Diplomacy Thread

[ThePlagueRat]

I think astrologix is perfectly right on this issue... *applause*

[DAVOUT]

"He says the continent has a very "interesting shape."

Chokepoint ?

[Nuclear Winter]

Answer from Vox

Explorers Too
Dear Nuclearis Winterius

Thank-you for your letter of the 18th. We appreciate the need to meet as soon as possible. Business awaits us. Alas, we must meet first. And to this end, we, the people of the One Voice responded positively to your request to identify - as best we could - where we reside in this wonderful, albeit shrouded world. I'm sure you will recall my 'directions' from my first correspondence.

So yes, we are eager to meet. We would also appreciate some information in return, which I understood to be our original deal. In other words - We tell you where we are. You tell us where you are. .....as best as can be identified from our current understanding of our environment. We promise to keep the information confidential.

The people of Vox Controli feel that we have much in common with the people of Spain. A love of life, a love of the land, a love of the sea, the squid thing - well, we still have much in common.

In conclusion - it would be good for our explorers to meet. The brave warriors of the One Voice have the honor in Voxian society of opening up the land. The first warrior you will meet - his name is Wandering Willy - a hero to the people of the One Voice. In answer to your questions - Willy can see the sea. (His sister Sally sells sea-shells by the sea-shore.) He is heading south. He has been on a long journey - so if you meet him - a mug of beer would be greatly welcome. Do not be put off by his tough appearance - Willy is a fine and sensitive human being - as is typical of our people.

Given that the topic of Willy and Warriors has come up, I could not resist the temptation to leaf through the one book, and share with you one of my favorite sectons. It is from the Book of Warriors.

Warriors I, Verses 1 to 6.

1. And so it came to be that the people of Vox Controli founded the capitol, "The Voice".

2. And the Voice begat warriors.

3. The Voice begat Willy. The Voice begat Tim. The voice begat Thadeus.

4. And Willy went out of The Voice, and into the wilderness.

5. And the shadows receded, and light shone upon the land.

6. And the people of Vox Controli cried out in unison and joy.

Thus ends the reading.

Very uplifting, isn't it. I get a tingle everytime I read it. Makes me almost wish that I had taken up a different line of work. Sigh - the life of a bureaucrat - well you understand.

My dear sir, I must make my leave. I wish you well. I look forward to hearing from you regarding location. And may the One Voice grant good fortune to explorers of both our great nations as they strive to meet in an uncertain world.

Yours truly,
BetaHound, VFA, Vox Controli

As you see, they are heading south.
Directives on what to answer? (Besides the fact that I had already given directives on our location.....)

[DAVOUT]

We could answer along those lines :

I recall well of your directives; for us the perspectives are quite simple since we are near the center of the map, as we told you. For us, the East is on the right side and the West is on the left side of the map. More detailed directives could possibly help us to look for you on the good side.

Just a suggestion.

[Togas]

"Willie can see the sea. He is heading south."

It's possible that Willie might meet our Madrid Expedition.


...And I love how these guys also seem to roleplay. We need to continue to give them bits of our roleplay in our PMs to them. They could be doing it just for our benefit, but just the fact that they write it up and seem to enjoy it gives us both someone in common that cannot be ignored.

Be sure to keep a VERY friendly attitude with Vox. I know that betahound has been slow in his responses. I'm going to write a message back to Jon thanking him for getting Beta to write us quickly and thanking them for telling us such a enjoyable tale, etc, etc.

... the diplomacy never stops.

--Togas

[Nuclear Winter]

Oh my liege, be calm, for I treated(and will treat) them as sweetly as I can. More roleplay is going on the next Pm, be assured of this.
I shall only release my anger on that Hound via mIRC in our private channel.... lol

[adaMada]

GoW

GoW has PMmed again requesting we exchange minimaps. Could we discuss this a bit, and perhaps even have our great leader give his thoughts?

-- adaMada

[ThePlagueRat]

I think so adaMada. Let's not to anything hasteful now.

[adaMada]

GoW Overview

Since I've been doing so much diplomacy via IRC and PMs and have been rather -- negligent -- in posting things on the forums, here is a complete diplomatic update on where we are with Glory of War.

GoW Diplomatic Overview:

Current Diplomatic Status:

• We are generally friendly
• When we first met, I convinced their ambassador that I was fighting a distrust of them amongst my team, citing their warrior nature. In response, he asked me to pass this quote (from the General PTW forum) along to the team in general:
  

  Simple logic says that if we violate even one contract, no teams will sign contracts with us and will throw off our entire stragity. It is in our best interest in the long term to follow the contracts no matter how advantageous a voilation oppertunity looks.

  I passed this information on to Togas, and then disregarded it, as the distrust was more of a diplomatic ploy than a truth. Having said that, some members of our team clearly do distrust GoW a bit because their militarism, and I'd like to hear any thoughts on whether I should continue the ruse, perhaps claiming there's a segment of our population that now distrusts them, but not a large one. Any thoughts?
• We've agreed that a 2-2 tech trade is acceptable, though it hasn't been formally agreed yet. They have warrior code and masonry -- and they are the only group to have warrior code, meaning it's rather valuable. I've overplayed the value of our techs and underplayed theirs, to the point where their ambassador agreed that we are doing them a favor, and explicitly mentioned that it would help foster goodwill amongst them. This is in lou of gold, but I am under the impression that Togas (and most others) consider it a priority to befriend this team even to the point of loosing a bit of gold. Considering that befriending them now may net us a discount should we ever hire them later and that warrior code in itself is fairly valuable, I consider it to be a workable deal for us, even if (on the surface) we give away more than we get.
• They are actively seeking a minimap trade with some urgency, for reasons unknown. If we do trade, their ambassador suggested that we could send warriors to meet each other earlier in the game than we otherwise could.

Possible Diplomatic Deals:

• Minimap trade. They want it, and we'd like to know where everyone is. Fairly simple .
• Nonagression pact. Their ambassador mentioned this briefly -- suggesting that if we did trade minimaps, he personally wouldn't signing one so neither side could use the information as a military advantage. (This is probably because of how I overplayed our team’s distrust of them above). I think this option would make nearly everyone happy -- for those two want to befriend/ally with them, it's an unmistakably friendly step, and for those who distrust them, it secures us for the immediate future against them.
• Most Favored Trading Nation Status. Togas suggested that I consider the benefits and reasons against offering this to them. I haven't even mentioned it to their ambassador yet (waiting to hear what others thing), but sadly this means I can’t offer much insight into the problem – I have no idea what it’s worth to them .
• ‘Neutrality Pledge’ in their wars. Same situation as above. I don’t know if GoW would value this at all, and I’d rather not give it away for free – but if it allows us to net some better deal, and if we already have a military nonaggression pact, then this level of more full neutrality may not be a bad step (though it could eventually put us in a conflict between our GoW contracts and our Legoland contracts).
• Location of the two civs they know. This would obviously be very useful, but I doubt we’ll get it. Firstly, we can only trade them the location of Legoland, which we obviously cannot do without betraying their trust. Secondly, they may be forbidden to trade us those locations as well, and I believe they take their treaty obligations very seriously.

I’ll add anything else if I can’t think of it, but I’d like any thoughts that I can get on how we should proceed. I’d like to be able to at least tell them if a mini-map trade is possible by the end of the day, and I think we should decide which of the above diplomatic solutions would be acceptable to us, and then ask them which of those they can accept. Hopefully we can come to some sort of balance, and I believe this could be a very fruitful partnership.

-- adaMada
Ambassador to Glory of War

[adaMada]

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
I think so adaMada. Let's not to anything hasteful now.

I don't want to do anything hasteful -- just find out what people think . Having said that, if we wanted to do that warrior-warrior meeting strategy mentioned above, we'd want to get the map trade done sooner rather than later, so we can get moving on the whole deal. Having said that, this is (by far) a secondary concern to the greater issue of making the best decision.

-- adaMada

[ThePlagueRat]

yeah, let's see what the others have to say.

I think mini-map trading could be a nice choice,
but only for the ones we can trust.
For now I don't know who to trust?

[adaMada]

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
yeah, let's see what the others have to say.

I think mini-map trading could be a nice choice,
but only for the ones we can trust.
For now I don't know who to trust?

Since we happen to be the only two people who seem to be commenting on this right now , I'd like to ask you your opinion on one thing.

If we did the mini-map trade and a nonagression pact, would you feel better? Obviously, this assumes that GoW honor their pact, but I think they will -- as the quote I was sent says, they can't expect many people to hire them if they start backstabbing now.

I'm just trying to get a general feel for public thoughts before Togas makes a decision -- if nothing else, I've got a 'have you decided yet?' message to reply to, and I'd like to know in what tone I should say 'no' .

-- adaMada

[History Guy]

Hasteful? That's not a word is it? Ah well, we Spanairds don't have our first dictionary yet, so it doesn't matter.

As for Glory of War...DO NOT give them our maps. These men have stressed, they haven't suggested, they've stressed that their goal is to destroy every other civilization and win by domination. Their only philosophy is warfare, that is all. There is nothing else they plan but warfare, one long protracted struggle to eradicate all other powers and to become the one kingdom on the planet. That is all. Glory of War is not to be trusted, or entrusted with such valuable things.

Hernan de History Guy Calamari the Younger
Diplomat

[adaMada]

Originally posted by History Guy
Hasteful? That's not a word is it? Ah well, we Spanairds don't have our first dictionary yet, so it doesn't matter.

As for Glory of War...DO NOT give them our maps. These men have stressed, they haven't suggested, they've stressed that their goal is to destroy every other civilization and win by domination. Their only philosophy is warfare, that is all. There is nothing else they plan but warfare, one long protracted struggle to eradicate all other powers and to become the one kingdom on the planet. That is all. Glory of War is not to be trusted, or entrusted with such valuable things.

Hernan de History Guy Calamari the Younger
Diplomat

Hernan de History Guy Calamari the Younger,
I know not if hasteful is a word. In my travels, I am told that we are indeed advanced to even have knowledge of an alphabet, so perhaps we might continue our advancement through the construction of a great list of words that exist? I know not of this dictionary you speak of, however I am always happy to learn new of words, and perhaps even find some that I may use.

As for Glory of War, I must respectfully disagree with your diplomatic assessment. As your honor may remember, this tribe has elected to make themselves a band of servants, willing to do the deeds of others for reward, even at the expense of their own victory*. Though I understand not their reasons for doing such, it would seem to me that they would be unwilling to betray a friend, as then who would allow their service? Indeed, if we are concerned that they will use this information to betray us, they have already agreed to shakehands with us upon the thought of nofighting, and perhaps a great linguist (such as yourself) might even place such a handshake in words and make it moreso binding? Even without such, I feel confident that they will honor their words, as any other path will lead to the downfall of both their tribe and their merchant ways.

Sincearly yours,
ada del Mada
Ambassadsor of Togas to Glory of War

[ooc]
* Merc tribe, even if it means loosing them the game.
[/ooc]

[Togas]

Let's trade maps with them.

We cannot hide our location forever. And we cannot hope to be successful in this game by hiding from our potential enemies. We must be bold, bring them in close to us, befriend them as much as possible, and beat them at their own game.

We are Spaniards. Let us fear noone.

--Togas