Diplomacy Thread

[Togas]

Godking -- We got the location of Gathering Storm. Let's not trade our actual minimaps. We don't need to know what their island looks like and I'd rather not give them directions to our continent. Swap info with them about contacts and storylines and when mapmaking comes around we will be the ones to initiate contact on their shore, if possible.

Everyone -- It's OK to reveal that we have contact with ND, GoW, and Lux. And feel free to gossip a bit about the teams we know. Don't lie, just pick certain details to convey that express the point of view we want known about that team. We should establish ourselves as a source of information and stories about the world early on. We do not have contact with Legoland, so we should not discuss them. Let's keep our secret friendship a bit more secret. We also shouldn't hint that we know the location of Legoland either.

Sounds clear to me that Vox and GS are locked in a showdown. I find it interesting that Vox has "closed off" the rest of the continent to GS ... sounds like they've blocked off a thin peninsula. Vox is clearly north of GS, given what we know from GS's map, and what Vox has told us about their continent.

--Togas

[E_T]

Looks like Vox is messing with the Wrong team. IT will be to their detriment.

Eta Tamali

[History Guy]

It is my opinion, since my recent evaluation of Vox Controli as being dominated by not only the One Voice, but the Big Mouth (hidden behind the screen) which refuses it's people their rations of squid, thus giving them mental deficiencies, thus leaving them brain washed, that they are ruled by a madman. This One Voice of there's is supposed to show Democracy, but it shows simply Despotism on the worst scale. One mind tells all, and the Great Eye, lidless, wreathed in flame, sees all. They believe that attacking their lands would be folly, for they are all of one mind, they think that not 10,000 men could do it. But they are wrong.

It is my opinion that the Vox Controlians, who refuse to share their Book of the Voxians, are doomed. They set themselves up as the most mindless of all civilzations. They are run as though they were drones in a beehive, and they do nothing to stop the agonies they are forced through. Such a people cries to be obliterated, and I am of the opinion that it will not be long before they are destroyed by the people of the Gathering Storm, whom I see as far more of a threat than that mindless rabble known as Vox Controli.

Hernan de History Guy Calamari the Younger
Ambassador to Neu Demogyptica

[jdjdjd]

If GS is shut off, and thus limited to how many cities they build - I don't care how many alleged "great" gamers they have, they very well may never overcome this start position.

Imagine a team that displays to the other civs a great charade and meanwhile behind the scenes they are plotting and planning as only the best civ'ers do - Do I speak of our team, or...Vox Controli?

Do no underestimate that which we do not understand.

As for Lux - no reply to our offer of the alliance, yet.

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by jdjdjd
If GS is shut off, and thus limited to how many cities they build - I don't care how many alleged "great" gamers they have, they very well may never overcome this start position.

The same applies to Vox. Perhaps they will not let GS advance because they are protecting the only land they have available to them. Obviously we are on the largest continent, and smaller continents are not known to have tremendous amounts of space.

[mrmitchell]

hello, sorry i have not been very active lately, but

in a short chat with AdmiralPJ I made the following title for Our Dictator, not knowing hte real one :

Grand Despot Togas, Lord of the Light of the Infinite Wisdom by the Grace of the Spirits

Feel free to scatter it about your conversations with the other teams, if you wish to show that we have uniformity about our Despot's title.

[Togas]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
Grand Despot Togas, Lord of the Light of the Infinite Wisdom by the Grace of the Spirits

I'm rather fond of this title.

--Togas

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Togas


I'm rather fond of this title.

--Togas

Yes, quite sober although descriptive.

[History Guy]

It's very nice, really, though I also like my own..."Togas, Magnificent and Beneficient Thane Lord of Spain, Overlord of the Visigoths, Flattener of the Vandals"...which is the one I always use.

Hernan de History Guy Calamari the Younger

[GodKing]

Dear GodKing,

My apologies for not being able to get back to you sooner. there is certainly alot going on within our team, which tends to makes any discussion slip past proposed deadlines. Also, Meshelic lately needs to focus more and more on rl issues, and won't be able to be so active in the position of GS foreign minister, and ambassador to your people. I hope that, for the time being, me replacing him as interim ambassador won't cause any problems.

I'll try to answer all your questions in proper order.

1. Vox.
We have maybe eased tensions between our nations a little, which is good. However, at this point there is little reason to believe that Vox will proof to be the long-term trading partner we hoped to get as a neighbour. The sooner we can meet other Civs (and yes, Spain has always held our highest regard), the better.

2. Non-aggression pact.
Certainly, a non-aggression deal between our nations sounds good, but there are some diplomatic catches which make it difficult for us to agree to one formally. First of all, we have stated before that we are going to honor all deals, and generally play the game honorably. While in essence a noble cause, lately it has come to our attention that there is more then one snake under the grass, it certainly makes this game more challenging.

One of the problems here is the concept of non-aggression: we are a peaceful tribe, and would love to ratify our position more officialy. But, we can't foresee what might happen in the far future, and thus feel wary to commit to long term deals. OTOH, all deals with a fixed end date (like your 50 turns after meeting) are in itself tense, and seem to imply that it is kind of a countdown for hostilities once the deal ends. This scares us even more, as we don't like to imply this, tension is something that builds up over time, and is not supposed to eplode so immediate.

Also, it makes us a bit vulnerable, as it would take away the proverbial stick. For instance, once we would agree to a non-aggression for a longer duration, anybody could sail a settler to what we plan as our future territory, and plop down a city completely surrounded by our territory, undefended. Indeed, it could rely on us for its protection against other civs, as they most likely need to pass through our territory to reach that lone city, which we can't accept because we are sworn to non-aggression. There are more issues like this, and I agree that with a bit of friendliness and openess this kind of situation shouldn't appear in a game, but we don't want to get our hands tied on deals that initially seem beneficial for two parties, but after a while proof to be too constraining for us.

But, these smaller issues could be resolved with a few modifications... the above city-building problem can be easily resolved by including a paragraph in our deal that states that Civ A will not build a city in the neighbourhood of Civ B's territory (e.g. on the same continent within 8 tiles) without Civ B's approval. This approval should be easily given in most cases, but at least it takes away the aggressive nature of settling too close to someone's borders.
Also, the fixed duration issue should be able to be worked around with for instance a running deal: agree to 20 turn non-aggression, but negotiate all 10 turns. So, when a negotation crashes, it would still leave both parties 10 turns to prepare their defense, meanwhile trying to glue the pieces together, and reach a deal anyhow.

... to be continued

3. minimap / contact
In the same respect, we would welcome trading current minimaps with you, certainly as it will guide trading galleys accross the high seas relatively safely. But, those minimaps can also be used to explore possible colony sites on the other continent, and we don't need colonies of any civ near our borders soon. The available land on our piece of land is most likely going to be divided (hopefully peacefully) between Vox and ourselves, there is no abundance, just barely enough. I know, we might seem territorial to you, but at least territorial is better than warmonging. Again, it is a show of honesty that I share with you these concerns, we really would like to avoid becoming them any issues later on. And, we can understand you have similar issues when it comes to your beloved homeland, and would like to anticipate them as well.

If you could agree to such a deal, where we promise not to use minimaps to chose the best spots on the other continent, I'm sure we will be fast to trade our minimap (full proposal will need to get polled in our senate).

BTW, when I was talking about the piece of land explored, I forgot that you are expansionist... through luck, we have explored a lot of land (up until we bumped into Vox, after which scouting stopped), but surely we can't keep up to your glorious explorers. My mistake, for which I apologize.

Also, you were talking of acquiring galleys soon. We have been working toward a similar goal, but the tension with Vox has delayed our progress. Do you have a rough estimate on how long it would take for you to arrive on our shores, and be welcomed with the biggest welcoming party our people could afford? Not only would it make planning for the festival easier, but maybe it could also guide us in our research, so that we can complement each other instead of doing things twice.

4. Tech trades:
we would welcome this very much. As you have contacted many civilizations, we can only imagine you will be advanced in many disciplines. However, we of Gathering Storm are proud to announce we have the best facilities when it comes to research, and our analysists say that the gap between us and the rest of the world will most likely only increase in the coming years. Maybe we can't share any interesting techs with you now (I doubt it, but maybe), but certainly we have the potential to become your best partner when it comes to research. You are right in that this might not be the best time to discuss it, but a lot depends on when you foresee to arrive on our shores. If that moment would already be very close, it might be best to start planning common research goals, instead of just dealing with what we have.

5. Wonder agreements
Sadly, we can't commit to this deal at this point in our game. Of course, our nation also longs for the Great Library, even if we may not be so focused as other teams in building it. But we can't rule out any unforeseen situations: if one of our troops would for instance be promoted to a leader at the right time, I'm certain that the GL would be a sure demand in our team, we can't be constrained then. Case by case deals may be possible, but I doubt that we will get a majority when it comes to 'giving' the GL to any other team, however sweet the deal would be.

.. to be continued (sorry)
]
5. Secrecy.
Don't get me wrong, but to be honest, proposing to gain the minimap of another civ was a bit of a test from our side. Whatever the result of negotiations would have been, we were not going to acquire a minimap in such a dishonorable way. However, we liked to assess how safe our information would be in your hands, how much we could trust you. After all, this is still a fairly young world, and you never know who you deal with. I hope it didn't damage our relations, but it was one of the few options we had to test you, and you passed brilliantly.

We regard secrecy of deals very high, and will never betray our trading partners in such way. But, as you have said before, there is a difference: techs acquired through deals are not the property of the original owner anymore, and can freely be sold again. Where the tech came from is something else, we are not going to tell the origins of any tech. This is certainly different from minimaps, which do kind of belong to te original owner, and are not to be shared. Also, I told you a bit on the relations between us and Vox, this is completely from observation, and nowhere the result of any diplomatic contact between our two civs. What is said in diplomatic contacts will remain secret on our side, to the best of our abilities.

I hope this is a decent reply to your proposal, please contact me if I would have forgotten anything. Also, please don't mind my English: I'm fully aware that it doesn't grasp the little differences in meanings natively speaking people see and understand. Whereever there is doubt, understand that I do not want to imply anything wrong, it most likely is just a language error of me. This is part of the reason I needed this much text to explain myself, I really want to avoid any misunderstanding.

I wish you the best of luck, and let's hope to meet your explorers soon,

DeepO

[ruby_maser]

I would hesitate to give GS an accurate time frame for when we might arrive on their continent. If they are paranoid about us settling there lands, let that last as long as we can make it last.

They don't know we have a world of possible city sites at our disposal right now

[edit]: this is the 400th post of this thread! Time to start a Diplomacy 2, methinks

[Togas]

We should extend our friendship to GS as well as Vox, but both must be done separately. We should tell GS when we have mapmaking and galleys on the way, but we don't have a timeframe yet. Let's stay away from minimap trades as much as possible and try to find other ways to locate them without saying directly that we don't want to trade minimaps.

I have no problem with the non-agression pact deal with 10 turn recommitments, etc. I have no problem with the no-settlement agreement, but we should try to bargain a bit to get something out of it ... act like we might reluctantly agree not to settle, and so forth.

Most importantly let's keep talking to them and make it a priority to try to meet them (along with Legoland) when we get Mapmaking. Our goal should be to make first contact with every other civ and become the primary trade source of as many teams as possible.

--Togas

[Togas]

Neu Dem offered us Iron Working this turn. We had nothing to trade them, but offered them 25g and did not accept just to see what they'd do. If they accept, we would be perfectly OK with this fantastic bargain and would then have to apologize to Lux and explain about the bargain, but I think it'd be worth it. Most likely this offer will get ND to contact us ... which is what they should have done in the first place.

We need to see what ND wants for Iron Working. Right now Lux has offered us Iron Working for Alphabet and 25g.

History Guy, get on top of ND about this trade issue and feel them out for what they want.

--Togas

[DAVOUT]

Lux bad score average is also bad on turn per turn; it is almost certain they have only one city whereas the top three have already or are in the process of having 3 cities. Are they building or even poprushing military units ?
If ND refuse 25 gold, we could try again with Lux : Iron working against Alphabet (without gold).

[Ninot]

it would coincide with Trip's mentality (him being team leader) to start with military