Diplomacy Updates (~Turn 120)
With the news that Haram appears to be communicating with us, it looks like we might have hope for working with Rome after all. If Haram turns out to be trolling/lying, then this will be the cruelest thing ever.
I sent this to Team Blame Caledorn and Team Dinosaurs:
Quote:Hello everyone,
Sort of "breaking news" here but Haram (a member of the Roman team) responded with a YES to me via a PM at Realms Beyond saying that he was interested in communication. I hope he's telling the truth, because I wrote quite a detailed plan. Please read it below my signature and if all looks good, I will send this to Haram and the Rome email. In particular, Blame Caledorn might be affected by my spices proposal since I'm offering our third resource for free to them and our second one appears to be set in stone for a trade with Team Dinosaurs, but I think if this works out the benefit will be much better than what could be gained with a single trade.
Don't tell anyone else about this message. Remember that we still have a defensive pact with Rome until turn 130. I'm glad I asked to have it this long!
Sincerely,
DMOC
Team EggHeads
*********
Dear Rome,
Thank you for responding to my personal message. Here are a few requests:
(1) The information in this message should REMAIN CONFIDENTIAL. Please do not tell anyone else about these plans.
(2) Since you are logging in as "GG", I am not sure who is playing the turns. Do you have a primary turn player or do you alternate? And who is playing and conducting diplomacy?
(3) What is the best way to contact you? Haram sent me a Personal Message on Realms Beyond. We would prefer that email be the best way to communicate (ours is dick76dmoc@gmail.com), but we are happy to accommodate to your specific needs if any.
(4) If my English is confusing you, please let me know and ask which parts of my message are the culprit. I am a native English speaker and even I can get confused about the language.
Now here is the REALLY interesting part of this message. As I mentioned, I think we are at the point where all four of us have severely damaged our ability to stay relevant in this game. The four teams I refer to are you guys, Team EggHeads (us), Team Dinosaurs, and Team Blame Caledorn. This constant military buildup will only result in wasted hammers (and will benefit Team Asterix and Team SutOxy) unless we have a solid plan.
*START OF PROPOSAL*
The four of us will work together to attack India. Rome immediately moves all of their standing army (units that are not acting as military garrisons) and declares war on India once Rome's stacks are by India's border. When that turn happens and we verify that you declared war, the three other teams will offer assistance.
(1) The defensive pact between EggHeads, Dinosaurs, and Blame Caledorn against Rome will be canceled.
(2) All three of us will gift you twenty (20) gold per turn starting the NEXT turn and lasting for fifteen (15) full turns. This means that Rome will receive a subsidy of 300 gold total from Team EggHeads, Team Dinosaurs, and Team Blame Caledorn. This means you will receive 900 gold total, which should help jump-start your economy and allow you to research Currency.
(3) All three of us will sign an NAP with you until turn 160.
(4) All three of us will sign open borders with you. (We can do this earlier if you want ... let us know.)
(5) All three of us will cancel all resource deals with India, if any exist, and will not provide India with resources as long as your war is happening.
(6) In addition, Team EggHeads will be researching Calendar soon, and we have 3 sources of spices. Thus, as soon as our third source of spices is hooked up, we will gift Rome spices, which will continue up to turn 160. We estimate that our third spice will be hooked up around turn 130.
(7) Finally, depending on how quickly the war happens, Team EggHeads can also declare war on India as well, to drag some of India's focus away from Rome's troops. We have an NAP with India, but it will expire shortly.
(8) [Optional] Team EggHeads can ship a worker over by galley to help road the land between you and India for faster transportation. Let us know if you would like this.
While this is happening, Rome's praetorians should make short work of India's outdated troops and thus Rome can take over all of India's southern land, if not more. We would like to add on the following important condition that Rome will NOT make peace with India UNLESS consulting with Team EggHeads, Team Dinosaurs, and Team Blame Caledorn about this. This is because if we work together, we can force more concessions out of India, increasing Rome's spoils of war.
*END OF PROPOSAL*
Why should the four of us do this? Team EggHeads, Team Blame Caledorn, and Team Dinosaurs both gain security on their border and can use the military for Hereditary Rule, future cities, and other things. But what is important is to see the benefit for Rome.
*BENEFITS FOR ROME and WHY INDIA IS THE BEST TARGET*
(1) India is the best target for Rome because they have The Pyramids, which is built in a southern city and is thus close to Rome's borders. Once you get The Pyramids, the Representation civic will also help your economy rebound (and do not forget that we are gifting you gold while this is happening!).
(2) The obvious benefit is that Rome will be able to get all of India's southern lands.
(2) Furthermore, India has expanded very fast early and are lagging behind in technology, so they will not have macemen or other advanced units prepared.
(3) Yuufo (the player for India) appears to be bored with the game, since he is playing turns in 5 minutes. HE IS UNLIKELY TO BE PREPARED for a full war. This is in contrast to Team EggHeads, Team Dinosaurs, and Team Blame Caledorn, who have been fully aware of your military buildup for the past 50 turns and have compiled a stack of units by our borders for this purpose.
(4) Finally, Rome gains 3 solid allies and gets FULL SECURITY from all its other neighbors due to the turn 160 NAP.
(5) Rome also gets a FREE happiness resource from EggHeads (spices) for about THIRTY turns.
I hope you can see that we are genuinely interested in helping out your team in this game. No matter what, the other teams CANNOT offer a better deal than us. =)
We look forward to a response providing details regarding the turn you can declare war and receive assistance. If it will take a long time to respond, please at least give us a confirmation that you got the message. For example, a response like "received message and will write back in detail within 24 hours" would be great. Please communicate with us, because that is the most underrated aspect of a full diplomacy game like this one. If you agree to the plan we can all sign open borders with you to increase your trade route income.
Sincerely,
DMOC
Representing Team EggHeads
I also sent this to Asterix:
Quote:Asterix,
Thanks for the response. Since we communicate a lot, I have a feeling that we could be more efficient, so I'm going to number my points in response to yours. That way, if you want, you can respond to specific points and that will make it clear what we're talking about and that we won't be missing some otherwise pertinent information in our messages. You certainly don't have to reciprocate ... this is just a thought I had.
Please keep this information confidential.
Quote:Just a brief reply - I never said NAP with me till T250 was a condition of a Big Coalition, just asked you to extend it beyond T120 and said I would like it to be longer than till T150. You said you will discuss it with Teddy and get back with me, you never did.
(1) We did not discuss it back with you because you had retracted your offer to help us conduct our diplomacy with Rome. While we trust you, it seemed like the relationship wasn't reciprocated.
Quote:BTW, if we declare we would not pursue cultural victory, would you be more interested in long term NAP with us? Your current position is forcing us to seek long-term NAP with Suttocrats, so you approaching us at the same time saying that "we should do something about Suttocrats" is somewhat ironic - if you will continue to act the way you do, we have no choice but to become their best friends/vassals to just survive.
(2a) If you promised not to pursue a cultural victory, then yes we would definitely be more interested in a long-term NAP. I don't think we have one at the moment, actually. Would you be interested in an NAP to turn 175, to be kept confidential from other teams? Further details for cooperation can be ironed out in future emails covering different cases (e.g., if no cultural victory, we'll sign a longer one ... if we promise to have an even split of land for some future military conquest, that can also change things, etc.).
(2b) Also, I would be very wary of signing a long NAP with SutOxy, since I feel like they are in the best position to win the game. They just won the Music Great Artist (and they have Mausoleum) so I suspect they will start a Golden Age and attack one of their neighbors to get into a very strong position by the Renaissance era. I don't think they ever had plans to attack you, even if India does attack you, because both Arkipeller (Orgynized) and classical_hero (Ponies) are significantly weaker and less technologically advanced. In fact, we were surprised to see that Team Rome actually has just as much total food worked as Team Orgynized! Talk about a fall from grace for Orgynized.... Team SutOxy will literally walk over their two other neighbors at ease. A long NAP with you is exactly what SutOxy need to win the game, in my opinion, but Team Blame Caledorn and us will try and figure out something to do about them. Feel free to offer your ideas, but even if you don't, I'll fill you in on any plans we might have, and we'll contact SutOxy to see what they're up to.
Quote:So you are saying you are still working with Rome and Dinosaurs on the Big Coalition? Please confirm. How is NAP with India part of it? Why you do not want me to get involved?
(3a) We are working with Team Blame Caledorn and Dinosaurs, NOT Rome (it would be great if we could work with Rome, though!). India's NAP plays no part in this, as it was signed a long time ago and will soon expire.
(3b) Amazingly, Rome has actually responded to my recent request to work together with them. (This is the first time in the entire game they've done this!) I am in the process of sending them a detailed plan that involves them attacking India in exchange for us offering substantial concessions to them. I'm sure you'll like this idea. The best part is ... you don't even have to do anything right now! If the plan with Rome works, then Rome can take care of India for both of us, and you don't have to lift a finger!
(3c) We definitely want you to be involved in what we do later. If you have ideas or suggestions on communicating with Rome, that would be greatly appreciated. In addition, as long as we don't break any of our older confidentiality agreements with other teams, we'll let you know if the plan is going to be put into action, so you will get a heads-up on whether you can stop worrying about India.
Quote:I backed up from the talks, as you said you believe that us having good relations with Rome is a proof both our teams are cheaters
(4) I concede that I went a bit out of bounds on that. To clarify, during that chat I was getting a bit stressed over the whole Rome situation, and was trying to decipher Rome's weird actions. In addition, other teams, such as SutOxy, referred to you as "Maga" when they conversed with us, which only raised my confusion. (It seems like you weren't aware of this when we chatted about this.) However, given what you've said, I will just chalk it up to some weirdness from those teams and will not raise this issue any further in our future conversations.
Quote:Btw, now India has Open Borders with Rome, too - wonder what is your take on that?
(5a) I did notice that, and I have no idea what this means. On the one hand, it could mean Rome is communicating with them (who knows?). Or it could mean Rome is scouting their defenses for attacking them. (I think we both prefer the latter case!)
(5b) In fact, I just sent Yuufo an email on January 1 asking him for an update on his situation. If it turns out that he has plans to attack (or not!) then we can refer you to the information promptly AND we will also attempt to extract futher details from Yuufo. I assume you'll be okay with this? I checked our earlier email exchanges to Yuufo to make sure that I wasn't crossing any lines, and Yuufo and us did sign an earlier confidentiality agreement that pertains to information such as the NAP, border agreements, etc. but if we talk about something new, I don't see why I can't just give you the info dump.
(5c) Did you notice that not only has India completely slowed down on expansion and are thus lower in score, but Yuufo is also playing his turns in 5 or fewer minutes? I'm having a very difficult time thinking that he's planning for a war given that he seems to have checked out of the game, but again, we've asked him about this and we will be keeping watch on his power graph, as we have been doing the entire game
Wishing good luck for us in this game,
DMOC
Team EggHeads
And finally, it's time to respond to SutOxy's message (which you can see here). Here's a proposed draft (I did not send it):
Quote:Dear SutOxy,
Sorry about the abruptness of the news. I have to admit that I (DMOC) honestly thought that we would maintain open borders throughout the duration of our T150 NAP. To respond to specific points:
1. We haven't gotten back to silk/spices yet because (a) we still haven't hooked up spices yet, (b) we've already set up a future silk/spices trade with another team a long time ago and © we're thinking of using some happiness resources to try and pay Rome something, since we hope we can communicate with them and want to leave this option available.
2. We're happy to work together. I'm not sure if there's anything useful we could do together now that would also be fair to you.
3. Well, safe to say that I think you already have a good plan for this, but I suspect that you'll make a Liberalism beeline. You have a Golden Age essentially "banked" so I'm not sure if anyone can catch you if you're also going to be using The Great Library and The Parthenon for Great Scientists.
4. In general, I'm always inclined to weaken a neighbor's position. I'm not sure how your diplo has gone with him. Do you have resource deals, NAPs, or other agreements set in place? Asterix for some reason seems to be far more worried about India when in reality your team is in the much stronger position.
Sincerely,
DMOC
Team EggHeads
The question is, do we want the open borders? How much trade route are we getting from them? The above message assumes we'll keep open borders. At the very least, don't we at least want to work together for an agreement, as in point 2?
Last thing Teddy --- what did you and Team Orgy (Arkipeller) talk about in chat? If Arki is becoming enemies with SutOxy that's pretty important information.
I can see why a lot of players won't like full diplo because of the amount of effort good diplomacy takes, but when it works out, it's definitely a beauty.
I added this post to the original thread so lurkers can see some of this stuff while it's in progress.