Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[dazedroyalty]

Making a rare post to say that I also agree with the sentiment that we don't want to lose the meta game with CFC in favor of a dot map (even if it is better!). We want to keep some "friends" for as long as possible. And, especially in light of the current espionage discussion happening in other threads, I think it is wise to keep a team happy that we know has the knowledge (and experience?) of how to make life hell with spies.

[Sian]

got an open question for the diplo junkies ...

Should the Barb city stay named as Alamanni when captured or should we try to rename it asap so people don't spot it?


Against renaming would be less issues with people (WPC/CFC) whining that we settled towards them against any believed argeements.

For, would be that it might wave a red flag at those good enough at C&D that 'hey we got a free city on top of being top 1 in anything worth mentioning' and might lean more towards us getting dogpiled

[scooter]

Checking in. First off, since when did we get into this bizzarro world where Lewwyn is the Diplo Voice of Reason??

Side-note: why in the world are we in such a rush to get all realpolitik with CFC? That seems to be the tone of some of these comments, and it sounds like a terrible idea.

Ok. Here's my question for you guys. Are we even close to being in a position to settle this area? That part is unclear to me. Also, I don't see what the big deal is of them saying they were going to settle a spot, finding something more attractive, and taking it. I dunno, I don't think they've done anything wrong. My impression right now is there's several spots we care about more than this at the moment, and maybe they feel the same.

Anyways, how about a draft vaguely like this:

Caledorn/CFC,

While your team is considering our last email, we wanted to ask you about another topic. You told us awhile ago that you had a spot you were planning to settle close to the Oasis, but it seems you have put that on hold to settle other locations. We're also looking at spots in this area, and it's a little unclear to us where you are looking at settling. Can you clue us in on your plans?

The spot our team was thinking about is 1S of the Oasis. However, we don't want to plant a spot that will strain our relationship with your team, so we wanted to talk it over with you. We could arrange a chat sometime if that works easier.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Thoughts? All I care about is that we're 100% up-front with CFC here. I'm not OK with any plan to sneak-plant a city and piss off CFC just to have a shinier dotmap. You can sneak-plant on a team you haven't technically met and have 0 relationship with, but so far we have an actual working relationship with the guys who seem to be in charge at CFC.

[SevenSpirits]

I don't buy the "delaying tactic" theory at all. Here we are now, thinking of settling a city near the oasis, and it's clearly the case that telling them about our plans now is the friendly option, while the selfish option is waiting to tell them until just before we settle it!

Seems to me like their intention was thus: they see an important stone resource in a barren location, which they believe is theirs by right. They want it, so they prioritize telling us about an oasis and agreeing on it as our midpoint. But then settling agreements stall out, so they don't feel totally safe that we won't steal it. So they tell us that they are planning a city there. They are! And it's an important city for them because of the stone, but since it's kind of far off and barren, and because they don't need stone quite yet, they are not settling it yet. But the point of telling us about it is to get a diplomatic toe in the door: it's so that if we settle there, we feel obligated to come to a mutually agreeable split with them. And this is good in their eyes because they only care about one thing, which is the stone. The stone is clearly on their side of the oasis "midpoint", and they expect us to be reasonable in negotiations, so they can feel confident that they can be uncompromising on the stone when it comes to city placement, and even if it's all they get, they will get that.

What we need to do is tell them we saw this cool stone there, and we see this great spot for one of our cities nearby, namely 1S of the oasis, which fits perfectly into our dotmap. In fact it's so great that plans are already in motion to put a city there in the coming turns! But in the spirit of friendship we want to talk to them about city placement and come to a good compromise. We gather from their diplomacy so far, talking a lot about the "oasis" site, that they really really want to claim the stone, and that's understandable. So how about, they get the stone and we get the fish? A city 1S of corn would fit much more poorly in our dotmap, but as long as they don't settle a city with BFC claiming the fish they it will at least be palatable. [Btw, possible compatible dotmaps include red dot + A or C; and pink dot + B.] Please reply quickly as settling plans are in motion.

[NobleHelium]

I was following you there Seven until the end. Are you saying we should be prepared to settle the crappier spot or what? We can easily gift them the stone, nobody is trying to take the stone from them.

[Bigger]

I was following you there Seven until the end. Are you saying we should be prepared to settle the crappier spot or what? We can easily gift them the stone, nobody is trying to take the stone from them.

not sure I would like that solution if I was in there shoes. as soon as we are competing for the same stone wonder (isn't hanging gardens still available), are we really going to keep that gift going?

I think we should put this on hold and rush 2-3 west of the lake before we make contact with that team .

[NobleHelium]

Sure, I'm perfectly happy to keep gifting them the stone even if it means they'll compete with us for wonders. And I mean that.

[SevenSpirits]

I was following you there Seven until the end. Are you saying we should be prepared to settle the crappier spot or what? We can easily gift them the stone, nobody is trying to take the stone from them.

Yes, I think we should be willing to settle for the crappy spot. Like I said it's obviously important to them, and since we have our own stone it's not important to us.

I am not sure which specific dotmap we should propose to them. There is a dotmap that we may be able to get without pissing them off, which is that we settle S of oasis but they settle at B, with stone first-ring. But the way I see it, claiming the corn + fish is the goal for us, and the important thing is to get them uncontested while keeping CFC happy with us.

[NobleHelium]

Well I don't think they'll be able to compete effectively for the fish either way, unless they swap to Caste and run artists or something. The main thing is that I want to be able to use the corn for the big swath of land west of it which is completely bleak otherwise, and planting to the east of the corn is the only way to do that.

Keep in mind that a stronger set of cities in the area will help us project power in the future.

[SevenSpirits]

In that case, maybe our initial offer should be that we get pink dot and they get B, and we will avoid building too much culture stuff there.

I consider settling pink dot without their approval, however, to be out of the question. I think it would piss them off quite a bit, and ultimately it's not that important for us.