Diplomacy Thread

[Togas]

Originally posted by adaMada
1) Should I admit that there is land to the south of us, or should I simply state "We have a .jpg of the land we are claiming as our territory. This is the fertile land close to our capital that we are currently in the process of settling, and we ask you to respect that."

If we go the route of giving them an image (and right now I'm getting a lot of good feedback against it), we would only say that THIS is El Valle De Los Torros, the valley we have been speaking of that we have claimed for Spain.

If they ask "well, what about the rest of the land south of there?" we reply "what about it?" They reply, "Are you claiming that too?" We reply, "not right now, no."

Originally posted by adaMada
2) Should I challange them on this trading issue? I can say something along the lines of "There must have been some misunderstanding; though I understand that our teams have had informal discussions on possible trades (this being one possibility), I don't remember any official agreement going through on the issue. If such an agreement has, I apologize, and please point me to the correct message."

YES. Inform them that you're confused over this agreement and ask them to forward it to you so you can review it. See what they do. Respond accordingly.

Originally posted by adaMada
3) They're asking for the map before they move, that they know which direction they can move in. If we don't want to give them the map itself, can we say something along the lines of "You may retreat your warrior to the north, north east, north west, or north (making up the directions for now), which will start you on a path that will bring you clear of our territory."

IF we give them a map ... and I have heard mostly good arguments against it, it would only be after they leave.

Oh, and find out why they've got a warrior north of Madrid, too. He's not on the coast mapping, he's directly north of our capital. Are they trying to threaten us?

--Togas

[Togas]

Lastly,

adaMada, I believe you have one of the most difficult diplomatic roles in our country. I hope you're up to the challange. No only do you seem to be working with a team that is trying to destablize the relations of all of the nations on our continent, you're looking at a team that prefers to push their weight around with us. They are going to require a lot of work and will probably tax your patience.

I have zero trust in them right now, and their usefulness is getting very thin. If this thing doesn't get resolved to everyone's satisfaction, the next step will be for us to diplomatically isolate them and try to create alliances to counter their growing threat ... which is going to make your job as their ambassador an even greater chore.

Good luck, my friend.

--Togas

[Aidun]

I've got an idea to make our claim of the Valle de los Torros sound very rightful. I've PM-ed Ada about it. I'll quote here from the PM:

PM from Aidun to Adamada
Ada, perhaps it's a good idea to paste a settler on one of the tiles at the right of our map and thus suggest we're going to colonize Valle de los Torros. If they pass trough the Valle de los Torros and don't see any settler or city, we can alway's say we have dicided to retreat the settler and let him found a city at an other site to prevent them of knowing where our city is or something like that. We suggest them by this that we were no lying that the territory is ours, but that it nearly IS. By placing the settler on the map we can make a strong statement agaist them.

Aidun

Please post some comments on this idea.

Aidun Cian the Older

[Togas]

It's a clever idea, but let's not. They're already too suspicious of us right now, I'd hate for to have an unprotected ghost settler out there that never materializes into a new town.

[Aidun]

Paste a spearman one tile behind him... It's just to make a stronger statement. See this as a kind of bluffing.

Aidun Cian the Older

[jdjdjd]

GF will always shoot his mouth off before he has the facts. He gets pissed too easy and can overrely on his emotions. He also uses disinformation to try and make us or others confused.

We should continue diplomacy as we have in the past. we should downplay this and not elevate it. There's too much for us to lose and for them to gain. Lux and ND clearly know GoW is FOS.

We should play off the tech trade as miscommunication - as I said already to Lux, how can either side commit to a tech trade for techs that are still over 10 turns away? it is unfair to both teams. We will trade them Writing if they need it at the time - we'd be stupid to let someone else beat us to it - if its h-back or something else, what diff is it to them?

We should tell them no thank you to the minimap trade. Though you are for it, many team members have become insulted by GF's comments to other teams and Panzer's last email. These members fear GoW will back and bit us in the butt.

Finally, tell them if thet agree to not search South, we will agree to not search North. And then after mapmaking we could neg a map trade.

Sound undetached, unapologetic and like things between us a business as usual.

GF is like trying to negotiate with Hitler - we'll give him everything he wants and he'll still invade Poland.

Thats my HO.

[Ninot]

Originally posted by jdjdjd

GF is like trying to negotiate with Hitler - we'll give him everything he wants and he'll still invade Poland.

Thats my HO.

do you mean like instead of with hitler?

but i COMPLETELY agree on your sentiments about GF.

We just must ensure that he does not drag a Stalin into it. Should that be a man like Trip, we could be in trouble. Trip won't send HIS ministers to the gulag.

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by Ninot


do you mean like instead of with hitler?

but i COMPLETELY agree on your sentiments about GF.

We just must ensure that he does not drag a Stalin into it. Should that be a man like Trip, we could be in trouble. Trip won't send HIS ministers to the gulag.

I suppose that makes ND France... boy wouldn't they be surprised to learn that

If we're Britain than it makes a ton of sense if Legoland is America

[Ninot]

no, we're Poland

ND is... uhm.... Mars

[ruby_maser]

Originally posted by Arnelos
I suppose that makes ND France...

Talk about a role-reversal. They are, afterall... Germans

[pikesfan]

We should share that with them. It might make them laugh

[Togas]

jdjdjd -- Contact Lux Invicta and ask them what they are working on now and how long they think it will take to learn it. We thought they were doing Horseback Riding, but someone said in chat that they were going to trade for it. We're confused. Let them know that we will have writing in about 10 turns (we'll have it a few turns prior, but we don't need them to know that). If it sounds like they are going to get their tech before we finish Writing, tell them that we discovered Mysticism (and make it sound like we're telling our good friends the GOOD NEWS!), so that they won't have to waste time on it. Begin discussing possible trades for it, don't finalize anything but feel them out to see if they have anything in mind.

--Togas

[Arnelos]

Just had a lengthy chat with Nimitz from the Legoland team.

Here's what we talked about:

INFO ABOUT LEGOLAND:

- They have a sizable small continent they believe all to themselves
- They have not worried much at all about defense and concentrated purely on REX
- They have 3 cities, their fourth settler is travelling
- 3 city names: Legopolis, Jacksonville, Farmsville
- They are doing well in tech from goodie huts
- They are working on writing, then plan to do map-making
- There are not only coastal and sea, but they believe ocean tiles between themselves and all other continents
- They believe their continent can reasonably fit 12 to 16 cities (minimizing overlap)
- They've had two barbarian attacks in the past turn or so
- They have a whole bunch of mountain tiles to their north, but not too many others

STUFF I TOLD THEM:

- GoW has been trying to convince each team that the other teams "broke their word" and are untrustworthy. We think perhaps GoW has done it too much now, so that everyone suspects their F.O.S.
- GoW has been trying to convince each continent team that the other continent teams are out to get them (tech embargo or war). Much of this seems directed against ND.
- Nimitz told me he was "warning his team" about that, as they had been considering a technology partnership with GoW and he'd been heavily against it anyhow.
- Told him we were looking for a barbarian encampment our advisor told us about that we can't seem to find anywhere.
- Told him we were indeed research Writing when he asked. Told him we were "several turns" away from it.
- Told him GoW had horseback riding and we were trying to get it from them, but they weren't making it easy on us.
- Told him our *claimed* land area seemed comprable to theirs, but we have more of a problem defending it than they do.
- Told them we had lots of mountain tiles

GENERAL:
- We repeated the whole mantra about how our teams have unique reasons to trust one other that don't exist with any other teams.
- We repeated the importance of gaining contact with each other ASAP so that we can get our technology partnership off the ground.

OTHER ISSUES:

- We agree that GS and Vox Controli are probably together on a continent that connects to the main continent where Vox Controli is likely near Lux Invicta. This means Gathering Storm is likely isolated with Vox Controli its only contact and that perhaps Gathering Storm will one day attack Vox Controli.

[E_T]

Last night, I discussed with Togas & Dejon my suspicions about Lux and/or GoW and the possibility of them having contact with one or more of the "Lost Civs" (GoW with Lego, Lux with Vox and possibly GS). Togas stated that that would be too big of a secret to keep, that he is trusing the leadership of those teams. They they are too dumb to try something like that, he claimed. .

Aren't we trying to do the same thing with our land area??

My reasoning was the 2 for 1 tech deal that Lux was wanting to give us. I figured that just contact with GoW & ND would not be enough to justify this kind of agreement, whereas contact with a few others would guarantee them being able to deliver (especially if they go to War).

This Report from Arnelos only makes me more suspicious of Lux. We should see what we can find out, if at all possible before we trade anymore techs with Lux (especially Mysticism).

[EDIT] Maybe we could go to them and say that someone from one of the involed teams had said something that got us thinking about it and if it was true?? [/EDIT]

Eta Tamali

[ruby_maser]

But how would it benefit Legoland or Vox to remain tied to one civ on this continent? They both know that all four of us on the continent have contact with each other. Wouldn't they have spoken up by now or at least mentioned it in correspondence?