Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[kjn]

Good questions, Ruff, and I agree with your thoughts.

There are two relevant pieces of info they've given us in their proposal, one is the position of the oasis, and the other is a rough location of their capital. I really doubt they're lying about the oasis, but the exact placement of their capital is another thing (and somewhat fluid in their description). There is also the question about the quality of the land between us.

Just checked in-game, and the tile that Ruff marked "1S1E: Oasis?" (3E of the pigs) has fresh water. The desert NE of it (3S of the eastern jungled banana) isn't fresh-water. So at least that matches.

We should also discuss how far north and south such an imaginary line would go.

[kjn]

And to your last question, Ruff, I think we should put time limits on any settlement agreements. If they haven't made a clear claim to the land when a deal expires, then they've failed to fit their gameplay to their diplo.

[regoarrarr]

I agree with the general consensus that this is favorable and I'm mostly amenable but don't really want to just agree ti this oasis as a dividing line for the reasons mentioned.

Plus if they're offering that up as a dividing line then it probably favors them (because they'd expect us to counter).

I think we need to get some further scouting info in that direction, as Sullla mentioned, before agreeing to specifics. Maybe we can agree no pink dots, give them a timeframe of when we'll have that area scouted, and go from there?

[mostly_harmless]

Isn't any pink dotting ruled out by the huge maintenance cost anyway?
So a border agreement is not really that critical early on.

mh

[kjn]

For any team except us and those that have managed to a high-commerce tile, yes.

In a way, we should be proud that something RB managed to pull off several years ago has managed to leave such an impression on the community, but like many spectacular and impressive stunts, it's a stunt, not a strategy. And here there are so many reasons for why pink dots are stupid or unworkable.

High maintenance costs means any far-flung city will crash the economy (we were ORG then, we are FIN now).

A well-designed map (from what we've seen so far) means there are plenty of nice city spots close by (the previous one wasn't).

No way for a pink dot to block expansion for the other team (we were CRE then, we're EXP now; no single avenues of expansion for any team).

Hopefully there will be no zero-expansion team in this game. Or put another way:

[kalin]

I also think we should agree in principle on a border agreement but not on specifics. We can agree not to pink dot.

Kalin

[Shoot the Moon]

I also think we should agree in principle on a border agreement but not on specifics. We can agree not to pink dot.

Kalin

My thoughts as well. It seems like they want a more general agreement at this point, which I am in favor of, rather than getting down to the nitty-gritty, which I think it is too early to do. I'd say perhaps accept their offer and say something like "how about we revisit this in 20-30t once we both have more map info and at that point get something more specific in place."

[scooter]

Ok sorry, this weekend has been a zoo for me. If Ruff doesn't beat me to it, I'll draft something in the morning.

[scooter]

Here's my first stab at it. There isn't an obvious consensus, so I've tried to combine little bits of everyone's comments that I liked. Basically, the goal is to agree to avoid pink dots, delay them on specific details, but try to ease their minds by giving them reasonable reasons to not agree to specifics yet.

Team CFC,

We are all very happy about the NAP agreement, and we're generally on the same page with you on the border discussions as well. We like the idea of both of our teams being able to expand in peace without having to worry about aggressive settlements from each other. I would describe our feelings as being strongly in favor of avoiding aggressive settlements. We have no interest in "pink dotting" your team, and we're glad you feel the same.

That said, we would like to wait until we have a little bit more map info before we get into specific details on the agreement. We have yet to uncover the oasis for example, so we have not had the chance to see the land between us. As a general rule, we try not to make specific border agreements on land we haven't seen, so we're just trying to exercise caution here. How about we agree to avoid aggressive settlements, tentatively agree in pencil to the oasis arrangement, and agree to revisit this in 20-30 turns when we should have better map information? We would really like working with your team, so please do understand that we're very motivated to work something out once we know more.

scooter
Team RB

Have at it. Some of the sentences in the first paragraph are a little awkward, so suggestions welcome on those.

[kalin]

Scooter, imo that draft looks great.
Kalin