Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[pindicator]

In all seriousness, we just need to guarantee that one of those three teams aren't coming at us. Like Sullla said, promise them anything - because if even just one of CFC, CivPlayers, or Apolyton can be bought out then this war will be a lot easier to defend.

[waterbat]

i think if Civplayers can be swayed, Apoly will have to go west with them into CivFR land. Are they really going to try to hit us on that front all alone?

Now is the time to try this diplo before formal arrangements have been made between the three suspected dogpilers. if they are making some agreements, inertia will take over and there won't be any stopping it.

[NobleHelium]

I would be happy to work with CivPlayers, they are the least annoying team in the game I would say. In fact I could probably say that I like them. Shocking, I know! Noble LIKES SOMETHING!

It would be most reasonable to offer them up to the amount of troops that we would dedicate to defending against them.

[MWIN]

As someone said we stopped being good guy long time back. We might as well go with that....

1) in the chat it says Apolyton and civplayers. No way do we make a deal that doesn't include both
2) I don't even know how to respond to that part
3) "there is no reasonable cost" - you haven't played many diplo games have you . Trying to make deals is not mutually exclusive with preparing a defense

1: ok, I missed that, sorry
2: well it is something I think about. I'm proud of realms beyond and its core values. This may be better off in the rants thread but I genuinely cringe when I see us screwing our allies, when I read nobleheliums "Fuck CFC" posts and hear Sullla's LOL-style sweary tirade. My post was too harsh on you and I apologise because I know you're trying your best and have your heart in the right place. So apologies for that.
3: no, I haven't. But I stand by the no reasonable cost statement. And regarding mutually exclusivity: sure, but I view this kind of diplo akin to alternative medicine. Sure it can't hurt to try but is ultimately useless and distracting.

[Cyneheard]

Can someone log into the game and accept WPC's just-offered Map Trade offer, unless we've got a good reason not to?

And they've offered again.

[NobleHelium]

I don't really want to accept WPC's map offer to be honest. Nobody sees our island cities right now, and WPC has nothing to offer us unless CivPlayers gave them their map and I really don't see why they would.

[scooter]

Ok fine, I went and got the military numbers myself. Here is what we have:



Now, again I don't want to give them a precise number breakdown, but I think we should go all-in here. I think we should go big or go home and offer something like

* 20 maces
* 15 Muskets (we're going to continue drafting these 5 every turn for awhile I'm assuming)
* 8 Knights
* 8 Catapults

In exchange for:
* Nap until T220 with both CivPlayers and Apolyton
* Those units will never see action against us for the remainder of the game.

(Also, I would stipulate that CivPlayers and Apolyton are free to divide those up amongst themselves, but the rules still apply)

There's several ways we could present such an offer - we could add up their hammer or power numbers, we could add up their total strength, we could tell them they are all >= maces except for 8 cats, etc. I don't care so much about that, but I don't want to get ahead of ourselves here. I just want opinions on if we should offer such a deal like the above. If not, is it a NO no from your perspective, or a "no, but yes if we change it to X"?

Please share your opinions.

And no, I don't think this leave us overly vulnerable. We would need to do a brief military build-up in all our production cities just to make sure we have enough on hand for CFC in 10 turns, but that's just a one city front so it's much more defensible. Besides, they are a lot more likely to back away carefully if they find out we have NAPs with our western neighbors. I think the chances of CivPlayers/Apolyton accepting this is pretty iffy, but I think it's totally worth the shot. Seriously - tell me if you were CivPlayers you wouldn't think long and hard about that.

[scooter]

1) in the chat it says Apolyton and civplayers. No way do we make a deal that doesn't include both
2) I don't even know how to respond to that part
3) "there is no reasonable cost" - you haven't played many diplo games have you . Trying to make deals is not mutually exclusive with preparing a defense

1: ok, I missed that, sorry
2: well it is something I think about. I'm proud of realms beyond and its core values. This may be better off in the rants thread but I genuinely cringe when I see us screwing our allies, when I read nobleheliums "Fuck CFC" posts and hear Sullla's LOL-style sweary tirade. My post was too harsh on you and I apologise because I know you're trying your best and have your heart in the right place. So apologies for that.
3: no, I haven't. But I stand by the no reasonable cost statement. And regarding mutually exclusivity: sure, but I view this kind of diplo akin to alternative medicine. Sure it can't hurt to try but is ultimately useless and distracting.

My reply was kind of dickish, sorry. It was posted from my phone which probably made it sound worse. Anyway, on the two things, here's a hopefully more reasonable reply.

2) I honestly think we've kept our deals and been fair to everyone. So from a reputation standpoint, I think we're fine. Although I would note that I don't care about it THAT much (to me this kind of thing is very much just a fun internet game - for instance I love the game Diplomacy which is a vicious back-stabby game), I know other people here do, so I keep that in mind. So reputation aside, I also don't see how offering creative things like this implies we are "weak" or "desperate." To me, if it says anything at all, it says we're putting a ton of effort into this game. Who puts in the kind of effort required to dream up zany ideas like that? More than likely though, I think it says nothing. Or if it says something, I really don't care what it is, I just want to win.

3) A better way to say it: if you assume everyone will act rationally, yes you're right, no one would take any deals with us. The reality is people are irrational very often. We have a couple dozen publicly reported games here that prove that - you're dealing with humans, not AIs. It's why I asked what their goal was. Maybe that was a dumb question, and it definitely went nowhere, but being enabled to do something fun can be super attractive to a mid-level team that knows it probably won't win, and I want us to try to exploit that.

[Ceiliazul]

Now, again I don't want to give them a precise number breakdown, but I think we should go all-in here. I think we should go big or go home and offer something like

* 20 maces
* 15 Muskets (we're going to continue drafting these 5 every turn for awhile I'm assuming)
* 8 Knights
* 8 Catapults

In exchange for:
* Nap until T220 with both CivPlayers and Apolyton
* Those units will never see action against us for the remainder of the game.

(Also, I would stipulate that CivPlayers and Apolyton are free to divide those up amongst themselves, but the rules still apply)

Definitely agree on the big offer. And I think your breakdown is about right. If we can give more maces and keep more muskets even better. I don't know what their odds of agreeing are, but this is definitely the time to try.

[scooter]

One thing to keep in mind that I don't think I made super clear. Let's say hypothetically we offered that and they took it. Yes that's almost all our military. However, keep in mind:

* CFC NAP has 10T left
* We can draft 5 units/turn
* So we could amass 50 muskets and whatever we could build in that time frame prior to the NAP expiring. We would be fine.

Honestly, I would be willing to give more than those numbers if that's what it took. However, I think 50 units will get their attention.