Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[Dreylin]

I liked Ruff's message, but support getting something our there soon. Sooooo's suggestion on its own would be sufficient; I can't immediately see a way of pushing Aidun towards negotiating with Imperio without diluting the impact of the rest of the post.

[Sullla]

Honestly, I'm pretty close to the mh position by now. This team is hopelessly delusional, and we will never see eye to eye with them. Sadly, Templars have decided to throw the game to PAL, and there's nothing we can do about it. The only things that we could do to stop them throwing the game to PAL involve neutering our own team's power (e.g. handing over cities) which we simply won't do.

Once in a while in Avalon Hill's Diplomacy, you will see one player simply decide to screw everyone else over in the game by surrendering their supply centers to the board leader, actively assisting them in soloing the game. This is considered disgusting, reprehensible play, but it does happen on occasion. Usually it's the result of someone taking things in a game too personally, being a sore loser, or taking a perverse satisfaction in screwing over everyone else in the game to make up for their own poor play.

I think you can see the parallels to our current game.

God, I can't stand their team. I would seriously think about changing our goal from winning to "annihilate Templars."

[sooooo]

OK, I just went ahead and sent my email.

[ruff_hi]

pm from Aidun ... send about an hr ago ...

Hi Ruff,

Thanks for the reply through PM and e-mail.

There is also another thing: it seems that PAL is trying to build a coalition against your team, convincing Banana to join them as well. You would do well to convince Banana to stay on board. If we are to compete with PAL, we need all help we can get.

PAL is also trying to keep Imperio from going with a peace deal. I am trying to get Imperio to join in the peace, but I have received no reply. Perhaps you should independently and directly open up peace talks with them as well, since Imperio needs to be part of any peace deal we make, not only because because of the Templar alliance with Imperio, but also because leaving Imperio out would only mean that in the near future yet another war would be fought on our continent, leaving PAL's position untouched.

It won't be easy, but try to find creative solutions that don't really hurt you but could mean a lot to Imperio. I happen to know that Imperio's main concern is territory and have always been angry about the settlement of Cape Town, a spot which they wanted for themselves, leaving your team without metal. I should add that the Templars have never understood this frustration from Imperio, given the abundance of resources Imperio has.

Use this information to your advantage and I hope it can help you to bring about peace.

I send this through PM, because I don't want my team to know that I sent this. As such, you never got this message or the info from me.

Best, Aidun

[Sullla]

There is also another thing: it seems that PAL is trying to build a coalition against your team, convincing Banana to join them as well. You would do well to convince Banana to stay on board. If we are to compete with PAL, we need all help we can get.

I send this through PM, because I don't want my team to know that I sent this. As such, you never got this message or the info from me.

Best, Aidun

OK, this needs to stop. Who the hell are we negotiating with here?! Are they on PAL's side, or not? This double-talk is just absurd.

[MyOtherCar]

Use this information to your advantage and I hope it can help you to bring about peace.

Thank you Aidun, thank y..

...err, did you forget to add an attachment or something? I can't seem to find 'this information'.

[Swiss Pauli]

There's one of two things going on here:

Either there's a split within Templars with those that are happy to be PAL biatches on one side, and those, including Aidun, who would rather team against them, seeing as PAL is the big dog.

Or, and perhaps more probably, Aidun is trying to keep Templars' options open by offering us both the stick (give us stuff or we'll join PAL), and the carrot (here's the key to understanding Imperio).

In light of this information, I think we should prepare a proposal for Imperio to join us against Templars when we take Jericho. If they want land, then they can have Damascus, Constantinople, Acre, and the site next to Acre. We'll make do with Jericho and Jerusalem. We spell out (again) that we had to settle Cape Town, or quit the game, because the mapmaker did not put any metals, or horses, in the western half of our continent.

[sunrise089]

@Ruff - Please, under no circumstances mention Jericho in any of our posts. It pains me that we move a horse archer towards the city and that that action became the highlight of the turn, but that's in the past. But please, no hints no matter how subtle.

@Soooo - If we can take Jericho without drafting and without weakening the Cape Town army we won't need Imperio to conquer Templar cities. Why offer peace then?

EDIT: Didn't see the new page.

@Swiss - Again, please lets not mention Jericho to Imperio until we take the city. I assume that's what you meant, but all of this diplo talk is making me nervous.

[sooooo]

@Soooo - If we can take Jericho without drafting and without weakening the Cape Town army we won't need Imperio to conquer Templar cities. Why offer peace then?

My reasoning was that capturing Jericho with a lightning assault is one thing, but capturing Jerusalem is another. If we had all of our units in the north brought to bear at Jerusalem then it would be 10x easier. Plus we'd get trade routes back.

[sooooo]

You know what, I'm beginning to take a shine to Aidun. He is going out of his way to tell us potentially useful information. Sure we may already know it, but he wasn't to know. Maybe we should send a pm back to Aidun, saying literally anything, with a "Your pms are secure with us and will not get back to templars. In return we trust that you will not inform the rest of the templar team of my pms either." Maybe we need a "Team Info and Contacts - Aidun" thread

[ruff_hi]

@Ruff - Please, under no circumstances mention Jericho in any of our posts. It pains me that we move a horse archer towards the city and that that action became the highlight of the turn, but that's in the past. But please, no hints no matter how subtle.

I haven't mentioned Jericho to them. But this is the job of a diplomat and a General. The diplomat does all he can to avoid war, while a General does all he can to win a war.

Looking at the diplomatic front - PAL is winning this game (I guess that is why they are called democracy games, because of the huge impact of meta diplomacy).

The way I see it, we have 3 strategic options open to us:
1) Take Jericho and invite Imperio in on the spoils (while they still exist)
2) Kill Templar and Imperio
3) Form a 5-team Alliance and all go after PAL

I have ranked them in the order of 'easy' to 'hard' (relatively) for us to achieve.

[sunrise089]

@Ruff - Ok, let's negotiate a 5-team alliance from a position of strength atop the ashes of Jericho.

[ruff_hi]

The chances of getting Templar to agree to a 5-team alliance in that situation is zero.

Sunrise ... I am going to post a screenshot of the junction between PAL and Banana tonight (or you could do it) - can you write up how you would go about attacking Banana if you were PAL. I want to share this with Banana and start to work towards getting all of the other teams to gang up on PAL.

[sunrise089]

Happy to write up a plan for Banana Ruff.

I don't share your lack of faith in our diplo corp though. To me, "work with us or we'll destroy you" is more compelling than "work with us (PAL) while we win the game and you play an increasingly irrelevant role."

[ruff_hi]

I can see that.