Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[SleepingMoogle]

While caution is recommended, I think we may be a bit too paranoid right now. There are no real indications that CivPlayers are gearing up for aggressive settling or war. They likely consider us to be the biggest threat and, while signing OB would benefit them, it equally benefits us in turn. My best guess is that they'll be reluctant to agree to anything that doesn't gain them more than it does us.

[Bigger]

I don't like the way Decebal is presenting himself as a "Good Cop" and the rest of his team as "Bad Cops."

From CivPlayers:

Dear scooter,

Regarding our Open Borders agreement, it seems that factions in our government do not see any advantage in signing it.
Perhaps we can find a mutually beneficial agreement that can help me shut them up? At least for the time being.
What do you think?

Sincerely yours,

Decebal

This smells fishy to me. They're screwing with us right now. Let me think about this.

They're fishing for concessions obviously. Just cut to the chase in a businesslike manner. Ask how many 1-commerce trade routes they would get upgraded from open borders, say we'll offer the same info, and we'll split the profits 50/50 using gpt.

I.e. if they'll earn 3gpt from OB and we'll earn 7gpt we can offer 2gpt for OB. For all I know they'll earn more than us from OB though.

I agree with novice on their intentions. This is actually a beautiful piece of diplomacy by civplayers, I don't think yall gave them enough credit in that field. During the cold war there was a senator that used the same tactic to negotiate an arms reduction with the soviets. The soviet diplomat wanted the Americans to do everything first, and was really demanding a lot. So the American basically said "you know, everything you say is fair and I agree with you. But my colleages in the Senate are stubborn - can you help me convince them?" By forcing the Soviet diplomat to look at the issue from the American side, the Soviet ended up agreeing with the American position and doing most of the caving.

So, he is trying to get us to give them a favorable agreement that he can take back to his team and "convince" them.
Not sure how to respond to it, though. I agree with Sulla that we shouldnt consider paying them for open borders.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

In all of this, is there any mention of a border agreement, and specifically an agreement on the part of CivPlayers not to settle any further to their east? Failing this agreement, as much as I hate to do it, I'd cram a city on the border hill and pack it with spears, axes, and War Chariots Scooters and dare them to advance any further east. Paranoid or not, I don't like the feeling that we're getting the runaround. I do not want a border city down there, but I want even less for them to advance an inch further. I know this is a flip flop on my earlier position when I said to ignore this spot, but we're a week later and diplomacy seems to be not making the progress that I had hoped.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Dear scooter,

Regarding our Open Borders agreement, it seems that factions in our government do not see any advantage in signing it.
Perhaps we can find a mutually beneficial agreement that can help me shut them up? At least for the time being.
What do you think?

Sincerely yours,

Decebal

Dear Decebal,

Regarding your stalling about filling in the details of our NAP, it seems the four of you that make up the factions in your government should exchange a few emails or forum posts and sort this out quickly. Unless you would like to get a lot of use out of your sacrificial alters very soon, I suggest you give us a straight answer about this agreement and state your intentions. Perhaps your government will find avoiding a pointless and bloody war beneficial? What do you think?

Sincerely yours,

Xenu

Something like that...we could clean up the language a bit to make it sound more (or less) hostile, whatever the consensus is. I get the impression that these guys are here to play hardball, that or they've decided they don't want to be friends. Unless they do something to allay our concerns I think we have to be proactive in developing a defense strategy for the west.

Since there has been criticism in the past of arm chair quarterbacks throwing out ideas without specifics (never mind that I don't have time to really get down in the details in this game, and that a lot of the details play out over my head anyway):

• We should reconsider either settling an awful front city or devising some other scheme to control the SW area. Could we get any mileage out of building and garrisoning a fort on the hill instead of wasting a settler building a bad city? Would it be too close to their cultural borders to remain in our cultural control? Obviously if they settled a city to push our units out of the fort that would be possible by the game mechanics if we don't have OBs, but just as obviously we'd tell them that them settling any closer to use would be interpreted as an act of war.
  
• This conversation is happening elsewhere but I think settling the city NW of Brick by Brick should be prioritized just as soon as our scout finishes defogging the remaining tiles in the area. Even if there aren't a lot of food resources up there we can still get good use of the whip off all those grass tiles once they're cleared/farmed. Or workshopped, or whatever. Seal the front, support BbB, build military in the area. Maybe there are enough hills that the city would actually be a good producer.
  
• Keep the heat on them diplomatically. I don't think we should try to dance too much with these guys. I say if they want to play lets make a deal, we always make the next offer worse. We can do business with someone else.
  

[scooter]

NW into the great city of Adventure One, then 3SW where he can try the famed food stalls of Gourmet Menu, renowned for their clam chowder, and from there due westwards after rounding the southern tip of the sea.

The closest city of CivPlayers is 7 tiles east of Gourmet Menu, and the land is open with a few hills. We don't see any barbs there right now.

Rather than delay any further, I simply sent this to Caledorn via chat. So CFC has directions now.

On the CivPlayers issue - for the moment I'm going to wait to let SevenSpirits take a crack at it as he's requested.

[antisocialmunky]

Looks like they want to play good cop/bad cop or something.

"I want to help you, but my friend here needs some convincing, can you give me something to convince him?"

I think an interesting way of responding to that is to flip that question back at them. You could mention nonchalantly that some members of the team are skeptical of their intentions now and would rather prioritize finding their neighbors and making deals with people interested in the trade potential of a long partnership.

Just don't do anything overtly hostile or comes over as trying to strong arm them into an NAP because that just reeks of insecurity from having a city out of position. Just act calm and like its not a huge deal and adjust settling plans/builds accordingly.

That being said, it seems like a strange move to me for someone in their position. Do they really think that getting on the bad side of the current game leader is such a good idea? They are either overconfident or don't know how to do diplo right in a game this long game or it is a simple miscommunication. :\

[Qgqqqqq]

If we want to buddy up with them we should try the gpt compromise - if we've got active deals on their favor they'll be less willing to embargo.

[Bigger]

Looks like they want to play good cop/bad cop or something.

"I want to help you, but my friend here needs some convincing, can you give me something to convince him?"

I think an interesting way of responding to that is to flip that question back at them. You could mention nonchalantly that some members of the team are skeptical of their intentions now and would rather prioritize finding their neighbors and making deals with people interested in the trade potential of a long partnership.

Just don't do anything overtly hostile or comes over as trying to strong arm them into an NAP because that just reeks of insecurity from having a city out of position. Just act calm and like its not a huge deal and adjust settling plans/builds accordingly.

That being said, it seems like a strange move to me for someone in their position. Do they really think that getting on the bad side of the current game leader is such a good idea? They are either overconfident or don't know how to do diplo right in a game this long game or it is a simple miscommunication. :\

yeah I like this, good post ASM

[DaveV]

The closest city of CivPlayers is 7 tiles east of Gourmet Menu, and the land is open with a few hills. We don't see any barbs there right now.

Before NobleHelium gets here: is it worth sending an email correcting this to west?

[SevenSpirits]

On the CivPlayers issue - for the moment I'm going to wait to let SevenSpirits take a crack at it as he's requested.

Thanks scooter. So I actually spent over an hour trying to figure out the perfect message before deciding my voice was the wrong choice here. I think I'd be good for talking to OT4E, but not Decebal.