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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves
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Accepted their gold gifts.
They gave us 1000gold this turn (T172).
"You have been struck down!" - Tales of Dwarf Fortress
--- "moby_harmless seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!"
Wow UCiv. Best Civ Friends Ever. Perhaps we should tell them that we aren't worried about any CFC grenadiers
 since they are spending their production in more scary ways.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." “I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
I know people don't always like my lengthier messages, but I think it's necessary here. There's your warning.
 Draft to Apolyton/CivPlayers Wrote:Apolyton and CivPlayers,
August 27th, 2013, 16:07
(This post was last modified: August 27th, 2013, 16:09 by Boldly Going Nowhere.)
 (August 27th, 2013, 15:45)scooter Wrote: I know people don't always like my lengthier messages, but I think it's necessary here. There's your warning. Looks great. I'm trying to think of a way to subtly hint to them that if they survive this war with the bulk of their advanced army intact, perhaps they can continue to gain ground against another opponent and basically come out even further ahead than grinding to a halt against us when we get rifles. How close is CivFR to being able to defend against Cuirs? I'd put at the end something along the lines of: "Then we would both make lengthy peace, and we would go fend off our eastern enemy who will still have a sizable technology advantage against us while perhaps you guys send your armies to the west and increase your gains even further. Something like that, just maybe less clunky. If they accept our offer, they make strong-ish gains with very little cost and can use their original investment to reap unexpected dividends against another opponent. I'd be intrigued, at least, if I were them. I don't think saying specifically which direction to send their units is good, I'm just trying to plant the idea of them sending them against someone else where they can benefit (someone that is NOT us). --- Edit: we could even offer up the idea of a buffer/DMZ border area so they don't have to worry about doing more than a token happiness garrison while they war elsewhere, for the duration of whatever NAP we can get.
I didn't fully read that but it sounds like you want to buy them off so we can defend against CFC which I fully support. Note that if we do get revolted out of Nationalism which I doubt, the offending civ will lose all goodwill from me (unless it's CFC who already have none).
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. 
Looks good scooter. With more time I would probably not be that specific about the cities we are happy to give up, but the clock is ticking in the east, so being direct seems like the best course here.
What is the worst that can happen: They pass this onto CFC to see of they get a better deal from them if they stay in this war and bind our forces. CFC promises to roll up RB from the east and Civplayers, and Apolyton gain some additional land compared to what we offer. Problem for them would be that their land will than be completely shaped in the wrong way, so I doubt they will go for that. And we have nothing to lose. mh
"You have been struck down!" - Tales of Dwarf Fortress
--- "moby_harmless seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!"
My instinct is that it is too much info but m_h is right that time is of the essence. If you could get away without naming the cities, I'd do it, but if you think you need them it is more important that we get the conversation going than anything else.
Good work, guys.
I've got some dirt on my shoulder, can you brush it off for me?
Hmm. Maybe. We'd still have 30 cities to their 21 and 22. They just killed a bunch of our units, so I don't think I'd go for it. Not that it's a bad idea to ask anyways. The problem is they've just invested too much in this to leave us still up 40% in land.
Definitely throw in a couple free (to us) extras: We won't further whip or draft any of those cities prior to you capturing them. Feel free to keep stealing our tech: We'll abort our plans to counterespionage you. Additionally, I wonder if we shouldn't be willing to throw in a GP or two given that we'll still have such a large land advantage if they take it. Yeah, that's expensive, but if we can buy enough time for our land advantage to take hold, it will probably be worth it. Plus, if they take the deal, we may be able to defend Starfall. If they don't take the deal, losing our national epic city seems like a real possibility. How many GPs is Eastern Dealers going to spit out for us before the game is decided? More than 2. Edit: I also want to up the praise a little bit, both for the obvious reason and to try to imply that that's why they had such a nice early success - that we were caught off guard. Quote:You guys have done an admirable job of working together, and I'm impressed by the attack you two put together. We were expecting rifles. We were not expecting Cuirassiers, and we sure as shit weren't expecting 28 of them. (August 27th, 2013, 18:15)Zargon Wrote: Hmm. Maybe. We'd still have 30 cities to their 21 and 22. They just killed a bunch of our units, so I don't think I'd go for it. Not that it's a bad idea to ask anyways. The problem is they've just invested too much in this to leave us still up 40% in land. They have invested a lot, and can get away with modest gains without incurring the loss of their technologically advanced army. They can still use those troops against CivFR and probably make decent-good gains. That's the carrot. Continuing to fight us they will have a few more early successes, until we mass draft/whip an army of rifles and bleed them dry. Why fight for 2-3 more cities and lose an entire army vs. the prospect of keeping that army and wresting land from another opponent? That's also the carrot. Continue to fight us and all of our troops that we have tried to move east through diplomacy, meanwhile allowing CFC, the current leader, to roll us up in our east and get all of our best cities. We lose, you lose, asshole CFC wins. That's the stick. Last point, I don't think we should infer that they caught us unawares. They did not. We simply couldn't counter in time. I'd rather congratulate them on very good play than immodestly say they pulled one over on us. We saw this thing coming and did everything we could do avoid, delay, mitigate, but clearly they were too determined for us to diplo our way out. No harm in doing that. But yes, all the praise we can muster. I am still gracious towards them, they've played a solid, fair game, as fair as a gangbang 3:1 is going to be, anyway. No lying, little obfuscation. Just subterfuge. I'm fine with them.
Right, and we couldn't counter in time in part because we didn't really believe they'd be going all in until much too late, and didn't realize that CP would have a huge stack of curs right at the start of the war until a few turns beforehand.
I was doom-and-glooming back on turn 160, and this was way beyond my imagined worst-case scenario. Stating they caught us flat-footed is entirely accurate. I haven't played any MP Civ 4, so I have to defer to people more experienced to me, but CP just smashed our main stack, trading 30 units for 3 (I missed whether we counterattacked to take some of that back at 1 for 1). I don't understand why they'd choose to take our deal and turn around and hit CivFr when they can just keep walking forward and take peace after we actually display an ability to stop them, which seems like at least 4 cities in, minimum. Why take modest gains when you can take more? We keep pushing CFC as the new leader, but I don't see why they'd buy that. CFC has 22 cities, and if poly/cp takes our deal, they probably won't expand that much or at all against us. So that leaves the world at poly, cp, cfc, and civfr at 20-22 cities and us at 30 cities, plus perceived allies of WPC and UniversCiv. Taking the deal is silly unless we can offer a real concession or credibly threaten to throw CFC the game. I don't think we can credibly make that threat (plus remember they don't share our dislike of CFC, so it's not like they mind CFC winning more than us), and I don't think just offering those 4 cities gets them to even talk about it. Maybe if we offer the cities plus a GP they'll talk and we can get talked up to 2. Maybe. But I don't know that I'd take even that as them. |
. Our cities on the CFC front are our strongest cities, and if they pick up 7-8 of them (minimum) easily while you guys only gain 1-2 cities each, they will easily run away with this game - I can promise that. And no, we aren't going to abandon our front with you just because CFC moves in on us. If we're going to get dogpiled, we are going to find a way to win on one of the two fronts just for pride's sake 
