Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[regoarrarr]

Their known power value is 28000, which includes 4000 from pop, 16000 from tech, and 4 warriors, but I think there is a strong possibility that they are the top rival in power, at 54000.

Reasons for this are:

The top rival team is almost certainly a team with BW. Those are the Spanish, Apolyton, the Germans, CivFr, and CFC. We have graphs on CFC, and they're below us, and I have strong suspicion that CivFr is rival worst in power. Apolyton just researched BW. That leaves the Spanish and the Germans as candidates.

This concerns me. If they have 54K power then that means that they likely have 3 or possibly 4 axes? I think we should put some more emphasis on getting their graphs, possibly depending on what we find out from them in diplomacy.

On the plus side, if you're wanting to axe rush someone, axe rushing the team with War Chariots is probably not your first pick

[mostly_harmless]

"Wismar", nice, that is close to where I live.

That message is fine. I am pretty sure they will be ok with English communication. I would just like to see their eMails, because sometimes we write German sentences in English, that might twist the meaning somehow.

mh

[kjn]

I think we should go for the following with the teams that aren't native English speakers (CivFr, Univers, the Germans, and the Spanish):

Write relatively simple English. Be especially wary of implied structural elements - in many other languages (eg German and Swedish) these are made explicit in the way a sentence is formed, but English is quite fond of omitting signals on how the words in a sentence should be parsed.

We should try to gain some understanding of how native French, German, and Spanish speakers use English, mainly to discover misunderstandings before they turn serious. mostly_harmless can already fix that for German, and we have some Spanish and Portuguese speakers too.

We should maybe also make a dictionary of civ terms. If Scooter thinks it would be helpful, I can put that together (I have some tools available for building termbases and dictionaries that I really need to learn better, and this is as good an opportunity as any).

[darrelljs]

What makes you think they aren't proficient? I spent a month or so in Germany about a decade ago, it seemed like just about everyone younger than 40 was fluent in English. I think this will be much more of an issue with the Spanish team than with the German team.

Their participation in the rules lawyering process. I could be wrong, but if I am there is no harm in giving them a German version and if I am not there is benefit.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Also, its just nice for people to communicate in their native tongue. Even if they are fluent in English, there are brownie points to be had using German.

Darrell

[pindicator]

Also, its just nice for people to communicate in their native tongue. Even if they are fluent in English, there are brownie points to be had using German.

Darrell

This.
It's a nice gesture, and if we are looking to make friends, nice gestures can add up to carry a lot of weight. Just look at our AI diplo games: usually it's the small gesture stuff that influences big decisions (like who someone attacks or doesn't attack).

[scooter]

I don't really care if we just send English first or both. If MH wants to translate it then I'll send both. If not, I'll just send the English one in a few hours.

[mostly_harmless]

I will translate a German version in around 12 hours or so, if we want to wait that long. Right now I have a nice bonfire going and not much nerve to translate.

mh

[novice]

I think it's best to send an english only version first. Sending a translation could be seen as condescending - this is the internet, people speak english. The chinese players were offended when Lord Parkin posted a Google Translate message on their boards instead of just posting an english message.

[scooter]

Agree with novice. Draft sent.