DIPLO: comments on Rollplay log

[Aeson]

Mainly I just mean being quiet about 'so and so said this' and the like. RP doesn't need to know GoW is telling us theya re funding Vox, Lego doesn't need to hear that RP is trying to get us allied against them anymore... stuff like that. We should still try to make trades of course.

[Shiber]

Here's a thought:
We tell RP that we're expecting to lose a few small cities. RP will get the message to Vox, that they should hit those cities.
A preferable situation would be this: we tell RP that we saw BetaHound's "war report" on the public forum, telling that they've got units only 5 tiles from our capital, and that we hope that this was just a statement, and that they're going to attack border towns instead of our capital, because if they do, we're in trouble. RP relays this message to Vox, and they march their immortals to EotS, moving off the mountains at some point and allowing us a lot more turns to take shots at them.

[alva]

Devious, but I like it, you've done this before havn't you

[Theseus]

Shiber's last post... devious.

I think the PR angle is huge at this point.

I like Shiber's idea... that is called the "backchannel." We might want one or two more of those.

In addition, we need to select team members to play several emotional roles in public and in private:

1. Afraid: "Jesus Christ, an Immortal onslaught!!! We might get massacred... would you consider letting me join your team if GS is out?"

2. Nonchalant: "Yeah, we might lose some border towns... but we shall overcome, have no doubt."

3. Psycho Warmonger: "We shall destroy the Vox infidels... the land will run red with their blood... we will root out and exterminate them, until their seed shall exist no more."

FUD= Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.

IBM perfected FUD in a business sense in the 70s, and Microsoft and Oracle are their current inheritors.

The trick is: All of this communcication is TOTALLY MANAGED. Nothing goes out to the world, either publicly or privately, that is not vetted and approved by the team.

[Shiber]

I like the idea of passing each comment posted publicly through a process of inspection and approval. Perhaps it would be easier if we adopted Togas's (eew...) system and posted some thread that would centralize the information related to PR, e.g. what we cannot say and what we're advised to say, who is playing which character etc'.

[DeepO]

okay, I realised I still had to answer Godking's last message. As it's obvious that we can use it for PR, I'm posting it here. Please comment all you like, when I get back this evening after visiting my parents and sisters, I'll post it to them.

Oh, one request: this is unoffical information, and has to appear impulsive, and common. I know there will be grammar mistakes and typos in, but for once, keep them in if they don't alter the meaning of what we want to say. It makes it much more real, I'm not exactly known for writing flawlessly. If this was an official PM, things would be different, but the whole point in trying to set up a back channel is to make it appear casual.

Hi Rich,

Sorry to be this late in answering you, with the massive posting on our board, and crunch-time at work, I totally forgot to answer you. Only now, when cleaning up my in-box did I realise I didn't respond before. My sincerest apologies, I really didn't want that.

Thanks for the update on Vox's troops, we had come to similar conclusions... and it doesn't look too bright. I hope we will be able to hold on, as said, we're fully expecting to lose a couple of cities, not much more. The only question is which cities...

We have better production then Vox, so if this war takes long enough, we should be able to reverse the direction troops are walking in, but it is very hard to see when, or even if this is going to happen. A lot will depend on luck, which we can use about now. And of course, if Vox would make silly mistakes, even if that doesn't seem very likely. They have played their cards very well, so far.

Luckily, they are fighting a war far from their core, which they can't keep undefended to be a too juicy target for Bobian civs. GoW has made a few remarks on the public forum, commenting on how lovely those undefended cities look, and we're a bit puzzled if that was meant for our cities, or Vox's cities (they are in visual range of both of us). I don't really understand them, sure, trash talking is fun, but they can't seriously believe we (Vox or GS) will just give them our border towns without a fight. And a couple of horsies or spears aren't really a concern of ours, now that we face stacks of immortals

Don't think we were too well-prepared for this war, Vox had us fooled into being our friends. It's no secret we had the smallest military force in-game, but this has changed since then. What saved us, was Grog. Sure, you might think that the trash-talking about him was a bit too much in the beginning, but the reason why he was so important to us, is that he was our sole protection against Vox agression. Vox couldn't attack us before killing him, and by doing so, we had 5 turns warning before they could move their stacks from behind Grog to next to our cities. In those 5 turns, we basically started building our defense, which also explains why our turns take 24 hours, and the posting on the board is so hectic. Given our empire and the limited time, I think we did well. If it will be enough is a totally different question, but we'll see. Nothing more we can do about that, we shouldn't have neglected our defenses before. We won't make the same mistake again

I can imagine you're afraid that war will break out on Bob, as it was our idea the moment we learned GoW and ND were so close. Who will team up with whom is something we have no information about, but are very curious in finding out. But, the little contact we had with those teams seems to confirm that something is going to happen, although we're not sure what. Also, lately, GoW has not exactly been a reliable diplomatic source, so we can't even rely on what we did hear.

You might know we received maps from Bob from Vox before the war broke out, it was one of their attempts to get cash for immortal upgrades. Which also means we can now see your situation, and I have to say, it's looking good for RP. You did a good job walling off 'your' part of the continent, although you do have a very large border to protect. ND, being the aggresive strategists they are, could give you a hard time if they focus on one or a few points. I agree that normally, they should lose, however, as you said, there are large advantages in having a close, easily defendable core. If they combine strengths with GoW... could become nasty. Don't make the same mistake as we did, defending is in Civ3 better then attacking, if it's one stack against one other stack. The problem is that defenders have to protect everything, where attackers only need to attack one point. (well, that was not our mistake, we simply had too few defenders )

One thing we have difficulty understanding is RP's unwillingness to acquire Feudalism from us. If our calculations are right, Bob can have chivalry before our NDAs run out, so if everybody honors their deals with us (okay, not really a given in this game), your defenses might become a lot less good then you anticipated. Now if we would be asking for exuberant prices I could understand, but that is not the case, our price has been very fair. Oh, BTW, would you be interested in acquiring Chivalry from us? Now that we don't really need the cash anymore, we are discussing to get to Chivalry ourselves, meaning it would be even faster in being released to the world. However, seeing the disaster (to our treasury, anyway) of last tech trading, no way are we going to start on it if nobody is interested in buying it from us. And the Vox war is a slowmover war, so it's not really a necessity to get knights for them (they could help in attacking, but that's a long way off, we need defense now)

Lego: yes indeed... while all the other teams are, or will be in war soon, they're happily sitting on their continent, with the pyramids to double their expansion. We have no real information on the size of their continent, however we made a few calculations (now that we have maps of Bob, that is one of the things we can), and it looks like they were given a 2-civ continent at least. Bob has always been a 4-civ continent, and our continent is, what size is concerned, a 1-civ continent... the RNG wasn't exactly friendly to us, pitting us next to Persia with too few space to expand to.

The next few turns will be instrumental in our war, as it will show us how much we'll lose to Vox, and by what time we should be able to get to our feet again. We're still optimistical, in that nobody of our team thinks this will be the end of GS, and that in the end, Vox will pay for breaking our trust, and treaties. Let's hope we're right

Any way, the game has stopped to be even remotely boring, this is fun!

Damn, gotta run, and this is not completely finished yet. More tonight, hopefully.

DeepO

[Theseus]

Great idea... a tocuh too much the "whipped dog" though.

Show some GS backbone, man!!

"I don;t know how yet, but we will defend, and we will have our revenge!!"

[alva]

and it doesn't look too bright. I hope we will be able to hold on, as said, we're fully expecting to lose a couple of cities, not much more.

A lot will depend on luck, which we can use about now. And of course, if Vox would make silly mistakes, even if that doesn't seem very likely.

Now that we don't really need the cash anymore

Aren't these two a little contradictory?
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Love the part on chivalry though
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What is the reason behind your thing on letting RP think we (very) vulnerable?

[alva]

GoW has made a few remarks on the public forum, commenting on how lovely those undefended cities look, and we're a bit puzzled if that was meant for our cities,

Not sure if we should mention this. No one but GoW really knows those cities are undefended, no need to invite others,is there

[DeepO]

At any rate, this message gets postponed to tomorrow. Actually, I was pressed this afternoon, I was going to adjust a few things, but ran out of time, and just posted what I had so far.

I agree on the whipped dog thing, maybe it was a bit too much. However, this was specially designed like that, my last message was a bit too optimistically, I heared later, I wanted to offset that. I'll rewrite tomorrow, being more modestly optimistically.

Alva: I don't want to say to RP we are very vulnerable, but that we were, but are regaining strength. The idea was that if RP would be somehow sponsoring Vox, they would be somewhat rewarded for their cash, but wouldn't want to keep on doing it, as it would make Vox momentarily too strong, and later on would be lost money anyway.
But, somehow, I have to say that, although cash isn't really a problem anymore (which isn't completely true, it may not be a problem, but all extra cash will be used asap), we would still like it if they would send us some cash for Feudalism. It's contradictory in itself: I can't say to them: "if you don't give your money to us, you will need to give it to GoW instead, who might later on attack you", OTOH, I also can't say "We need your cash". I was still thinking on making it sound better, but the general idea is to have a ple for selling Feud, while not showing as we need the money (which would mean they won't give it to us)

undefended cities: I don't care if everybody knows that our, and possibly Vox's cities are undefended. Nothing they can do about it without marines, and GK claims to be a warmonger, he should know. Maybe I should mention it more explicitely, though.

And, the reason behind letting RP think we're weak, or at least weakish, is that this would go directly to Vox, most likely. It would make Vox more confident in themselves, and overconfident people make mistakes, or lose care. The problem is that I need to tell it in such a way that RP doesn't get any ideas o invading themselves, so I have to laugh about the punity of GoW attack force, if they would land one.

I'm not certain if this is what we want to say to RP, though... this is quite difficult.

DeepO

[alva]

Why not split the messages over severall days, each addressing one major point.
Might cut on the possibility of confusion and sending the wrong message/idea.

[DeepO]

Maybe, but it would also look like I was working him, instead of posting all what's on my mind, in a semi-chaotic fashion. I want to appear a target for Togas' puppet-string-pulling, as it will mean we will be able to pull their strings too. The more chaotic, the better...

DeepO

[alva]

Organised chaos is very difficult to achieve

[nbarclay]

I think saying that we might lose a couple cities depending on how the situation develops would be both more accurate and better for appearing not especially strong yet but not too weak either. I don't want to seem so weak that RP might consider it worth their while to try sending a suicide galley or two with swordsmen on, because we have essentially nothing to defend us against a successful suicide galley invasion in the South.

[Theseus]

Did you all get the sense I was trying to convey in my 'diplo thoughts' email?

A little bit of a change: false bravado, and taunting.

Sort of a Sun Tzu thing... make them think you are weak when you are strong, by "pretending" to be strong.

I could go either way here in terms of the acting.