Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[Sullla]

I have no comments on the diplomacy (it all looks fine to me), but I disagree on the probable outcome of the war. I do not think that the Germans will collapse and We Play Civ will end up as our main rivals; I think that the WPC attack is going to fall apart in spectacular fashion, as the Germans are much better situated on the defensive than WPC thinks. I expect either a total stalemate, or a war when the German team comes out on top. Germans are currently only very slightly behind WPC in overall Power, plus they have the defender advantage working in their favor. My belief is that WPC is made up of terrible players (why hello there, former Templars!) who have no idea what they are doing, and they will botch this situation as badly as Templars messed up their war against Realms Beyond in the previous Demogame.

Again, I don't think this affects our diplomacy at all. I would simply be shocked if WPC ever emerged as any kind of power.

[antisocialmunky]

I was under the impression, that WPC and CFC were going after the Germans, wups. I guess we can help the Germans to carve up WPC.

[Commodore]

Scooter received my sage counsel on the matter at hand:

scooter: doing diplo for that ISDG is tougher than i thought. tough crowd to please
Sent at 2:23 PM on Monday
me: Meh, DoW everyone.
Win playing AW.
Sent at 2:25 PM on Monday
me: It's foolproof.
scooter: it would certainly be fun
me: Krillmode Modern Armor to win Dom/Conquest the same turn.
scooter: unfortunately with one team refusing to end turns, i think a modern armor win would be 2016. so we'll try to win sooner
Sent at 2:27 PM on Monday
me: Well, kill them all one by one then, going from slowest upwards.
Make it clear that's what you're doing.
scooter: well that slow team just got declared on
me: I call it "Darwin Driving War Chariots"
scooter: we can only hope it was a PYFT war
haha that's perfect
me: Heh, and I'm totally not joking.
scooter: i know the team already favors declaring on the slow team just to get rid of them
so yes it might just happen
me: Given RB's rather ruthless metagame has made a player gene pool that's roughly 90% pure murder...
Pass it along.

[scooter]

OK, two things:

1) Suggesting a sentence should be removed because it's "fluff" isn't convincing to me. There's a lot of fluff in diplo. People like to read fluff, especially people who role-play and fight dumb ancient wars. I am very pro-fluff when there's nothing valuable to say, especially when it just seems nice.

2) People also like to be flattered. Logically, WPC is probably happy to have peace with us because we have War Chariots (worst case scenario for their UU) and appear to be a strong team. However, them thinking "gee, RB seems happy to be friends with us!" is a positive thing. It's not conveying weakness - if we were conveying weakness people wouldn't be lining up to beg us to sign NAPs with them as everyone has been doing so far. Keep in mind - we've offered zero NAPs so far, all NAPs have been offered to us and accepted by us. I really doubt that "conveying weakness" is our issue right now.

[scooter]

Oh, and I agree with Sullla - this German/WPC war is more likely to be a stalemate if anything - nothing of value changing hands and dead units. When you're dealing with unknown quantities (yes these two aren't entirely unknown but we can't be 100% certain either), it's better to let it play out before helping one side. Also, we're in a strong position, so pursue low-variance strategies - in this case just staying out of it. Supporting one side and picking the loser just makes the winner mad at you. Since the PB2 examples have been common in here, you could easily argue that Spullla supporting the losing team in the chariot rush (the sunrise/rego Byz team) backfired a bit. Obviously you can't say that for sure given all the other factors in that game, but I think you get the point. So yes, neutral neutral neutral here. Let it play out a bit before reacting.

Unless you guys REALLY want to go with Commodore's Darwin Driving War Chariots suggestion.

[mostly_harmless]

Chatted with WPC in game:

mh

[scooter]

Excellent chat all over. Did WPC keep or raze the German city? I'm going to redraft the WPC message with the new info in mind, and I'll give in and drop that hated sentence.

[mostly_harmless]

Raze. Does the "Never-above-size-1-city-capture=autoraze" rule apply to player cities as well or only to barb cities? I think it was a recent city that autorazed.

mh

[scooter]

Player cities too

[scooter]

Ok, modified WPC draft:

Tatu,

First, apologies for being a bit slow to respond - I was out of town for the week. It seems like things have been quite eventful while I'm gone - I certainly didn't expect two neighbors to break into war! I wish you good luck in your fight. Also, some serious congratulations to you on drawing first blood . I believe that's the first city conquest of the game so far which is a great accomplishment that your people can be proud of.

We are often hesitant to freely sign NAPs, but we do understand your desire for security while involved in another war. Therefore, we're happy to sign the NAP until T100. Hopefully that will give you some breathing room.

So does the German team seem caught unawares? Hopefully for your sake they are easy to defeat. Do you think you can take a lot from them?

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB