Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Alternatively don't even use any tricks to hide it, just overtly move on CivFR's side and further weaken the dogpile.

[kjn]

Their best shot at attacking us would be while our army is still in Germany and theirs is back from Spain.

However, that'd first mean breaking their NAP with us ahead of time, which I doubt they are wont to do - we have gone into a cold war mode but neither side has broken any hard and fast part of the agreement (they've weaseled on the marble, and we on the gems).

Also, right now it's T151, and I guess it will take them to at least T155 until they've destroyed the Spanish team (this turn they take Umgungundlovu, then Ulundi T153 with their main stack and Nobamba T155; Chinook they take with the stack from Nongoma). Then it will take them 6t to shift their knights from Nobamba to our borders.

I think we should use our scout to go down to the war area, and keep tabs on the CFC army. Also trade maps with the Spanish team, and ask for a screen shot or two of the CFC army.

[NobleHelium]

Since when did we agree to anything relating to gems?

[kjn]

Since when did we agree to anything relating to gems?

5.4 Both teams agree to offer first dibs to newly acquired/unused resources to the other team at an appropriate price (happy resource for happy resource or for a price of 2 GPT per city count of the team receiving the resource)

Now, since we can claim they've been in breach of 5.5 I'd the our trade of gems to the Germans should be in the clear, but our gift of gems to WPC is arguably breaking this. On the other hand, they haven't asked or raised a fuss about it.

[zakalwe]

I thought they were already getting gems from us as part of the NAP deal.

[kjn]

I thought they were already getting gems from us as part of the NAP deal.

No. "Only" spice and stone.

[scooter]

(if/when we actually do so) Who cares if CFC finds out if we helped CivFr? If they want to make it stop, they can sign a NAP according to our terms. By refusing to sign a NAP, they've by default made an enemy out of us (or at least a rival with no cooperation), and now they get to live with the consequences. I feel no sympathy for them or any reason to hide our actions. If anything I like it to be overt. If they want to go realpolitik with us - which in fairness is the right decision - they need to fully grasp that we're in the position of power here.

If they want to similarly try to prop up GWT they can do that to retaliate, sure, but they're further behind us in tech, so they can much less afford to do so than we can afford to help CivFr.

[Bigger]

I agree w/ Scooter, I don't want to hide the gift. There is also the bonus of letting CivFr know we don't care if CFC knows we are helping them .

[scooter]

Alright. I decided we've waited long enough to reply (about 48 hours now), and I really don't want to delay it, so I'll go with the 180g figure from last turn. Sent this:

Wow, that sounds like a very dirty trick by CFC. I'm sorry to hear that - they have been very difficult to us too. We are currently bound to a NAP with CFC until T175, and we are in the middle of our own war anyway as you might have seen.

However, we still want to do what we can to assist you. We are finishing Engineering at the end of T152 and really don't want to delay that, but after that we can spare some gold to help you in your conflict with CFC. We're making roughly 180 gold per turn at max tax. Also, you can run the trade mission in one of our cities if you'd like. Unlike some, we are an honest team, so if you can make it that far we will not give you any trouble.

Maybe we can work together in the future - it seems to me that we may have common enemies. We do have full maps on CFC, so if you want, we could also exchange maps with you.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

preview-edit: literally 60 seconds after sending it, I get the email that Inca finally ended turn.

[scooter]

I went ahead and wrote + sent this to WPC:

Beta,

First to clear things up, CivFr is the Mayan team, currently in 2nd place. They're different from the Zulu team, which is Spanish Apolyton.

The German team just now ended turn, so we can both login now. We did not see their large stack last turn, so we can't confirm where it's at just yet. We will let you know as soon as we figure out it's location for sure, but we suspect it's hiding nearby in an attempt to ambush us. Thankfully, we have a sentry unit, so our visibility should be pretty good.

Wasserburg should fall to us this turn. If something unusual comes up during this turn, I will contact you ASAP. I wish us both good luck this turn.

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Hopefully you don't mind the decision to send this immediately rather than draft + discuss, I don't think there's anything unusual in here. We were busy discussing CivFr yesterday, and now that the turn rolled I wanted him to have that response from us right away.