The problems I see are twofold: one, I spent too much population on colonies, leaving me unwilling to spend an entire turn's worth of labor on a trade and unable to spare the food producers from increasing prosperity to meet the upkeep costs.
I see. I had assumed the food was for population growth, not boosting taxes. It's much, much more efficient for me to just hand you raw cash than to give you food to produce a bit of your own with. The labor cost of a caravel would seem to be 6 money by this metric, for instance, which is infinitely easier for me to part with than 25 food.
Let's say that a caravel hull is worth 6 labor, and the magic keel is worth 3 + 2 gems(or 3 labor) + 2 money. Make an offer for it, although heavy armor isn't particularly worth the enchantment costs to me as a replacement for my current magic medium armor.
You know, the more I think about the 4/turn thing the better a deal it sounds like. I'm not sure I'm completely sold, but I'm definitely thinking about it.
I guess one major question is, how many Vanquishers do you intend to have? If I could spend a lot of money to chain-explore quickly, that might make it more attractive than exploring for free one turn at a time.
For the sake of argument though, how would you feel about 40 money and 3 magic gems, for the caravel hull, magic keel, and magic sails?
Additionally, I'd like the rights to explore the open sea past you. Should I find anything, we'll discuss who owns the rights to colonize what, and an oceangoing cog will be made available for allowing you to colonize anything we decide is yours. (Building a colony slightly offshore of somebody else's capital usually is not an act of peace.)
Well that's kind of convenient, because I'd like the rights to build and use a road right on or next to Mount Skyreave. I should probably talk to Happerry about that too.
Anyway, I kind of like the idea of Sunstone and Xeniice working together to explore and divvy up the unknown parts of the world, so I suppose we can work something out. I'm assuming this was more mentioned because you thought I wasn't going to take the shared mercenary deal, though, which might happen after all.
I'm still thinking I'd want several Vanquishers, or their less combat-oriented equivalent, going at once, though. Would you be interested in somehow having me finance your construction of more so that you can then start renting them to me, presumably through some kind of loan or credit system? What would be your ideal setup in general for a potentially long-term joint exploring agreement?
As for smelting ingots for food, I don't think so, since it'd either mean I was just stockpiling it, or I was depending on your regular metal needs to sustain my population, which isn't really sustainable. I'm open to doing it for a more permanent type of compensation, however.
It's basically +2 food for you if you shift a worker away from a +6 food farm. Alternatively, I have extra wood and stone if you're interested in those.
I'm not going to have any +6 farms shortly, so it'd only be +1. Given that you'll soon have mostly 5-7 food tiles soon as well, it might be fairer to pay 9 or 10 food, since that'd be around a 2 food profit for each of us.