Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[novice]

Sounds good to me.

By the way we should look into getting the National Epic built cheaply in Eastern Dealers using the same marble.

[Old Harry]

Sounds good to me. Although KJN's suggestion of clearing the pig by Worms for them is good negotiation fodder too.

[kalin]

Here's a suggestion: we can say "yes spices for marble, and we clear the gems *or* if we cannot we'll give you our extra gems temporarily". It seems to me we don't really want to spend worker turns on them, and marble for gems and spices is a good deal for us if we can get the marble in time.

Kalin

[Tyrmith]

If WPC complains, we can tell them to enjoy watching the Germans seal their own fate by helping us into a second golden age + drafting. The information will be obvious to them anyway shortly, and it'll put a good spin on things imo.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Sullla said something about sending them both gems and spices for marble, but that seems to be notably above their asking price. I'm slightly concerned that we don't give them TOO good a deal (in this case, 2 happies) and annoy WPC. Not that I really care that much what WPC thinks, but we certainly don't want them backing out and informing GWT that something is up.

I think the likelihood of WPC backing out of our deal and informing the German team of our plan to invade is virtually zero. They have hitched their wagon to our rising star and would fare poorly against us, even if they tied their civ closer to CFC. Also, there's the issue of them having already warred and been annoyed at the Germans. I wouldn't worry too much (at all) about them suddenly becoming buddies with WPC.

The marble deal is easy to explain. As Tyrmith said, marble gets us closer to drafting an army to rid the game of the German scourge. This ends the discussion with WPC.

[dazedroyalty]

Haha ok, wheel spin detected, let's redirect that energy to something we do need to discuss. Relevant portion from GWT email:

We would be interested in trading it with you versus gems, but we wonder whether you by any chance would be interested in another deal.

Our food does not taste like food for warriors should taste and our people are looking for spices.
How about trading marble against spices and you add the favor to remove the jungle from the gems north west from your town ditchdigger for us ?

So they are suggesting two possibilities:
1) Marble for gems straight-up is acceptable
2) Alternatively, marble for spices and we chop their gems

Sullla said something about sending them both gems and spices for marble, but that seems to be notably above their asking price. I'm slightly concerned that we don't give them TOO good a deal (in this case, 2 happies) and annoy WPC. Not that I really care that much what WPC thinks, but we certainly don't want them backing out and informing GWT that something is up.

The other thing is we need a strong, guaranteed timeframe. It's T123 right now. We don't need it for a few turns, but it will likely take them a few turns to hook it anyways. What we DO need is confidence that we will have marble until a minimum of T140, correct?

So how about something like this. We propose to them:

-Gems for Marble straight-up until T140 (phrase it like "a nice round number like T140" so it just seems like a window and not a microplan deadline). We could say we want the trade to start no later than maybe T128? I don't want them taking 12 turns to hook marble because obviously. Or rather, let's just ask how soon they can have it hooked.
-We can then say at T140 we would be open to renegotiating for the spices and gems chop idea. Make up something about being stretched for workers currently, but we can more easily spare them around T140 so we'd be open to considering it then. Of course we'd just say "nah we're good" at T140 because our need for marble would be gone.

Thoughts on this plan?

I'm not worried about giving them too good of a deal. Anything to get the Marble. If WPC is made and tells the Germans what's the absolute worst that can happen? They can't break the deal for 10 turns unless they declare war which would be silly.... wait... I just talked myself out of my own opinion. I wouldn't put that past them. Still, I'm not worried the deal will be too much. What I am worried about is the negotiations taking too long and them not getting marble hooked it time to be worth anything to us.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Any deal that secures the Taj for us and denies it to CivFr, our biggest threat who also has the Mausoleum, is a good one for us.

[scooter]

If WPC complains, we can tell them to enjoy watching the Germans seal their own fate by helping us into a second golden age + drafting. The information will be obvious to them anyway shortly, and it'll put a good spin on things imo.

Even explaining that it helps us with Heroic Epic is fine. They have no way of knowing we will have it built already by then.

[Azoth]

Great news about the Marble. Let's hope the Germans can hook it up in time.
Here's the relevant screenshot, dated T117.

By my count, that's 9 worker-turns for the Desert Quarry, 3 worker-turns for a Desert Road, another 3 turns for a Road 1N, and a final 2 turns for a Road 1E of Wilhelmshaven. (Later screenshots suggest that none of the tiles adjacent to Marble on the WPC side of the border have Roads, but someone can confirm that.) So that's 17 worker-turns total.

It's T123. Worst-case scenario: the Germans haven't started hooking up the Marble yet. In that case, if we want the Marble by T128, they'll have to devote at least four Workers to the task! Let's hope they have started working on it. Either way, our next message will have to stress how time-critical the resource is, without giving anything away, and we might need to offer worker-turns to make the schedule work.

[Bigger]

yes, thats why we need to not be cheap and just give them marble and spices. this may mean the difference between getting a free golden age or giving our biggest competition that has MOM a free golden age!


i wouldnt even be opposed to sending a worker or two up there to assist (not gifting workers, but having our workers do the work then return).