Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[scooter]

Also, I'm still going to need someone to "be me" temporarily this week. I'm headed out in 3-4 hours or so, and I'll be mostly unavailable the rest of the week... It sounds like they're settling this city soon, so I'm thinking they'll respond pretty quickly. You don't even need to do too much, there just needs to be someone in charge of determining the consensus and drafting replies and the masses will help with the rest.

If I see Caledorn on chat I'll try to get an answer out of him quickly so we don't have to wait for a full reply, so that would possibly mitigate the need for much diplo to be done while I'm gone.

[scooter]

Ok, got ahold of Caledorn. Here's the answer I got:

Caledorn: I am not 100% certain what our turn players has recommended, and if you want a 100% certain answer I have to ask. But based on the screenshots I believe the city will be either 6,6 or 6,3 from the Oasis
6,9 is a desert tile, so that would be silly
scooter: well settling on a desert isn't really silly since it auto converts to a 2/1/1 tile so it's actually kinda nice to redeem it
Caledorn: Oh.. blushes This is why I do diplomacy and not turnplaying...
I had no idea about that
scooter: haha it's ok. learn something new every day!

Included the comment on the desert thing just to reinforce that Caledorn very much is just their diplo guy and certainly not heavily involved in strategic decisions... Just something to keep in mind.

We then had this brief follow-up exchange:

Caledorn: Let me see if I can find the dotmap someone made
Ugh. That did not help as the dotmap also proposes 3 as a possible location. I will ask. Hopefully one of the turnplayers will clarify before you leave, because this is not helpful at all
scooter: ok, yeah if you could just let us know that would be helpful.
without full knowledge of what the terrain looks like, i would say 6-6 and 6-3 would both sound nice from our perspective

I'll update if/when more comes in.

[kjn]

Not much we can do about it, but the SE (3) location from the oasis would claim the wet corn, making us sad pandas.

[kalin]

We cannot actively stop them, but we can tell them that we want that corn and that it's on "our" side of the border and that it's stretching it. I would say that.
Kalin

[scooter]

Ok, it seems they have yet to decide, but we have some wiggle room here to request them not to settle certain spots:

Caledorn: Gah. It seems the turnplayers are uncertain.
Okay, the spots I have been given as possible locations are, in no order of preference mind you, are: 9 9-9 9-6 and 6-3
Good thing I asked as only one of those are among my suggested spots
Whichever spot is decided, it will be our westernmost city in your direction. There is full consensus about this on the team.
If any of those locations are undesirable for you, please let us know. It is uncertain if we will settle a city there as our next settlement or if we will delay it a bit, so the sooner the better if there is objections.

[kalin]

Cool, this actually sounds reasonable. I'd say they can have the oasis since we cannot easily fit it in our dot maps but that wet corn should be ours. That's my opinion. I am wondering if we should mention that we also intend to make a city there and give them some potential locations.

Kalin

[kjn]

There is another thing here. This would be their fifth city. We've settled three cities, and they're all first ring so far. Our next two will be first ring and first-and-a-half ring (for Bananagem, 5N of AO ). But the tiles 1E and 2E of the oasis are 8W 2N or so of their capital, ie they're pushing expansion pretty hard our way.

Thus, I think we should start to consider our expansion beyond the first seven cities.

[kjn]

Caledorn: Gah. It seems the turnplayers are uncertain.
Okay, the spots I have been given as possible locations are, in no order of preference mind you, are: 9 9-9 9-6 and 6-3
Good thing I asked as only one of those are among my suggested spots

That's some varying spots. 6-3 and 9-6 would be great for our purposes. 6-3 is probably coastal on the southeastern sea. 9 would probably share a peak tile with a city claiming bananas and spice east of MM. 9-9 would also claim a riverside tile, probably a plains but I'm unsure.

I think we can live with all those spots.

[kalin]

kjn: Good points. However, their expansion can't be too good for their economy. They are setting themselves up for a pretty rough economy going forward. I do agree that we have to start thinking where we are going next with expansion. We'll probably know better once we explore the south more.
Kalin

[kjn]

@kalin Agreed. I just plunked down a city of ours 2SW of the oasis to do a quickie check of what it would mean. Our costs went from 12gpt to 19gpt in city maintenance and civic upkeep

I think it will be of paramount importance to get the cities up and productive quickly if we are to continue to expand quickly, but I think we've shown that's one area where we are better than every other team.