Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[mostly_harmless]

Chat with Flunky (Germans) in-game:

They were "worried" where we intend to go with that spear. I told them we just wanted to check on their city, whether it would be the capital and that we probably won't head further north but rather west.
To their west there is tundra, desert and mountains and Lizzy and Zulus.

they asked for a road connection and I told them we will be connected via the river soon. And that Sailing is on the list.
Their Sailing is not coming any time soon, he indicated.

Told them, that there are quite a lot barbs around. Their 4 scouting Quechuas are fine apparently.

Then some chat about their team. In theory they had 60 people at the beginning. But tahthas dwindled down to just 3 last turn. After the reload, activity has picked up again.

the war is not really war, but more like stand off in the forests.

Then some attempt on understanding how the mod handles the in game timer. Since WPC has played pretty quickly, the Germans cannot rely on a long timer "extension". But it seem their in game timer shows the same time like ours until everybody has played.

mh

[kjn]

Good you're making diplomatic progress with the Germans, m_h!

I think we can tell them that if they can road the tile 1S or 1SE of their jungled pigs they will get a road connection to our land. Worms will expand to third-ring borders on end of turn 80 anyway, so then they will get visibility of our gems.

Another idea for how we can keep the Germans happy with us if they complain about the gems, is that we can offer to chop the jungled pigs for them. Not sure if we will have the worker actions to spare for it or if they are going for IW right now.

[NobleHelium]

You should have told them that when the timer reads 24 hours left it actually means 4 hours left.

[scooter]

Glancing at all the comments - yep I'm in full agreement with the consensus on how to respond to WPC. I'll post a draft for review tomorrow morning.

[scooter]

Suggested draft to WPC. Just trying to be nice and not commit to anything since we couldn't even if we wanted to.

Tatu,

Thanks for the message, glad the war is going OK so far! First off, we do not see anybody gifting horses to the German team. We definitely would not do that - we have a NAP with you and helping the German team fight you would be an unfair thing to do. Because you have contact with both our team and the German team, you can confirm this for yourself on the F4 screen. You have to know both parties in a resource trade for it to be visible on F4, so it's possible that a team we have not met is gifting them horses. Hopefully that helps your investigation!

Unfortunately, I'm sorry to say we cannot provide military aid on this war. We do also have a NAP with the German team, and we intend to honor that NAP despite our desire for a faster game pace. I strongly believe we should honor these deals at all costs, so in this case we can't do anything more than quietly cheer from the sidelines. I hope you can understand our desire to play honorably.

Our game is going well, and we've having a lot of fun. We lost our first scouting unit to a bad dice roll on an animal attack which slowed us down a bit, but we have managed to recover so far. Unfortunate things happen sometimes. I hope you guys get better combat results than us! Do let me know if I can do anything further to help.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Fire away.

[mostly_harmless]

Sounds good.

mh

[kjn]

I'm a little unsure about the "I strongly believe we should honor these deals [NAPs] at all costs" wording. Not with the spirit of it, but if misses to show that we view NAPs and other agreements as two-way streets - the other party needs to make a good-faith effort to uphold their part of their bargain.

Not sure about the best way to communicate this properly though.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I agree. Thanks, Scooter.

[Old Harry]

- we have a NAP with you and helping the German team fight you would be an unfair thing to do.

could read:

- we have a NAP with you and we think helping the German team against you would breach that agreement.

Otherwise great as normal.

[kalin]

@scooter: It sounds good, I would cut:

I strongly believe we should honor these deals at all costs

and just say:

In this case we can't do anything more than quietly cheer from the sidelines.

I think the statement that we should honor NAPs is implied.

Kalin