Chapter 1576: Burn the cauldron
For a fully-organized naval fleet, the three functions of reconnaissance, supply, and troop transport are all indispensable. As long as they are used properly, their roles are as important as warships responsible for maritime operations. It's just that maritime operations in this era are not so particular at all. Even European countries that colonize the world through the ocean often have their colonial fleets only composed of armed merchant ships that integrate all functions. If there are a few old warships retired from the navy in the fleet, they are already considered high quality.
For example, although the East India Company's South China Sea Fleet looks like it has dozens of combat sailing ships, in fact, the number of warships that have actually served in the military can be counted on one hand. In addition to combat functions, most sailing ships also undertake other transportation tasks. Therefore, the East India Company does not have a clear understanding of the role these full-time ships will play in the entire naval tactical system. There is no extra financial and technical resources to design and build these special ships.
Things that the Dutch don't understand, the Malay people naturally don't have the corresponding understanding of. But Luo Hong doesn't care about these details. In his opinion, spending more than 200,000 yuan to buy Haihan's ships will play a big role in the military. The first is that he can get a glimpse of Haihan's shipbuilding technology. Maybe you can learn something from others, and secondly, you can use this to further undermine your opponent's confidence, making it even more difficult for them to have the courage to continue bidding. Of course, the most important reason is that Luo Hong is convinced that the equipment sold by the Haihan people will never be just fake goods. These ships must have their functions.
Like the arrangement of army equipment, Haihan Navy's technical guidance content is also packaged into other non-ship equipment as part of the second bidding content. At the same time, this project also includes ship-borne weapons that match the warships, which are the naval guns that buyers are obsessed with. For the two buyers who want to buy the Haihan warship, this is of course a project that must be grabbed.
But because the standard equipment of these 24 warships has reached nearly 300 guns, the total price even exceeds the Army's order of 200 guns in the morning, plus ship accessories, ammunition supplies, training programs, etc. After waiting a while, the base price given by Haihan has reached 1.1 million. Even Luo Hong, who had been doing well in the morning, felt a little headache about the price.
Although the procurement budget that Luo Hong could control was much higher than that of the Dutch, it was not without an upper limit. The Sudan gave him a budget equivalent to three million Haihan dollars, and allowed him to increase this upper limit at a critical moment. Increase by 30%, which is up to four million. The gold he brought to Sanya this time was far less than that, so he would probably have to borrow money from Haihan to pay off this military purchase order.
Luo Hong has now spent more than two million. This number is actually higher than he expected, because he did not expect that his opponent would be so "vulnerable". Among the four projects that have been completed so far, There was actually nothing gained, nothing could compete with Ma Dalan Country. Luo Hong even suspected that Su Keyi was just going through the motions and had no other plan than raising the price.
In the end, these two remaining projects were both must-win targets for the Matalan Kingdom, but their total amount actually exceeded Luo Hong's budget limit, but he couldn't show any panic now, lest his opponents would see the flaw. Of course, Luo Hong could not imagine that Su Keyi was not much more relaxed than him at this time. The limited financial budget greatly restricted his space for performance. Facing the last two important projects, Su Keyi felt bitter in his heart. and nervousness.
The base prices of the remaining two naval projects are both above one million. For Su Keyi, who only has a budget of 1.5 million, it is difficult to compete for one, let alone both. He could only choose one of them to bet on, and even then he would probably have to borrow money from Haihan to have a chance of winning.
"Then let's proceed with the second bidding of the Navy!" Seeing that the written procedures for the previous one had been completed, Bai Kesi did not leave any more time for the two of them to think, and directly announced the continuation of the bidding process.
Luo Hong has a very heavy task. He not only has to seize this project, but also tries his best to find out the upper limit of the other party's bid during the bidding process to ensure that the last item can also suppress the other party. Su Keyi is just the opposite. If there is no way to ensure that the project is won in this round, then he must try his best to interfere with the opponent's judgment in the bidding to pave the way for the final highlight.
The competition for this project was actually relatively favorable to the East India Company. After all, the Netherlands is famous for its excellent sailors and businessmen, and its maritime armed strength is not bad among its European counterparts. They don't even need the naval training provided by Haihan, and they can use self-produced naval guns and other equipment. The weapons are just fine. The East India Company's demand for this project was not as strong as that of the Matalan Kingdom.
But Su Keyi still decisively used up his budget in the first round of bidding and directly quoted the amount of 1.5 million. This strategy had never been used in the bidding process of the previous four projects. Luo Hong also completely expected that Su Keyi would choose a seemingly unexpected bidding strategy at this time. He increased the price by 20% on the original price. Wan, I think this should be stable. But Baix announced that the East India Company won the first round of bidding, which gave Luo Hong a blow.
Luo Hong immediately thought of a possibility. If the other party wanted to seize this project, they planned to use these naval guns to arm their own combat ships. Coupled with the military training provided by Haihan, in this way, the Dutch could actually Effectively enhance its maritime armed strength. On the other hand, Ma Dalan Country, even if they grabbed the last item and got the batch of warships, but they did not buy the original weapons, they were still not sure whether they could defeat the Dutch fleet.
Of course, this inference is actually suitable for the situation where the Dutch get any one of the remaining two projects. As long as the Mataran country misses any one of them, the effect of the entire arms purchase plan may be greatly affected.
Luo Hong did not dare to be careless and immediately added another two hundred thousand to the first round. According to the Dutchman's bidding strategy in the previous projects, he believed that the other party would not increase the price by more than 30% of the base price, but he had already increased the price to 40%, which should be able to suppress the opponent.
However, the result announced by Bai Kesi next made Luo Hong even more panicked: "The second round bid of the Materan Kingdom is still lower than that of the East India Company. Please ask the representatives of the Materan State to prepare the final round of bids."
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Luo Hong saw the smile on Su Keyi's face. Although the other party didn't even say a word, Luo Hong could see the mockery in his eyes. Luo Hong didn't know how high the other party's quotation for this project had been, but it was obvious that Su Keyi did not intend to give up this project easily.
The cruelty of the bidding model was once again fully demonstrated at this time. The price offered by Luo Hong was already more than 1.4 million. It can only be inferred that the other party's bid was at least around 1.5 million, and it was probably higher. For this amount, he now only has one chance to outbid the other party. But considering that the upper limit of funds the Sultan allowed him to operate was four million, the price he could offer was only about 1.7 million. What's even more frightening is that even if he seizes this project, he will no longer have the funds to seize the final warship order - unless he disobeys the Sultan's instructions and borrows a large sum of money from Haihan. Luo Hong finally raised the price to 1.7 million. If the deal was completed at this price, his budget would have been almost exhausted. But he couldn't think about it that much now. In this battle with no gunpowder in sight, he decided to fight for every inch of ground and not leave the Dutch with a chance to make a comeback.
Su Keyi used one round of bidding to force the other party to spend the remaining budget funds. This strategy can be said to have achieved quite good results. As for how high the opponent's price was before surpassing his own offer, that is actually not the point. He knew he had succeeded in disrupting the opponent's rhythm and forcing him to make an unplanned offer to compete for the project.
The remaining two rounds of bidding were simply a torment for Luo Hong. If his opponent made another higher bid, he would really have no chance to counterattack. But perhaps it was God's blessing or his opponent's strategic error. Luo Hong's best-effort bid this time actually withstood two rounds of bids from the opponent, and finally won again in this project. When hearing Bai Kesi announce the results, Luo Hong actually had the illusion that he was in a dream.
According to the rules of the bidding activity, after the winning party is finally determined, its price will be announced on the spot to show fairness. After Su Keyi saw the other party's bid of 1.7 million, he was calm on the surface, but he was stunned in his heart. So far, the other party has won all the bidding projects that have ended, and the total transaction amount has reached four million. This level of local tycoon is indeed unmatched by the East India Company. Su Keyi could even imagine that if he proposed a budget of four million Haihan dollars to the company's Batavia meeting, he was afraid that the shareholder representatives would slam the table and ask Van Diemen to fire him immediately.
Su Keyi didn't seem particularly excited when he saw Luo Hong's reaction. He was really not sure how much the other party's budget still had. However, he knew that the moment for his decisive battle had come. Even if he lost the first five projects, as long as he won the last one, the East India Company would still have hope of making a comeback. But if even this item is snatched away by the other party, then probably all he can do is to rush back to Batavia immediately after the meeting, suggesting that the governor and the council give up resistance as soon as possible and take the initiative to beg for peace from the Matalan Kingdom. .
The only people in the venue who were excited about this result were probably the executive committee and the onlookers. Although the bidding results showed a one-sided trend, these old foxes have now basically understood the bidding strategies of both parties, and can roughly guess the goals of the representatives of both parties in the game process. Although it was only a civil fight rather than a physical fight, there was no shortage of tense atmosphere.
"I suggest adjourning the meeting for half an hour to give representatives of both parties some rest time." Tao Donglai, as the moderator, made a suggestion that made everyone breathe a sigh of relief. Naturally, Su Keyi and Luo Hong would not object. They both needed some time to carefully consider the final bidding strategy.
Haihan provided a rest room for both parties. Su Keyi and Luo Hong were not polite and hurriedly left the conference room with their men.
Tao Donglai said: "Who do you think will win this final project?"
Schneider responded: "It would not be surprising for a nouveau riche like Ma Daran who owns a mine at home to get a sky-high price in the end. I am optimistic about Ma Daran people."
Bai Kesi said: "But have you noticed that Su Keyi's bids for each project are calculated and the bids are raised just right. I think he has been trying to figure out his opponents during the bidding process of the previous projects. Bidding strategy, and then suddenly counterattacked in this project just to verify the rules he summarized before. At this point, I think Su Keyi has done a better job and is probably already preparing for the final bid. Okay, that’s a good strategy. The Malaysians have already spent four million, and I don’t believe their budget is unlimited. If the last project is a competitive bidding strategy, then I’m still optimistic that Su Keyi will win.”
"But this is a game of throwing money. In the previous bidding process, Ma Dalan almost always used force to defeat skill, which is unreasonable at all. Even if Su Keyi knew the bidding rules of the other party, it would be of no use in the face of the financial gap. "Schneider did not agree with Bai Kesi's view: "The Dutch can invest at most two to three million in this game. This is the amount we have calculated repeatedly beforehand, and the result will not be too different."
"Then have you calculated the upper limit of the budget of the Ma Dalan people?" Bai Kesi immediately asked.
"We only judge that the budget of the Matarans will be higher than that of the Dutch. We cannot estimate a more specific number." Schneider shrugged: "The economic information we can get comes from the business warehouses in Surabaya Port, but There is no way to piece together more information based on these fragments of intelligence, but at least we now know that the financial resources of Matalan are much higher than we thought."
"Financial resources and bidding strategies are only a competition at a certain level, but if you analyze it from a military perspective, the matter is actually very simple." Yan Chujie also joined the discussion: "The Dutch's superior force in the Far East is at sea. , so they only need to try their best to strengthen their maritime advantages to resist the attack of the Matalan Kingdom. As for the army, I don't think the East India Company has the ability to maintain a firearms force of six to seven thousand people for a long time, so Su Keyi gave up the army equipment. It makes sense to focus on naval equipment, especially warships.”
(End of chapter)