WP-09-Diplo [Ben Franklin]: Dear Mr. Flowers and Mr. Hive Date:Mon, 07 Feb 2011 05:13:08 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.websofpower.com/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== First, a note for Mr. Flowers - your offer comes as quite a surprise to us, but we are pleased to accept. We share your concerns about open-source seeds vs. patented monocultures, and if you can provide a market, we will be happy to help supply that demand! We'll send some folks over to the two regions you mentioned, and see if we can get that project started there. Second, a note for Hive-mind: we just wanted to make you aware that the other three of us decided long ago to make this place a permanent battle-royal. As part of that, we agreed to only send public announcements, so there would be no private negotiation. Should you grow in power, I would gladly share some regions with you to bring you up to equal strength -- and I suspect my partners in mayhem would agree -- so that the 4 of us could have an even grander World War among us! Mr. Sunshine appears to think you would get along best with the Cloud Computing guys here, but I suspect we're all flexible... Furthermore, as it happens, we have also shared our real-world identities: I'm the leader otherwise known as Bob Heeter, and of me you already know much. The flower-power folks and the Grid-computing types will be known to you, but I will leave it to them to introduce themselves! WP-09-Diplo [Hive-mind]: Communications Interception Date:Mon, 07 Feb 2011 06:59:42 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.websofpower.com/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== Sharing regions is irrelevant. The Borg acquire what is useful and process it to serve the Collective. Flowers are irrelevant, except whether their nutrition value can be extracted and supplied as nutritional supplements to the drones. Cloud Computing already serves a useful role within the Collective and will continue to be integrated into our systems matrix. Merging of Collectives to enhance the whole is a relevant goal. [RL: Barry Brook, ex-Warlorder and WoP veteran, reporting in] WP-09-Diplo [Sunshine]: Hive mind Date:Mon, 07 Feb 2011 20:02:10 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.websofpower.com/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== "Flowers are irrelevant"? oooh bucko uv got another thing coming! here iv spent the last hundred weeks working with these two bozos who keep smooshing my gardens and telling me that gardening collectives arent efficient and now iv gotta deal with someone who just flat out says there not relevant!? way 2 become garden enemy numero uno, d00d! i thot with a name like "hive mind" ud care about the bees an their needs, but apparently not. well, thats it. u stay far from my gardens or ill show u whos irrelevant. hugz sunshine! ---------------- Heya, Barry! Long time no chat. I'm David Courard-Hauri, aka Little Puppy from the W2WT days, and numerous pseudonyms in this world (acanthopis, eeee, My Pretty Pony, Babyseal, Mothra, are a few that I can think of off the top of my head). I don't know how much history you know about this universe. Essentially Bob and I united fairly early on and drove everyone else out one by one except Ivan, who was using the "grow to 7 regions and then build like hell before you explore any more" strategy. Bob and I beat our heads against each other for a large number of turns, and I'm pretty sure he was going to win in the end, but then Ivan decided to connect and we all decided to re-balance the regions and have a go at a 3-person, balanced fight. Since then, each of the three of us has led at one time or another, and each of us has been more or less on the ropes, but things go up and down. I believe that we have an agreement that we would all fight each other (i.e. you are not allowed to declare alliances and you are not allowed to have private conversations). Since we're all friends, we have been interpreting that fairly broadly. By that I mean that there have been long periods of time when two of us would not fight with each other, and even times when we have offered each other regions, or told each other that we'd let them have this area if they stay out of that area, for example. I think that we have tended to be accepting of these sorts of things, but generally nobody offers deals or something similar. Essentially, my take has been that if things happen without coordination then that's ok, but working out a "treaty" or something like that would be going too far. We are always all at war, even if there are (sometimes long) periods of quiet. Bob and Ivan, has that been your sense as well? WP-09-Diplo [UniNet]: Weighing in... Date:Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:16:21 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.websofpower.com/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== Well, since the UniGrid is in another quite period, I guess I'll have to weigh in as myself... Hey Barry - glad to have you aboard, even if it was shortly before UniGrid was planning another expansion phase... :-) I'd like to add a small caveat to David's very good summary of this Universe - I was also beat down and forced to restart under the combined forces of David and Bob. However, never really believing in defeat, I restarted (rebooted?!?!) where others did not. Other than that minor clarification, I think David explained two years of game play pretty well! And yes, David, I totally agree with your take on the diplomatic situation. Under the new circumstances, I'm OK with another rebalance. Even though I lead at the moment (tongue sticking out at Bob and David) I was the weak partner at the first rebalance and feel this would make appropriate amends... The only thing I would suggest is that we maintain the free-for-all aspect of the Universe rather than declare alliances. Despite the fact that UniGrid and the Borg could be natural allies (being as there are no biological distinctivenesses to be assimilated, and hey, UniGrid is close to UniMatrix - right?!?!), the FEEL of the game would change if alliances were re-introduced. My opinion, but I'm flexible... I've already set my orders in - still fighting with the backup system at work, but may have got it now! YEAH!!! - because I was expecting this to be another very busy week. So if we are to rebalance the ceasefire will have to occur after the next newspapers! Ivan (PS When UniGrid comes out of it's communication blackout again, it will make introduction to the Borg. That was going to occur in the next turn or two anyway, just so you know I wasn't simply ignoring you... :-) ) WP-09-Diplo [Ben Franklin]: Are we entering a ceasefire? Date:Wed, 09 Feb 2011 05:03:22 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.websofpower.com/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== RL: Dave and Ivan summed it up pretty well. I hadn't appreciated that we'd be going into a cease-fire so early. Seems like the Borglings have a long way to go yet? We could, say, have another 16 turns or so of mass mayhem while the Borglings finish exploring... then declare someone the winner-of-the-round as of Turn 220, then go into a 10 turn (maybe longer) rebalancing... then go on to the 4-way free-for-all, which sounds great to me. I seem to recall being the largest donor back when we brought Ivan up to parity, but it doesn't look like that's in the cards this time... However, I too have already sent my moves in, so if the Borglings want to Assimilate immediately and an immediate ceasefire is agreed upon, it at least can't start until after the midweek update. WP-09-Diplo [Sunshine]: rebalancing Date:Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:09:00 +0000 To reply, log in at http://www.websofpower.com/?Page=Login or use your newspaper form. Direct email replies do not go to the sender. (This is intended to protect the privacy of other players.) ====================================================================== While I have no problem rebalancing if that's what folks want to do, I'm not really convinced that it will be necessary. I'd say let's just keep playing and see how things develop. If Barry gets walloped early on, then we can go ahead and rebalance (or start anew, now that there's another game going on), but experience in this game seems to suggest that weak players rise from the ashes. I'm far more worried right now about there never being something like a "winner" than about somebody getting knocked out! Still, I'm fine with whatever the majority of players wants to do. -- Dave