Diplomacy Correspondence Tracking thread

[Sullla]

Diplo conversation with WPC. Dropbox seems to be acting funny right now, but here are the links to the images:

[scooter]

Sent to CivFr:

Hey guys. I haven't heard from you about our last couple messages, so I wanted to send you a quick message to see how things are going. Any updates on your situation with regards to CFC?

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

[Lord Parkin]

From WePlayCiv:

Hi Scooter. Your team member getting pics had a front row seat to our run up to Warendorf. I offered him a lawn chair and a beer. LOL

My earlier chat with one of your team members got a bit chippy, and I apologize for that.

On reflection, I agree that we should have taken a more direct route to Warendorf to start the war. That was my mistake.

But we also have kept the majority of the German army occupied in the north. In and around Warendorf, currently, we count at least 42 German units.(14 catapults, 7 war elephants, 13 axes, 6 chariots, 1 spear, and 1 longbow)

Given that we have a larger army than them (according to the graphs), and we are pretty closely matched for the upcoming slug-fest, there cannot be too much down south. That was my frustration when you and the player today got impatient with our progress. We wish the German cities we were facing only had 3 units in them, whether they be longbows or not. From what I understand, you have yet to see any opposition to the degree we are facing. But that is Ok by us. Let us be the anvil, and you can be the hammer. We have more units coming to reinforce our stack, which I expect will take quite a beating.

So hopefully this will help clear the way to Webringen. The loss of their capitol will be a blow.

I asked your player if you could leave your chariot in the hills. A: you will get a good view of the proceedings, and B: you will help protect our two dog soldiers from German chariots. No war elephant can currently reach that tile.

And, after some research, I now know how to create a sentry chariot. I thought we needed way more EP's than we currently have for our chariots, but that is not the case. Learned something new today.

Anyways, wish us luck. We will need it in the upcoming battle. They get to run 13 catapults at us before their units attack.

And good luck to you on the advance on their capitol.

Cheers! Beta of WPC

[scooter]

Sent to WPC:

Beta,

First off, I'm not positive which team member you chatted with where it got chippy, but I do know for sure nobody over here was offended by anything said. I hope your team feels the same. We are in crucial turns, so it's only natural that both of us will need to be pretty direct at times. No worries.

Also, yes we haven't encountered a single stack that big, but we've killed close to 20 units so far (and we're about to fight a fairly good-sized group in their capital), so we haven't exactly been walking into empty cities. The reality is we have invested into a ton of drafted Maces to accompany Knights and War Elephants, so we're able to handle anything they throw at us.

I'm not sure where the mixup happened with the Chariot, but our turn player did not have any directions for the Chariot when he played the turn, so he just chose whatever made the most sense. There's probably 4-5 people who login regularly, so you likely talked to somebody else. Sorry about that. Anyway, we'd really like to keep the chariot alive so that we have visibilty on the region, so we're going to aim to do that. If anything, it's probably best that we keep it with your main stack so it can help you absorb collateral. If the German team wants to foolishly waste units attacking you on a hill instead of defending from the city, you should let them .

Hope this helps. Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help!

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

[scooter]

From CivPlayers:

Scooter, greetings

We considered you proposals as I promised, but at this moment we do not feel ready to extend our NAP obligations. Perhaps we will reconsider this in the soonest future.

OT4E
CivPlayers

[scooter]

I made a brief attempt to fish a little more info out of CivPlayers.

scooter
Hey OT4E - this is scooter from RB

OT4E
hi

scooter
thanks for getting back with us on the proposal. no problem, I understand
we can always discuss it again soon as things change

OT4E
yes, thanks for understanding

scooter
Again, we're committed to locking down peace with your team if you are interested, so just let me know if you change your mind, or if there's something we can do to make it happen
do you mind if I ask why you aren't interested right now? I thought maybe you would be since CFC seems occupied with CivFr now

OT4E
well you can ask of course, but I cant share full scene with you. It is not relied to CFC that much.

I know that you will not be satisfied with my answer. But there is nothing I can tell you that will prevent you from thinking that we are just jacking up our price.

scooter
no it's fine, I understand if you can't give a clear answer. I'm just trying to understand your motivation for wanting the NAP to expire. I've been trying to figure it out on my own, so it's worth asking you

He promptly disappeared after that last message . Not very productive, but it was worth a shot.

[scooter]

So, I had a chat with Yossarian from CFC yesterday. Last night was crazy so I didn't get a chance to post it, but here it is. There is not much of significant substance - most of the second half of the chat is just chit-chat. Here's the log, I'll summarize the notable points at the bottom.

scooter
congrats to your team on getting the first complete kill
our world is a slightly smaller place now

YossarianLives
Thanks! In the car now, I'll let you know when I can chat

YossarianLives
Ok, I'm here if you want to talk
Sorry I hadn't gotten back to you earlier, I've been pretty busy, but I hope you noticed that we did stop pillaging

scooter
hey no problem. and yes, we did note and appreciate that
how's the CivFr war? I saw they razed one of your cities

YossarianLives
Thanks for your post in the tech thread also about the Spaniards attempted gift. We appreciate that. Very good sportsmanship on your part
We'll miss those guys, they were a lot of fun to play with

scooter
Yeah we talked about it and it didn't seem right. I'm glad to hear your team feels similarly

YossarianLives
CivFr war is fine, just trying to hammer out the land division of former Zulu territory

scooter
and agreed. they weren't a very strong team, but they made me laugh a lot.

YossarianLives
How is the German war going?

scooter
I don't think they were very organized - they asked me about tech trading a week or so ago hahah. They somehow forgot TT is off

YossarianLives
Who, the Spaniards? I don't think they took a really close look at the rules
They kept asking us to send them screenshots of the land between us when we first met

scooter
yeah makes sense. and it's going smoothly. their current turn player is a pretty competent defender, but they're obviously severely outmanned.
yeah the Spaniards. and that's funny, I don't doubt it.

YossarianLives
Yeah, they held their own against wpc pretty well earlier, but they're up against a whole different beast this time around
Poor Germans, can't catch a break!

scooter
Yeah I feel for them. Someone has to be the victim
how does land splitting with CivFr even work? They have a bit of a reputation for not being timely in their communication

YossarianLives
Lol, not easily. That reputation is well earned!
How about sharing German lands? Is wpc going to try to get any of the spoils?

scooter
well good luck with that, hah. Yeah they will, but as you can imagine their military techs are vastly outdated, so we'll see how much they can do.

YossarianLives
Yeah,I think we've pretty much figured it out now. Didn't go as smoothly as we wanted, but we think we found something fair for both sides
Hopefully the French agree lol

scooter
Haha, guess so. Does that mean our team's war will be the only one soon?? So sad
And how much land are they really going to get? You guys did do basically all the work there

YossarianLives
Lol, we really don't want war! I get that you think our requests for a NAP extension are too much, but you haven't come back to us with anything

scooter
Oh I was referring to our team's current war with Inca, not with your team
I think we both realize though that if we fight your team, CivFr wins

YossarianLives
Oh, got it
Well, hopefully wpc can join you to keep you company soon
Yeah, I think our the teams have really started to pull ahead of the pack.
But CivFr and us are finally starting to catch up to you a little bit
Those war preparations really have an impact on score

scooter
Yep, sure do.
by the way, this is why it's difficult to convince the team to NAP with you guys since you seem to insist on payment . You guys really aren't notably behind us at all
Taj + rolling over weakest team in the game will do that for you

YossarianLives
Sure, but you're about to roll over the next weakest team. And we've had to make some payments ourselves

scooter
you've had to make some payments?
and eh, we don't get to keep all the Incan land. in terms of city counts, you'll be awfully close to even with us

YossarianLives
To a team that's been ahead of us in score this whole time!
Well, in terms of land concessions, giving up Zulu territory that really should be ours

scooter
I was going to say you must mean CivFr, I certainly don't remember us getting any payments :D

YossarianLives
Lol, well, your marble (re)payment is coming
I just hope we don't meet the same fate as the last team that gifted you marble

scooter
well, both cases we traded for the marble, and in both cases we gave up more than we received in order to get it, so I wouldn't call them gifts hah. but fair enough

YossarianLives
I don't think the cost was too high. You've definitely benefited a lot from our long NAP

scooter
I think we've both benefitted a lot from it no doubt
CivFr would be the prohibitive favorite if we hadn't agreed on that deal

YossarianLives
Globe Theatre on the border may have been a more difficult build otherwise

scooter
they've got some extremely good players
haha, it was going to get built one way or another, and that was the best spot for a drafting camp

YossarianLives
True, the NAP and trades have been good for both of us
Yeah, they're a smart team, just need to work on their diplo a little bit

scooter
yeah, common issue for experienced MP teams like that. not accustomed to the diplo hassle

YossarianLives
Right, this definitely is not a ladder game
RB definitely seems to have the most experience with long PBs, even if you guys do hate half the settings we're playing with
I'm looking forward to reading Sullla's write-up of this game after its all over, to read about all our stoner moves, and the c&d work you guys must be doing. I hope he does one of those on his website.

scooter
yeah it's a diverse team. I hope he does a post-game writeup. I think your team has been very strong in the last 75-80 turns especially. really went all-in to get nationalism that quickly, then all-in on the Zulu war. Obviously both paid off

YossarianLives
Yeah, I agree that's where we stopped dinking around and got more serious about the game
So you don't think there are Amy other teams out there getting ready to join the fun and go to war?
It definitely helps to pick up interest amongst the teammates

scooter
I kinda doubt it, not a lot of serious building up happening

YossarianLives
Well you're probably keeping better track of that kind of thing than we are. We've had enough on our hands for awhile, as the saying goes

scooter
Heh, understood. Sorry for the delay in messages, partially occupied with work and all that. And I've got to run now

YossarianLives
Alright, sounds good. Talk to you later

Main notes

1) They appreciated our post on refusing gifts from someone who is about to die. Nice to know they view this as exploitative, even though CivFr apparently does not.
2) Sounds like CivFr demanded some of the Zulu land as reparations for the Merchant fiasco.
3) That said, sounds like CFC is going to pay them off, and they'll be at peace shortly. Not very surprising.
4) They view the NAP situation as the ball being in our court. I think they view things like us - a NAP would be nice, but it's not necessary right now for either of us.

[scooter]

Sent to WPC:

Beta,

I've seen a screenshot of how it looks in-game - glad your stack survived! Obviously you both took some losses, but the good news is almost all your catapults are intact, so if you bombard with the weak ones and attack with the strong ones, I bet you could take the city. Hopefully you have a few promotions available too . It's really great that Warendorf is on flatland - almost all of the cities we've run into are on hills, which have made their longbows pretty nasty.

We will let you guys play your part of the turn before we move our War Chariot. Let me know if there's anything we can do to help. We're moving on their capital of Webringen now, and it's tying down some of their elephants (they need to cover against our Knights).

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

[Lord Parkin]

From WePlayCiv:

Hi Scooter. Your chariot can see that the first round went pretty well. We killed 8 catapults, 1 war elephant, 4 chariots and 9 axes, at a cost of 6 spears, 4 dog soldiers, 1 chariot and 2 catapults.

And now its our turn. Will keep you posted if your chariot can help out. Maybe by killing the wounded chariot to its east. But lets wait until our catapults have fired. I will be starting to play our turn later today.

Cheers!

Beta of WPC

[scooter]

From WPC:

Hi Scooter. We reduced the city defences and bombarded their units. We also proceeded with a number of attacks. More than we probably should have, but we have minimized the damage they can do next turn, and we killed a couple of key units, and we have more units streaming in. There are about 25 units on the roads behind the mountains and set to arrive in the turns ahead.

Can you use your chariot to take out the German chariot to the west of you (keyboard direction 4), It is at 0.2 strength, so you will probably kill it without any losses and can then retreat to the stack. Thanks!

How's things down south?

Cheers! Beta