Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[Nicolae Carpathia]

CFC are our neighbours they have everything to gain from a successful dogpile.

[antisocialmunky]

It is less conditional than that. CFC being #2 benefits from any dogpile on #1 RB where RB is sufficiently slowed down compared to CFC. They don't actually have to win, they just need to divert enough away from achieving our victory condition so they can beeline theirs (military domination into end the game vote since I can't see this game go to Space Ship or a Cultural win). They might be able to pull off something like let the world cripple RB so they can take down one or two of the small civs while no one can do anything. It is what Kathlete basically did in PB2 except not as completely retarded in execution.

In many ways, #2 can be a stronger position than #1 since they are in a really good position to coordinate an attack to take down #1 in such a way that the world is too gassed to prevent their victory.

[Old Harry]

In CFC's position I'd let us think a dogpile was coming so we wreck our economy preparing for it while they eat up a weak neighbour. As novice says I don't see either team making much progress attacking the other.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't have lots of units on that border come t175 just in case.

[Shoot the Moon]

In CFC's position I'd let us think a dogpile was coming so we wreck our economy preparing for it while they eat up a weak neighbour. As novice says I don't see either team making much progress attacking the other.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't have lots of units on that border come t175 just in case.

Yes, but if we prepare for it and they don't, good luck to them defending that border city.

[fluffyflyingpig]

The easy and obvious way to tell is to force them to stop stalling and talk.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

We are going to win or lose this game based on the diplo situation circa T175. It's time to blow up the phones.

I suggest we discuss NAPs with CivPlayers (I approve of scooter's earlier message), and as soon as we declare on Germany, with Apolyton as well.

I suggest we let the Spanish know that CFC will be bringing knights and maces their way ASAP. And if they haven't, we should tell them to tech HBR and we will provide them with ivory for War Elephants.

I think we should consider discussing a joint military campaign with CivPlayers/CivFr/UCiv against Apolyton, and CivFr/UCiv against CFC and see who is interested. CivFr/UCiv should be able to be convinced that they are too far from our core to profit through a military campaign against us, and that their best option is to take CFC down a peg.

If we can secure a border with CivPlayers, we should be fine.

[Sullla]

We're floundering a bit in this thread, talking in many different directions and not coming to much of a consensus. I will try to focus the discussion around the main goals that I think we should be pursuing. Here are the main diplo objectives I'd like us to work on:

* CFC: They completely ignored the NAP part of our last message, their diplo guy again completely dodged the question in scooter's chat, and they just swapped into Police State and Nationhood civics and whipped/drafted away 25 population. We need to be more direct in confronting this team. I'm not saying we tear up our current deals or anything like that, but we can't let them continue to ignore and evade our questions. I would like to see a direct message asking them what's the deal with their military buildup, pushing again the NAP, and saying something like "so should we prepare for war with you on Turn 175?" We can be polite to them and still push for a direct response.

*WPC: we need to ask them if they have a NAP with CFC, and make sure that they are not the target of CFC's buildup. We also still need to tell them that we want our teams to declare in the second half of the timer (after Germans) on Turn 150. Time is running out, we need to coordinate this before the war starts in four turns.

* UniversCiv: poke them about the CFC massive knight fest, ask them if they have an NAP with CivFanatics. Give them a warning of some kind. I don't think they are the target, but it never hurts to be careful. Could even win us some diplo points, who knows.

* Spanish: we need to talk with them immediately. Ask them about their NAP situation with CFC, ask if they have Horseback Riding tech (we know that they have Construction), and offer the proposed ivory for dyes trade. There isn't a lot of time to spare here, if we agree as a team that we're going to do this resource swap, we need to get it in place immediately, and get them researching towards HBR tech. I think that we should make this move, as otherwise those knights are going to ride right over the Spanish cities. With elephants, they can at least make this a very bloody war for CFC, and that's the best we can hope for right now. If the Spanish are still standing on T175, that will make our situation enormously better.

I hope that scooter is around, because we have a lot of work to do.

EDIT: Talking NAP extension with CivPlayers is also an extremely good idea. Not a huge fan of planning more campaigns against Apolyton though, don't get ahead of ourselves.

[antisocialmunky]

Adjust greeting and signature, using simple English so a translator won't screw it up too much.

Hola Hombres,

From their actions last turn, it seems that they are preparing for war with a giant army of knights. The analysts on our team think the most likely target will be your team since you have fought a war with them. We have no interest in seeing CFC defeat you because they have been very annoying in their dealings with us.

So, we propose that we trade ivory to you for dyes and you tech Horse Back Riding as fast as you can build to war elephants, the unit that will do best against the knights until engineering.

Concerned Citizens at RB

[kjn]

Brought over from the turn discussion thread:

Here are the main diplo objectives I'd like us to work on:

* Contact WPC again, ask them if they have a NAP with CFC, tell them we want our teams to declare in the second half of the timer (after Germans) on Turn 150.

* Contact UniversCiv, poke them about the CFC massive knight fest, ask them if they have an NAP with CivFanatics. Give them a warning of some kind.

* Contact the Spanish, ask about their NAP situation with CFC, ask if they have Horseback Riding tech (we know that they have Construction), offer the proposed ivory for dyes trade.

I agree with all these proposals, though I am not all set on getting the second half against the Germans - I think we can work with either half.

If CFC starts to object that we trade ivory to the Spanish team, then we (a) get confirmation that they are their targets, (b) can reply that we supplied them with resources during their previous war with the Spanish, and didn't quit doing so despite strict neutrality, and they aren't at war right now.

I don't think we can manage to organise a dogpile on Apolyton. CivFr and Apolyton seems to have relatively cordial relations so far with plenty of trades, despite their close borders; CivPlayers have no land border with them; and Univers have plenty of unclaimed land between them and Apolyton. They also largely lack military techs. And organising a dogpile as the #1 team is even harder to do than doing it as the #2 team.

As for Univers and CivFr, both have so far been quite standoffish to us, and I see no reason for why this should change just because we start to gobble up the German land. Rather the opposite.

[antisocialmunky]

If CFC starts to object that we trade ivory to the Spanish team, then we (a) get confirmation that they are their targets, (b) can reply that we supplied them with resources during their previous war with the Spanish, and didn't quit doing so despite strict neutrality, and they aren't at war right now

Why give them a straight answer when they can't give us one? It won't matter if they get annoyed with us since this team seems to want to eradicate that shade of purple off the map at some point. Might as well just ignore them if they ask unless they want MOAR NAP.