Team Info and Contacts - Templars

[sunrise089]

Soooo's message with the Stone City stuff removed looks great. Upon further reflection after the obvious stuff (peace means open borders with us and no pillaging of our stuff) the most important thing we can get is for Templars to close borders with Imperio. Reducing Imperio's tactical options to a single city front will be huge, while we can move some of our units through Templar land and force Imperio to put units in their backline cities.

Tech trades and PAL embargoes and NAPs longer than the civ-required 10 turns are all nice, but not as crucial as closed borders with Imperio.

Bonus: If Templars won't accept closed borders with Imperio, that may be a sign the Imperio army is indeed stalking towards us.

[ruff_hi]

I posted (bottom of last page) that combined sooooo's two posts and slightly reordered some of his paragraphs - just posting here so you don't miss it with the move to a new page.

[T-hawk]

Just a couple thoughts -

The game enforces the 10 turns of mandatory peace only if a concession is granted as part of the peace treaty, right? It can be just 1 gold but there has to be a concession?

If/when Templars does close borders, we need to be prepared/ready that Imperio doesn't get a nasty stack teleported somewhere bad.

[sunrise089]

@T-Hawk - I thought you could choose either "cease fire" or "peace treaty" with the latter enforcing peace for 10 turns. Concessions by one party simply mandate the peace treaty option.

As for teleporting, very true. We'll need to ask Templars to let us know where the stack is unless it's closer to Imperio land than neutral or RB land.

[sooooo]

Looks fine ruff. Can you send it back to sir aidun?

[ruff_hi]

copy sent via PM to Aidun

[ruff_hi]

reply ...

Hi Ruff,

Thanks for your message. Once again apologies for the length, I need a lot of text to make my message crystal clear. This is 1 of 2.

I am doing very well, although I am busy. When I quit diplomacy, I didn't have time for it any longer. I'm studying Diplomacy in Belgium and I was preparing a simulation of the European Union in Buffalo, New York state. American and European students participate in that. The simulation was a success and I got an award for my role there, which involved a lot of mediating. Right now, I'm busy finishing my studies and finding a job in government or perhaps Ph.D. So I don't have a lot of time to concern myself with this Democracy Game (or perhaps rather Diplomacy Game). Occasionally I drop by and that was when I saw our turnplayer Hercules' request.

My last letter was an unapproved message. I do not know, but there might be members who would have preferred that I would not have shared what I wrote in my last message. However, it is something which I have wanted to share for a long time with you; 5 months ago. I have seen our relationship decline. And while part of the blame undoubtedly lies with you guys, we share the other half of it. It frustrated me, because we could have achieved a lot more through cooperation and I wished we had joined forces back in August.

Mutual mistrust brough us here and I had my part in that as well. There have been many occasions that I have also thought about the questions I formulated in my previous letter. Before I proceed to matters at hand, I want to ask you once more, to express your grievances and talk about the past. I do not wnat to go into a discussion of who is right or who is wrong. That was not why I openly expressed Templar feelings in my last letter. I want to understand your point of view and it is for you important to help me with that, because that will help me to place your proposals in a wider context, opssibly giving them more legitimacy.

That gets me to our current situation. I think I can convince my team members to refain from pillaging right now, but they will be hard-pressed to agree as long as your troops are assembling before Jericho, so we have a tit-for-tat situation there. One thing in return for the other.

What I need from you is something to return with to my team, to present and say: hey, look what I got from those RB bastards. 5 months ago we would have solved things differentlty. Then we were equal partners, then a proposal like the one you proposed would have worked. Now we are not equal partners. You are big, we are small. There's mistrust on my team's side. But still a couple of members said: ok we give you the benefit of the doubt. Try to get us something, but make it substantial. Now as much as I'd like to, with your current proposal, I cannot return.

While being big has advantages and being small has serious disadvantages, being big has disadvantages too and likewise being small also has certain advantages.

I understand that in this situation, your team is not happy to make an attempt to please a team with which it is at war, let alone make gifts. Who are those Templars, to be the demanding party? However, the situation is as follows. Right now, your team is second to PAL and Imperio is third. The Templars, are not one of the big and powerful teams. The chance is very small that we are going to win this game and my team members have been thinking like that. They don't see a reason to end this war, because whether we lose here or 200 turns down the road, we lose either way. Our ambition is fairly small. We are no longer in this game to win. In other, more modest ways, we can define our victory. Even if we lose, we win.

As such, we don't have to go for peace deals. In fact if we do, the team that would most benefit from such a peace deal is yours, since it grants you a shot at defeating PAL, while our chances at that are forgone anyway. There needs to be something in this for my team, something that is so valuable that it would make us decide that we would better stay in this game and fight alongside RB instead of against RB. Is that unfair to you? Perhaps it is, but such is your dilemma right now. In chess, you sometimes have to sacrifice a piece, sometimes even the queen, to win the game. That's what this situation is like. The question is whether you are prepared to make that move.

I know that would we form a three-team alliance, together we would be very strong, unbeatable perhaps, but the partner in the alliance which would win the game would be your team. My team would serve as support for that. An intact Templar partner has much more to offer you than a stale-mate or a defeated Templar team with cities in ruins. The question is how much and what are you prepared to give up for that? Likely you want something in return and I think there is still a lot the Templars can give RB in an alliance.

Consider all those things. But be careful. While it may not seem like that, I am reaching out, perhaps more than I have ever done. I can do that only once. Also, I can foresee that with the current developments, in the near future, truly unrepairable damage will have been done to the relationships between our teams. There are hard feelings on both sides now, at the current pace they will quickly increase. Now we have a chance to get past that. So do not wait to take your decision. Would you need more time, I advise whoever is making the military moves in your team to observe some constraint to the military actions, particularly around Jericho. As I said above, tit-for-tat.

Best

Aidun

[ruff_hi]

Team - this is a non-sanctioned private message from Aidun to Ruff. He must be reading our thread and applying option 'D' from one of my previous posts (chewing up forum space). Again, he says alot of absolutely nothing. Several times he was close to saying something ...

eg: "we can define our victory"

... but each time he says nothing. Where do you want to go with this? My feelings is to copy what he has said and email it back to Templar and to Imperio. Also, I am thinking of a very short PM back to him ...

Aidun - you use a lot of words to say nothing. Define what Templar's would consider a 'win' and Team RB might be able to help you achieve that. I am fairly confident that I can talk my team into a permanent peace deal based on the following (in the order listed):

Peace Deal signed
Templar close borders and cut trade deals with all other Teams
Templar sign open borders with Team RB
Team RB gifts all techs that we have to Templar
Templar agrees to convert (at their cost) all of our remaining cities to the AP religion
Templar stop researching and cedes cash to Team RB (after meeting their own expenses)
Team RB cedes Pink Dot and all cities South of that to Templars
Team RB gifts all future techs we research to Templar
Templar not participate in any tech trade without the approval of Team RB

Regards,

Ruff

Personally, I think he is looking to gather free research for his PhD. Naturally, this is total bull **** and there is no way that Team RB will agree to this (that is ok, I will just say to him "hey - what can I say, I tried").

[sunrise089]

If you want to answer his silliness with more silliness be my guest Ruff. All of the gravitas in the Templar post just feels comical to me. "Reaching out?" Yeah, reaching out for a concession as we're busy winning the war.

[sooooo]

I wouldn't send that. It's a very weird situation. We cannot offer anything reasonable, because he needs to come back to his team with something big for them. Yet we cannot simply tell templars what we think of them because he may well send it on to his team and then there's no chance of any cooperation or a peace deal.

To be honest I would send the pm you sent to sir aidun to the templars inbox. He clearly does not speak for the templars anymore, so direct negotiation is worthless.

You can tell him that we will tell let him know everything after the game is finished. He can read our forum if he likes.

[mostly-harmless]

I am angry I wasted time reading Aiduns message. There is zero content. Not even a stupid demand. A lot of muck. but I guess that happens when you start simulating the European Union.

Anyway, I am not sure what your intention is, Ruff, with that reply?

Templars are trying to gain time for a re-shuffling (ie. Imperio stack) of units.

I am not sure their message is worth a reply.

mh

[MyOtherCar]

An intact Templar partner has much more to offer you than a stale-mate or a defeated Templar team with cities in ruins

With their kind of gameplay, I wonder if that's true.

I don't trust him.
He's a diplomat (f.t.), he doesn't speak for his team and if he did, his team isn't trustworthy. I say we only keep up communication to prepare for BB.

[sooooo]

Suggest to send this to the main templars inbox.

Dear Templars,

We recently received a pm from Sir Aidun, seeking to negotiate a peace deal. However, once we proposed our deal to him, his reply did not make it clear whether he posted it on your boards. He seemed to imply that unless we made a very generous offer then he would not report it to you. We thought our deal was fair, but he believes he cannot report back to you unless it's heavily in your favour. To be honest, the whole thing is confusing. Does Sir Aidun speak for templars as a whole? Are the templars interested in negotiating a peace deal? He also proposed a pact to stop pillaging while we negotiate, but we are unsure whether the templars' turnplayer supports that pact. We like Sir Aidun and get along with him well. But war/peace is quite important, so we'd like the above issues cleared up.

Thanks,

Team Realms Beyond

[ruff_hi]

I did send back this message to Aidun ...

quick question - what does Templar consider a 'win'? You talk about this but don't define it.

I support sooooo's message. Do we include copy of what we actually got?

[Kylearan]

Hi,

do we really want to tell the whole Team Templar about Aidun's unapproved message? This doesn't seem fair to me. It sounds more like an off-the-record PM from him, to feel what might be possible diplomatically with us, before he tries to persuade his team to communicate with us again if he feels this is worthwhile.

If we really want to talk with Templars (about whatever that might be - he hasn't said anything meaningful...), I think we should write back to him that he should sort out whether he's speaking for the whole team or not, and if he cannot do this, we shouldn't let the rest of his team know about his communicating with us.

-Kylearan