Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[scooter]

And to address the CFC thing - there's no incentive at all for them to make an agreement. The western neighbors have a lot of it.

Chatting with Apolyton now, and MZ is basically saying they made promises to CFC that they won't break.

I think I'm going to throw one last-ditch email at CivFr for them to ignore.

[scooter]

How about this.

CivFr,

So I know you guys never respond to email, but you need some reality a little bit here. Here's what's about to happen:

1) We are defending our western front from two attackers that are ahead of us technologically. We're going to lose more cities than we have already, not much that can be done.
2) We aren't winning this game. We may survive this war, sure, but we're going to lose quite a bit more
3) Starting on T175, CFC is going to attack our other side. We have nothing there because we are defending our other front. If you see CivStats, they are going to walk in with a ton of units. They will capture all our best cities full of mature towns, and we will not be able to stop them.

The conclusion of this is CFC will easily run away with this game. They'll add 20 or so cities to their count, capturing a few valuable wonders in the process. The game will be effectively won in 20T by the team that back-stabbed you. The only way this game is salvaged is if you guys push out an army hard right now and attack CFC immediately. If you do this, and we survive, we'll put our full efforts into helping you win instead of CFC for the remainder of the game. If not, we'll all be conceding to CFC by T200, and I don't think either of us want that.

If you still care about winning the game, contact me soon.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

[NobleHelium]

Sounds good.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Agreed. Send that sucker. Don't hold your breath waiting for a reply.

[scooter]

Alright, chat with MZ of Apolyton.

scooter
"honor bound to finish what we have started" - I don't follow that point. bound to CFC?  

MZ
what I meant was that there is no written treaty between us, but we agreed to act together in order to have chance succeeding. abandoning other(s) would not be a good practice

scooter
so CFC just gets all the rewards while you guys do the hard work? that doesn't seem too fair

MZ
it is not fair, however until this is only speculation we can not act along that

scooter
given that you guys started the war 5 turns sooner than CFC will, it seems pretty reasonable to expect you would get out of it a few turns sooner too

MZ
if this happens i guess we will be just as unlucky as wpc.. as you guys leftr not a single bone for them

scooter
how do I say this delicately. they made their own massive mistakes despite my constant attempts to help them.
but I don't quite understand your insistence to stopping a runaway that is already stopped while the real one is about to blow everyone away

MZ
I am not really greedy, all i wanted to somehow restore the balance and keep us in the top. However when it came to the point that only 2-3 civs can have achance to act together we make certain promises. Those are needed so everyone makes sacrifices accordingly. Right now there is no point regreting our promises. you are still the largest while cfc is at war with maya too, though that war is not violent.

scooter
the war is completely fake and everyone knows that :P
cfc/maya
what about agreeing to keep the war active like the cfc/maya war but demilitarizing the border

MZ
there was some city razing, clashes in the beginning.. probably came to stalling since then

scooter
here's the thing. it's not even a spite thing, we genuinely cannot defend both sides at once, so we have to choose which side
we would love to turn around and give cfc a turn at fighting us head on, but you guys have to allow us to do that. even if we do that, they will take a couple cities because it takes so long to get there
but if we don't, the game will be decided in 20T guaranteed
Look. I don't really care about winning. But I really don't want CFC to win. They haven't been very honest and fair with us throughout the game. I'd rather us be throwing everything at them

MZ
I doubt this, but there is the thing that I will keep my given word even if itputs me in disadvantage. At some point it may be convenient to stop the war, but we can't. and faking it is not much better

scooter
I think you underestimate cfc's position. nobody can stop them right now. you guys don't border them and won't.
and they're neighbors with wpc which is free cities whenever they want them

MZ
I'm aware of this, and if you really let cfc get your land easily then it will cause us problem, but there is nothing we could do.. we will adapt

scooter
this isn't about us "letting them have it easily" - it's that we have no choice. what are we supposed to do exactly? what would you do in our position?

MZ
well, this kind of talk is uncomfortable for me . I don't want to suggest anything

scooter
I'm not sure I follow. I just mean - what if us, civplayers, and uciv were all hitting you at once. how could you possibly defend all 3 fronts at once? you'd have to choose right?

MZ
((tbh I "hoped" that you and maya forge a workable alliance and that would had make a much more fun scenario.. I kinda dissappointed it did not happen, but we had to work against it))

scooter
we hoped so too, but maya ignores every email of ours. they are worthless
this would be a real game if they joined in. geographically they are natural allies for us
it's too bad too, I know they are good players

MZ
I think it's logical for us to be in this war.. we can not drop now and it might be too late when we see who gets what and how easily. but until then we must stick to the course

scooter
Oh I think it's logical too. But I think what's logical is that you accomplish 2 goals - taking us down enough pegs so we're out of the lead and getting a few cities for yourself. and our offer woudl accomplish boht of those for you
I think after you capture a few more cities it won't be so logical to be in it. I'm just trying to skip the step in between where we both lose tons of units in the process

MZ
I could say we hoped that you easily abandon the incan cities and defend your core land, but I can't suggeswt you to do this. It wouldn't be brave of us if we got frightened by your army and rather drop from the war

scooter
honestly, we would be happy to do that if we knew you would stop once you took those rather than move into our core too
but the reason I'm coming to you about this now is because we don't have railroads, so it will take very long to get to the other side. if we're going to defend our core, heading that way needs to happen now

MZ
you must understand that I can't make any deal with you, no promise etc

scooter
I guess, but we both want the same thing here. There has to be some way it can work

MZ
would go against what i think is honorable
I will think about this situation a bit and discuss with the others. We were not consistent about our goals in this war, but we had to agree to give in a lot and don't abandon the others. all made this promise. also that none of us shouldget the bad end.. however I know it's easier to say this than to do it.. talking about possible spoils and such

scooter
Yeah I understand. I do appreciate your honor in sticking to deals. I'm just warning you that CFC does not share that same sense
they are the same team that told CivFr they could run a great merchant mission, then at the last minute declared war to sabotage the mission. they aren't very honest
and it's showing in that they only agreed to do this once you guys did all the hard work and drew our army over to your side

MZ
I heard maya demanded half of zulu land and threatened war otherwise

scooter
they demanded that after CFC sabotaged the great merchant. they wanted to be compensated for losing their trade mission

MZ
I did not hear about this great merchant thing, cfc said maya demanded too much so they declared war just to show they can not be threatened. Btw we had our dispute with maya too.. i know diplomacy is very hard with them

scooter
yeah. the reason maya is so mad and unwilling to sign peace is because they had their trade mission ruined by cfc

MZ
just as with uciv.. when i finally contacted with their diplomat they didn't even know where is our empire.. it was not many turns ago

scooter
cfc actually declared, surrounded it with military units, so maya used it on a golden age instead for fear that cfc would kill it
hah! that's funny. not very surprising either
you can only imagine how out of things WPC is

MZ
at least they are persistent
I was not too happy learning they join the war

scooter
UCiv?

MZ
wpc

scooter
join the war on Inca?

MZ
yes

scooter
yeah. well if we hadn't attacked inca I actually think inca would have completely wiped out wpc pretty soon

MZ
anyway I will have some discussion with the others and also my teammates (once our hacked website comes back to life) We willdsicuss this cfc thing, but don't think i was not aware already. I was hesitant joining this war, but as i said later I saw it necessary

scooter
website got hacked? sorry to hear that
that's no fun

MZ
check out and hit pause play
http://apolyton.net/
actually looks funny

scooter
and yeah, okay. just wanted to make it clear that all we really want is an opportunity to fight cfc, but you guys have to work with us little to make that happen
wow!
crazy
(about the website)
Is that supposed to be a dog or a fox or something? haha

MZ
now I have to go, cu

scooter
bye

Shrug. Basically he agrees with me that some sort of agreement would be good for them, but CFC locked them into not leaving the war early, and he's insistent on honoring that even if it means game over.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

What did they think would happen if they let CFC sit out the first five turns of the war? For all of their apparent tactical/civ gameplay skill, they didn't think this through very well regarding the most likely outcome.

[scooter]

What did they think would happen if they let CFC sit out the first five turns of the war? For all of their apparent tactical/civ gameplay skill, they didn't think this through very well regarding the most likely outcome.

Yeah I don't think they thought that one through very well. Sigh.

[mostly_harmless]

Fine on the CivFr eMail. Nothing to lose there.

I am amazed at your energy to keep up a polite conversation in that MZ chat!

Would have loved to hear from CivPlayers. Ah, well.

mh

[scooter]

Ok, sent the CivFr draft. Why not.

[MWIN]

Can we at least check what CFC wants for peace? Otherwise, this is GG anyway...