Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC)

[Octavian X]

I do think that getting the Drones to ask for us would give PEACE the sense that they were uniting behind the Hive, rather than competing with it. My belief and hope is that they'd be more encouarged to support us if they knew that others were supporting us as well.

[Snowflake]

I don't think the Drone's will be supporting us. And I don't think we should support the Drones either. We should try to get the governor ourselves. That's only my personally opinion though.

[Kody]

You haven't considered the fact that we need to give the impression of a fragile power balance.

Asking the drones to ask the peace to vote for us disrupts that power balance in the minds of the other factions drastically. Making it so obvious will help catalyse an alliance against us.

Also does it really matter who gets governorship. The drones actually don't care that much and we should really unless we're interested in turn on the drones in the next 20 years.

[Snowflake]

My thinking is that it will be too obvious for other factions if it appears we don't care if we could get the governorship. Being pactmate is one thing, being in the real relationship as we are in is a entirely different issue. I believe once the Drones' started the governor election, we should all go out and at least appear to gather support for ourselves. The final result is not as important as the impression we give to the others.

[Octavian X]

I'm sorry I disappeared yesterday. I had a huge test to study for, and thought it best to stay away from distraction.

Kody, I'm still not sure about how to deal with Peace. It is obvious we need their support. Of course, I can't read minds. I'd just say bring up the subject next time (if ever) we have a turn chat.

[Kody]

Looking at the votes, the drones + hive combined votes is greater than university+ cycon+ pirates.

The AI will abstain as neither drones or hive have a pact or treaty with them.

So basically if we really wanted either the Hive to win. Then all we had to do was ask the drones to vote for us.

[Enigma_Nova]

Originally posted by Octavian X
My belief and hope is that they'd be more encouarged to support us if they knew that others were supporting us as well.

It usually has the reverse effect.
People tend to analyse this before they accept it - and if we've got drones looking for peace to form an alliance with hive, they're probably going to wonder:

"These Drones and the Hive have something going on."

If we don't tell them what we're trying to do, they'll be suspicious and not support us.
If we -do- tell them we're trying for supreme governor (shouldn't drop too much information) they're likely to either tell us to get screwed or pretend to play along, get some tech and info then pull out.

Unless it's clear that the Hive-Drones allegiance cannot be stopped, they will prefer to try to fight for the win themselves rather than settling for second best.
...Of course, they don't know we have such a tight allegiance, and it is better to keep some facts secret.

If we need the PEACE's support, I think, would be to contact their embassador and ask "Ya wanna help us do something?"
Not dropping that their help is required, but rather that we have a proposal which may interest them.
I'd suggest offering a smaller proposal (say some infiltration info trading) to see whether they're interested in helping us.

Originally posted by Kody
You haven't considered the fact that we need to give the impression of a fragile power balance.

Don't know what you mean by that, but I assume it means we don't let them build armor against our sledgehammer or cover their backs for daggers.

Originally posted by HongHu
My thinking is that it will be too obvious for other factions if it appears we don't care if we could get the governorship.

My bet is that if we shut up about the governorship we'll be doing exactly what the rest of the factions are doing. By ducking questions about the governorship we'll make it obvious, but if asked "Are you guys trying for supreme leadership?" We say "Are you looking for contenders?" - firmly planting the question back on them.

They know that the Drones and us are pactmates, so they can expect that we have motive to support each-other in the election.
We don't drop information by supporting each-other.

Being pactmate is one thing, being in the real relationship as we are in is a entirely different issue.

Drones are lifelong pals, right?

I believe once the Drones' started the governor election, we should all go out and at least appear to gather support for ourselves.

Does 'ourselves' include or exclude the drones?
In the Hive - Drone system you can bet we'd support a pactmate. Think of the commerce, people!
The most populous nation should try for governorship (is that us at the moment) so it doesn't look suspicious.
The idea would be to drop as little information as possible to gain whatever support we need.

The final result is not as important as the impression we give to the others.

They know we're pactmates. Unless we do something stupid, Drones / Hive running for Governor means:
We want commerce
We want veto power
Being pactmates they know we're allied.
If we go for the governorship as soon as we can then we're also not giving much away as this is a standard thing to do.

What Impressions are we trying to avoid, exactly?


.................................................. ........................Edited by Googlie to align quotes
Edited by Enigma_Nova to avoid giving Googlie the last word

[Kody]

Hrmm well the departure of the university changes things alot.

Even I'm not sure what's going to happen now. Before we were worried about the other factions consolidating their efforts against the Hive.

The pirates demonstrated that they were in it for themselves, and consequently they alienated the cycon and probably the university too. We didn't want them joining forces with the university or the cycon.

The hive has been very friendly to the cycon, and they know we dislike the university. So our efforts have made a university and cycon alliance unlikely.

Basically the other 3 factions were quite divided and we wanted it to stay that way. Looking back I'm wondering if we did the right thing subtlely encourging the pirates to be anti-social and the cycon to not ally with the university. It made the diplomatic arena for the other factions frustrating and the hive-drone alliance is very over powered right now.

If we had let the other factions consolidate then the game would be more interesting and challenging for all involved. Also more fair...

[Enigma_Nova]

use it and reap it, that's what I reckon.

You subtlely encouraged these factions to be antisocial? Good thinking, but how did you do it?

[Kody]

Simple really, the pirates started out anti-social, however the thing that would rein that in would be if they started seriously falling behind in tech.

So the hive simply traded them one or two important techs at a slight discount. They didn't have to learn to be nice, and it made them overconfident in their own superiority. Also I massaged their ego in various public forums and through the diplomacy.

With Cycon it was even simpiler. The hive liked them to start off with so we simply cultivated that. Also we treated them nicely compared to the pirates and university had a slow response rate to diplomancy. We simply made ourselves a better choice as an ally.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Kody
If we had let the other factions consolidate then the game would be more interesting and challenging for all involved. Also more fair...

Aha - so now you have come round to my position of a couple of months ago ...............

G.

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by Kody
Hrmm well the departure of the university changes things alot.

Did PEACE break pact with uni? I think I forgot to check that last turn.

Regarding the impression we want to give to others, I think we want to let them think that the two pacts we've got are not that much different. In other words, first we can't contact peace before our turn for we shouldn't have known the Drone's plan to call governor election (if we are not in a deep pact the Drones wouldn't have told us the plan beforehand). Second we should contact peace when we get our turn, not to bribe them using anything, just ask the question and appear to be testing the water. For being a pactmate they would be expected to support us. We would have already lost the chance to bribe drones to vote for us. Same thing with CC. We ask them to vote for us but not desperately so.

If we get the governorship as a result, it's good but if we don't, there's not a big difference.

However if we really do want the governorship then the whole thing should be handled differently. We need to tell CC and peace that we have this plan, and we have already got support from the Drones. And we actually ask the Drones to vote for us.

[Kody]

Googlie!

Have you looked at the other player's turns.

The pirates are being run fairly badly, and the university while had their turn skipped. The cycon are going to war against the pirates.

The hive could probably win against the university and peace with just the cycon's help.

Before it was a likelyhood of victory, now it's just insanely easy with the way things are turning out.

Alot has changed in the last 5 turns, and I thought I was actually needed back.

[Kody]

Googlie,

Also in your opinion, has the hive done unusually well diplomatically, or just the other factions have done unusually poorly?

[Snowflake]

Just read what happened at the University. What a bummer.