Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[spacetyrantxenu]

Anyway, I view their attitude as a carte blanche to blockade and pillage them with privateers, once we get Astronomy.

I like this, even though we'll probably be outside of our NAP by then anyway. They certainly deserve as much.

On preview, this part is a bit off topic but potentially relevant in the future?

And unlike using the chariot to pillage on land, privateer blockades are specifically included in the game mechanics and are not exploitative of borders or war/peace status. The fact that killing the boat doesn't cause war between the combatants indicates this. Sure, they may think it is us running the blockade but unless they can prove it, too bad for them (that's a black flag, not yellow, and we didn't win circumnav so movement points won't give it away, and we probably won't be the tech leader at that point in the game so who knows how many civs could have sent out a pirate boat). The counter to privateers is to go kill them. We don't have that option against their chariot, not without causing war. It's a different case. (The same would apply if they privateer blockaded us, too. We'd be sure it was them, but unless we watched the boat from port to our coast we'd have no direct proof, just circumstantial evidence. Anyway, the same method of redress would prevail, they would just kill our privateer and that would be that).

[pindicator]

Oh please. Pillaging a cottagr is not worth risking our weakly defended border cities over! It's that simple. If we weren't at war and had troops in place i'd be with you on this. But we can't ignorr the facts of the situation just because we're upset.

And about ivory, the ONLY reason we offered that trade was because we felt CFC might attack. Congrats on the revisionist thinking if you believe otherwise

[spacetyrantxenu]

I can't argue too strongly about our reason for offering the ivory for dyes deal, yeah we had a strong suspicion they were going to war and wanted to jam our thumbs in their eyes to help the Spanish. But we did benefit from a higher happy cap from dyes, right? Draft away!

No, pillaging one cottage is not worth it. But if they send in more units and pillage tiles we were going to keep, then what? We have to stop them or they're just going to continue doing it. I don't know if they'll accelerate pillaging by sending in more units or not, but what if they do? The sooner you draw the line, the better. It's simply not acceptable and they know it. They're testing us.

We're not the only side with a weakly defended border. What is the garrison in their stupid border city anyway? I'll bet we're as much of a threat to them as they are to us right now (three mace drafts on our turn later --> instant threat). I don't see all those knights making the trek to our border before we could respond. We don't want to have to do that, but we could. I don't think they'd try to find out.

I'm not just taking this hard stance because I'm upset. Yeah it's a pissy thing to do, pillaging our cottage. But I don't care about that one. I care about all the ones they could potentially pillage going forward if they're not prevented from doing so. Zargon or someone already did the math on how many beakers we could potentially lose if they run a significant pillaging campaign. Why even allow that to be possible? I don't care what Yossarian reports back from their team. It is an act of war, we don't need their agreement on it.

[Sullla]

scooter, kudos on doing an excellent job with the diplomacy. You're handling this situation in exactly the right fashion.

A lot of the recent posts in this thread have been sheer insanity. I think we would do better to scale things back and not get too excited over what the other teams may be doing. We never want to burn bridges irreparably, and we don't need any more enemies than what we already have.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm not saying we should attack them. But if we tell them they've committed an act of war they'd likely back off and stop the pillaging, which is the desired course of action. If they don't stop pillaging, well, what's our plan B anyway? To let them keep doing it? That's the insanity.

[darrelljs]

Deleting reply to a post facto edited post .

Darrell

[Zargon]

I think it's silly to approach this in a manner that treats the ivory trade and the pillaging as different sorts of things. We knew what we were doing, even if we slid it in before their war, and insisting that we're the good guys and CFC are the bad guys won't get us anywhere.

You've made your point, and we can respect your decision to pillage our stuff under a NAP even if we don't agree with it. But there will be future consequences for this abuse of game mechanics if you take it past Wasserburg (or past turn . We trust you understand how valuable mature cottages are, so we don't make this threat lightly. Other teams also have observers in the area and have declined to take advantage of this oversight in game mechanics, even though we have NAPs with them, as well.

(not sure about last sentence)

That lets them pillage a town plus a few villages (if memory serves), hopefully giving them a sense that they've properly gotten back at us for the ivory.

I feel like that's the key to resolving the pillaging situation short of declaring and killing it: Simultaneously pointing out that it's obviously an abuse of game mechanics, and letting them feel like they've extracted their pound of flesh for the ivory.

Is it a tactical possibility to declare war to get rid of their chariot? Not now, but in about 3-5 turns when we'll know if it's going to continue it's pillaging mission up towards the capital? Could we have enough stuff in Starfall by then and would it be worth the risk? I'm not sure. It feels like the answer is probably no, but having the answer for sure would inform the wording of our diplo with CFC now. Letting them keep doing it has a really high price tag, true (town-> hamlet is 100 commerce over 60 turns, town-> nothing is 140 or 150 commerce over 70 turns, plus the worker turns depending on riverside or not). But Starfall has a higher price tag than every cottage in the German lands put together.

[Dantski]

In short: he immediately replied about the ivory thing as expected. I offered that we could both drop it - the ivory and pillaging. He said he'll take it back to the team, but he feels the damage is done on the ivory. He said it's been a serious pain to deal with

Obviously he won't disclose how much damage but surely it wasn't really that noticeable considering how quickly CFC are steamrolling the Spanish. Or is he talking about our relationship damage instead of units lost damage?

[Brian Shanahan]

@Xenu, you don't kill a bee after it stings you, as it has just committed suicide.

Ths sting barb pulls out taking half the bee's insided with it.

[Cyneheard]

@Xenu, you don't kill a bee after it stings you, as it has just committed suicide.

Ths sting barb pulls out taking half the bee's insided with it.

Fine. A wasp. [/pedantic]