Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[darrelljs]

Nice message scooter!

+1! That was just an extremely well worded message. Other than adding in our units lost tally, and picking whichever of power or hammers makes it look better, I think you nailed it the first time around .

Darrell

[Sian]

Counting from the old Turn Reports i get these numbers as of how many units we had in the war from the word 'go'

* 21 Macemen -- 189k, 1470h
* 6 War Chariots -- 24k, 180h
* 5 War Elephants -- 40k, 300h
* 3 Knights -- 30k, 270h
* 10 Catapults -- 50k, 500h

Total = 333k and 2720h ... with a continuous flow of Knights and Maces supplementing the army from our heartlands

Nevermind ... Sulla Ninja'd me

[scooter]

Okay, updated draft. Here it is, I'll note the changes at the bottom:

Beta,

So I was just clued in this morning about the in-game chat that went poorly, and I was in the middle of writing you a message when your email came in. First off, thanks for the apology, and I'd like to extend ours too. Sullla seems to have had a long day going into that, and the perpetual Turn 160 that kept getting stopped and reloaded was frustrating to us all, so I think you guys just had the perfect storm for catching each other in a bad mood. It happens in a game we've all invested a lot of time in, so I hope things are okay going forward. It looks like both sides said some regrettable things, so hopefully we can both write that off as a blip and move on. We clearly have a bit of an game-related dispute or difference of opinions, but I really don't want that to extend to a personal dispute. This is a game after all, and our contact with your team has been nothing but pleasant throughout. So please do accept our sincere apologies for the harsh words that were said.

As for our dispute over spoils, I think there's a few frustrations from our side too. I want to dispel this myth that we've walked into empty cities and you guys have had to do all the fighting. Someone on our team did a count of units. Your initial stack had 45 units:
* 5 archers
* 3 chariots
* 10 dogs
* 5 swords
* 15 cats
* 7 spears

That's 200k of power. Here are the units we've killed so far in this war:
* 12 axes
* 9 spears
* 14 longbows
* 1 Quechua
* 1 horse archer
* 3 elephants
* 1 catapult

That's 217k of power. We've killed more than you invaded with. Yes they did weight things toward you a bit later on in the war, but we absolutely killed a lot of units. I understand that you've seen them defend heavily against you, but the reality is we brought Knights, Maces, and Elephants and you brought dog soldiers, and dog soldiers will never do anything against longbows and elephants. It just isn't true that you've had to do all the fighting. I don't know what exactly you've killed from their team, but I'm guessing it's less than 211k of power. For reference, we had 387k of power (3,140h of production) on turn 1 of the war, and we've added ~200k of power of Knights/Maces throughout the war.

The added frustration for us was the missed opportunity to hit Warendorf early. We blitzed their first couple cities. It definitely cost us quite a few units, but it allowed us to capture their population before it could be whipped into new units. I honestly believe you guys would have taken Warendorf had you attacked it immediately instead of burning 4 turns turning around and going the wrong direction. Sure it would have been bloody, but that was literally all they had on that front - the rest was by us and too far away to reinforce. If Warendorf fell, the rest of their cities were always going to collapse afterwards. That 4 turns they spent whipping longbows and war elephants, and that basically turned the tide of the war up there.

So I'm not sure what to do next to resolve this. I do understand your frustrations completely, but I do not agree with your opinion that you've had to do all the fighting while we waltz into all the spoils untouched. I believe it's just the reality that we brought a ton of extremely advanced units. Anyway, I think I better send this so you can hear my initial thoughts and react, but I'm more than willing to continue talking this through and figuring out how we can help you out going forward. 

Thanks,
scooter - Team RB

Changes:
1) I didn't want to make this even more massive, so I just included a sentence about our unit breakdown: "For reference, we had 387k of power (3,140h of production) on turn 1 of the war, and we've added ~200k of power of Knights/Maces throughout the war." The 387k is Sullla's count. The 200k is just a quick estimate. His count included only 3 Knights, we've definitely added at least 10, which is 100k power. All it would take is about 11-12 additional drafted maces to push that number to 200k, so I think that's a super reasonable estimate of what we've invested. If someone seriously wants to put in the effort to get a precise number I guess I can include it, but that doesn't seem necessary.
2) I stuck with just power over hammers. I didn't want to over-complicate things and include both, and the power numbers I think are very slightly more favorable to our point, so I went with that.
3) Added the horse archer to the kill list and power killed count.

I went off Ceil's count for units killed. I'm assuming that count included the units that we killed this turn, but can we confirm that? I thought 3 elephants in particular sounded low. I guess killing 3 this turn sounds right, but I feel like we killed some before this turn. So if we can get a confirmation on the "Units Killed" figures, that would be great. Thanks all!

[Sullla]

We didn't kill a single elephant before this turn, as hard as that is to believe. I went back and double checked. I'm pretty sure that what we have is correct, or very close to it.

[antisocialmunky]

It sounds like you are dodging addressing their grievances directly and doing a defense like we did something wrong.

I would focus instead on the fact:
-They made an agreement they didn't understand and our need to kill the Germans ASAP
-We needed to take Warendorf to get rid of the cultural borders so we could save their butts.
-That the Germans could have razed Huron speaks volumes about WPC's prospects for the war alone or someone not as technically advanced like Apolyton.
-They dicked around for 4 turns and it got to the point where we had to micro manage their moves so they didn't completely fail.
-THEY DIDN'T BRING UP THE RAZE OPTION BEFORE THE REPLAY

I guess my logic turned out quite similar to yours. I suppose the main idea to drive at is to point out their failure was their own fault. Maybe mention at Sullla has lost his chat privileges.

Maybe reverse the kill tally and the 3nd and third paragraphs.

Of course they would just come back at us about the spirit of the law and the fact we have so much and we didn't give them anything. I mean a civ as big as us should afford to give them something right? But oh well, I don't think they'll be giving anything from us.

[MWIN]

Probably for follow up email, but we can also talk about what would have happen if we go alone vs WPC goes alone. We would still have won, but WPC would have lost badly....

I do hope Germans capture it rather than raze because that way we can liberate that city...

[scooter]

-THEY DIDN'T BRING UP THE RAZE OPTION BEFORE THE REPLAY

They actually did, technically... They sent us an email requesting that literally as I was playing the turn originally. Liiiittle too late at that point.

Anyway, yeah you've pointed out more things we could say. Of course there's a massive list of reasons we could point out, but the email is already very long. I'd rather just focus on making this one or two good point, and if they are still unconvinced we can go into more of these details. There's a fine line between making our point reasonably but firmly beating it into their faces condescendingly.

[Zargon]

I think the part where we lay out our "frustrations" sounds a little hollow.

Oh crap, we had to use our superior military to kill lots of stuff and take all the cities. That's evidence that we pulled well more than 50%, but it's not evidence of frustration.

We need to point out that we'd honestly be in a better position if they'd held up their end and captured some stuff.

Perhaps something like

We'd be in better shape economically if this war was already over with, which it could have been if not for you attacking Warendorf 4 turns late. Yes, us getting those cities will help us long term, but Apoyton is going to hit us with drafted rifles in the very near future. We're already behind the 8-ball on the tech front, and the fact that this war drug on for 3-5 turns longer than it needed to means that we're 3-5 turns further away from matching their rifles, and that will cost us. It will cost us in the loss of one city if our defense goes perfectly, and more if it doesn't, and it will cost us in terms of having to build and sacrifice tons of muskets and catapults to a rifleman stack, delaying our economic recovery even further.

You may have gotten an even shorter stick than us here, but we aren't thrilled with how this shook out either.

[darrelljs]

I think people are making good suggestions, but I also think this is one of those situations where the draft is as close to perfect as it needs to be, and we are better served by sending it out than discussing it further .

Darrell

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I do like Zargon's points, since we have insisted that we took the cities due to a need to end the war quickly. His suggestions explain why fairly concisely.