Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[sooooo]

There seems to be no point in negotiating with aidun. That needs to be done with templars proper. I think what he is fishing for is that we offer him a city. Kylearan, your suggestion I think would take a long time to materialise itself. We have to negotiate a generous solution with him first, then after we come up with a deal he will put it to the templars and we have to negotiate all over again. It could take weeks!

I think we should send my message to templars and if they are interesting in negotiating they will reply. If they are not then at least we know where we stand and we will not waste any more time on it.

@Ruff: I don't think we should send our proposal with the message. Let them ask for it if they are curious.

I don't think we are hanging Aidun out to dry here. He did state that he has permission to negotiate with us, so they know what he is doing.

[darrelljs]

I'm against sending a message to the Templars fingering Aidun. I mean, the guys is going out on a limb and whether his message is vapid or not, it doesn't change the fact that it would be a betrayal of trust. If you want to negotiate with Templars proper, have the courtesy to send Aidun a message saying we aren't comfortable with this backdoor channel, and want to get to the Templar's proper (and that we won't disclose what he's been doing).

@sooooo - He said his message was not approved. He might have some latitutde, but I doubt he was supposed to send any messages without a Templar team review.

Darrell

[mostly-harmless]

Yes, I agree, we should reply to Aidun first, saying that we want to negotiate with Templars on an official basis, given the current situation and given that we received misguiding diplo messages before (NAP negotiation & trade offerings right before they declared).

mh

[TAD]

Judging from the turnplay thread, they are not winning this war, so what could they achieve from stalling?

It sounds to me like Aidun is not at all in touch with his team about this, which is bad.

[regoarrarr]

I disagree with most of the above commenters. I think that Aidun is sincere and regrets what happened to our relationship.

I agree that he is probably out of touch with the rest of his team, due to his absence.

But I do think that it is probably true that they are looking at this game as a loss. They realize that they are not going to win. So if they're looking to play kingmaker of some sort, I do think it's worthwhile to go down the road of exploring what they're looking for.

Going back to capital-D Diplomacy, a lot of times in this situation, a team / player is looking for something fun to do - a task or something that will make slogging through the remaining turns worthwhile.

What about we send them something like we have received a quest that Christianity (or whatever their state relgion is) must be spread to every city in the game. And we play that up as our quest and vow that we will aid them in doing this.

I think we need to stay away from offering cities or techs or anything really "game related" since they know they're going to lose and us offering them a city or a tech is not going to change that, it's just going to delay the inevitable

[ruff_hi]

I'm thinking of something like this ...

Aidun,

Your flowery words are not working with Team RB as our team is very spread geographically. Basically, the responses that I am seeing fall into the following:

European Team Members: Really enjoying your prose
UK Team Members: What? More European waffle
US Team Members: Come on - give us something actionable
Australian Team Members: Don't come the raw prawn - give us something concrete

Our collective response is "You started this war. We are executing it by killing your units. Don't start something that you cannot finish."

That said, Team RB is not just here to steam roll other teams. We have always said we want to work together. It would really help your teams cause with us if we knew what your team means by a 'victory'.

So, lets start simple and not go for the golden ring in one shot ... what does your team need out of this game to say that they played a good game and 'won'? Answer that question and we can start working on how Team RB can help Templars reach that point.

Ruff

[Sullla]

I just see this as more typical Templars nonsense. Send a long wall of text that says nothing, we respond with a specific proposal, they refuse our offer and make no counter-offer. We've been doing this the whole game. Templars never say anything substantive in their messages. We always go around in circles to no purpose. I'm really sick of dealing with these guys...

I wouldn't have a problem with cutting off Aidun and revealing his messages to the rest of the team. Still, there seems to be a majority opinion against that, so let's send him back a message asking to clarify. Something along the lines of what mostly_harmless posted:

Yes, I agree, we should reply to Aidun first, saying that we want to negotiate with Templars on an official basis, given the current situation and given that we received misguiding diplo messages before (NAP negotiation & trade offerings right before they declared).

I'm not sure your proposal sets the right tone, Ruff. Anyway, first we need to start negotiating with the actual Templar team, because talking with Aidun when he has no decision-making power is meaningless.

We should also bring up this point: if your team has decided that you can't win the game, and are simply acting to spite Team RB, then why should we negotiate with you at all?

[sooooo]

OK, since the team does not want to mention sir aidun to the templars, how about:

Sir Aidun,

We feel you are playing a game with us. You say that you don't want to make a demand from us. However, you claim you will not relay any proposal to the templars unless it is sufficiently amazing for them (queen-sacrifice quality). We feel you are just playing us to see what kind of offer we can make.

We would like you simply to ask your team exactly what you want in a peace deal. We'll consider whatever they say. We know you didn't have authority to make binding agreements in your first two messages. But you do have access to your team's board, so please ask them what they want.

[mostly-harmless]

I am more happy with soooo's latest attempt.

mh

[sunrise089]

I strongly support the original "tell on Adiun" message from Soooo. I have no evidence he is genuine (he's welcome to prove his sincere commitment to peace by telling us where Templars plan to send their units) and he's lied to us in the past. I think he's trying to be slick and obscure the diplomatic waters until Templars and/or Imperio get troops positioned better.

[sooooo]

We could try and convert him into a double agent for us. Very good training for his EU diplomat job

[MyOtherCar]

I rather like ruff's proposal. Mainly because it makes it clearer to Aidun in a non-offensive way that his diplomatic forum-filling isn't working.

[mostly-harmless]

Hah, nice diversity in opinions here. In that case we should just send an email & PM saying (in a true templar style): "Message received. We are discussing."

mh

[TAD]

Ruff´s message really cuts to the chase. I wouldn´t say it like this, but then again I am european.

[regoarrarr]

I think the thing I like best about ruff's message is that I have NO idea what "Don't come the raw prawn" means