Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[mostly_harmless]

In my opinion, future ISDG rammifications shouldn't factor into it much unless we are blatantly cheating or breaking diplomatic stuff.

Just one comment on this:
It was in the beginning of this ISDG when one team mentioned that they remember RB braking a NAP in the Apolyton game.
Which we did not, because the Spanish broke the deal first, right? Of course it nicely suited us back then to have such an out clause.

If we follow the WPC deal to the letter but not the spirit and leave them complaining, I am pretty sure that word will go around before the next ISDG.

After all, look on how tainted some of our posts are about other civs, based on their past performance.

So these things do matter to some extent. Do we care? I don't know.

mh

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

what about offering WPC other things as "recompense" for cities?  I use quotes because I'm trying to think of things that are low cost for us but WPC may still see as beneficial enough to smooth things over:

1) Extra resources
2) Excess military
3) Gold  Just kidding.
4) Other non-tangible help

Extra resources are the easiest to give out, especially if we have enough excess that trades are unlikely to happen.  As I've seen it, resource trades aren't really happening anyway, so those extra resoures aren't doing anything for us right now.

Military may be tricky, but it depends on what we have after the German war.  We've been saying how maces are largely useless for us to continue to produce; would we also have an excess after the war?  We wouldn't want to give them too much to be a threat, but we really can't put a number on that until after the German war ends.

Let's tell them to set up an espionage economy and tell them we'll never run counter missions against them. We're an open buffet, so chow down! This is probably the best economic contribution we can make without harming ourselves in the process, like gifting gold, etc. Having them run the espionage slider could give second hand us passive benefits as well, like city visibility (etc) on other civs.

I like the idea of gifting WPC some maces at the conclusion of the war. We won't need them all and won't want to continue paying support costs for them, and it will add some height to the WPC speed bump when someone else comes to run them over. If WPC can get a couple of units in position to tag along with our stack and can make the killing blow on a couple cities that we attack down, let's do that. If they can't, they must understand that we aim to win this game, and dragging out the war and the attending unit costs, war weariness, etc, are dragging us down.

The bottom line is that good diplomatic relations with the Germans (better than their relations with WPC, at least) is why we have steamrolled through this war so quickly. We would have killed them eventually, but with much heavier casualties if they had chosen to make us pay the butcher's bill rather than WPC. I would like to avoid sticking it to WPC if we can. You never know when you'll need something. But, if they can't get in position to take the kill shot on a couple of cities, they have to be prepared to take nothing from this war.

Maybe let's take Wilhemshaven and then have them put a chariot and a couple spears on the hill 2N of Warendorf. We beat Warendorf into dust and have them kill the last mangled defender, then we rinse and repeat for the other tundra cities. This is based on the assumption that we don't care so much if we lose a few maces (otherwise we wouldn't consider gifting some to WPC).

[antisocialmunky]

Well, we shouldn't conflate pref metrics with diplo reputation. Most of our analysis has been reviewing the past performance of the various teams at civ.

[SevenSpirits]

As proposer of the message we sent to WPC asking them what we could do to make them feel they'd been treated fairly, let me post my take on it.

RB: We aren't required to, but we'd like to make you happy. What would it take?
WPC: If you gave us all four remaining german cities, we would still not be happy.

Big failure to be reasonable on WPC's part. I guess their prior reasonableness was in large part wilful ignorance about their awful position. So unless they come back with something much more reasonable in their next message or the next time we chat, I suggest we don't worry about meeting their demands.

What I do want to do is follow the letter and spirit of our deal with them. We promised:

1) We won't race you for the cities in your half of the land split.
2) We will prioritize capture of cities in our half over cities in your half.
3) We will share any useful intel that we come across
4) And of course, we will be sincerely rooting for your speedy progress and success.

3 and 4 are true and taken care of. 2 is true and taken care of. Only remaining point is to not race them for cities in their half of the land split. So that city that they are besieging: we are not to race them for it. IMO that means that as long as their main army is besieging the city and/or they claim their main army is headed that way, we should not capture and keep it. On the other hand we may still kill defenders to help WPC, and with WPC's permission we could raze it for them to replace.

I suggest we tentatively plan on letting them capture that city, and taking the other three for ourselves. But details (e.g. additional maceman gifts) are to be worked out with WPC over chat, and it needs to be clear that we get some appreciation for our kindnesses.

[scooter]

I don't think how we treat WPC is going to influence our diplo with other teams one iota, so that's not worth giving up cities for. Diplo will be decided by geopolitics, not by the complaints of a dying civ.

If that's the case then i say we take everything

+1 to pindicator. I'm slightly less confident than novice, but if his premise is true, then absolutely we take everything. And I'm coming around on his premise anyway the more I think about it.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I agree with pretty much everything you just wrote, Seven. There is simply very little that we can do to make them truly happy about the outcome of this war. They just need to know that we need to end the war as quickly as possible so as to recover economic lost ground to other teams. IF WPC can get units in a position to get the killing blow, fine, give them the tundra cities/Warendorf. But, if they can't do that in a reasonable time frame (which would be, what, with no delay at all to us continuing to take cities? This is up for debate) then we continue taking cities until the war is over. We state it is our preference that we be able to assist our ally in getting something from the war, but winning the game is our overall objective, so we can't wait too long for them to get their act together. How long that is is something we need to decide. I personally don't want to wait any turns. The onus is on them to get a unit in position to get the killing blow.

[scooter]

Yes, my feelings more or less line up with Seven as well at this point.

[darrelljs]

As to reputation impact in any future ISDG, recall that we brutally stabbed Imperio in the Apolyton demogame, and yet the Spanish still ended this game trying to give us all their money. Granted they are...different, and might not be aware that this RB and that RB are the same .

Darrell

[Sian]

Those with the memory to hate us the next time an ISDG comes around, is probably those predominantly already is either hating us already and/or pragmatic and invested enough to admit (at least internally) that they'd do the same if they were in our shoes.

At the end of it ... sure, if they can get some units to trail us grabbing a few weak cities (which would be neglect-able in the greater scheme for us) then let them have it, if they can't, tough luck ... if they're interested they're welcome to inherit some of our outdated troopers (and the maintenance cost) to make them an (ever so slightly) tougher speed bump and/or a forward warning post for us

With a fair share (or offering such) of constructive critique about how they blundered the game. I'm sure we could collect a fairly lengthy cache of suggestions about how they went wrong and how to fix it

[SevenSpirits]

Personally I don't care if some future RB ISDG team has diplomatic troubles.