Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[kalin]

scooter: I like it. I would remove this:

"I do think you should be OK to sign OB with the Germans if you're careful."

Kalin

[scooter]

Agree that it should be discussed at CFC - this is just an attempt to get them on our side before we bring it up at CFC (plus, they did vote against it last time). I can't quite tell if the comments are meant to imply we should avoid that last paragraph.

I'll probably remove the sentence kalin suggested as well.

[kjn]

Yeah, agree with Kalin on the OB sentence. For our purposes, we don't really care if CFC have OB with the Germans or not - it's WPC who is going to look askance at it.

I think it's fine to prepare the ground before hand about a turn timer reduction - getting a very quick agreement or two can be quite important in moving a proposal forward, and back room dealings are quite important in negotiations.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Good response. Leave in the bit about shortening the turn timer. Feel free to remove "all joking aside". Also, feel free to quote Sullla verbatim about the Germans trolling everyone. You may want to add an F-bomb adjective before the word "Germans". If you disagree with these last three suggestions, I defer to your leadership in this correspondence. If you agree, hit send!

I also agree with kalin about removing the sentence about signing OB if you're careful, but I don't think it is important either way.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Good response. Leave in the bit about shortening the turn timer. Feel free to remove "all joking aside". Also, feel free to quote Sullla verbatim about the Germans trolling everyone. You may want to add an F-bomb adjective before the word "Germans". If you disagree with these last three suggestions, I defer to your leadership in this correspondence. If you agree, hit send!

I also agree with kalin about removing the sentence about signing OB if you're careful, but I don't think it is important either way.

I like the way Boldly thinks. More f-bombs. The Germans should hereinafter be dubbed the trolling-German-fuckers at every possible mention.

For instance, to WPC:

How is your war going with the trolling-German-fuckers?

Or to the Germans:

Dear trolling-German-fuckers,

How is your war with WPC going? Are you close to dying in a mattress fire yet?

[scooter]

Revised draft:

Caledorn/CFC,

Thanks for the message. As I said in my confirmation email, it seems we're thinking along the same lines. We're happy to accept the NAP extension & EP spending provisions. Also, pass on my personal thanks to YossarianLives for ensuring that our scout arrived at your borders safely.

Our take on the war is that WPC's invasion has been ground down to a halt by the German team. We suspect that we'll either see some sort of counter-attack or peace treaty soon, but the reality is we're just guessing and attempting to read the graphs. We've been able to avoid tensions despite having OB with both of them by just being up-front and telling them both we intend to remain neutral. I think both teams are nervous that we might help one side, but we're doing our best to stay out of the conflict right now.

(Of course, you could always tell them that they can have Open Borders with you when they speed up their turn pace a little bit . )

Joking of course on that, but what do you guys think of another push for a shorter timer pretty soon? The last push was probably bad timing with the holidays and many players being busy, but most people should be getting back into their normal routines soon if they aren't already. For instance, last turn the German team logged in, played their turn, logged out, then we all waited 36 hours as they didn't end turn or even log in again. My main concern is I don't want teams to get bored. One turn every couple days is slow, but it's sustainable. Once you start hitting 3-4 days for a turn, I fear teams will get bored and the game might really struggle to continue into the late-game. Our team and probably your team is big enough to handle a few dropouts due to boredom, but I fear some of the smaller teams may not be so fortunate. What's your team's thought on this? I know you might have differing opinions on your team, I just wanted to try to gauge how you guys feel privately rather than publicly first.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Changes made:
1) Removed sentence kalin suggested.
2) Added a sentence in the last paragraph about the last German turn

The rest I left the same. Any objections? Pretty soon I'm headed out for most of the night, and if there's no serious objections I'll send it when I get home (7 hours or so).

Good response. Leave in the bit about shortening the turn timer. Feel free to remove "all joking aside". Also, feel free to quote Sullla verbatim about the Germans trolling everyone. You may want to add an F-bomb adjective before the word "Germans". If you disagree with these last three suggestions, I defer to your leadership in this correspondence. If you agree, hit send!

I also agree with kalin about removing the sentence about signing OB if you're careful, but I don't think it is important either way.

I like the way Boldly thinks. More f-bombs. The Germans should hereinafter be dubbed the trolling-German-fuckers at every possible mention.

I'm not sure how serious these suggestions are, but while they would be sort of funny, it's just not my style. If this game gets to a point where it's so ridiculous that the team actually wants to do this, I'll hand the reins over to someone more capable.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

...snip...

I like the way Boldly thinks. More f-bombs. The Germans should hereinafter be dubbed the trolling-German-fuckers at every possible mention.

For instance, to WPC:

How is your war going with the trolling-German-fuckers?

Or to the Germans:

Dear trolling-German-fuckers,

How is your war with WPC going? Are you close to dying in a mattress fire yet?

Revised draft:

Caledorn/CFC,

Thanks for the message. As I said in my confirmation email, it seems we're thinking along the same lines. We're happy to accept the NAP extension & EP spending provisions. Also, pass on my personal thanks to YossarianLives for ensuring that our scout arrived at your borders safely.

Our take on the war is that WPC's invasion has been ground down to a halt by the German team. We suspect that we'll either see some sort of counter-attack or peace treaty soon, but the reality is we're just guessing and attempting to read the graphs. We've been able to avoid tensions despite having OB with both of them by just being up-front and telling them both we intend to remain neutral. I think both teams are nervous that we might help one side, but we're doing our best to stay out of the conflict right now.

(Of course, you could always tell them that they can have Open Borders with you when they speed up their turn pace a little bit . )

Joking of course on that, but what do you guys think of another push for a shorter timer pretty soon? The last push was probably bad timing with the holidays and many players being busy, but most people should be getting back into their normal routines soon if they aren't already. For instance, last turn the German team logged in, played their turn, logged out, then we all waited 36 hours as they didn't end turn or even log in again. My main concern is I don't want teams to get bored. One turn every couple days is slow, but it's sustainable. Once you start hitting 3-4 days for a turn, I fear teams will get bored and the game might really struggle to continue into the late-game. Our team and probably your team is big enough to handle a few dropouts due to boredom, but I fear some of the smaller teams may not be so fortunate. What's your team's thought on this? I know you might have differing opinions on your team, I just wanted to try to gauge how you guys feel privately rather than publicly first.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Changes made:
1) Removed sentence kalin suggested.
2) Added a sentence in the last paragraph about the last German turn

The rest I left the same. Any objections? Pretty soon I'm headed out for most of the night, and if there's no serious objections I'll send it when I get home (7 hours or so).

Good response. Leave in the bit about shortening the turn timer. Feel free to remove "all joking aside". Also, feel free to quote Sullla verbatim about the Germans trolling everyone. You may want to add an F-bomb adjective before the word "Germans". If you disagree with these last three suggestions, I defer to your leadership in this correspondence. If you agree, hit send!

I also agree with kalin about removing the sentence about signing OB if you're careful, but I don't think it is important either way.

I like the way Boldly thinks. More f-bombs. The Germans should hereinafter be dubbed the trolling-German-fuckers at every possible mention.

I'm not sure how serious these suggestions are, but while they would be sort of funny, it's just not my style. If this game gets to a point where it's so ridiculous that the team actually wants to do this, I'll hand the reins over to someone more capable.

Quasi-serious. We've been very polite dealing with a trolling team. Or, if not trolls, highly inconsiderate, incompetent players who have an odd need for group hugs (I mean group consensus), despite not having apparently much of a group. I'm generally pretty direct, but in this case I'm being ludicrous to emphasize how nice we've been about the clock issue. Not that we can unilaterally do as we please in a multi-team, of course. However, sometimes humor meets with success where logic fails. I'm just trying to move the needle in the direction of getting the timer shortened so we can get this game finished before CIV becomes CVI.

If the game ever degenerates to name-calling as I've suggested, we could flame-war back and forth for a second or two (I nominate ASM and Xenu for over the top antics and trolling and Noble for pedantic counter-punching of flawed argumentation by the opponent if this should ever be necessary ), but by then we should just stop playing. No one wins when it gets to that point, and the game wouldn't be fun anymore.

[antisocialmunky]

I forget but aren't we allowed to have public threads? If so it is probably better to complain in that than in official diplo cables. Otherwise it might come over as offensive rather than casual griping. Even chat would be better.

I guess we could be cheaky and rename our civ to something like "Turn Trolled by Germans" to voice our displeasure.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Holy wall of text, Batman! Boldly, does your computer let you use a spoiler tag?

...snip...

I like the way Boldly thinks. More f-bombs. The Germans should hereinafter be dubbed the trolling-German-fuckers at every possible mention.

For instance, to WPC:

How is your war going with the trolling-German-fuckers?

Or to the Germans:

Dear trolling-German-fuckers,

How is your war with WPC going? Are you close to dying in a mattress fire yet?

Revised draft:

Caledorn/CFC,

Thanks for the message. As I said in my confirmation email, it seems we're thinking along the same lines. We're happy to accept the NAP extension & EP spending provisions. Also, pass on my personal thanks to YossarianLives for ensuring that our scout arrived at your borders safely.

Our take on the war is that WPC's invasion has been ground down to a halt by the German team. We suspect that we'll either see some sort of counter-attack or peace treaty soon, but the reality is we're just guessing and attempting to read the graphs. We've been able to avoid tensions despite having OB with both of them by just being up-front and telling them both we intend to remain neutral. I think both teams are nervous that we might help one side, but we're doing our best to stay out of the conflict right now.

(Of course, you could always tell them that they can have Open Borders with you when they speed up their turn pace a little bit . )

Joking of course on that, but what do you guys think of another push for a shorter timer pretty soon? The last push was probably bad timing with the holidays and many players being busy, but most people should be getting back into their normal routines soon if they aren't already. For instance, last turn the German team logged in, played their turn, logged out, then we all waited 36 hours as they didn't end turn or even log in again. My main concern is I don't want teams to get bored. One turn every couple days is slow, but it's sustainable. Once you start hitting 3-4 days for a turn, I fear teams will get bored and the game might really struggle to continue into the late-game. Our team and probably your team is big enough to handle a few dropouts due to boredom, but I fear some of the smaller teams may not be so fortunate. What's your team's thought on this? I know you might have differing opinions on your team, I just wanted to try to gauge how you guys feel privately rather than publicly first.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Changes made:
1) Removed sentence kalin suggested.
2) Added a sentence in the last paragraph about the last German turn

The rest I left the same. Any objections? Pretty soon I'm headed out for most of the night, and if there's no serious objections I'll send it when I get home (7 hours or so).

Good response. Leave in the bit about shortening the turn timer. Feel free to remove "all joking aside". Also, feel free to quote Sullla verbatim about the Germans trolling everyone. You may want to add an F-bomb adjective before the word "Germans". If you disagree with these last three suggestions, I defer to your leadership in this correspondence. If you agree, hit send!

I also agree with kalin about removing the sentence about signing OB if you're careful, but I don't think it is important either way.

I like the way Boldly thinks. More f-bombs. The Germans should hereinafter be dubbed the trolling-German-fuckers at every possible mention.

I'm not sure how serious these suggestions are, but while they would be sort of funny, it's just not my style. If this game gets to a point where it's so ridiculous that the team actually wants to do this, I'll hand the reins over to someone more capable.

Quasi-serious. We've been very polite dealing with a trolling team. Or, if not trolls, highly inconsiderate, incompetent players who have an odd need for group hugs (I mean group consensus), despite not having apparently much of a group. I'm generally pretty direct, but in this case I'm being ludicrous to emphasize how nice we've been about the clock issue. Not that we can unilaterally do as we please in a multi-team, of course. However, sometimes humor meets with success where logic fails. I'm just trying to move the needle in the direction of getting the timer shortened so we can get this game finished before CIV becomes CVI.

If the game ever degenerates to name-calling as I've suggested, we could flame-war back and forth for a second or two (I nominate ASM and Xenu for over the top antics and trolling and Noble for pedantic counter-punching of flawed argumentation by the opponent if this should ever be necessary ), but by then we should just stop playing. No one wins when it gets to that point, and the game wouldn't be fun anymore.

Anyway, regarding the actual point,

If the game ever degenerates to name-calling as I've suggested, we could flame-war back and forth for a second or two (I nominate ASM and Xenu for over the top antics and trolling and Noble for pedantic counter-punching of flawed argumentation by the opponent if this should ever be necessary ), but by then we should just stop playing. No one wins when it gets to that point, and the game wouldn't be fun anymore.

Wouldn't you want Noble to do pedantic counter groin-punching instead? That sounds more painful and less productive. Trolling is about being as much of an ass as you can while contributing as little as possible to the thread. Wait, that sounds a lot like my contribution to this game. (I should have posted this in the rant thread instead of the diplo thread in that case!)

OK, so game related, very tangentially diplomacy related and therefore thread quasi-appropriate: We're currently on pace to win the game on turn 254 by my extremely precise scientific calculation. At the current game pace that will be on Febtober 30th of 2014. (SPOILER: We win by an orgy of fire.) However, if we initiate a PYFT war and kill the "trolling-German-fuckers" we will win the game on turn 281, which is 27 turns later. However, my calculations put that win down on the calendar on Febtober 3rd, which is as you can all see much sooner. So we win later in Civ years, but sooner in human years, which is how many of us calculate the passing of time. This is a scientific argument and is probably infallible. Therefore we should run a PYFT war against the T-G-Fs, whenever it's possible. Um. So diplomacy related. We're going to need a coalition of the willing to pound these clock abusers into the ground, just to speed things along. Crackalack, let's get our allies of convenience lined up!

[relurk]

[scooter]

Sent my latest draft off to CFC.