Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I would have accepted the straight sheep for spices deal too. 1-3 gpt just seems weird.

Yup.

[Tyrmith]

I think we're over analyzing things, but a) I doubt every team recognizes the value of trade routes, or at least the value we place on them, b) my personal feeling was that Scooter's message didn't feel scrooge like ("Pay 3gp/turn or no deal!"), but more of working together with the other team "Sorry, sheep doesn't really work for us, here's a potential idea, what do you think of 3gp/turn?").

I also really doubt that they would have recognized that getting sheep was pointless for us, otherwise they wouldn't have offered it to us imo.

[Bigger]

I'm with Sullla here. CFC could very well know we had spice before they made the final road connection, and the very first action they took after getting the road built was certainly to take a look at our resources.

They could easily have offered some gold for spices, if they wanted. Or even approached us about possible resource trades before getting the road up.

Every one of the teams we've met knows that we've teched Currency (they can see how much gold we have). They also know we have lots of cities. So if they stop to think for five seconds, they should also realise that we want as many OBs as possible, since we have lots of trade routes to fill. Signalling that we are willing to give a good deal to others to get them is hardly a bad thing.

why would they offer us gold, which we have already?

[SevenSpirits]

We could then come back with one of two responses:

1) "Great, that sounds fine with us! Looking forward to working with you in the future."
2) "We don't really need sheep right now; how about you pay us some gold/turn in exchange for those spices?"

I mean, I'm not crazy for thinking that the second response makes us look a bit like jerks, right? Because if I'm UniversCiv, I'm not too pleased with the way we responded, and I'd be thinking about blowing off the whole thing.

Maybe you could already guess, but for the record, if I'm UniversCiv, I'm thinking: Wow, they didn't just blow off my absurdly lowball offer, and actually made a very generous counteroffer that they must know is in our favor. Awesome, I love these guys!

Really?! Accepting a deal that they proposed is going to make them mistrustful of us in the future?

No, I didn't say that at all. Just that they would think we considered it to be a fair deal or even a favorable one, and therefore that they don't owe us anything, and in fact maybe we are in their debt a little bit.

So what should we have done, waited longer to respond? Send them back a more miserly option? That's going to encourage a relationship?

The right way to handle it IMO would be to say pretty much what we did, by expressing: "Thanks for the offer! Actually health doesn't do anything for us right now, and we don't see any happy resources that you have and would want to trade us. But we are happy to make something work, if you want the resource a lot. Maybe for 3gpt, we'd at least get something small in return?"

At the very least it's important to make the other side aware that we are being nice to them. Accepting their first offer does not accomplish this! They won't think they owe us anything. Compare the diplomatic gains we make from this, vs the diplomatic gains we make from e.g. approaching a civ we've known for longer out of the blue and offering them spice for free. Pretty much the same result for us in-game but it's a thousand times more effective in making that team loyal to us.

Same thing with the other ideas here: signing deals with other teams will cause the teams we met first to mistrust us.

I have no idea where you got "mistrust" from my post.

[fluffyflyingpig]

They should be concerned with our score, not percieved diplomatic slights over resource trades. Don't overthink things!

[Merovech]

I actually agree with Sullla here in that, diplomatically, we should have not pressed for the 3gpt; although, I don't think I feel as strongly about that as he does. However, I think 3gpt is worth more than the diplomatic difference.

[kjn]

why would they offer us gold, which we have already?

Gold the money, not gold the resource.

[mostly_harmless]

Just realized that the aptmod sends you eMails once a new ingame proposal has been made.

New proposal ingame at ISDG2012:

Proposed exchange by Zioun, offered to
The propose is:
Offer:
Apertura de fronteras
Ovejas
Demands:
Apertura de fronteras
Especias

(that is the old one btw.)
But quite useful for discussing it before someone logs into the game and gets surprised and cancels it.

mh

[Old Harry]

I think Scooter got the message just right.

FWIW I think Seven's interpretation is slightly more likely, but until we get their response and find out what's the point of arguing? (Yeah, okay - apart from the joy of arguing )

[waterbat]

Why don't we just make the spice for sheep trade and tell them we get their first happy.

Heh, I wrote this exact line on my phone, but couldnt post it - yesterday during lunch - so probably about the same time.
I guess I had 'excess' in front of 'first happy'.

anyway - noone commented on GES's suggestion. Why don't we offer that as an alernative? Noone is interested in +1 happy? Do we think that they will never have a Happy that we don't already possess?