Diplomacy Master Thread- Helping Your Opponents Beat Themselves

[scooter]

I'm not sure we can do anything differently currently, as we have already taken a position with CFC over quite a few messages that we are trying to win and we know they are trying to win too. They now believe that we won't do anything crazy that will lower our chances of winning, so they are kind of walking all over us. (They can do this - even though they don't want conflict with us - because we've told them several times that we really don't want conflict with them, and that we think peace is worth more to us than to them.)

I would rather that our general stance was: the most important things to us in this game are our relationships with other civs. If we feel betrayed we will punish it and if we feel well-treated we will reward it. Pitting that stance against a team like CFC - assuming they believe it - means they would not want to take any risks by pillaging our hamlet.

At this point, CFC won't believe it, as we have told them repeatedly how pragmatic we are. But it's still possible with other teams, and I suggest we try to do it with them.

Points taken, thanks. I understand what you're talking about. However, I generally dislike that approach for a team like ours which has clearly been one of the most talented teams from Day 1. We knew coming into this game that the front-runners would be us, CivFr, and CFC, and that's where we're at. I'm a big believer that in just about any game, when you are the better team you generally want to minimize variance, and that approach sounds pretty high-variance to me. For that to work with CFC we would've had to start ages ago, yes. Let's say we did that though - what if we played that way and reacted accordingly (harshly) when they inevitably cut corners like always knew they would with us? What if they call our bluff and we get into a hot war with them? Those seem like risks that would be worthwhile risks for a middle-of-the-pack team to make, but I'm really skeptical that it's a wise risk for us to be making. Also, I rarely see that attitude resulting in wins in competitive full diplo games. Putting up with minor crap is almost always worth it.

Also, we lost a hamlet. I don't think that's walking all over us (though yes I recognize we may still lose more than that, but it hasn't happened yet). The ivory has almost certainly hurt them much more than a lost hamlet. Even if it's not killing many units, it can slow you down the same way 1-2 elephants is slowing us down - keeps you from blitzing through quickly with Knights and forces you to wait for 1-movers.

I'll think about this going forward with other teams, though.

[scooter]

Ah, did something not get included in the diplo thread, or am I searching for the wrong word?

Sorry, somehow that chat didn't make it into the tracking thread. My mistake . The post in this thread is here:

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid379432

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Boldly - no personal offense intended whatsoever, but I just disagree with basically every thing you wrote in that long post, and I don't know how else to express that in a new way . I don't think it's a post that's very grounded in reality. We can't grind them into dust, our whole military is far away. And even if we could, why would we want to right now? I want to win the game, not just beat CFC. They likely aren't even our biggest competition to win. Taking on the #2 civ in soldiers just for sake of a personal grudge is the kind of ludicrously stupid play that I see in games here a lot that just blows me away. Your suggestions would probably result in a CivFr victory.

We know the reality of the situation. They have their limited viewpoint of our ability to defend but also our reputation as solid players (collectively as a site by reputation). And they have our self interest first diplomacy up until this point. We can throw a curveball and bluff. We are their predictable win-first neighbor. They're abusing our hospitality like an AI.

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edit: no longer coherent and I saw scooters most recent message. You make good points and we can't change course as sharply as I've advocated without coming across as insincere and purely bluffing. But, I think we can realistically achieve some outcome diplomatically that is better and more sustainable over the long run than paying them not to pillage. A little saber rattling based on section 3.1 or whatever combined with Ceil's missive on honor may be a decent combo.

All that said, I've said my peace. You can all rest easy.

[antisocialmunky]

I don't even know what attacking CFC would look like other than razing that border city and gaining naval control so they can't attack us easily and we naval blockade all their cities.

[NobleHelium]

Clearly we should beeline Privateers and blockade all their coastal cities. The blockade money will be very important to our tech rate.

[scooter]

So I was talking to Lewwyn, and he suggested something that I really like.

1) Inform CFC that we will be sending a couple chariots over to their front with Zulu to pillage neutral tiles. I'm not talking about threatening, just a simple "Hey Yossarian, just wanted to let you know we'll be sending a couple chariots over your way" type thing

2) Assuming they don't immediately promise to stop pillaging, whip a chariot or two out of Starfall. With Engineering we can get over there pretty quickly. Our NAP agreement says they cannot close borders during any time of the NAP, so they can't block us that way. We'll go get some gold of our own.

Good chance they just immediately agree to drop it, and we don't even have to do anything with Starfall. However, if they refuse, why not just do this? It's just a matter of whipping instead of drafting, and the money we'd get from pillaging would be pretty nice. Plus we'd get visibility on the region.

[NobleHelium]

Sign me up for a fleet of chariots.

[Lewwyn]

Irrationality is a big advantage to have in diplomacy.

[BRickAstley]

So I was talking to Lewwyn, and he suggested something that I really like.

1) Inform CFC that we will be sending a couple chariots over to their front with Zulu to pillage neutral tiles. I'm not talking about threatening, just a simple "Hey Yossarian, just wanted to let you know we'll be sending a couple chariots over your way" type thing

2) Assuming they don't immediately promise to stop pillaging, whip a chariot or two out of Starfall. With Engineering we can get over there pretty quickly. Our NAP agreement says they cannot close borders during any time of the NAP, so they can't block us that way. We'll go get some gold of our own.

Good chance they just immediately agree to drop it, and we don't even have to do anything with Starfall. However, if they refuse, why not just do this? It's just a matter of whipping instead of drafting, and the money we'd get from pillaging would be pretty nice. Plus we'd get visibility on the region.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Perfect.