Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[scooter]

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 sort of said some of the same things, but I just want to quote this for being pretty much perfect. The longer we run circles with CFC, the longer we're doing things faaaaaar more productive than fighting a war with CFC. I mean seriously, "Conquer weak neighbors, maintain peace with more threatening neighbors" is the most fundamental civ strategy there is. We are LUCKY to be next to 2 of the 3 most incompetent teams in this game (WPC, Spanish, Germans), so running circles (in peace) with CFC so that we can take advantage of this is awesome for us. So no, trying to bully CFC while we're prepping for an invasion of one of our punching bag neighbors is not profitable in the slightest.

Valid Ideas:
1) Accept the marble right now for 10T, say nothing else.
2) "Hey we don't need the marble, would you be interested in extending our NAP to T200 (pick a number, I don't care) and giving us that marble gift later in that NAP instead?" (and we can be more precise on the window)

Bad Ideas:
1) Hey you broke our agreement so we're tearing it up, fear us
2) Hey you broke our agreement so meet this list of demands or else the whole deal is off

If we want to internally dislike CFC for their actions and get adequate revenge when it makes sense in the scheme of our long-term strategy, great! If it means our Rifles/Infantry era strategy involves being friends with CivPlayers and killing CFC instead of the other way around, great! Until then, we have some backwards northern neighbors to eat, so every single diplo decision should revolve around facilitating that.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying, Scooter. It's entirely rational. But their constatnt attitude and trolling makes me irrationally annoyed so I'll continue to advocate for killing those guys every chance I get. If it ever comes down to choosing between killing civplayers or WPC or CFC, whatever...you know who my vote is for.

And to whoever it was that said the bad behavior is by our team...please. Are you tonedeaf to what these guys are writing to us? They've insulted us several times. I'm not being very nice either but at least I'm not sending the official correspondence here. They don't care that they're insulting us, they know what they're doing. We can play our diplo to stay above the fray if we want to since that is a better strategy for us, but don't pretend these guys are somehow blameless in their treatment of our team and in their dealings with us. That's just not credible.

[Old Harry]

Does their suggested marble window tell us that they plan to be building a national or world wonder from t150? Do we want to snipe it?

[scooter]

And to whoever it was that said the bad behavior is by our team...please. Are you tonedeaf to what these guys are writing to us? They've insulted us several times. I'm not being very nice either but at least I'm not sending the official correspondence here.

FWIW I agree with this pretty much. Well, I think saying they're "trolling" is way over the top, but the bit about our team's internal behavior is spot-on. If we're going to function properly as a team, we're going to need to be brutally honest in here when it's necessary. I may think a few of the opinions in here are flat wrong, but I think the wide range and complete honesty of the opinions is an asset. Let's not discourage that. It's not hard to weed out the extreme opinions anyways.

---

Trying to make sense of this, here's my proposal. The reality is there is no strong consensus here. I'm just going to propose this and gauge how positive/negative the reactions are, and we'll go from there. How about something like this.

Caledorn,

We've been thinking about how to come to a more agreeable deal. We don't have much use for the marble right this minute, and it's unfortunate that later in our agreement it's not available. How about we compromise - we extend the NAP portion of our agreement from T175 to T200, and that means the marble portion of our agreement can come when you're done using it again. Does that work for you?

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Reasons for this:
1) This guarantees we will be able to completing kill the German team without a dogpile. If CFC willingly extends the NAP past T200, they are not organizing a dogpile, and that's a super valuable confirmation to get. Similarly, if they refuse to extend the NAP, it'll clue us in that something is brewing. In that case, we immediately start poking around other neighbors about NAPs to figure out who might be on board with CFC and who isn't.
2) If we get one major neighbor (especially the one we suspect the most) to prolong peace, that gives us tons of options post-German war. We could quietly integrate the land in peace and tech up further. We could hit WPC which is the softest target. We could go after Apolyton which may be juicier. If things go south with CivPlayers that's an option, though that seems pretty unlikely.

Mainly #1 is the thing. I think this is a golden opportunity to get some valuable info on CFC's intentions.

Also: if you like the direction of the message but want to tweak details (you don't like T200 or something), please say so, that way we can start to build a consensus that we at least want to pursue this direction. Currently it's difficult to even gauge that.

One More Note: Please keep in mind - we don't really care about the marble. We will likely have our own source (or at least WPC will have it which is as good as it being ours) before T175. The goal here is NOT to secure marble, it's to prolong peace and/or figure out CFC's intentions. Just thought I would clarify that.

[Ichabod]

What are the things we could possibly build with Marble right now? I ask this because I think making that message a bit more "concrete" could be a good thing, like pointing out what we intend to build with the Marble. Otherwise, I think it feels too much like just fishing out for a NAP extension. Maybe say something like, "we'll have marble from the german team until X turn, but we want to build the Hermitage on a city to be settled on the polar region later, around turn X + 10 (after turn 175). Could we work something for that time?". I think they'll have a harder time trying to justify not agreeing to a deal like this, if they indeed want to attack us after turn 175.

By the way, I think we should be very proactive on diplo right now. Put the possible dogpilers against the wall, trying to find out who will attack. This is the perfect time, we are surging ahead in power and we aren't at war yet. After we attack the germans, I think it'll be too late.

[Ruff_Hi]

+1 to the testing of the NAP agreement. Nicely worded Scooter. I was thinking that the 2nd last sentence might be 'from T175 to T200, and that means expanding the marble trade window so that we can agree on a mutually beneficial trade period' but what you have is fine.

[SevenSpirits]

Maybe clarify that this also means extending our resource gifts to them too?

[scooter]

Maybe clarify that this also means extending our resource gifts to them too?

I'd kind of prefer that it doesn't, and that those end on T175. Then if they want those resources, they can trade for them like anyone else. That may be wishful thinking, though. I just know with their negotiation style, I'd rather "relent" and extend those resource deals than give it to them up front and open the door for them to ask for more.

[Cyneheard]

Maybe clarify that this also means extending our resource gifts to them too?

I'd kind of prefer that it doesn't, and that those end on T175. Then if they want those resources, they can trade for them like anyone else. That may be wishful thinking, though. I just know with their negotiation style, I'd rather "relent" and extend those resource deals than give it to them up front and open the door for them to ask for more.

Agreed. They have to feel that they "won" the negotiation - and as much as we'd like something for those resources, if that something is "peace" then we've done decently well for ourselves.

[antisocialmunky]

Maybe we should tell them, if they don't want an NAP extension, then offer marble on X turn.