Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[NobleHelium]

Pretty sure it was CFC who declared. But didn't WPC declare on the Germans earlier? We know the Germans were second half for sure.

I think Ceil could send the GG message. It is borderline a meta message since they aren't playing anymore.

[Ceiliazul]

Where do you want it? The game IT thread seems a bit ham-handed.

[Zargon]

The declarer basically gets to choose which half they want, with the restriction that if they want the 1st half, they must have moved before the target on the turn before.

[scooter]

I think we should send one to the German team too. This work?

Hey guys, just wanted to say good game and well played. Sorry that things ended in war between us, but it's the way the game goes sometimes. Thanks so much for being good sports and playing your turns until the end.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

[scooter]

So I saw OT4E of CivPlayers online, so I decided to try my luck on the civic/religion swap stuff. Emphasis mine.

scooter
Hey OT4E, got a quick question for you if you have a minute?

OT4E
hi
i will try to give you quick answer if i can

scooter
hey. I was talking with MZ from Apolyton, and we are making an agreement to never use civic/religion swap spy missions against each other for the rest of the game. We both think they are kind of unfair missions
and we'd like to try to include more teams in the deal
do you think that's something you would be interested in agreeing to?  10:19 AM

OT4E
i remember that somebody tried to apply this to the rules
not sure who exactly
but probably it failed

scooter
we pushed for it pre-game, but it got voted down, but MZ suggested we make an agreement out of it
that we'll never use it even if we are at war or peace

OT4E
I need to discuss it with my team
you know now we have more espionage points on you, so this will be like a favor from our side for right now

but in general I agree that this is a not completely fair.

scooter
Yeah I understand. Apolyton is in the same boat in that they have more EPs on us, but it was their idea to at least rule that one out

OT4E
may be because they have same civics as you

scooter
but I do generally believe those missions aren't very fair. I"m sure you guys will do some tech stealing with those EPs anyway
hah, yeah for now!

OT4E
did you discuss this with WPC?

scooter
I haven't yet, but we might do that next
they don't even have alphabet so they can't do a whole lot with spies just yet hah

OT4E
why not?
you can gift them spies
share some money and here it is

scooter
that's true, yeah

OT4E
for us it will be mandatory to have them in this agreement

scooter
Ok. I believe I can convince them to agree

OT4E
and what do you think about "peaceful civic swaps" when both team agrees to?

scooter
You know, I'll run that by my team
I tend to think it would be fine if both teams agree to it. It's a little exploit-y in my opinion, but it's not THAT bad and you still have to pay for it
what's your opinion on that - think it's okay?

OT4E
yes I dont mind

scooter
yeah. I think I agree. the point of this was more to avoid things turning into an EP arms race, so I don't think that's a big problem
Anyway, if you don't mind, check with your teammates, and I'll run it by WPC

OT4E
ok

scooter
thanks!

OT4E
np

Ok so I need to talk WPC into it for them to agree. He does need to discuss with his team, but overall this sounds extremely promising!

[scooter]

SUCCESS.

OT4E
about switching, I have just discussed it with our co-captain. ‬
We agree to enter your agreement if you bring WPC in. For "peaceful swapping" we have nothing against.‬
scooter
Okay great. I will talk with WPC.‬

Talking WPC into it should be trivial.

[Bigger]

what does "peaceful swapping" mean?

[Fintourist]

Very nice work!

If you also manage to get CFC into this...

[scooter]

Okay, let's talk next about how to handle WPC. It's time to give them some pointless freebies to make them not hate us so much and just kind of hope that helps things. We have tons of happy and health resources, and we have excess of a bunch of them right now. I suggest we more or less offer to WPC that we will give them any excess we have if they are bumping into the happy/health cap. We can reserve the right to hang on to 1-2 excess that we think are valuable bargaining tools, but most of our resources won't have people lining up to buy them. So I suggest we send a message to them somewhere along these lines:

* Ask them where their biggest cities are in relation to their happy and health cap
* Offer to raise their cap with gifts of resources if they are close to it
* Ask them to agree to the civic/religion swap mission deal

How does that sound? If that general direction works, I'll draft something up shortly. I think we should be pretty liberal with giving them our excess resources. Doesn't cost us anything, but it can help them.

[scooter]

what does "peaceful swapping" mean?

The two scenarios I could see:

1) One team wants to switch into same civics as a friend, but doesn't want to burn the anarchy. They could pay that friend to revolt them into the proper civics if that is "cheaper" than the anarchy.
2) If we get revolted out of something by someone not involved in the agreement, we could pay someone to revolt us back into what we want. Someone floated doing this with WPC in another thread I think.

I see no reason to oppose that. Sure some others could use it to help themselves out, but I don't think that's worth fighting over at all.

Very nice work!

If you also manage to get CFC into this...

We can dream right?? We can give that a shot after getting the initial 4 in.