Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[Brian Shanahan]

The only way I see them being amenable to a NAP is if we were to divide up some other team with them (after both our wars are over), like UCiv or something... which is pretty unrealistic.

Hopefully I didn't push too hard on my comment regarding "we may not always want peace." I don't want them thinking they have all the power regarding the NAP and can wait until the last possible moment to negotiate for one if something changes their mind. I probably should have phrased it differently, but I'm not too worried about it.

The only thing I'd pull you up on was going with the elephant/dyes trade being called a gift. I'd have played the line "more happy from dyes there, so we think we got a good deal" if I were doing the chat.

Otherwise it was pretty much spot on.

[scooter]

Brian - yeah you're right, though I kind of like the idea that the elephant "gift" is irritating them

Darrell - agreed

I think they are just leading you on.

Huh?

[antisocialmunky]

I think that they are saying they aren't committed to T175 because they haven't gotten everyone 100% on board yet. While this is true to the letter, it doesn't say one way or another that they are internally divided.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Well like I said, we're not committed to anything at T175 quite yet, and we want to keep it that way for a little while longer
But if you have anything that brings us back in the running, we'd absolutely listen and consider it
I have to be honest though that it would need to be in our favor for the team to approve it

Kudos to you, scooter, for not making a jab along the lines of "stone for marble deal, you got Mids AND Taj? What else could you need?'"

Anyway, I think you did just fine in the chat. Seriously, what one-sided deal could they have in mind that we'd be interested in? Paying a rival extortion just so you don't go to war isn't a winning strategy either.

[kjn]

Kudos to you, scooter, for not making a jab along the lines of "stone for marble deal, you got Mids AND Taj? What else could you need?'"

The Notre Dame?

[scooter]

I think that they are saying they aren't committed to T175 because they haven't gotten everyone 100% on board yet. While this is true to the letter, it doesn't say one way or another that they are internally divided.

Of course, that's been my theory for awhile. The internally divided thing, for me anyways, came from the "we have those who lust for blood too" thing.

[Zargon]

You might be able to wring another 10 turns of NAP out of CivPlayers by giving them the following line of reasoning:

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Assuming CP and CFC do a 2v1 vs us, which we'll know is coming because CP don't extend their t170 NAP, it is in our best interest to use the 5 turn window to try and neutralize one of the threats 1v1 with our material advantage.

As it stands, that means that purely out of an interest in self-preservation, we'll be forced to attack CP and defend against CFC, thus naturally committing more units to the CP front.

But that means that if the war goes well for CP and CFC, CFC will naturally get more than 50% of the spoils, while losing far fewer units.

And if that comes to pass, then CFC will almost certainly win.

If CP enters the war, they need to do better than 50/50 with CFC, or CP will lose even more ground relative to the leader in the game.

Therefore, since in the event of a 2v1 against us, we will be attacking one side and defending on the other, it's in CP's best interest to extend the NAP another 10 turns, so that we will instead be attacking CFC and defending against CP.

That's what CP gets out of it.

We're willing to agree to this because we get
1) 5 more turns
2) To give CFC a stick in the eye for their conniving diplo.

You may worry that we'll then turn around and offer to extend CFC's NAP by 10 turns with the exact same reasoning, and in fact we would. However, while we expect that you'll take this deal as it makes sense for you, we expect that CFC won't take the deal, because it doesn't make sense for them. The reason being, that if CFC determines that CFC+CP vs RB is their best shot at victory, then they need to make it happen as fast as possible. They're #2 in this game, so they will recognize that making the war happen is more important than who gets 60% and who gets 40%. We'll still offer it, because we'll give CFC every opportunity to shoot themselves in the foot, but unlike here, we wouldn't be expecting them to agree.

All that is predicated upon CP+CFC vs RB becoming a reality around turns 170 to 175. If for whatever reason it doesn't happen, like CFC is slow to finish their war or slow to recover their economy, or you should see an opportunistic war with another of your neighbors or whatnot, then signing another 10 turns of NAP is something you'd still want to do.

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Now, it might turn out that instead of fighting an offensive war on one side and a defensive war on another, it's more tactically sound to just defend on both, but we need not mention that.

It might be worth making the offer sooner rather than later, though I'd probably wait a turn or two into the German war, so hopefully our results there add a little more weight to our argument that 1v1ing us for even 5 turns is well worth avoiding. If we wait too long though, CFC and CP might firm up their plans with a formal agreement to attack together on turn 175.

[novice]

Great work, scooter.

Sounds like both cp and cfc would like to be our friends if we can find a mutual target to carve up. Geography makes that tricky, though.

You know what has really limited diplomatic flexibility? The fact that RB has been winning all the stats for the last 100 turns.

Preview post - I like Zargon's post.

[antisocialmunky]

@Zargon:

Hey CP,

Why don't you extend your NAP for 10 turns and see how well your CFC friends do before you commit? Otherwise we'll have 5 turns all to ourselves .

In a totally non threatening way,
RB

[kjn]

Don't forget Apolyton. They might be in with CFC too - I think it's more likely that CFC+Apolyton has a deal going than that CFC+CivPlayers do.

But there is one important thing about the possible dog pile, and that is that they have no way to mutually reinforce each other, they are isolated from each other. Against Apolyton we have plenty of defensive depth, and against CivPlayers we have a lot of culture in the border region, so they will be hit hard with SoZ war weariness, and vulnerable to attrition.