Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[scooter]

Thanks guys, kalin's suggestion sounds right to me. I'll send this after I eat lunch if no objections pop up before t hen.

Tatu,

Great! Glad to hear the forums are back up. Hopefully your team can all get back on the same page quickly. If it goes back down again, just shoot me a quick email to let me know if you don't mind - that way I know to contact Beta instead.

Our agreement currently only has about 10T left in it. We would like to extend it, so what do you guys think about an extension until T140? That should be a nice long window of peace for both of us. Let me know what you think - I'm definitely open to different suggestions.

Hope the war is going well - we really appreciate your team's dedication to playing turns quickly. Hopefully with time the German team can be eliminated, and we can keep a better pace.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Ceil's suggestion - I considered the paragraph order thing too, and even played around with it after your suggestion. I couldn't think of a way to discuss them resolving the German conflict in a way that didn't feel a little awkward, so I think I'll leave it this way. Plus I figure it's often good to end messages with niceties.

[Sullla]

I think the wording is fine.

Is there any interest in a longer NAP offer? We have NAP agreement with the German team until T150, and I think there's a wide-ranging agreement to attack the German team roughly around that date to get them out of the game as quickly as possible. We should have Guilds and Nationhood drafting right around T150, plus the map will likely be mostly filled by then, making it a nice target date for our first war. Since we have no desire to fight anyone before that time, we could potentially look to extend NAPs with everyone else beyond that date and lock them into Parkinesque deals that they regret later on.

What if we offered NAP with We Play Civ to T175 instead, for example? I find it hard to believe that we would want to fight them before that, giving us time to conquer and consolidate German holdings. Or does that tie our hands too much? I would love to hear other thoughts on this.

[scooter]

That crossed my mind too. I would be on board with asking for T175. Worst that can happen is they bargain us down to a more conservative NAP length. Thoughts?

[mostly_harmless]

What are the chances of the German team getting attacked by others before T150? In that case we might end up with no viable target if we lock ourselves into a long NAP with WPC.

Thoughts along a different line: We could just do a NAP with WPC until T140 and therefore justify to others our military build up around that period, while secretly preparing for an attack at the Germans 10 turns later. Maybe even informing WPC secretly about it. They might even want to join.
Too convoluted?

mh

[scooter]

Hm, probably a bit much. It's a tough sell, mainly because the German team is more or less the pariah of this game. It's almost a net win in the diplo column to be broadcasting to everyone that we're pro-WPC and anti-German team. I mean, we have teams more or less campaigning for a dogpile on them in a public thread over at CFC, which is arguably not really fair to allow, only nobody seems to care.

Better question may be - what's the odds of the German team being wiped out in the next 60T (it's T90 now, NAP is through T150) and thus leaving us with no real targets? I think pretty it's pretty unlikely, but it's not impossible.

[mostly_harmless]

Yes, hard to judge, especially seeing how there is no progress in the current war at all, as far as we know. Both teams even managed to settle new cities.

Stagger the NAPs in 25 turn steps sounds good then. Germans T150, WPC T175, CFC T200?

[kjn]

I really doubt anyone can take on the German team in the next 60t. They've shown that they're reasonably able tacticians and that they can get a large army quickly.

They hold quite large amounts of land now, have a good mix of ancient era units, and plenty of them. That means catapults or strong two-movers are needed to even make a dent at them.

Then we have the question of their neighbours. WPC won't be able to defeat them. They have Apolyton to their west, and they're the slowest to expand among the tech leaders. And then there's us.

[scooter]

Yeah, pretty much agree with kjn. Ok, I think I lean towards throwing out the T175 number and just see what they say. I'll let this sit a couple more hours for others to chime in.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I think T150 with our first target (Germans) is perfect.

I think we probably cannot set the CFC one out far enough. Honestly, I would just about take a whole game NAP with them. We are better than them, and have plenty of other land to grab.

As for WPC, I think T175 sounds great. Even later than that might be better than earlier.

[Bigger]

why not just ask them how long they want to extend it too, then go from there? I agree with Sulla that 175 is probably fine, but why not let them suggest it?