The Long Road Ahead

[Snowflake]

Ok so Gaians was trying to prevent Spartans from meeting Angels while being honest about them having Angel's frequency. The Spartans applied pressures, believing that they can get it from Yang. This changed Gaians initial stance and now they are trying to sell the frequencies to each other. While the Spartans discovered that Yang will not sell them the Angels' frequency. However they believe that they can still get it from Morgans since they mistakenly believe that Morgans already met the Gaians. I suppose this will turn out that Morgans get Gaians frequency from the Spartans.

The transition from isolation to glaoble communication is so fast, and so interesting.

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by KrysiasKrusader

It looks like (seems to me) that they are somewhat concerned about the closeness of the Gaian/Angel relationship (?).
Even mentioned that they were waiting/trying to for us to get into contact with them.


I dunno why. But I have the feeling that they are sincere about this. That this is not a form of deception.

Looks like the Morgan's language has expressed their sincereness right at the point. Now whether the Spartans will be convinces and switch from their initial preference of the Gaians, or will they try to explore the Morgan's good will, will be interesting to see.

[Snowflake]

The Spartan's "bad cop" roleplay is clearly seen through by the Gaians but their counter roleplay is as good. The deception and anti deceptions...

Since I'm no where close to be ready to write up the history for this period yet, I have to try use this diary to jog down my impressions so that info do not get lost in my head ... I really wish they allow search in private forums.

Googlie has a pretty good summary about the Spartan's current stance.

Originally posted by Googlie


It's maybe time for a full Junta meeting to thrash out our strategy in more depth

Till now it's been (or at least my understanding of it is):

• stay friendly but cool for the time being with all 3 human factions
• make the Uni our submissive research engine, and so be it if this leads to:
• Eliminate the PK's, capturing and assimilating their bases
• Ally with the Gaians to remove Yang as a threat
• Take out Morgan, with or without the Gaians help
• now so strong as to be invincible, turn our attention to the Angels, and subjugate them
• break with the Gaians, subjugate them, and declare ourselves El Supremo

Given the data that is emerging, we maybe need to re-evaluate that strategy (if indeed this is our strategy)

[Snowflake]

There have been too much on my mind recently, and I haven't been able to keep an eye to the development of the game. And then suddenly I found that the Spartans have closed the Gaian Embassy. I looked a little more, and found that just one day ago, Maniac proposed a Gaian, Angel, Spartan three-way co-operation plan.

The key to the break up of the Spartan-Gaian relationship, from my understanding of brief reading, is that the Gaians already have Doc: Loyalty, a fact that the Spartans doesn't know. Therefore the Spartans see the trade as both party will be benefited from gaining Loyalty, while the Gaians see the trade as unbalanced since they would only get a level one tech (Social Psy) while the Spartans get a level two tech. They therefore demand another level two tech in return, which, combined with the Gaian's usual arrogant speaking manner, provoked great uproar in the Spartans.

What is interesting is that the Gaians know clearly that the Spartan's doesn't know they have Loyalty, and choose not to disclose this fact. And the list of requests didn't get proper discussion either, under the apparent dictatorship. It seems to me that they do not really care the long term development of this relationship, and have no idea how to think in the shoes of the others. It must have come to them as a big surprise that the Spartans would react this violently.

I have learned so much about the importance of communication and understanding. The Angels are able to keep a healthy relationship with the Gaians so far. In addition to the facts that they have established a relationship earlier in the game, GeoModder also has been able to stay unaffected by the Gaian's way of conducting business.

I'm now convinced that diplomacy is really the most important aspect in a demo game.

[Snowflake]

I have read a little bit more back. It looks like the Gaian's attitude is really a reflection of how they perceive the Spartans have been treating them. The Spartans wanted to prevent the Morgans from contacting the others and thus cleverly misled the Gaians that they didn't posses the Morgan commlink. It was a lie that has the same characteristics to a lie that I made in the last ACDG, which I claimed that although it was misleading, it was not a lie. Here's I'm seeing it again, and again see the damage it could do to the relationship between two factions. I am not sure how the Gaians get to know the truth that the Spartans really have the commlink. However, they did not confronted the Spartans about it, instead, this incident has left a bad seed in the relationship between the two factions. Basically, the Gaian Spartan relationship is not healthy from the very beginning. They lack trust to each other, and they both choose deceit, instead of being frank and open.

[Snowflake]

Read more on Angel's forum. I really like Geo's style. Straight and open, with clear message and friendly stance. I also like his roleplay. "free flow of information" versas the Spartans "property right" stuff. Worth of mentioning. Looks like the Angels will be a winner in this diplomatic combat.

Spartan is also playing good to separate the Morgans from all the other human factions.

[Snowflake]

Ever since the Gaian Spartan Embassy was reopened, the Gaians and Spartans have been quarreling, pointing fingers to each other, blaming each other. I feel once again if they have tried to be open and clear from the beginning, it would be much easier then trying to explain and argue about what has been done and why.

One thing that has been argued back and force is the Spartan's not sharing of the Morgan commlink. The Spartans insisted that not sharing Morgan commlink is their strategic decision and argued that the Gaians have never and will never give them a price that is worth its value. However nobody has pointed out that the reason why the Gaians are so bitter about this is because the Spartans had lied in this issue, not directly admit they have it but don't want to trade it. This naturally leads the Gaians to conclude in the Spartans insincerity in their relationship.

Another matter is the Social Psy-Loyalty trade. The Spartans are still trying to make a sense out of why the Gaians cannot see that it is beneficial for both of the teams to get both techs, while still don't know that the Gaians has long had Loyalty. So much effort wasted. I'm not sure if the Gaians has a lot to gain by not sharing that fact. Perhaps they believe this way they would be able to garantee their grab of the CN SP? I fail to see though, why wouldn't they gain more by letting the Spartans know this. They could still build the SP by not trading Loyalty to the Spartans, and if the Spartans really want the SP, they could have been able to strike a much favorable trade.

The last issue is the closing of the Embassy. It was a good roleplay move by the Spartans. However they are now trying to explain that this was only roleplay and they are actually honorable good people. With aspect of roleplay, no team is even close to where the Hive had been in the last game. We had acted so consistent in every aspect of the game, portraiting the faction characteristics. If I were the Spartans I would not have tried to explain that that was a roleplay and we were actually not like that. The Gaians' anger over the fact they close the embassy is natural and should be expected, and should be handled within the roleplay realm, instead of trying to explain away their previous actions. No wonder the Gaians has been accusing them being inconsistent and changing back and force.

[Snowflake]

I PMed Chaos Theory to ask how the Gaians decided that the Spartans were lying to them.

Hi CT

I was reading the forum trying to catch up with the game and found the incident regarding the Morgan commlink interesting. Could you tell me how you decided that the Spartans were lying to you, just for my own curiosity? Appreciate that!

Hong

[Snowflake]

I knew I forgot something.

Ahh that's a good technique. Thanks for letting me know! One learns something everyday!

Hong

It is legitimate to open communications with a human player whose commlink you don't have and attempt to offer items for trade, as long as you don't actually offer them in the official game. I opened communications with Morgan and tried to offer him Sparta's commlink. Since I couldn't, I knew they had each other's commlink. I tried this in older turns to figure out when this happened. The Angels used this to press us on Sparta's commlink, when we obtained it.

Snowflake wrote on 14-11-2004 22:54:
Hi CT

I was reading the forum trying to catch up with the game and found the incident regarding the Morgan commlink interesting. Could you tell me how you decided that the Spartans were lying to you, just for my own curiosity? Appreciate that!

Hong

That is indeed a good technique. Though I'm not sure if this has the effect of leaking information. Perhaps we should discuss whether this should be prohibited if there's ever going to be another team game.

[Snowflake]

Nobody wants a war this early. The Spartans are very concerned if the Gaians will be so mad to declare war on them. They are proposing a summit between two faction leaders. My expectation is that they will be able to save the relationship. Although it is unlikely the relationship is going to improve immensely.

[Snowflake]

Illuminatus

Moreover the manifesto is an emergency work, constructed only to convince us to give you Doctrine: Loyalty without any gains. ... nothing like this has been mentioned to us, or Angels, before. You can assume how we will react to this proposal.

Maniac:

It is of course unsure if he refers to "we" as "the Gaians" or "the Gaians and Angels", but just in case, should we ask the Angels:

"It's been a while we last heard from you. In the meanwhile we have received word from the Gaians you plan to refuse our offer for cooperation regarding our proposed leapfrogging. Is this true, or is that just Gaian overconfidence? Just wondering if we should spend more time discussing with you, or switch to Plan C: leapfrog with the Morganites."

Simply because you are not clear what others meant, doesn't mean that you should intentionally miscontruct other people's message. This message not only sounded threatening to the Angels, but also is suspicious in its intent to cause disturbance between the Angels and the Gaians by lying about what the Gaians said about the Angels.

GeoModder:

Atm there seems to be no definite proposal for mutual research -or tech trade plan with the Spartans, so we're unsure whether or not there is something to discuss. Also, earlier proposed deals seem off the table as Gaian-Spartan negotiations have once again started.

And whatever other factions may mention about our stance towards other factions, we would appreciate not to act on this info before checking if hearsay is true or not.

So, is there any (definite) Spartan proposal for trading or mutual research?

The more I read GeoModder's diplomatic dealings, the more I admire him. His message is again clear and straight, doesn't appear to be threatening or provoking, and doesn't appear to be soft and easy either. He also does not show a trace of being provoked, or anger toward the Gaians. In stead he merely focus on what the real current issue is. His mentioning of the reopening of the negotiation between Gaians and Spartans also shows he is clear-headed about the current situation. Every sentence in his message is useful, and conveying the message he wants to convey.

[Snowflake]

The Spartans has been quite eager to get the Loyalty - Flex trade going, and then they suddenly changed their minds when they received Mart7x5's message.

We would like to stress, that obtaining from you Doctrine: Flexibility and Ethical Calculus and not having embargo on them or alternatively not having embargo beyond 2153 is presently of the most importance to Data Angels.

This paragraph clearly showed the Spartans that the Angels' intend of trading Flex to the Gaians and completely made them decide to back off from the deal. Now they are worrying how to back off without being seen as the one who changes a lot again.

But the most interesting fact, to me, is how a team's diplomatic negotiations could be more successful. I suspect if GeoModder was to construct the message he would convey the same message in a different way. Perhaps with an emphsis on Angel's acceptance of embagos, instead of their hoping of no embagos. Perhaps something like this:

"We would also agree to a five year embago to both Flex and Ethical Calculus. However any longer term of embago would not be favorable within our faction due to the reason that it is a clear violation of our principle of free flow of information."

The current turn is 2148. A five year embago would mean they can't trade until perhaps 2153. Which achieves the same goal without provoking the Spartans anxiety regarding helping the Gaians.

Telling the others what is the most important for you, unless the other party is a most trustable partener of yours, basically means that you are giving yourself away by telling your opponent which is your weakest point.

[Snowflake]

The Spartans decided the Angels and Gaians will get Flex anyway so they are now proposing a simplified trade: Doc Loyalty vs Flex. The Angels loses the Ethical Calculus.

The Gaians apparently decided that they are not going to build CN. It is a big mistake on their part, in my opinion, for not having utilized this opportunity to gain more benefit. They could have let the Spartans know that they already have loyalty and could build CN any minute. Given the Spartan's anxciousness of building it they could very well get some good deals from trading CN to the Spartans with the agreement not building the CN. Instead, they managed to piss off the Spartans without getting anything.

[Snowflake]

Another mistake just happened. The Gaians promised to give the Angels two techs (Mob and Loyalty) preaccepted, and was commented by the Angels on the trust they have shown. The Angels were actually considering giving the Gaians some gifts. I was thinking at the time it looks like the Gaian-Angel relationship was growing very healthily.

However Chaos Theory did not do as they promised, instead he sent only Mob unaccepted. It may be just that he had forgotten, I think. The Gaians should have had a second person check the turn before sending it out though. From the posts in the Gaians forum, Illuminatus has done all he should do, reminding CT in the turn planning thread and so on.

The Angels were not feeling good at this. They were worried for the "mess" in the Gaians and concerned that the Spartan's would pull off the deal since the Angels could not deliver Loyalty as they previously indicated.

Mart7x5 insisted not finalizing the Spartan deal until they have loyalty at hand. So the Angels have not finally accepted the Spartan's counter proposals yet, I believe. This now looks like a very prudent precaution for the Angels.

[Snowflake]

I have decided that I would not be able to finish the history thread ever. So I will try to use this thread to record the history of this demo game, from my observation deck.