Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[scooter]

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.

We really have even more leverage than that. We can do the following:

1) Inform them that due to their lies and deceit, we will be initiating the cooldown at the conclusion of our NAP
2) Tell them we will declare war and begin burning their cities until the AP is destroyed unless they being mass-gifting Buddhist missionaries to our land (minimum 6 missionaries in 20T or something like that so we can get a bunch of AP votes). We'd also be able to tell them will be mass-drafting so they know a war vs us would be hopeless.
3) Inform every single team in the game

A blatant deceit like that is an open hostility, so we could drop all pretense of niceness and threaten them, which we will absolutely be in a position of power to do. The above doesn't even need to be true (about our intent to declare on them) - they'll just see a power buildup so who cares if our target is somebody else. We've resisted waving around that power due to diplo concerns, but if a team like CivPlayers corners us, we should use it.

The above is yet another reason why I don't think they're screwing with us. You backstab the top team in the game in order to strike a critical blow - like razing an important city or two. You don't do it to spread a religion. That's like holding up a bank so you can clean out their supply of pens and leave the money.

[Sullla]

Yeah I also don't think that CivPlayers is deliberately lying here. They would need to get much bigger returns to attempt something so obvious and blatant as moving into our territory and spreading religion immediately after a direct statement that they would do no such thing. I peg them as a team that's bad at communication, not a team that's prone to doublespeak.

My suggested basic compromise: wait and see where they move that missionary on our borders this turn, then reoffer Open Borders again.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

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.

Much of my (admittedly paranoid) argument stemmed from the belief that they could/would slip in the religion in such a way that would be undetectable to us by using a double move in our city lacking religion. I've looked in the sandbox saves enough times that I should have remembered the religion has been here for a while. I'll own that mistake. Thanks for correcting that, novice. Scooter, I'm in agreement with your overall assessment. Knowing that we would be certain that it was a violation of our agreement, CP is unlikely to violate the agreement after the warning. When it moves away, we open borders again. If they spread, we play whack-a-mole with CP's cities.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

kjn,

When we sling Nationalism, I DEMAND a total beaker count for all teams!!!

DEMAND!

kthxbai,
GES

[Sullla]

You can get a total beaker count for all teams at any point in time by checking our Google Docs spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...EQXc#gid=3

Of course, this is subject to possible error for all teams other than Apolyton and CivFanatics, who have Alphabet tech. That said, kjn missed one tech with Apolyton and hit on every single CFC tech correctly, so I have pretty good faith in the track record. Here is the current numbers total:

Realms Beyond: 11,646 beakers (note that we will gain 9000 additional beakers by the start of next turn )
CivFanatics: 10,206 beakers
Apolyton: 9918 beakers
CivFr: 7470 beakers
CivPlayers: 7416 beakers
UniversCiv: 5976 beakers
Spanish Apolyton: 3078 beakers
We Play Civ: 2628 beakers
Germans: 2466 beakers

When we discover Alphabet tech in about 4-5 more turns, I plan to do an extensive post comparing the techs and beakers of every team in the game. I can't wait to be able to see where they all stand with absolute proof.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

So as soon as we pick Nationalism, we will have twice as many beakers as any other team, and be the runaway food, land, pop, production, and power leaders. That is craziness.

[sooooo]

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.

I agree with this statement.

[Ubercannon]

So as soon as we pick Nationalism, we will have twice as many beakers as any other team, and be the runaway food, land, pop, production, and power leaders. That is craziness.

Although that's true, the raw beaker counts are a little misleading here. Apolyton is probably very close to finishing education, and liberalism doesn't really do anything for us now except give nationalism for free, so in a sense we're only "really" ahead by nationalism, and still missing metal casting and alphabet. Don't get me wrong we're obviously in the lead, I just think that raw beaker counts exaggerate the extent of that lead.

[Bigger]

thats not the only benefit of liberalism. its a prer-req for many important techs, and unlocks 2 civic choices that will surely end up using eventually with our cottage economy.

[Ubercannon]

thats not the only benefit of liberalism. its a prer-req for many important techs, and unlocks 2 civic choices that will surely end up using eventually with our cottage economy.

Well yeah eventually but not for quite a while.