Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[Shoot the Moon]

There's no point asking the Germans or WPC for location of horse, because we're not settling up to steal their source of horses.

Yes, but Plako made the map, so it is likely that horses are in a roughly equivalent spot (that is if other teams have them nearby I doubt our only source is beyond the lake).

[mostly_harmless]

Can't we simply say "Sorry, but we cannot supply war chariots to your cause at the moment."? This is honest and easily acceptable, I think. After all, who expects a team at this stage in the game has units to spare. Also, if they were serious about this, they should have come up with a more specific offer of what they would do in return.

I would also don't mind saying "That the conflict caught us by surprise and that we have decided to stay neutral." Nothing wrong with that. The moment we try to play both sides, the risk of it blowing up in our faces is high.

mh

[scooter]

Suggested draft to GWT:

Flunky,

Well we are certainly glad to hear you knew it was coming and were able to prepare. We will definitely be aware of their aggressive actions going forward. Unfortunately, we have already signed a NAP with WePlayCiv, so we are required to stay out of the conflict. We believe in always keeping our word in agreements that we make, so we will stay true to the NAP. However, we will be more careful in our dealings with their nation.

Good luck!
scooter - Team RB

[kalin]

@scooter: I like it. Do we have anything else to ask / talk about? If yes, it would be good to add so that we defuse a bit the attention from the "no, we won't help you". This is not particularly necessary though.

Kalin

[scooter]

Sent to CFC:

Caledorn,

My teammates suggested an idea, and it sounded like a good one to me. Would you like to make an agreement to not spend EPs on each other any more than are needed to get graphs? I believe we've actually out-spent you on EPs so far (we didn't meet other targets as fast as you), but we'd be very happy if we could come to an agreement so that we can both focus our EPs elsewhere. Any thoughts? I think it would help a lot on gaining info on our neighbors more quickly.

Also, I wanted to alert you that WePlayCiv has declared war on the German team. I don't believe I heard that you guys ever made contact with them, so I thought you might be interested to hear that. WPC managed to take an undefended German city very quickly! Have you heard any other whispers of war from other civs?

scooter - Team RB

I then waited 10-15 minutes or so and sent this:

Whoops, a teammate reminded me that you guys have already met both of those teams so you already knew about the war. My mistake - here I was thinking I was being helpful .

scooter

FWIW, CFC never told us they had met the German team, so I figured it's worth us getting points for apparently attempting to be helpful even if they already knew. Plus if we're lucky it'll score us some gossip (kinda wanting to hear about the likely-to-be-aggressive and apparently hard to communicate with Spanish team).

[scooter]

@scooter: I like it. Do we have anything else to ask / talk about? If yes, it would be good to add so that we defuse a bit the attention from the "no, we won't help you". This is not particularly necessary though.

Kalin

Not much that I could think of. We could propose an EP agreement or something, but we've drastically out-spent them so far, so I'm not sure that's necesssary. Hm. I could ask if they've met other teams recently.

[scooter]

I thought for sure this draft got sent to the German team, but apparently it was not. My mistake. I don't really care as much though given their pseudo-trolling.

Flunky, [GWT]

Well we are certainly glad to hear you knew it was coming and were able to prepare. We will definitely be aware of their aggressive actions going forward. Unfortunately, we have already signed a NAP with WePlayCiv, so we are required to stay out of the conflict. We believe in always keeping our word in agreements that we make, so we will stay true to the NAP. However, we will be more careful in our dealings with their nation.

Good luck!
scooter - Team RB

(No, no responses from anyone else recently)

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I thought for sure this draft got sent to the German team, but apparently it was not. My mistake. I don't really care as much though given their pseudo-trolling.

Flunky, [GWT]

Well we are certainly glad to hear you knew it was coming and were able to prepare. We will definitely be aware of their aggressive actions going forward. Unfortunately, we have already signed a NAP with WePlayCiv, so we are required to stay out of the conflict. We believe in always keeping our word in agreements that we make, so we will stay true to the NAP. However, we will be more careful in our dealings with their nation.

Good luck!
scooter - Team RB

Given that they need the input of the entire team before proceeding, I doubt your message would have been fully translated into German by now anyway without a team full of translators working furiously until the clock ran to zero.

/enddiplothreadjack
(No, no responses from anyone else recently)

[kjn]

Some diplo options and opportunities from the C&D department.

An EP limiting agreement with CFC would be a very good thing, and better to get it now as part of our existing NAP. It need not be a hard limit either, eg limiting EP spending to 10% of the total output would be quite worthwhile.

As far as I can tell, WPC do not have the German graphs, while we do have graphs for both. We can earn some diplomatic brownie points by giving them some pointers on the German military strength, if the team thinks it's a good idea. We can also ask them if they can sign OB treaties with CFC now.

[kalin]

Unless asked, I'd say nothing WPC or the German team. Even if asked we should consider things on a case by case basis. That's my opinion. We have more to lose than to gain.

Kalin