RBP2 Lurker Discussion Thread - No Players!

[antisocialmunky]

Can we point to specific diplo messages from Sullla where the recipient took it as suspicious and unfriendly? We keep talking about that in general terms but I'd like to see the smoking guns.

Also, I wonder if Sullla has a reputation from the Apolyton demogame? It's well known that Realms Beyond won with a perfectly timed backstab, and Sullla's game writeup makes him known as the person most closely responsible. I wonder if that plants a seed of doubt, consciously or not, about diplomacy from Sullla?

That's a good question. I would classify their general tone really early on as artificially friendly or suspicious sounding because Sullla so heavily composed them as to make them sound unnatural. Many of their early communications from when the only contacts were Dantski + Jowy are good examples of this. I also remember that there are some responses from either Jowy and Dantski in their threads about Sullla not responding to IMs because Sullla wanted to take time to compose every response. Sullla also tried to leverage absolutely everything his way to reduce the chances that the farmer's gambit would be called but I don't think that was such a big deal.

So basically:
-Unnatural sounding language - Suspicious
-Long turn around times to even short emails - Suspicious

It was never really an issue of being unfriendly, rather it was an issue of being more friendly. I never got any impression that people were treating them as anything other than 'The Indians.'

But wasn't everyone faux-friendly? For example almost all of the CoW members had positively sunny relations with Spullla for the first 85 - 90 (or even 100 in Nakor's case) turns of the game if their diplomatic correspondence is to be believed!

But their communications between each other were friendly and casual rather than the highly formal letters people got form Sullla as I said above.

To be quite honest I don't think that anyone has explicitly complained about Sullla's diplo except for that one thing with Dantski and the IMs and someone who called Sullla on his anti-war stuff. It'll probably take until the game ends to get a whole picture.