Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[MWIN]

I think we said 20 last time, so saying 30 now should be ok....

[Zargon]

We're about to start taking stuff they thought at the start of the war was going to be theirs. I wonder if it's wise, from a diplomacy angle, to be asking for their help (where's their stack) in us taking their cities. We don't need their intel anyways.

The other part seems fine. I think we can give them any halfway reasonable number as an estimate. I can't imagine them doublechecking it.

[Old Harry]

I'd suggest telling WPC we've lost 13 maces - that sounds like more than "quite a few" - and I think Zargon is right about asking for info - if you tell them what units we can see maybe they'll volunteer the info instead?

On CivFr - would thanking them for gifting ivory to the Germans be cheeky? Every elephant has meant fewer longbows for us to face... This could be the start of a beautiful relationship!

Also if the message makes them stop the ivory gift then some War Elephant builds might even get aborted...

[scooter]

Sent to WPC: (I made a few adjustments)

Beta,

Thanks for the update. We took the capital of Webringen this past turn, and we should be able to continue advancing. They had quite a few longbows on hills behind good cultural defenses so we lost quite a few maces, but we were able to preserve our catapults which is really helpful. We've lost over a dozen maces so far and several other assorted units, but we drafted really hard to make this happen, so we should be okay. However, I'm anticipating running into even more resistance. If you don't mind, could you let us know if they've hung around Warendorf or pulled back? We are trying to predict where their main stacks will be. I do see that they got another GG during their turn, so they must have done more killing.

Hang in there, they are quickly losing their ability to create more units, and we've been killing a lot (30ish units so far), so I don't think they have a lot more left.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

[Sullla]

We still haven't responded to CivFr yet?! What have you guys been doing over the last day? Get on this and get back to them quickly. Make it as vague as possible, but tell them that we remain interested in mutual cooperation. We have no friends of any consequence in this game. It would be a good time to start making them.

Who cares if CivFr took forever to respond? They did, and now it's time to get back to them. We have obvious common grounds to work together, every reason to be friends and no reason to be enemies. Let's make something happen.

[scooter]

What have you guys been doing over the last day?

Worked a 12 hour day, was away from the house for all but about 1 hour yesterday, etc. I'll write something up here before the stream starts as I finally have a few minutes.


I did have about 2-3 minutes earlier to catch OT4E of CivPlayers to ask about their horse archers.

scooter
Hey OT4E, this is scooter. Quick question for you
hope you don't mind me asking, but what's the horse archer in former Incan lands up to? We don't have to be nervous do we?
OT4E
Hi. No u dont need we are just exploring
Msg me if something wrong happening there
I am not currently making turns
But i gave appropriate orders
We aint planning anything against u

That was as far as it went, and I lost touch with him after that. Whether you believe him or not, they have yet to outright lie to us all game, so I'm not sure what the explanation is here.

[scooter]

Suggested draft to CivFr. Short and to the point.

Well I hope it's going well for you. We don't have any specific plans yet for after our current war... We are basically trying to keep all of our options open, whether that's Aztec, Ottomans, or India. I think one or two of them might try to attack us, not sure, so we need to be ready for that. Do you guys plan to attack one of them in the future? We might be interested in dividing someone's land with your team.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Thoughts?

[Zargon]

I don't know that I'd mention our worries about Apolyton or Civplayers attacking us. They're smart guys, and they'd connect the dots. CP or Apolyton attacking implies that CFC is attacking us as well, because they'd never do it without CFC, and us getting dogpiled is a dream come true for CivFr, so they might take that and back off from CFC and give them a nice NAP so they can come attack us.

I don't even know what I would say to CivFr instead. I don't think we'll ever be friends, frankly. All they seem remotely interested in from us a business relationship, and I think not becoming friends with us is advantageous to them.

The world is shaping up to be one where we have no friends. Such is life when we're the leaders with half again more cities and land than the #2. We haven't yet realized our advantage, but only fools would become friends with us at this point, because if our position stabilizes, we'll be untouchable, and the best any friends of ours could do is #2 - aka losing.

[scooter]

I'm good with sending it with the "one of them might attack us" sentence removed. Agreed it isn't necessary.

I think all our deals are "business relationships" at this point. Everyone recognizes we are #1 threat to win, so it will be near impossible to get any great deals.

[Azza]

If I were on CivFR, I'd probably think the current draft sounds too ambiguous, like we're avoiding telling them who we want to attack.

I feel like we want to say something more along the lines of we want to consolidate our gains before deciding how to proceed. If they have a proposal that'd accommodate our pre-existing deals, we'd be willing to listen.

Ultimately, I think we want to put the onus on them to tell us what they might want from us, because we've got nothing from us reaching out to them, and I don't particularly see why that'd change from them.