Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[novice]

YossarianLives
The pillage gold is very important to our research plans right now. We can't really give it up

This reads to me like they're fishing for us to pay them to stop pillaging. Let's see what they come back with. I'd be willing to pay them some gold to stop pillaging, if the price is right.

[scooter]

Here's the thing with CFC. I've said it before, but it's worth explaining again. CFC is a win-oriented team. They don't seem to put a lot of emphasis on grudges, emotions, feelings, etc. All they care about is making the decision that best maximizes their chances of victory. This is pretty much exactly how we make decisions too. This is different from a team like CivPlayers who seemed to get offended by us not saying flowery things to them or something or like WPC that knows they can't win and just want their big neighbor to be nice to them so they can have some fun.

This is why Yossarian keeps stressing he thinks we could still potentially cooperate after T175. They want to win as bad as we do, and I think they are well aware that all-out war with us on T175 probably makes CivFr the favorite to win and does little to help their chances (most likely outcome being a bloody stalemate). Generally speaking, things can go sour with their team, but if given sufficient incentive, they would drop that history and work with us. Now there may not be a sufficient incentive for us to offer, but the statement itself is still true. (If we offered them 5 of our cities they would give us whatever NAP agreement we wanted, to use an extreme example.) The contrast to that is we could be "super best friends" with them or whatever, and the minute that relationship was not helping their chances of winning, they would toss it out the window.

I like neighbors like that. They're predictable. CFC is a lot more predictable than CivPlayers for that reason. So when thinking about these things, please think through incentives. What incentive does CFC have to take a threat about "act of war" seriously? None, really. It's an empty threat that will probably just irritate them, which gains us nothing. Our relationship with them and deals have always been letter of the law, not spirit, so we sound like we're just whining by doing that. How about an offer to drop the ivory trade and also a request to keep our bridge from being burned? That's a real incentive to them, hence my approach in the chat. It's a small one, and it's maybe not good enough, but it IS an incentive - enough that Yossarian took it seriously.

Keep that in mind when dealing with CFC. Right now, they're playing the game exactly how we are, so it's not that difficult to understand their actions when you put yourself in their shoes.

[kjn]

Or we can tell them to pillage some Spanish cottages - they have plenty of units there.

[scooter]

BTW, I'd have loved to send selected portions of Scooter's chat with Yossarian to Civfr. Quite sad that they decided to keep mum about their assistance to the Germans (yes, I'd be willing to forgive them sending ivory to the Germans, as long as they cancelled the trade at the first legal opportunity and were willing to join a long-term alliance with us against CFC).

Definitely. I gave him a clear chance to explain away CivFr's accusations, and man did they still come out sounding scummy. I wish CivFr would just respond to us.

YossarianLives
The pillage gold is very important to our research plans right now. We can't really give it up

This reads to me like they're fishing for us to pay them to stop pillaging. Let's see what they come back with. I'd be willing to pay them some gold to stop pillaging, if the price is right.

I kind of read it as a bit tongue-in-cheek, like when we said the dye from the ivory/dye trade was very important to us. While of course we were glad to get the dye, our main motivation was slowing down CFC, and they knew that. In this case, their main motivation is messing with us, and he's just responding the same way we responded to him. I could be wrong of course, that was just my assumption when he said it.

That said, I agree it would be worth paying a small amount of gold to get them to stop. It's not hard for us to calculate the amount of commerce lost from some of the mature towns around their bigger cities, and it's not a trivial amount, so it would be worthwhile if it comes to that.

[kjn]

Here's the thing with CFC. I've said it before, but it's worth explaining again. CFC is a win-oriented team. They don't seem to put a lot of emphasis on grudges, emotions, feelings, etc. All they care about is making the decision that best maximizes their chances of victory.

I know, but I think there is a thing missing from their diplomacy. Basically, you can only be their friend if you pay them, and pay them more all the time.

From a pure short-term perspective, that can be a great approach, but it is likely to leave them very exposed if things start going badly for them.

I also think you misjudge CivPlayers here - they strike me as a very pragmatic team as well, but unlike CFC they are willing to give up something to gain something they deem worthwhile. We could reach a settling agreement with CivPlayers where we both agreed to give up something, in order to keep good relations.

[waterbat]

Yossarian would be more wary if he read the Diplomacy 3 game.

[Zargon]

One chariot, under perfect conditions, costs us about 35 future commerce/turn.

They have to be right where we're exposing towns, in that brief window between conquest and cultural regrowth, despite not knowing our war plans or culture plans. Realistically there'll be inefficiency, so they don't manage to do that even that much damage.

That's 35 commerce per chariot action, so 70 per turn.

But they can improve their damaging efficiency by not pillaging cottages, only hamlets and higher. The cottage only costs us a few worker turns, it's the upgrades that really cost us. So pillaging town to cottage would cost us 140-150 commerce over 70 turns (frontloaded to sooner), for 1.5 turns on the chariot. There's a reasonable number of roads, so I can't imagine that they'll lose all that many turns to inefficiency - they can just follow the road west and then northwest, doing 2 pillages per turn all the way. Then they can pillage Worms (they can move twice on roads then pillage), and move up to the capital without losing a single pillage action for probably 10 turns, if they're smart about it. Even after the unrest period, there will be a bunch of exposed cottages in the 2nd ring of our new cities, though getting to those will naturally involve more inefficiency.

And I agree that if the price is right, I'd pay them off. What price is right? They get an average of 25+20+15 gold for dropping a town to a cottage, which would suggest that it's worth 40 gpt for that chariot to pillage optimally. I don't know that we can afford that. We might lose 95-100 commerce per turn of optimal pillaging, but that's future commerce, starting maybe turn 160-170. Keeping the money now for the printing press push might be better. Of course, if we can get a better deal than 40gpt by noting the consequences, diplomatically or otherwise, of abusing this game mechanic, then it might be worth consideration. I also might not get back to them immediately - we're certainly not interested in paying them to not pillage Wasserburg, unless we can get such a great deal that we can pillage it ourselves and come out ahead. I'd rather they feel like they exacted a bit of revenge, anyways, which they won't get if we pay them off and immediately pillage Wasserburg ourselves.

Maybe we let them pillage for another turn or two or three at Wasserburg, then we can see if they're going to pillage smart or not (pillage level 1 cottages or not), and then we take that into account and make them some kind of lump sum offer to go away, with part of the deal being they don't talk about it to the other teams. We obviously don't want CP and Apolyton showing up at our door with their hands out for behaving themselves next. Paying out a lump sum seems very likely to be cheaper and less noticeable than paying gpt.

Edit:

And that takes four chariot turns to accomplish. One chariot, under perfect conditions, costs us about 35 future commerce/turn

I haven't actually played Civ 4 in a long time - I thought a unit could pillage for a movement point, not it's whole action? If I'm mistaken and the chariot can only do one pillage action per turn, then I'll need to update this, mostly just dividing a bunch of numbers by 2.

Edit Edit:
It's hilarious how it's easier to figure out obscure stuff like trade route and number of cities maintenance formulas with google, than it is to figure out simple stuff like whether a unit can pillage multiple times per round.

[novice]

Can you pillage multiple times a turn with the same unit?

40gpt is way, way, above their pay grade. A lump sum of ~50 gold could be acceptable.

Anyway, let's see what they say and do. If they move towards the german core with their chariot we'll need to take action.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I don't agree to paying them off, I don't think it will work, and they still have no business doing it anyway under the terms of our agreement. And in no way do I trust them to not talk about it, if we make a deal like that. Can you imagine it from their side? They'd tell Apolyton, CivPlayers and anyone else who has units in the area that all they have to do is pillage some and we'll pay them not to do it.

North Korea. Missle tests. International reaction, North Korea usually gets some kind of humanitarian relief to buy them off. Or: My infant. Throwing punches. Does not get a fucking lollipop.

[scooter]

I know, but I think there is a thing missing from their diplomacy. Basically, you can only be their friend if you pay them, and pay them more all the time.

From a pure short-term perspective, that can be a great approach, but it is likely to leave them very exposed if things start going badly for them.

That's not how I understand it. It's pretty simple when it comes to us. We are ahead of them. If we signed a straight up game-long NAP with CFC tomorrow with no string attached, they probably will not catch us economically. They understand this. Just like they know straight war with us will not go all that well, they know straight-up peace will go just as bad, so they're in a super awkward spot. This is why they would like a compromise of peace, but we pay them enough to give them a shot at winning. I don't think that's "you can only be your friend if you pay them" - I think that's them trying what I said - figuring out what gives them the best chance to win. I seriously doubt they approach UniversCiv like that, for example. You also see them being harsh with CivFr. Us and CivFr are probably the only two teams in better positions than CFC, so they take a hard line with our two teams, and they likely handle other teams differently. I think that's a fairly logical approach, although this specific instance of giving grief to two strong neighbors simultaneously seems like a mistake to me.

I also think you misjudge CivPlayers here - they strike me as a very pragmatic team as well, but unlike CFC they are willing to give up something to gain something they deem worthwhile. We could reach a settling agreement with CivPlayers where we both agreed to give up something, in order to keep good relations.

Eh, things got better with CivPlayers when I started just saying nice things that didn't mean a whole lot. I think the land deal they made with us originally was pretty lousy for them. Decebal resisted, and then it that huge chat I focused on "sounding nice" and that helped. I dunno, that was just my feel, maybe I'm wrong.

Yossarian would be more wary if he read the Diplomacy 3 game.

NOBODY TELL HIM ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF THAT GAME . In my defense, different type of game than civ, but yeah.