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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves
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An alternative Ellimist-style response would be reject the deal in-game and don't reply, then start building military and wait for them to come back with a more conciliatory message...
Completed: RB Demogame - Gillette, PBEM46, Pitboss 13, Pitboss 18, Pitboss 30, Pitboss 31, Pitboss 38, Pitboss 42, Pitboss 46, Pitboss 52 (Pindicator's game), Pitboss 57
In progress: Rimworld
Surely if we are pissed off, we shouldn't tell them?
What more can we get out of our relationship right now? Why do you think that they will suddenly give us something extra or different for the marble now when we seem to be in agreement that they stick exactly to the wording of their agreements? They have stuck to the word of their agreement, so they have no need to change it to benefit us. All we need to do is say that right now we don't need it, and as we have agreed that we can have the marble at a 'mutially agreed upon time', we will let them know when we would like to claim the marble trade. I understand a lot of people feeling burned about losing the Taj, but it happens. They outplayed us and we might as well just accept that and keep our focus on the plans we have. If we start being hostile to CFC then we could convert what was a safe border into an unsafe one. They've got what they wanted from this agreement. As far as I can see it right now, we are the only ones with something valuable still to gain out of this agreement - the NAP to cover our backs when we go stomping the Germans. We go chest beating and demanding reparations or making threats and we are only going to end up worse off. Swallow it and move on. Lets win the game, not some trivial argument.
"You want to take my city of Troll%ng? Go ahead and try."
As much as it annoys me to say so, some of the more moderate positions stated here are probably wiser. Although it would feel great to facestomp on CFC now it's more beneficial to our development and growth to ignore their bullshit and just kill them later. There is no lower hanging fruit we can reach than the Germans so they are the rational attack option. CFC has got too big for their britches but we'll have to give them their beating later.
Keep in mind that they also have Nationalism and are SPI. If we attack without overwhelming force they will draft in enough defense to make the war costly for us. Team.DE can't do that. However, NO MORE SWEETHEART DEALS with those conniving f***s. Any future deals need to be very even because they will find a slimy way to screw us while abiding the strictest letter of the deal. Or, honestly, once we've absorbed the Germans, fuck a future NAP with CFC. We can secure the border with our veteran army. What kind of response do you suppose that will get from them? It would be hard to argue we need a NAP more than they do once we have a massive power lead. I don't see value in bending over backwards in our dealings with those asshats anymore. Played: Pitboss 18 - Kublai Khan of Germany Somalia | Pitboss 11 - De Gaulle of Byzantium | Pitboss 8 - Churchill of Portugal | PB7 - Mao of Native America | PBEM29 Greens - Mao of Babylon 
What are OUR goals?
For the immediate future we want to kill the Germans How does CFC figure into this goal? we want to have our back free and they attack with us. So for now I would stick to the deal, tell them we will request the marble on a later date. If you want revenge take it after it doesn't affect our immediate or long term goals, right? If we want to kill CFC later we can do that - after we finished the upcoming war and made preparations. And if we want to attack them later, let them think we put up with their shit, don't let them think we are pissed.
"Gentlemen. You can't fight in here. This is the War Room!"
- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
I've held off on logging into the game thus far so that everyone can hash out this diplo message, but I am going to have to get in there and play our turn soonish. We've had over 60 posts now on the subject of CFC, it's time to pull it together into one coherent message. I suggest a middle of the road course that tell them we're not accepting their marble trade right this minute, and we're not terribly pleased with the way that they've been communicating, while not going off into crazy "be ready to defend yourselves on T175" land. Please don't turn CFC into an enemy needlessly.
Remember, we're not so much upset with them for winning the Taj race, but due to their extremely insincere diplo messages that are currently treating us like expendable fools. Also go ahead and send the Apolyton message, since no one has had any suggestions there.
We don't have to respond right away. We can simply reject the Marble trade for the moment.
We don't want to fight them. Right now they know that and they're relying on it. Put yourself in their position, though... They don't want to fight us either. Why offer us the marble at all if they do? Just send them a very short and vague message with a jarring change of format(no salutation, etc.) and make them unsure if we're about to do something rash. They know exactly what they did. I'm not advocating revenge, cancelling deals, or attacking them. We already have the deal we need from them to attack the Germans, so we'll leave that in place. This is the "middle" option. We're already planning to start drafting our empire like crazy. We don't have to respond when they send us panicked messages. We can cause them to freak out and change their plans without changing our own. It's not about the immediate future, which isn't going to change. It's about whether we can work with them at all after that, and that's only possible if we convince them to quit screwing around with us. We've been doing the "moderate" option all game long with them and look where it's gotten us.
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FFH-20: Jonas Endain of the Clan of Embers EITB Pitboss 1: Clan/Elohim/Calabim with Mardoc and Thoth
We can reject the marble before responding. I'm completely 100% fine with letting them wonder what we'll say for a few turns.
As someone (Seven?) said, we need to be clear here. There is no bridge to burn. These guys will never be our friends. Any relationship with them is strictly a value thing - we're strictly business partners. They are currently more useful to us as a peaceful neighbor than a hostile neighbor, so that is what we need to maintain. So threatening war and/or making them so mad that war comes right at T175 is not a useful course of action. However, they DO need to know that we aren't real thrilled with them. It doesn't need to be said exactly how I said it or whatever, but they need to be aware that being opportunistic with us is risky. And they will be opportunistic again because again, they are not our friends. Even UniversCiv who ignored 5 straight messages from us responded and agreed to trade maps with us and CFC shot us down with no explanation. No need to be crazy/threatening in our response, but I just don't want us to pretend like we need to protect an alliance that doesn't really exist. |
