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The questions is, are we in favor of letting one missionary move on a predefined path? I think that's ok, especially if it helps us nail down a proxy war agreement.
Also... have we offered map trades to anyone in game?
April 26th, 2013, 22:40
(This post was last modified: April 26th, 2013, 22:41 by Sullla.)
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I don't believe that I said anything out of context. I do not think we should make any offer to CivPlayers regarding moving missionaries through our territory. The whole reason why we canceled Open Borders in the first place was due to fear of them spreading religion in our territory. No matter what they say on paper, I don't want Buddhist missionaries walking around in our territory. (Why would we even want to facilitate their movement of Buddhist missionaries into German territory? It makes no sense for us.)
Besides, it's not like making the offer would suddenly cause a huge upsurge in goodwill with their team. Just keep it nice and simple: "Sorry about the mixup. We'll reoffer Open Borders in the game." There's no need to say anything else beyond that.
I'll offer map trades to any team that actually responds to the diplo messages we sent out on that very subject.
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Why wait for diplo email replies? Offer in game, similar to the early resource deals with hard-to-communicate teams.
Better now than after EOT! 
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OK, fair enough. I offered a map trade to CivFr and UniversCiv, the two teams that we contacted with emails today. I also offered Open Borders with CivPlayers again. We'll see if we get any bites next turn.
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(April 26th, 2013, 22:40)Sullla Wrote: I do not think we should make any offer to CivPlayers regarding moving missionaries through our territory. The whole reason why we canceled Open Borders in the first place was due to fear of them spreading religion in our territory. No matter what they say on paper, I don't want Buddhist missionaries walking around in our territory.
There is literally no difference.
Present situation: OB and they may not move into our territory: we can't stop them from spreading religion, but doing so would break our agreement.
Proposed situation: OB and they may move the 1 missionary north through a few tiles of our territory but may not spread religion: we can't stop them from spreading religion, but doing so would break our agreement.
There is no difference!
Quote:(Why would we even want to facilitate their movement of Buddhist missionaries into German territory? It makes no sense for us.)
We are trying to conduct diplomacy. Diplomacy is built on token gestures. This one is free for us. It is of laughably small benefit to them but the magnitude is not what's important. What is important is:
* It shows us caring about them as a friend.
* It prevents them from justifying some slight breach of our agreement later as payback for our own slight breach earlier.
You may not care, but we are in a risky diplomatic position with them due to our axe moving through their borders. Right now they likely consider us to ignore small parts of the agreement whenever it suits us. This perception means they are more likely to do the same.
This thing might not matter. It also might matter a lot. The mission of the diplo team is to do the best we can keeping us in a strong diplomatic position. This was a great opportunity to do a small thing in support of that mission.
Quote:Besides, it's not like making the offer would suddenly cause a huge upsurge in goodwill with their team. Just keep it nice and simple: "Sorry about the mixup. We'll reoffer Open Borders in the game." There's no need to say anything else beyond that.
In fact there's no need to say anything to any other team ever!
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I agree with the points Seven is trying to make... but without the rhetoric.
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Ok, I'm usually all in favor of minor token gestures, but now that we've kicked off this Liberalism play, we have to start keeping in mind that we're going to start hitting some serious diminishing returns on "token gesture" type things. So far teams have mostly treated us like an equal, and the reality is we're not, we're significantly ahead of everyone else. The rational reaction by other teams will be to dislike us and not really want to help us. Minor little gestures to help other people will seem trivial to them compared to the notion of being an era behind us. CFC started to realize this in our last round of negotiations. They correctly recognized that the NAP was more valuable to us, given that we're ahead and have more to lose from a war. However, they misjudged how much we could do with as long a NAP as we agreed to. When it comes to try to renew our NAP with them next time, I suspect we'll have to pay even more for another one. It will probably be worth it (if they even will agree to one), but it's just reality. Doing them minor favors won't really have any influence on that, because they seem to be a pretty win-oriented team as evidenced by their negotiation tactics last time.
So I guess the point I'm trying to make is pretty simple - I don't believe a minor gesture like that will actually help us anymore. That type of gesture is nice when you're equals, but right about now teams should be realizing we're getting out of control. So I think it's more than safe to pass up this little opportunity because it will almost certainly make no difference.
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The only friends we are going to get are probably people with grudges that can't win the game. However, that situation hasn't really happened in this game with very few serious early wars.
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(April 27th, 2013, 12:44)antisocialmunky Wrote: The only friends we are going to get are probably people with grudges that can't win the game. However, that situation hasn't really happened in this game with very few serious early wars.
We're already taking advantage of the one serious early war.
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(April 27th, 2013, 12:44)antisocialmunky Wrote: The only friends we are going to get are probably people with grudges that can't win the game. However, that situation hasn't really happened in this game with very few serious early wars.
Inca/German and WPC are eliminated from winning, due in no small part to their war. Spanish Apolyton is also in the losers bracket. Their war with CFC has done nothing to help, but they would have never won either.
I think it is unlikely that we make any new friends until some of the other contenders realize that they're playing for second place and try to improve finishing position.
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