Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[scooter]

I believe we should just take the marble now and be done with it. CFC is being irritating okay, I agree. Our concern though is swallowing as much of the German team as possible prior to T175. If we grab their land as planned and land a couple key NAP extensions (not going to be easy I don't think, we'll see), we can pay them back some diplomatic revenge no problem. Let's be patient.

Again, if someone has a suggestion for an excess resource of theirs to ask for instead of marble, speak up and we can do that. In the mean time, however, I'd say let's just accept this and be done with it. And cancel the GWT marble deal.

[kjn]

That's the trouble with our landgrab the only resource they have that we don't have are sheep and marble. And the sheep's useless to us. They can get a whale, but that's a long time in the future.

So anything you can weasel out of them would be good, be it gpt (say they pay the going price for the spices, as outlined in our treaty), a lump sum of gold, a lengthened NAP (say to T195), or something else.

If they're willing to promise to not build the Notre Dame, I'd be a very happy camper, but I think we should avoid mentioning that unless they bring it up.

[sooooo]

Any claim that we must take the marble now and that we had agreed to it is absolute bullshit and must not be tolerated.

I don't get it - read the agreement and tell me what part of it is "bullshit"? As they said in their email, mutually agreeable doesn't mean when we decide. Since we don't care about when we get it, just accept it now.

[pindicator]

I think putting our faith in CFC honorimg a NAP is probably a fallacy. They will attack when they want to regardless of any agreement if they feel they can manufacture a "reason".

Actually, that makes me reverse course. Let's accept the marble at the latest date possible (probably will involve negotiating) and just play along. But note any future power increases by CFC with the knowledge that they will attack (or more likely, get their lackeys to attack) at the time they want, not when any agreement says they can.

Why not cancel now or play hardball now? Lure them into a sense of security, let them think their plans are catching us off guard. Keep your enemies closer, and all that

[kjn]

I don't get it - read the agreement and tell me what part of it is "bullshit"? As they said in their email, mutually agreeable doesn't mean when we decide. Since we don't care about when we get it, just accept it now.

Well, it says "mutually agreeable", but there is a soft limit mentioned in the treaty about that the marble sharing to start no later than T150 - and we've both interpreted that as a hard limit.

We can still remind them that we went to considerable pains to get them the stone as early as we did.

[Mardoc]

I don't understand the popular reaction to civfanatics's diplo arrogance. Yes, I grant that their tone is annoying, and their sharp dealing is obnoxious.

But speaking cold bloodedly - isn't this what we want? The more they seem to be 'winning' at diplomacy, the more they'll want to keep doing diplomacy. After all, the reaction around here to 'losing' at diplo is to want to stop doing it .

But at the moment, the very frame of diplomacy is in our favor; there's hardly anything scooter can give away that will cost us more than a war. At this point, the longer we're doing diplomacy, the further we pull ahead. We have better turn players, better micro team, and the snowball is in our favor. And we're about to start swallowing other teams, too.

Keep your eye on the ball, here. All that really matters is time to let the micro team win this for us. Details of this deal or any deal being 'fair' don't really matter, so long as scooter keeps the bribes smaller than the rate we're pulling ahead. Which I trust him to do.

[dazedroyalty]

I don't understand the popular reaction to civfanatics's diplo arrogance. Yes, I grant that their tone is annoying, and their sharp dealing is obnoxious.

But speaking cold bloodedly - isn't this what we want? The more they seem to be 'winning' at diplomacy, the more they'll want to keep doing diplomacy. After all, the reaction around here to 'losing' at diplo is to want to stop doing it .

But at the moment, the very frame of diplomacy is in our favor; there's hardly anything scooter can give away that will cost us more than a war. At this point, the longer we're doing diplomacy, the further we pull ahead. We have better turn players, better micro team, and the snowball is in our favor. And we're about to start swallowing other teams, too.

Keep your eye on the ball, here. All that really matters is time to let the micro team win this for us. Details of this deal or any deal being 'fair' don't really matter, so long as scooter keeps the bribes smaller than the rate we're pulling ahead. Which I trust him to do.

This makes the most sense to me.

[Cyneheard]

Agreed. Let's see how long we can delay the marble, and call it a day. It's not worth throwing our game over foolishness - if this is what they need to do to feel happy, let them. We'll go win the actual game while they feel awesome for getting 5 extra turns of marble while we go conquer 5 cities.

[Ellimist]

Some of you guys are totally missing the point here.

We agreed to their contract, yes, but what's the enforcement mechanism? There isn't one aside from what our two teams can do to each other.

If they don't honor their end of it, are any of the other teams even going to care? They'll find some way to spin it and try to make it out that we're the bad guys and everyone else will form an opinion based on who can spin things better. If they think it will help them, they are very likely to do such a thing to try and smear us, regardless of how faithfully we carry out our end of things.

Our interactions with them are going to dictated by what they think they can get away with. If they want to attack us while the NAP is still officially active, they are going to do it.

Right now, they're trying to bluff at us with an inferior hand. We need to call or raise. Or pretend to fold and then stab them while their pants are down.

I don't understand the popular reaction to civfanatics's diplo arrogance. Yes, I grant that their tone is annoying, and their sharp dealing is obnoxious.

But speaking cold bloodedly - isn't this what we want? The more they seem to be 'winning' at diplomacy, the more they'll want to keep doing diplomacy. After all, the reaction around here to 'losing' at diplo is to want to stop doing it .

But at the moment, the very frame of diplomacy is in our favor; there's hardly anything scooter can give away that will cost us more than a war. At this point, the longer we're doing diplomacy, the further we pull ahead. We have better turn players, better micro team, and the snowball is in our favor. And we're about to start swallowing other teams, too.

Keep your eye on the ball, here. All that really matters is time to let the micro team win this for us. Details of this deal or any deal being 'fair' don't really matter, so long as scooter keeps the bribes smaller than the rate we're pulling ahead. Which I trust him to do.

I agree with the main point here, but I don't think they're all that interested in winning at diplomacy with us. To them, winning at diplomacy will be when they convince other teams to attack us. Anything that happens directly between the two teams is a sideshow that isn't going to change anything that matters.

[Ellimist]

From CFC:

Greetings RB Friends,

We needed our marble until very recently, and we will need our marble for our own plans again in about 15 turns, so we must insist you make a choice: Either you take the marble within the next 5 turns (t140-145), or we will have to waive our original agreed deadline and re-arrange our deal as we will then be outside of the turn 150 window.

We can't delay another ten turns because that is when we will be needing it back. We are prepared to offer it in-game now. If you do not accept it within the timeframe that we had agreed to, then we will have to try to come to a new one. I'm sure you understand as we both agreed that the gift could be arranged around both our teams needs for marble.

Thanks,
Caledorn, Foreign Minister of Team CFC

Greetings CFC Friends,

I'm not sure I understand. Are you sure you want to default on the obligations you agreed to between our two teams? That seems like a pretty extreme decision to make for a team with such a low power rating.

Please clarify your intent as soon as possible.

Thanks

We can transition from there into renegotiating a better agreement, if that's what we want. It's not about the marble, it's about leverage.