Doing Diplomacy on behalf of GS?

[Arnelos]

Here's how DeepO of GS put it:

Well, there is one extra issue: we talked about RP taking some of our diplomatic stuff out of our hands in chat, and I posted that to the board. So far, the response has only been positive. It depends a bit on how far we would want to take this, so I'm certainly not in the position to just say: go ahead, and do as you please, but a lot of interesting ideas have come forward. Are you still interested in this, and would you by any chance of some kind of framework in which this works?

One idea that we've been playing with is that for instance we give you a tech to sell, and you broker it in our name. Or that we ask you to get some rubber for our alliance, and you do what you please do secure some. We're not ready yet to simply give all our diplomtic stuff out of our hands. (even if we fully agree your team is a lot better in this then we are) There are still a lot of problems to be overcome, and a lot of agreements on how we would see these things to be made (and this will not happen in one week time, I'm sure), but any input from you in this discussion would be greatly appreciated. One thing: we better get some kind of mutual agreement on this in place, before we ask other teams if they would accept it... at least to keep the public forum quiet.

DeepO

Thoughts?

[Togas]

I'm not sure about brokering it "In their name" ... what I had hoped would happen is that we'd slowly distance ourselves in public from GS. I want the other teams to see us as independent of GS. See us making our own deals and getting our own tech. I don't want them to see us as GS's minions, or else they will continue to grow wary of GS's power and influence.

GS should just give us tech and we go sell it for them, then we give them the profits. Of course, any "no trades" would not apply to GS. That's the only difference from otherwise normal trade agreements.

--Togas

[Togas]

One more thought: however, if we decide to formally and publicly unite with GS, we could serve as the diplomatic wing of the alliance.

It would make it pretty clear to the others what the political and diplomatic arrangement is, but if we decide that we don't care about trying to hide how close we still are to GS, then we'd do a better job acting as the ambassadors for the alliance ... in essense, further combining our two teams.

--Togas

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by Togas
One more thought: however, if we decide to formally and publicly unite with GS, we could serve as the diplomatic wing of the alliance.

It would make it pretty clear to the others what the political and diplomatic arrangement is, but if we decide that we don't care about trying to hide how close we still are to GS, then we'd do a better job acting as the ambassadors for the alliance ... in essense, further combining our two teams.

--Togas

This is, I think, what GS is somewhat getting at with this and what I had even suggested myself a while back.

The problem is, as you mention above, the impact it might have on the other teams.

However, as DeepO said in one of the chats, the other teams already seem to assume "complete and total dependence" as the relationship between GS and RP. We've been doing what we can to put a crack in that and I've certainly tried to further create that impression with MZ while chatting with him, but the impression is still out there.

I seem to think you're right about perhaps GS providing us techs to sell for them. I can think of ways we might be able to pull this off. The first would be simply that we would agree to be hired as GS' middle-man for tech trading because GS isn't very diplomatically active. We would make this rather matter-of-fact with other teams that we have simply signed an agreement with GS whereby they give us technology that we then trade with the wider world and are required to give the proceeds to GS. In exchange, we receive financial and material compensation for the service.

Don't know if that would be workable for what we want it for, though. We'll have to see. I seem to agree with you, Togas, that outright announcing the true nature of our alliance may not be beneficial yet. More to the point, it may be all fine with everyone until and if Legoland takes a fall... at which point the 2 teams closely allied with each other may be seen as disproportionately more powerful than we are. We'll just have to see.