Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[Sian]

They've logged in just now as far as i can see

[waterbat]

heh sian - we posted that information simultaneously - me in rant thread.

[scooter]

CivPlayers has responded:

scooter,

It is honour to greet RB's ambassadors in our lands. We appreciate your frank intentions to share knowledge and looking forward to build good, strong and profitable for both sides relations.

At this moment we are only familiar with Mayans(civfr) and Ottomans (apolython). Our early scouting wasnt very successful that's why we dont know much about the map and other civilizations, except that there are deep jungles in the north and dreadful tundra in the south ending with a coast. Civfr is our close neighbour, while apolython is located behind the jungles.

NAP treaty is also interesting for us. I can suggest to start from a peace treaty without exact limits. This means that war cannot be declared unless the treaty is denounced within the 10 turn gap. We are also ready to start discussing other deals.

OT4E
Civplayers

P.S: I dont usually use gtalk, but we can try to get online at the same suitable time to discuss details.
P.P.S: I also forward this conversation to Decebal, our Foreign Minister. He might be more active.

He also CC'd another email address, which I'm assuming is Decebal.

[kalin]

First impressions: they want peace as I'd have expected, they'd probably take a NAP with a minimum turn duration + cooldown. No mention of a border treaty...

Decebal is the Romanian spelling of Decebalus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decebalus), a king of Dacia. FWIW, this suggests their foreign minister may be from Romania.

Kalin

[waterbat]

well a rolling NAP can be as good as a firm one - if they break it, they give us at least a 10t warning. although refusal to renew a permanent nap could be its own warning.

do we take no mention of borders as a good thing? Also interesting Civfr is their close neighbor - both of them have more than the average city count - they could be starting to bump into one another culturally.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

If we don't get a border agreement then we need to get our support city in sooner rather than later. Which is a shame because it's going to be an economic black hole.

[Sullla]

Good stuff in that message. We already knew that Apolyton was the western neighbor of the German team, this sounds like CivFr is the western neighbor of CivPlayers. In other words, CivFr is about as far away from us as possible on this map. Perfect. They also suggested that there's an ocean separating the north and south poles across the Toroidal worldwrap, which we've been suspecting for some time. Otherwise we almost certainly would have seen some kind of unit wandering across the worldwrap and meeting us from our south. An ocean down in the extreme south sounds more and more likely.

We should try to get an Open Borders deal in place if at all possible, with or without allowing scouting units. We can run a road to CivPlayers very easily from Brick By Brick, and we'll need their cities to fill out our foreign trade routes once we discover Currency tech.

It also might be a good idea to keep leaning on CivPlayers for a longer NAP while we have the threat of that axe hanging over their city. We'll see.

[Azoth]

The issue with a settling agreement is that IF we are allowed to plant a city right on the borders of Xochicalco (say, on the plains hill 3E of the city), then we can't really object to CivPlayers planting right on the borders of Brick-by-Brick (say, on the plains river forest 3W of the city). The fact that we need the spot for security reasons - to connect Brick-by-Brick to the rest of the empire and deny CivPlayers a port on the lake - won't sway CivPlayers, even if we wanted to reveal those reasons. And if we agree NOT to settle within 3 tiles of each others' cites, then CivPlayers could settle the plains hills.

So I think we're better off without a settling agreement, but with as long a NAP as possible.

[NobleHelium]

If we don't get a border agreement then we need to get our support city in sooner rather than later. Which is a shame because it's going to be an economic black hole.

I don't think the cost of the city is a concern. I am concerned about CivPlayer's potential reaction - it's not really strong enough of a city that I'd want to fight a war over it.

[scooter]

Yeah, I'm trying to piece together how I want to react. I kind of want to get him into a chat where it's a lot easier to read between the lines than an email. I also have this sneaking suspicion they just haven't seen BbB yet, and they might react differently once they see it.

What do you guys actually think we should try to push for in terms of border agreement? I think it's still a little unclear to me if we want one or not. I've seen ideas for our city placements in the dotmap thread thrown around, but I'd like to see someone suggest something more formal complete with screenshots.

Order of business with CivPlayers is probably something like:

1) Accept rolling NAP with 10T cooldown clause immediately.
2) Push for OB so we can get trade routes going. Take a pretty neutral stance on whether or not we want to allow border scouting or not. I think either way is mostly ok, so this is one of those easy things to "give" on.
3) Try to aim for a longer NAP. It's T90 or so now. Ideally we don't really want to squabble with these guys until we've pushed around some softer targets, so the longer the better for the most part.
4) Border stuff?

Fire away on opinions.

edit: crossposted with several of you