox might be going to war...
* BigFurryMonster noticed.
{OliverFA} Well if you look at their scores GS seem a lot more powerful than Vox
{BigFurryMonster} They are.
{Panzer32} yes... what is Vox's UU?
{OliverFA} BFM, I think that jdjdjd has something to propose you. I'm not allowed to talk about that, but it could be interesting for you
{BigFurryMonster} Vox feels threatened by them, I think
{BigFurryMonster} Let him speak!
{BigFurryMonster} Is he online?
{OliverFA} I don't know what is Vox unit
{OliverFA} jdjdjd? I don't know
{OliverFA} but what I can really tell you is that the faction inside RP that sees ND as a menace grows in power every day
{Panzer32} I heard they had a good UU that they could use against GS
{BigFurryMonster} Indeed? Well, it better grow quickly, before ND has taken over all of the continent!
{OliverFA} which civ is GS?
{OliverFA} ND is REAL danger for all of us
{BigFurryMonster} I hope everyone sees that.
{OliverFA} and they are also playing at the intersite game. Am i right?
{BigFurryMonster} Right.
{OliverFA} well as i see it they claim to be very scared, but they now exactly what they are doing
* Panzer32 has quit IRC (Read error: Connection reset by peer)
{BigFurryMonster} they = ND?
{OliverFA} yep. They=ND
* Panzer32 has joined #Apolytonisdg
{OliverFA} hi again Panzer
{Panzer32} computer froze...
{BigFurryMonster} That's ND hacking into it.
{OliverFA} at the present moment ND is stronger than any other civ in the continent
{OliverFA} i'm leaving now
{OliverFA} see you
* OliverFA has quit IRC (Quit: )
{BigFurryMonster} bye!
{Panzer32} I'm leaving too...
{Panzer32} see you later.
* Panzer32 has quit IRC (Quit: Leaving)
* vondrack|AFK_for_a_minute is now known as vondrack
{vondrack} ok, turn report posted
{BigFurryMonster} great
{vondrack} sorry for letting you wait so long
{vondrack} RL things

	21-02-2003 16:51									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

I wonder why people think we might go to war with Vox? We probably will ... eventually ... maybe .... but it'd be interesting to know why some people think we will do it sooner rather than later.

ND also seem to be building quite a reputation.

	21-02-2003 16:59									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

ND is a very good team with experienced players. I predicted long ago, that they're going to be our toughest concurrents.

	21-02-2003 17:04									#5
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quote: Originally posted by Sir Ralph ND is a very good team with experienced players. I predicted long ago, that they're going to be our toughest concurrents.

Trip made an interesting post about them in the ISDG forum. He is certainly very impressed with them too.

It'll be fascinating to see how the game develops over the next couple of months. We're getting into the best bit of the game now. Early exploration is over and contact has been established. The REX phase is in full swing and we've reached the first big military phase with swordsmen and horsemen available to many teams on the other continent.

Civ is the best!

	21-02-2003 17:36									#6
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Very good conversation, and I hope it was indeed some naiev chit-chat, and not an elaborate play.

What strikes me most is that they have the impression GS and Vox are tense, which is exactly what we need. It will let them focus on their neighbours, not paying attention to us. It's obvious Vox has been talking about us a lot more then we about them, or they have played the underdog card very well. If two random civs were tense with each other, and one had WCs, the other immortals, would the immortal civ be the underdog? No way...

Note that they are scared of ND's power, but not of ours. But, that power of us is most likely bigger, and can only be equaled by ND if they are able to beat Lux, acquire it's two remaining cities, and don't lose too much in the process. It wouldn't surprise me if GoW and RP would get an alliance together, to take down ND before we can interfere.

nye, if you see more of these beauties passing by, please log and post them! This kind of information is a very nice extra, as it isn't protected by diplomatic censorship...

DeepO

	21-02-2003 19:01									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Well well well... that's nice.

It seems that the radio silence from our part of the world got people speculating- and i'd say its just a matter of obslete intel- Vox did fear a war, and thought this war will be the probable outcome (so have we, so we can't blame the rest of them...).
This just strengthened our belief that everyone is paying great attention to the score, and would explain the arms/culture race some of the teams are dragged into.

I also find it encouraging that they see ND as a "danger to us all" as OliveFA said, and BFM concurred. This indeed relieves the pressure from us.

One thing i might be wary of, is blowing up the partnership between Vox and us. This might make things look like we fooled them into thinking things are tense. When we decide to spill the beans, a gradual approach would do us well- a sudden suprise like "we're actually tech partners with a border treaty" is a bit too much to swallow in one bite, if you know what i mean...

	21-02-2003 19:18									#8
	Remove this text

Good catch.
I will begin monitoring the following channels: #apolyton, #apolytonisdg; for the following keywords: gs, gathering, storm, chariot, wc, immortal.
Any other channels I should monitor or keywords I should look for?

Last edited by Shiber on 21-02-2003 at 19:28

	21-02-2003 19:28									#9
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Btw, I intend to become more active on 'Poly's IRC server. I need to know what I can and what I can't tell.
For instance, if I'm asked "how are you doing?", can I answer "Very well, thank you"? I certainly wouldn't want to answer with "wonderful!" or "terrible!". What if I'm asked about our relations with Vox and the mainland? What if I talk to members of Legoland and they ask me about the geography of the rest of the world?

	21-02-2003 20:13									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Posted in the trash talking thread:

quote: Originally posted by GhengisFarb Luxians are proving to be quite resourceful in their defense, perhaps they will hold out longer than expected?

	21-02-2003 22:59									#11
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Shiber, monitoring seems fine to me, as long as it's a public forum, it is totally acceptable, and can only add to what we already know.

I'm not sure how the process works, do you get only the lines where one of the search terms appeared in? or also e.g. the next 20 lines?

Further, if you're up to it, you could also monitor for Vox, Lux, RP, Lego, GoW.

What is allowed to say: that's kind of what my problem was as well. See the 'what to disclose to legoland' thread for an idea, I think most of us agree that unsollicited information should be kept at a minimum, but we need to be able to tell them something if we expect something too...

DeepO

	22-02-2003 00:06									#12
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

I just run a regular IRC client and configure it to notify me when someone says any of the abovementioned keywords and highligt them. Then I look at the backlog and see if there's anything interesting. I also log and timestamp everything, regardless of whether any keywords were captured or not.
Ideally, we'd have a shell account running a bot that listens on the public channels 24/7 and emails back anything that is of interest according to the criteria that we define.

Btw, RP are currently discussing something in their restricted IRC channel. I can't dig out any more information than this without violating the rules.

	22-02-2003 00:19									#13
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

*taps fingers together*

Excellent.

-Arrian

	22-02-2003 00:55									#14
	Inflate your Upload Space

You remind me of Mr. Burns.
I think of him every time I use this emoticon:

	22-02-2003 01:55									#15
	Get a bigger avatar today!

If the other teams are thinking Vox and us are likely going to war, it can only mean one thing: Vox is planning to strike at us. Since we've not let on anything about our relationship with Vox, any information other teams hear is completely from Vox, and so it is natural to assume that Vox has been complaining a bit.

We should watch our backs. Vox still feels threatened, regardless of our attempts to calm them down and be our friends. Not good.


Dominae

	22-02-2003 02:11									#16
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Shiber: sometimes you scare me man

Dom: you do have a point, but isn't Vox doing this on purpose..?

	22-02-2003 02:23									#17
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

quote: Originally posted by alva but isn't Vox doing this on purpose..?

...to make us look bad? That's a possibility. Where then does that leave our friendship?

...or as a campaign of misinformation? That would be pretty cool. I would like to know if this is what Vox is really up to, though.


Dominae

	22-02-2003 02:28									#18
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quote: or as a campaign of misinformation?

We could ask them.

It will show them that we are on to them. There answer could shed some light on the subject, if not directly, it will indirectly.

	22-02-2003 03:14									#19
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Hmmm... how long has our relation now improved? 3 weeks? before that, how long was our relation very tense, 3 weeks as well? we were talking a lot more about Vox to other teams when it was tense, so let's assume Vox did the same thing. Now, we have shut up, so it's possible teams are still using this old talk of ours to think nothing has changed.

I'm not sure if Vox would tell that they're planning to attack us, but they can tell they're still scared of us, and everybody would believe them. Also, it surprises me that there is uberhaupt talk on this, I'm sure everyone has their hands full with the situation on Bob (don't know where it comes from, but it seems a fitting name)

DeepO

	22-02-2003 03:16									#20
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Oh, Alva, I agree. Why wouldn't we simply ask Vox what they are telling others about us, possibly creating a common image we would keep up. As long as we don't ly, I've got no problem with that whatsoever, maybe Vox isn't shrewd enough to start a misinformation campaign, but if they are been given the idea I doubt they wouldn't be able to do it...

DeepO

	22-02-2003 03:46									#21
	Tired of ads?

I agree with Alva. We could mention, seemingly just out of chit-chat, that we have been hearing certain rumors about our relations with them and that we're very interested in knowing more of how the other civs perceive our teams and our relations, and therefore would like to "cross our sources" and hear from them what they might have overheard.
That's one way of bringing up this issue. I'd suggest more, but right now I'm too tired for this...

	22-02-2003 03:52									#22
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Shiber - you should also have GS has a keyword too. So we can monitor if any of us gives stuff away.

	22-02-2003 04:12									#23
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

GS is already in my list of keywords ('gs' will also be triggered by hearing GS, because I've set the case sensitive flag off).

	22-02-2003 06:28									#24
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If you tell me how to do it, I can help you monitor and analyze the texts. We can have our own intelligence agency.

	22-02-2003 07:11									#25
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Scary... the GS NSA.

	22-02-2003 07:15									#26
	Put an end to popups!

I'm all for it, BTW, as long as it stays within the boundaries of the law (a bit unlike NSA after all )

DeepO

	22-02-2003 09:54									#27
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Big GS is watching!

One thing we should always remember about our relations with Vox - we actually have more to lose than they do. Yes, in a full-blown war, we will probably win, provided they don't catch us totally unprepared. But they have a garbage starting spot to begin with, and thus have more incentive to gamble (though I must say, I've never been very impressed with our terrain either... but it beats the hell out of theirs, apparently).

The partnership idea works better for us than for them, IF one assumes that each team is trying to win. So yeah, watching our back is a good plan. BUT, that being said, being militarily prepared and building at the same time is hard. Balanced play means we will excell at neither aspect.

*sigh* Human opponents are so much harder to deal with.

-Arrian

	22-02-2003 16:19									#28
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Lawrence, that's a very good idea!
Here is how you can all participate in storm gathering... I mean, intelligence gathering:
First of all, I'll assume that everyone of you uses mIRC. This is not a very rough assumption, since mIRC is the most popular IRC client for Windows, and the Linux port is quite popular too. Now, here's the deal.
First of all, open your options menu (fastest way is alt+O). Under the category IRC, choose highlight. Enable highlighting with the checkbox, and then simply add all the keywords you want (I recommend my own keywords; see my first post in this thread). You can also configure your client to beep when it catches this keyword, to color it red so it'd be easier for you to find it and to change the process window's title to something such as ATTENTION.
I stay in #apolyton and #apolytonisdg. When someone mentions any of these keywords, my computer starts beeping like crazy until I check it out. I also log everything, regardless of any keywords, and I suggest that you do the same (in options, under logging, log everything and set timestamping on, so it'd be easier to identify the logs by their filenames).

Good hunting!

	22-02-2003 16:35									#29
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

mIRC has a Linux port? Never knew that. I hate X.

	22-02-2003 17:15									#30
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

quote: Originally posted by Shiber I stay in #apolyton and #apolytonisdg. When someone mentions any of these keywords, my computer starts beeping like crazy until I check it out.

I've noticed that you've been in those rooms almost constantly for the past couple days. Found any interesting info yet?