Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[antisocialmunky]

Become someone elses vassal and force us to waste time in a WPC war?

[scooter]

So, I've been thinking. I know none of us like CFC, but the reality is they're our neighbors, they're easy to get in contact with, and I think they're generally predictable. CivFr in contrast has completely ignored us. As much as they would be the more ideal allies, civs that don't respond to emails are never going to make good friends.

So don't shoot me, but I'm going to suggest we try to work out a deal with CFC. The Twinkletoes post a few days ago got me thinking, and with the recent revelation of CivFr razing a CFC city, I think we should consider at least opening negotiations with CFC. Here's a vague outline.

1) CFC is not far behind us in terms of land like they've insisted previously. As we saw in Sullla's breakdown in the turn thread - they are 5 cities and just 6k beakers behind us, and a big chunk of that 6k is Liberalism which was only real important for the free tech. So we can remind them that the gap between us has been narrowedly down significantly due to the fact that their target was so weak.

2) They're in a war with CivFr right now, which is real enough that CivFr razed a city. They can't afford to be in a two front conflict with us joining in. We will give them a safe border, and they can use that to either take on CivFr, OR wipe out the fairly weak UCiv team. The former may be a necessity, the latter may be attractive to them.

3) If they complain about fairness of the deal, we could internally agree on giving/loaning/selling them some units for conflict. We would NOT offer this up front of course, but they're going to want to bargain with us, and this could be our reserve bargaining chip. Like, after the Incan war, what are we even going to do with these Maces? They'll be outdated and not really worth upgraded. This might be a nice use.

4) In return, we get a long NAP with them, meaning our only dangerous neighbor is out of the picture. I'm thinking T250. That's aggressive and risky, but it's betting we can develop better than they can, which is a good bet. (Maybe T225 will be more realistic, but we're going to want to aim high with CFC and work down from there.) This would let us do whatever we want. Right now, we probably need a round of infrastructure pretty badly, and we need to repair our economy. We do that, get ourselves Cavs, then run over any one of our neighbors, and CFC can't do anything about it. Apolyton might be a nice target with their well-developed cities and lack of military, maybe CivPlayers, or even WPC is an option if they give us grief over the spoils split. Right now we are pretty tied up, but a CFC NAP is the one thing that lets us do whatever we want.

5) Resource gifts could be on the table, but nothing serious. I'd prefer to not offer this at all.


Anyway, I'd like to hear what the thoughts are here. To be clear, I'm interested in "yes we should at least begin pursuing this and see where it goes" or "this is not worth pursuing at all because _________." Also keep in mind that pursuing it does not force us to actually commit to such a thing, but I think we have an opportunity here since CFC might have bitten off more than they could chew against CivFr. Also, CFC may just flat reject this, in which case nothing is lost. Except for my time . The reality is there are 3 teams with strong chances of winning - us, CFC, CivFr. Apolyton doesn't have enough land, and they have no good targets to hit so they will fade. We want to make absolutely sure if that "Big Three" comes down to a 2v1, we are on the correct side. I think that means we would be foolish not to at least feel out CFC more than we have.

TL;DR version: we seek longer NAP with CFC, giving them safe border to fight their wars. Point out that the land/tech gap between us has drastically narrowed, so we shouldn't need to give them so much. Be willing to give them some minor military aid (after the Incan war), which might help us anyway since our unit costs are massive and the units will obsolete soon enough.

[NobleHelium]

Well it might be worth pursuing, but I think we're past the moral event horizon with CFC and I don't think we can trust them moving forward. So I'm not sure how much value a NAP will actually have, especially if we have to pay for it.

[scooter]

Suggested draft to WPC. It's very talky, but that seems to make them happy so I can do that.

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

THoughts? I'd like to send early this evening (within 3ish hours)

[scooter]

Well it might be worth pursuing, but I think we're past the moral event horizon with CFC and I don't think we can trust them moving forward. So I'm not sure how much value a NAP will actually have, especially if we have to pay for it.

I'm not sure what you mean by moral event horizon. We've both stretched the previous NAP, but nobody has broken agreements. I would just suggest that in the case some sort of deal materializes, we expend more effort on closing loopholes. And of course, the value of the NAP depends on the actual price. A light payment would totally be worth it for us, a significant payment would not be.

[NobleHelium]

I was expecting a more severe "oh look you're being paranoid" post.

I'm saying that I think we're past the point of wanting to communicate and deal with CFC, because one they're very annoying, and two we can't trust them to not warp the deal in the future. Nobody wants to spend a week combing over the agreement to close loopholes - we don't get paid $300/hour like lawyers do.

[fluffyflyingpig]

CFC is not worth paying off. We have a defensible border. The only threat from them is if they organize a dogpile, they are not stupid enough to attack on their own. If we can stagger NAP extensions with other teams, CFC has no teeth. CFC looks like the scariest team out there at the moment after murdering the Spanish.

Get NAPs with anyone else except CFC. We need hit people up NOW, while CFC looks scary for killing off Spain.

[scooter]

I was expecting a more severe "oh look you're being paranoid" post.

There's a difference between ridiculous paranoia and reasonable concerns . Your concerns are obviously reasonable.

I'm saying that I think we're past the point of wanting to communicate and deal with CFC, because one they're very annoying, and two we can't trust them to not warp the deal in the future. Nobody wants to spend a week combing over the agreement to close loopholes - we don't get paid $300/hour like lawyers do.

Then find me a more attractive alternative. Because here are the facts.

1) CivFr ignores emails
2) Apolyton refuses NAPs with us because they fear we will just use them to swallow somebody else. Which is true
3) CivPlayers is resistant to NAPs with us because they apparently have a loose understanding with CFC.
4) WPC is our vassal, but they're OUR vassal. Plus, invading them while having 3 other un-NAPed neighbors would be foolish.
5) We do need a period of peace to convert our lands into an actually good economy, because ours sucks right now.
6) CFC is not quite our equal, but they are close enough that they need to be taken very seriously

Given all this, our best-case scenario would be a long NAP with CFC if it could be done reasonably. If you can find me a more attractive alternative, I'm all ears.

"Get NAPs with anyone else except CFC" made me laugh - as if we can just snap fingers and our neighbors would suddenly change their minds.

[Ellimist]

We should avoid tying ourselves any closer to CFC because we can't trust them to ever do anything that actively benefits us. not only that, but our bargaining position with them is perpetually terrible, even when it ought to be good we throw it away.

They are predictable, yes, but only because we've repeatedly given them incentives to act against our interests, and they keep reacting in the "correct" and logical way according to our mistakes.

Maybe in some scenario they'd be a good ally to have, but not for us.

[sooooo]

THoughts? I'd like to send early this evening (within 3ish hours)

Looks fine to me.