Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[kalin]

Here's an idea I had. We could offer WPC protection in the future. We don't want them to be eaten by someone else, and that would give them a reasonable assurance of survival. Not sure how to best word this, but something like: "the reality is that either of your neighbors can conquer you with relative ease and one or two more former German cities would not help you that much".

I am not sure if this is worth our effort, but having a friendly WPC as a safe border beats having CFC or Univers. Also, if we announce publicly this protection that would be a strong deterrent.

What do you all think of this idea?

Kalin

I don't think I've seen any reply to my post above. Is that something reasonable to offer?

Kalin

[Tyrmith]

Here's an idea I had. We could offer WPC protection in the future. We don't want them to be eaten by someone else, and that would give them a reasonable assurance of survival. Not sure how to best word this, but something like: "the reality is that either of your neighbors can conquer you with relative ease and one or two more former German cities would not help you that much".

I am not sure if this is worth our effort, but having a friendly WPC as a safe border beats having CFC or Univers. Also, if we announce publicly this protection that would be a strong deterrent.

What do you all think of this idea?

Kalin

I don't think I've seen any reply to my post above. Is that something reasonable to offer?

Kalin

Considering we're apparently kicking around the idea of running over them with cavs, probably not a good idea. :P

[Bigger]

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

im skeptical that there ever will be a future RB ISDG, tbh. do you think there will be intersite interest in civ4 4-5 years from now?

[Shoot the Moon]

My 2c is to keep in mind that we aren't likely to even want all of the remaining cities. I'd honestly prefer to give those tundra cities (scooter, definitely call them the "northern" cities or something nicer when talking to WPC though ) than to keep them. Does anyone here honestly actually want those cities?

The other two cities are a different matter obviously.

[novice]

Do we have any current screenshots showing the remaining cities? They're referred to offhand as a couple of weak cities, but my feeling is that four cities is a pretty big deal regardless.

[Sian]

Given that Civ IV is still going strong nearly 3 years after Civ V aired, and the next iteration will probably be out in some 2(?) years (the games arrived in 91, 96, 01, 05, 10 as of yet)... it depends on what a Civ VI is worth ... will they follow in the track of V or will they backtrack to IV and try another evolving the game off another evolutionary branch (probably a coin toss since V got somewhat mediocre feedback from the old guard) ... Anyone's guess really

That said, i don't see why a future ISDG can't be done ...if it will be in the Civ IV format or Civ VI ... ehh ...

[kjn]

Huge-ass overview picture:

Westheim has cows/pigs but not much else. Wesselburen has deer, furs, and crabs, so makes for a decent fishing village (similar to Let It Snow, but less grassland). Warendorf has a cow, and a bunch of shared flood plains with Wittenberge. Wilhelmshaven I think has pigs, and shared copper with Wismar.

So while the cities are worthwhile, they're not particularly interesting either.

[novice]

@shoot, I think we do want the cities. Soon, new cities won't increase our empire-wide maintenance costs anymore, so each new city will pay for itself quite easily, what with the GLH and all. So we want as many cities as possible to really start profiting from our (expensive) horizontal expansion.

[Sullla]

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.

novice says everything that needs to be said on this in two sentences. I'll requote on another page for repeated emphasis. CFC, CivFr, Apolyton, and anyone else isn't going to change their diplomacy based on whether we jump through hoops to give WPC a couple extra cities. They don't care. They'll do what's best for their civ regardless. And we shouldn't care either.

That said, here's another way to look at the situation. What would the future borders look like in this area with some of the plans we've been floating around? I went ahead and drew that up, using an overview screenshot from a couple turns ago.



We have captured Wien, Wittenberge, and Wismar. None of these cities factor into the debate; they are already ours and remain so. This illustration here shows the borders with WPC in yellow if we capture and keep all of the remaining German cities. The three little white X tiles around the marble would be out of our borders at first, due to third ring culture from Huron River, but would go over to us eventually.

This setup gives us a strong defensive position on our future eastern front. Warendorf is protected from two movers on the diagonal by the peak tile NE-NE of the city, and it would eventually gain control of the two tiles to the south of that peak when the city expands borders down the road. Warendorf in time would be safe from two movers, allowing us to concentrate our defenses in Willhelmshaven. There's also a lot of strong cottage and food tiles in this region that we would take over. This is my preferred situation by far.

Now let's see some alternatives. Here's giving WPC control over Warendorf:



It should be immediately clear how much more difficult it is to defend this position. We have three different cities that are all exposed from the Warendorf salient, and we would theoretically have to cover all of them. Now WPC is obviously no threat, but what if they gave another team Open Borders and let them amass units in Warendorf? It would be a nightmare playing defense. Outside of striking first to raze that city, there is almost nothing we could do here. We also give away about a half dozen nice tiles along the river.



Here's what it looks like if we give away Willhelmshaven as well. Now our defensive position is stretched even further, and although WPC's cities are easy to fork, we'd once again be in a nearly impossible defensive position if someone tried to first-strike us with cavs. We're also giving away 10 developed cottages, most of them riverside, and two food bonus tiles by losing these cities. That's not a trivial matter by any means. And we would also give up any chance of controlling the marble in the desert here either.

How about a situation with the tundra cities:



I don't view this as being much better. Although Wien is protected from two movers by a peak on the northeast diagonal, it's still asking for trouble to protect a border that looks like this. I don't think this situation would even make sense, since WPC hasn't even come close to any of these tundra cities during the war. I don't see why they would have claim on them. Also, weren't people arguing for more naval production centers a couple weeks ago? Well, these two German cities on the north coast would be excellent places to build a navy later on. They're on the polar ocean that wraps around the whole world, they have some pretty decent food tiles, there's infrastructure already in place here... I think they would be very useful to have, especially with us topping the Conquerer's Plateau right now.

I didn't draw up giving away just the two tundra cities. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to do that, as they would be almost totally cut off from WPC's borders. I can't see that happening.

The bottom line is this: WPC is in no position to bargain with us. They are desperately whipping their cities to try and prevent one of their own cities from being razed. I would estimate that Huron Riven has about a 75% chance of being razed by the Germans (they would raze, not capture, since they can't hold anything). They should be begging us for help, not dictating land division to us. Their team has shown themselves to be completely delusional throughout this whole affair from start to finish.

Given the tactical considerations of defending this area after the war is over, I would need to have a VERY good reason to give one or more of these cities over to WPC. I don't think any of the arguments raised here for giving WPC this territory has come close to that. As novice posted, will giving cities to WPC, or not, actually influence how anything thinks about us?

I don't give a crap right now about future Demogames that may or may not even be played. Come on now.

[novice]

Double food resource cities are nothing to scoff at. EDIT: Crossposted with Sullla.