Back. Catching up.
|
Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves
|
|
First things first, the easy one:
Draft to Apolyton Wrote:MZ, Any objections? I'll move onto the CFC stuff in a few minutes. I'm caught up in the diplo discussion, just need to read the last couple turn reports and I'm caught up. My initial feeling is that 1) yes we need to call them on their underhandedness but 2) we don't need to go the nuclear route (figuratively speaking).
For what it's worth, I like the second message, Option 6. It's short, to-the-point, and CFC might even take it as a compliment.
I agree that the old suggestion - Option 5 - was the worst of both worlds: inconvenient for them, but not actually harmful. But I wonder if we're overreacting. I don't see that CFC violated their agreement. They weren't required to lend us the Marble as soon as it was hooked; and if they had offered it to us, and we had built the Taj instead, we would have mocked them mercilessly for their stupidity. Really, I don't think we could have reasonably expected them to do anything else. Of course, they're handing us the Marble now because it's a convenient time for them, without consulting us about it, but the problem is that we don't need the Marble for anything anymore. So we should just say that. (Yeah, so they didn't have to rub it in. That makes them jerks but we already knew that. The NAP still favours us.) Anyway, I wouldn't send them the other message because I just don't see what "good-faith efforts" they could have made. We would never have given them Stone if we thought they were trying for the Hanging Gardens, or if we were racing them for the Pyramids. We both agreed not to target each others' wonders. In this case, there was only one wonder, so there was nothing to be done. I still think we might want to negotiate for alternate compensation, per Option 4, but I wouldn't call it "reparations." More like "thanks to you, we don't need that anymore. Got anything else?" 
Yeah, concur with Azoth. How exactly did CFC break or violate anything? The deal was marble for 10 turns at mutual convenience. Not marble to hand us Taj Mahal. That was our hidden subtext, not their responsibility. If we wrote the agreement with turn numbers that came out wrong for Taj, that's our own fault and problem. They outplayed us fair and square. Tip the hat and move on.
The only thing that's gone wrong is they're trying to offer it now instead of a time when we actually request or want it. So the proper answer is "not right now, but we still have call on it sometime later." Or even "well obviously we don't need marble now, can we renegotiate for something else?". That still has a higher expectation of getting us something useful than anything approximating "FU you arseholes". Don't get hostile. Any posturing for moral ground is silly, nobody else in the game is going to care about who annoyed who first.
Just drafted up something along the lines of option 4. Want to pause and address the Azoth + T-Hawk comments first.
I actually agree on one level. I don't think they really did anything under-handed at all. T-Hawk nailed it, there's nothing in that agreement that just guarantees us Taj. I don't think they owe us anything. That said... I still think we should absolutely confront them. They did play that pretty slyly. They are certainly not our friends, and they will never do us a favor unless it seriously benefits them for the remainder of this game. This is perfectly rational of them IMO, I'd treat us and our dominant position the same if I was them. So let's call them on this and see what they do. I don't want them to think they can pull a stunt on us in the future and just get away with it. I want them to know we're a little pissed so that they're afraid to do something more blatant. If we just ignore this, we send the message that they can cut corners and "Sommer" their way out of stuff and get away with it. Maybe they ignore our demands, but the message is (carefully) delivered that they just pissed off their scariest neighbor, and they should not do that again if they wish to live. That's communicating with them at their level. They seem to approach the game through a filter of "do whatever helps us win the best" which I think a lot of us can relate with, so let's treat them accordingly. Not every team fits this profile, but CFC appears to fit it perfectly. Ok, draft coming up in a few seconds.
Ok. For CFC, I really like Option 4. Seven's draft along this line said this:
Quote:Hi Caledorn, My only hesitation here is I don't really want to give them a chance to respond. I fear if we give them an opening, they'll gleefully play moralizing ping-pong with us, explaining how their effort was indeed "good faith" based on the Sommerswerd Code of Nonsense. I'd suggest we just tell them up-front what kind of reparation we want. My feeling is this: let's ask for 3 fast workers up front. Something like this: Option 4 scooter's draft Wrote:Caledorn, Pre-emptive comments: 1) The 3 fast worker thing is effectively a placeholder. We can discuss what we want that "demand" to be, but let's discuss whether we want to send a message like this first before getting too heavily sidetracked on this part. I chose 3 because it takes 3 to move onto and chop a forest in 1T, so we have a wide range of the usual "FW tricks" at our disposal (better than just 2 which can only road in 1T) 2) "we do have a lot of respect for your team" - for the group of you that will immediately scream "no we don't!!!" - just keep on reading.  3) Same with the last sentence. I'm just interested in either A) Squeezing some freebies out of a possibly guilty conscience or B) making sure they know we are not pleased. Ok. Tear this message up and tell me how much you hate it, I'M READY. 
Great to have you back, scooter!
I like the message. I think it's a bit wordy and I would aim to trim out some of the less important bits.
Three workers sounds good, but allowing for haggling room means asking for say, four. Four sounds like a lot though, so I don't know.
Civilization IV: 21 (Bismarck of Mali), 29 (Mao Zedong of Babylon), 38 (Isabella of China), 45 (Victoria of Sumeria), PB12 (Darius of Sumeria), 56 (Hammurabi of Sumeria), PB16 (Bismarck of Mali), 78 (Augustus of Byzantium), PB56 (Willem of China)
Hearthstone: ArenaDrafts Profile No longer playing Hearthstone.
|
