Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[novice]

Scooter,

Just notifying you that we keep our obligation, by both its letters and spirit. So we were not going to enter your land and spreading religion or doing any other mission. We understand you concerns though, but still hope that this wont be obstacle in our further relations.


CivPlayers
OT4E

Well this begs the question what their missionary is up to.

[SleepingMoogle]

I guess it depends on whether or not we choose to believe their explanation.

[Azoth]

Well this begs the question what their missionary is up to.

It's entirely possible the Germans requested a missionary, or CivPlayers offered and the Germans didn't want to refuse. And they asked for a spread in their annoying border city, to get at the Gems sooner and push back our culture. So the missionary was skirting our borders, on its way.

Or CivPlayers are lying. They were hoping to sneak a missionary in unnoticed, have us believe it was an unfortunate random spread, and got caught.

[scooter]

I don't think assuming they might be lying to us is even slightly worthwhile. Sure it's possible, but destroying all sense of trust and cooperation for a single religion spread is ridiculous. Maybe they'll do something ridiculous and do it, but letting the fear of the extremely unlikely dictate our choices is not a great way to go. Re-offer OB and I'll draft up a nice "thank you" here soon.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I don't think assuming they might be lying to us is even slightly worthwhile. Sure it's possible, but destroying all sense of trust and cooperation for a single religion spread is ridiculous. Maybe they'll do something ridiculous and do it, but letting the fear of the extremely unlikely dictate our choices is not a great way to go. Re-offer OB and I'll draft up a nice "thank you" here soon.

Unless they got away with it. If they did a clock manipulation double-move and just happened to play last one turn, we'd have been none the wiser. We could have checked civstats, but we would never have been able to prove that it wasn't a random spread. We caught them because they were clumsy. The AP is the only advantage they currently have over us. I wouldn't discount the unlikely scenario. When the missionary is gone, we can open borders again, but we need our religion here ASAP to prevent this situation from happening again. Probably it's small potatoes, but even the remotest of possibilities of a cheese/horseshit AP move should be denied.

[NobleHelium]

I don't think there's an urgent need to re-open borders immediately. We can wait until the missionary moves and see where it's going, at least.

[novice]

We could have checked civstats, but we would never have been able to prove that it wasn't a random spread. [...] We need our religion here ASAP to prevent this situation from happening again.

I think Ditchdigger is already Hindu, so it couldn't be mistaken for a random spread.

[kjn]

Well, if they spread Buddhism to us after we told them no, we can:

demand to spread Hinduism to their capital (that's -7 AP votes for them)
demand a Buddhist missionary gifted for us, for use in our capital (+7 AP votes for us)
tell everyone else about their scumbag move (no more OBs for them)

So I think we can re-open borders later this turn, once they've moved their missionary.

[scooter]

I don't think assuming they might be lying to us is even slightly worthwhile. Sure it's possible, but destroying all sense of trust and cooperation for a single religion spread is ridiculous. Maybe they'll do something ridiculous and do it, but letting the fear of the extremely unlikely dictate our choices is not a great way to go. Re-offer OB and I'll draft up a nice "thank you" here soon.

Unless they got away with it. If they did a clock manipulation double-move and just happened to play last one turn, we'd have been none the wiser. We could have checked civstats, but we would never have been able to prove that it wasn't a random spread. We caught them because they were clumsy. The AP is the only advantage they currently have over us. I wouldn't discount the unlikely scenario. When the missionary is gone, we can open borders again, but we need our religion here ASAP to prevent this situation from happening again. Probably it's small potatoes, but even the remotest of possibilities of a cheese/horseshit AP move should be denied.

I think you misunderstood my post. People are saying "well what if that email is a lie" implying we should not re-open borders because they MIGHT be lying to us and trying to trick us right now. I don't think that's a worthwhile way of thinking at all.

Also, the halfway compromise of "when the missionary is gone" is an invalid option. We wouldn't be able to cancel for 10T. If this paranoia is well-founded and they really ARE out to blatantly lie to us and slip in a missionary, they will just hide it 2-3T out of sight, get OB, then march right in when we can't cancel without a war dec. I mean, if we're assuming what you'er saying is true and they're willing to lie to us, take that to its logical conclusion (that they will do anything to make that spread happen), and then we have to NEVER sign OB with them again.

[Bigger]

Well, if they spread Buddhism to us after we told them no, we can:

demand to spread Hinduism to their capital (that's -7 AP votes for them)
demand a Buddhist missionary gifted for us, for use in our capital (+7 AP votes for us)
tell everyone else about their scumbag move (no more OBs for them)

So I think we can re-open borders later this turn, once they've moved their missionary.

another option.
get riflemen. conquer their territory, take their shrine and apostolic palace.
adopt buddhism and spread it to all our cities .