Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[Sullla]

Can we kill the German team? I think that's my one request for the game at the moment. Last to play every single turn, log into game with everyone else already done and two hours to go... then log out again without ending turn. Come on already! :mad:

I never realized that Imperio had managed to reorganize themselves as CivForum.de!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

kjn, through your C&D work we have a good idea what is going on out in the fog. What do you hope to gain through a partnership with another team, higher accuracy or confirmation? Tight C&D is probably one advantage we have in this game because almost surely not every team has someone putting in the effort you are. I'd be hesitant to trade away or share that advantage with anyone. I think as it suits our purposes we could release bits of info from time to time (example: hey team A, have you noticed your neighbor's power spike? They might be coming for you). But I don't know what we would benefit from a turn by turn numbers exchange since you're already reading so much of what is available.

I agree with this. C&D is an imperfect science and increasingly so as the game continues. I think that we can do a better job of filling in the blanks diplomatically rather than some sort of C&D sharing agreement. The possibility for treachery is high, IMO. Loose lips, now with stats!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Can we kill the German team? I think that's my one request for the game at the moment. Last to play every single turn, log into game with everyone else already done and two hours to go... then log out again without ending turn. Come on already! :mad:

I never realized that Imperio had managed to reorganize themselves as CivForum.de!

This made me think it will be time, once we know more teams and have had some interactions, to nominate award winners for our Demo Game.

Below is a direct copy of the original post from the tech thread.

I thought it might be fun to name all of the awards and add a few more. As someone who's lurked pretty comprehensively, I democratically elected myself for this duty.

Hopefully anyone who has a "negative" award named after them takes it in the fun spirit its intended.

• The Tatan Award (PBEM4g, PBEM10) - Making the most of your position in the game, good or bad, and showing good spirits.
  
• The plako Award - Not abusing the turn timer, even trying specifically to not abuse it, as though you were roleplaying some sort of perfect turn timer gentleman.
  
• The Ilios Award (FFH2)- Fighting honorably and fiercely until the bitter end, never trying to throw the game or be spiteful, and keeping all the enmity in-game.
  
• The SevenSpirits Award (PBEM19, PBEM23)- Showing innovative play and an enthusiasm for making the game fun and exciting.
  
• The Pocketbeetle Award (FFH1)- Most entertaining thread updater
  
• The Oledavy Award (PBEM17)- Most interesting thread updater (note, not the same thing)
  
• The Athlete4Life Award (PB2) - Sneakiest back stab gold star
  
• The Sandover Award (PBEM3) - Mostest with the Leastest award for crap land award
  
• The Adlain Award (PB4) - Leastest with mostest award for really good land frittered away
  
• The WarlordDr Award (PB4) - Warmonger of the year award for least infrastructure
  
• The FFH7 Clowns Award Warmonger of the year award for most military (important distinction there)
  
• The novice Award (PBEM13, 17, 23) - for most insanely thorough spreadsheet MM plan
  
• The "Krills' 12 steps to greatness" award (See all Krill games) from most retarded drunken behaviour
  
• The "WTF Darrell" award (FFH2 I think is the best example) for greatest WTF moment of the game (Always a goody)
  
• The "bloody sunrise" award for most crippling early game strike
  
• The regoarrarr award (PB1) - For most disappointing moment
  
• The Lewwyn award (PBEM14) - For most ill-advised rush
  
• The Commodore award (PBEM19, 24) - For most convincing desperate victory attempt
  
• The Lord Parkin award (PB4) - For most 1t techs in a row
  
• The mackoti award (many) - For the team that builds the Pyramids
  
• The Ruff Award - For best naming-scheme
  
• The Bobchillingworth award (FFH11) - For best military action devised solely for metagame reasons
  
• The Jowy Award (PBEM6) - For worst leveraging of traits (i.e. never going to war with Boudica of Rome)
  
• The Whosit Award (PB2) - For biggest misuse of military units
  
• The Gaspar Award (Pretty much every game) - For most war plans composed but not enacted.
  
• The Sareln Award (Um, every game) - For first player eliminated in a rush
  
• The TMIT's Speed civving award - For being shortest time logged in to the game.
  
• The Kuro Slow civving award - For being longest time logged in to the game.
  
• The Thoth Award (Pretty much every game) - For most youtube links posted in thread.
  
• The Catwalk Award (Pretty much every game) - For most headscratching thread spam.
  
• The Munro Award (PB1) - For Biggest Upset
  
• The Cyneheard Award (Every game) - For the biggest bridesmaid
  
• The Locke Award (PB4) - For most effective personality change
  
• The Serdoa Award (PBEM10, PBEM25) - For biggest wonderwhore
  
• The DrNomadic Award (PB2) - For most inane lurker comment
  
• The MJW Award (All) - For most confusing lurker behavior
  
• The Dazedroyalty Award (PBEM7) - For most impressive dogged defense
  
• The Sulla Award (Demogame) - For best pink dot
  
• The Speaker Award (PB2, PB6) - For most impressive military tactics
  
• The Twinkletoes89 Award (All) - For surviving against impossible odds
  
• The Iskender Award (FFH5) (All) - For best performance with a lesser Civ/Leader pairing
  
• The Exploit Award (PB1, PB3) (All) - For poorest performance with a stronger Civ/Leader pairing.
  
• The Kyan Award (PBEM4g) - For most consecutive turns in a Golden Age
  
• The Mist Award (PB7) - For the player who annoys the game admin the most
  
• The Uberfish Award (FFH2) - For best sneaky good game position
  
• The Amelia Award (FFH2) - For most damage on a single turn
  
• The spacemanmf Award (PBEM13) - For best war turn report (single turn) [rego already has an award before anyone mentions PBEM8]
  
• The Selrahc Award (FFH6) - For longest delay to settle first city
  
• The Washington, Mongolia Award (sunrise089 - all PBs) - For worst power/internet situation for someone who purportedly does not live in a 3rd world country.
  
• The pindicator Award (PBEM26) - For cheesiest yet deserved success
  
• The yuris125 Award (PBEM20, PBEM26) - For player who swings the balance of game most while having no actual benefit to his own empire
  
• The Mortius Award (PB2) - For allowing someone to walk into your undefended capital
  

Keep em coming, of course.

Once the game starts, post links to nominations for the awards in this thread. I'll try and keep everything collated and then when the game is over we can decide if we're voting on the awards or letting the namesake hand out the award.

So, Sullla has nominated CivForum.de for:

• The Kuro Slow civving award - For being longest time logged in to the game.
  
• The Bobchillingworth award (FFH11) - For best military action devised solely for metagame reasons
  

Fun!

[kalin]

One thing to consider about exchanging C&D info is that we don't have to share analysis, but only numbers, i.e., a cropped demo screen (or the info in it if that's not allowed).
Kalin

[kjn]

Folks, we are nowhere near any C&D-partnership. And if we were to start something like it, we'd probably start on the analysis side. Like, "do you know anything about the makeup of that $BIGNUM power number".

I can also imagine sharing graphs, if some team runs lots of EPs against one of us but not the other. (I'm pretty sure we'll reach EP spending agreements with some teams.)

Also, one thing I'm sure we should avoid doing in public is any mocking of the other teams. We've already had Sommer try to paint a target on our backs. We have a reputation that precedes us with other teams, and one team that RB of old did a backstab of in an old game that they still remember.

Lets not pour oil on any fires here.

[antisocialmunky]

This made me think it will be time, once we know more teams and have had some interactions, to nominate award winners for our Demo Game.



So, Sullla has nominated CivForum.de for:

• The Kuro Slow civving award - For being longest time logged in to the game.
  
• The Bobchillingworth award (FFH11) - For best military action devised solely for metagame reasons
  

Fun!

Is it too early to start a poll about who will be the first to die and who will be the one doing the killing?

[Dantski]

Also, one thing I'm sure we should avoid doing in public is any mocking of the other teams. We've already had Sommer try to paint a target on our backs. We have a reputation that precedes us with other teams, and one team that RB of old did a backstab of in an old game that they still remember.

Agreed, everyone joined this game to enjoy it. There's no need to trashtalk players/teams and doing so not only makes the individual look like a jerk but it also tars everyone associated with the same brush.

[scooter]

OK back on topic, message from Caledorn:

Hi scooter/RB

Thank you for the congratulations on the new city we indeed have built, and likewise congratulations to your team for your new city as well.

As you already know, I have sent you an invitation to GTalk using the gmail you provided. If there's something you need a quick response to you are welcome to poke me there. I'm using an Android phone, so I should be available there (as long as I'm not asleep of course) even if I'm not near my computer.

We agree with your proposal that we notify each other when we meet other teams. Our suggestion, to get a clearly defined agreement, is that when one of our teams meet a new team we notify one another what team we met, the turn we met them, and in what direction they are (thus making it easier for each other to meet up with those teams).

As you've probably figured out from our warrior movements, we intend to explore northwards next. We'll be crossing a patch of open terrain next turn and wanted to ask if you had seen any barbarians or animals in the area? Have you explored much in this direction? As we're going to notify each other about contact with other teams, we think it would make sense for us to send our scouting units in different directions. What's your thoughts on this?

We have been doing some speculations about the map, based on what we have seen so far in our scouting, and we're wondering if you have come up with some speculations? We definitely agree that it would be a good idea if we pool together knowledge on our surroundings. If we do this we may both be able to explore more efficiently, as well as figure out a pattern to where the other teams are so we can discover their whereabouts as quickly as possible.


Caledorn, on behalf of Team CFC

[scooter]

Initial thoughts:

1) No complaints, overall another positive message. We have an agreement to notify each other upon meeting other teams. I suggest we agree to their additional requests along this line
2) Anyone who is in game more often want to field the barbarian question?
3) A little disappointed they didn't offer any info about the map right off the bat, but I'm not sure how much there is to say. We know the land/water percentages, but I don't know that we've cracked much else. Probably a good idea to pool some info here - curious if everyone has a body of water near them like that. This might be something easier to do in chat sometime so they don't pick over his words so closely and squelch useful info.

[scooter]

Caught Caledorn on chat. I'll include the whole thing for completeness sake, but the first half is mostly filler. Took some liberties here with information, so if you don't like that then let me know.

scooter: FYI - message received and acknowledged. team will chat about it and all that
Caledorn: Thanks ... "and all that" made me chuckle a bit. Doing the diplomatic work is a lot of fun
scooter: hah. it sure is. it's weird getting used to trying to corral all the opinions and put something together
I'm used to playing solo and just saying whatever I want. hah
Caledorn: Exactly my point laughs Making as many as possible in the team happy with wordings and sentences in the official messages.
scooter: hah yeah. we'll definitely get you an answer on the barb thing. I don't think we've seen any in that area, but I posed the question to the guys who login more often. hopefully I'll hear something soon
well, there was a couple panthers, but we defended against them and won so they're gone
Caledorn: Ah great. I'll relay that to our turn players. I am just a backup turnplayer myself, so I don't log in much either. I'm keeping our conversation here unofficial except for the highlights and if we talk about something official stuff (like the acknowledgement and the panther part for instance) just fyi.
scooter: Yeah that's what I'm doing too. Just makes it easier
Caledorn: Yeah. It's going to be a pain if I have to copy/paste every single thing we say in the forums, so I'll just pick out the important stuff
scooter: Definitely. we had some map guessing talk earlier in our forum. I'll have to track that down
Caledorn: Great I hope your team approves of sharing a bit.
scooter: yeah. unfortunately we lost our scout to a bad dice roll barb attack so that is why our scouting info is lacking. has your barb luck been any better?
Caledorn: Ah, that makes sense in relation to the fact you guys haven't seen the oasis yet. We have taken out a couple of animals, and courageously run away from a few like Goldilocks did (that post in the public thread cracked me up btw! Great post!)
Thankfully we haven't lost any units, and our inital scout is the warrior who is near you guys
scooter: Hah, yeah that was a fun post. after our poor scout died we didn't want that happening again!
but yeah, that's why we unfortunately don't have as much info as you guys
after losing it we focused on the land around us
you guys seen much water? we've seen some, but not a lot... but some people on our team seem to think there'll be more out there
Caledorn: Yeah, makes perfect sense. We'd have done the same thing
No, we haven't seen much water at all. There is a salt water body which you'll discover just south of the oasis. Other than that just some tiny lakes here and there
scooter: yeah that sounds similar to us. some minor saltwater sea to our west, but other than that, all land
I think it's saltwater.
Anyways, getting late in this part of the world, so I'm going to call it a night. We'll try to get an official response back to you guys soon.
Caledorn: That's interesting considering that salt water I'm talking about is to our west as well. I'll let the team map speculators know I'm sure they'll love speculating further with that info
scooter: Interesting, wonder if we both have similar surroundings.
Caledorn: And okay, sleep well then I've been up all night. Completely botched sleep schedules
scooter: hah! thanks, I'll talk to you later

Notes of varying importance:

1) He thought our Goldilocks public post was funny. I'm happy to hear that.
2) I admitted we lost our scout, but now we have an excuse for lack of map info to share with them, so there's that.
3) I told him we've got a saltwater body of some sort to our west, and he responded by confirming they have the same to their west. I should have asked if there's any signs to them of explicit mirroring, ack. Maybe in the email. This does help us a bit on narrowing down Plako's design.
4) They have not lost any units to barbs, though I'm sure our crack team would have known by now if they had.
5) Yes, I'm copying/pasting every single thing we say even if he apparently isn't.

He's warming up a bit which is nice.