Templars: Diplomacy Thread #2

[Swiss Pauli]

The fun and games will continue here......

[regoarrarr]

message from templars

Team RB,

You seem to have ignored this comment from me:

"Indeed Sir Aidun went out of his way as to NOT demand but to ask you
what you thought might resolve the situation".

Also the issue about handing over Cape Town was mentioned by you not us.

Hercules Templars.

[ruff_hi]

right - and we kept on saying that it was up to Templar to make the first suggestion. Repeatedly.

I think we shoot them back an email ...

Templar,

You should grab a copy of the complete correspondance. Yes, Aidun did ask us to propose a peace deal and also to make it attractive. We, repeated, multiple times, refused and asked him / Templars to suggest a peace deal as it was you that aggressively declared war. We are still waiting!

Team RB

[Sullla]

I would remind them of the course that negotiations have taken thus far... (Scroll ahead to the next post to skip the full exchange and get to the substance.)

May 6

Hi Ruff,

In response to your letter of 28/29 April, Hercules has asked me to initiate some informal 'backtrack' talks with your team. The team was not opposed to your latest proposal, but some unclarities remain. Please take your time to read this, I hope you don't mind, since I have a lot to say. This is part 1 of 2.

I do not have an official mandate to make binding statements and whatever we would discuss is not official or binding, but the idea is that by talking freely about our concerns here could possibly bring about a solution which we both prefer over the current one of war. This solution we could recommend to Imperio.

I have long argued within my team to engage in more open talks with your team, because my impression is that there is unnecessary misunderstanding and distrust, which has brought us to this situation of war. I hope that through this way, you can make me help understand the concerns of your team a bit more and I can do the same for my team.

For my part, I can say that we share your concerns about PAL. Right now they are running away with the game. However, we have found it difficult in this game to find allies. PAL has been friendly and helpful to my team and what you ask is that we pay back that friendship with a slap in the face. My team cannot afford to alienate friendly teams, especially not when we are at war with the secondmost powerful team in the game.

My team has been in search for security for a very long time. Warily we watched the expansion from your team and your military buildup. We know from previous experiences that in DGs, one has to find a team to join forces with. For a very long time, for us, that team was your team. In our forums we talked about a 'natural alliance'. Yet, we seem to have talked two different languages. When we reached out, we felt nothing came in return and when you reached out, my team saw it as an opportunistic action, leading to a response like: "Apparently it suits them now to team up with us, but when we asked them it was too much for them - how can we trust that they don't turn their backs on us when the weather changes again?"

Eventually we found another partner in Imperio one or two months before your team suggested to us to form a three-team alliance with your team and Banana. The response was: "Nice, but a couple of months too late." And once again: "Why didn't they agree when we proposed it back in August/September 2008?"

All my team's actions have been motivated by a search for security and indeed this war is mainly aimed at achieving security by attacking a team that we started to view as a threat to our security.

However, if we let our minds think freely, and I have encouraged my team members to do so, we could see that our team's security can be achieved peacefully as well if the threat were to cease to be a threat through peaceful means.

I have always hoped that we could establish a three-team alliance and I was disappointed to see our continent go down the road of beggar-thy-neighbor politics.

With PAL going full-speed ahead, we have to formulate an effective strategy of competition. I cannot see how that would work without extensive cooperation and coordination between the three teams of our continent. As such, my view is that if you are truly concerned about PAL, you must agree with me that cooperation is the only way.

We cannot proceed, however, as things stand now. My team is facing a hugely strong neighbor, who has the capability to eliminate us if we were on our own. As such, we need to have a satisfying answer to this question: suppose that we were to ally, how can we be sure that our neighbor does not turn on us and wipes us off the map in the blink of a second once our common threat/challenge is eliminated?

end of part 1

Part 2 of 2

If you want to prevent PAL from running away with the game while we are bogged down in war, think about that last question in particular. If you want us to become your partners, you have to win our hearts and minds and take away our security concerns.

Unlike Imperio, I don't want to ask concessions from your team, I want your team to understand my team's situation so that you can come up with a solution yourselves. I hope you appreciate that more than arrogant demands. Perhaps you wish to offer us something, I leave that to you. However, make sure that your answer is convincing and leaves my team do doubt that we should better end this war than continue it.

I hope you are willing to explain your team's concerns to me. Make me understand what drives you. Perhaps you also have security concerns. I know that you did not appreciate all of my team's actions. I'm sure you have a certain idea about my team. It's possibly not positive, but that's no problem. Please tell me and please be honest in that. No comment can offend me, because I regard any critique from you as a learning experience. The fact that we are at war means we have both failed in a certain way and hopefully next time we can avoid that mistake.

I hope this informal talking can help us bring greater understanding and perhaps peace.

Best,

Aidun

May 7

Dear Sir Aidun,

Good to see you back! Diplomacy with your team was rather difficult since you left, since our emails were unanswered. We hope all is well with your personal life, since we were concerned for you when you left abruptly.

You are correct that we do have our grievances against Templars (that whole "declaring war on us" thing was a biggie!) and we note yours with us. However, we do not see it as constructive to discuss past events. We will say things that you disagree with, then argue further on the details and nothing will come of it.

As such, we will try to suggest a constructive plan for the future.

We will answer your question about our motivation. Quite simply, it is the same as yours: security. Our military build up was solely a response to Imperio, who made their intentions clear at an early stage by sabotaging our metal and building a lot of units. We never had any hostile plans towards the Templars and were happy to renew our NAP until you informed us that you did not want to do so.

We honestly do not know how we can convince you to "leave my team in no doubt that we should better end this war than continue it". As you say, PAL is running away with this game and our continent needs to settle its differences if it wants to change that outcome.

In terms of a "gift" that you mentioned, we can figure out some kind of lopsided trade if you like - the techs we have that you don't (drama and engineering) for the tech that you have and we don't (theology) - naturally, dependent upon an in-game peace deal between our two teams.

From our point of view we see this war (and our war with imperio) as a stalemate that gains nothing for any team but hurts us all. Whoever invades the other team will simply lose. That is probably the best movitation for us both. Ideally, we see the future as uniting against PAL. If we all close borders against PAL and negotiate a trade embargo, they will suffer. We can coordinate our research and trades to give us 3 vs 1 research power. This will have to be negotiated in the future after we sign an continent-wide in-game peace deal. You will gain the ability to focus more on research and religion rather than having to build units to defend yourselves.

Anyway, it seems that you want us to suggest a peace deal. It seems strange to invade our lands, retreat your units and then ask us to propose a deal, but we will get the ball rolling.

Our proposal is:

1. An immediate peace. We re-open borders and sign a 20 turn NAP.

2. You do not pillage the roads in neutral territory.

3. We have attempted to talk to Imperio about peace. They have continued to state that they will not sign peace with us unless we give them our city of Cape Town. Clearly we will not do this. If we cannot agree peace with Imperio, then we cannot have them using your lands to attack us from. Thus while we are still at war with Imperio we must insist that you close borders with them. If you wish to broker a peace between our nations then take your best shot at it. However we will not be giving them Cape Town. Maybe they would be more willing to sign peace if our civilisations sign a peace treaty first.

May 7

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

May 10

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

May 18

Hi Ruff,

I hope my last letter by PM did arrive. In any case, while I would
love to take the time for these peace negotiations, other players in
the game have come knocking on our door as well.

This time PAL is seeking to court my team. We both know that it is in
PAL's interest to do so, in order to keep your team at a distance
through the war.

But like the leader of a random small country in the real world
doesn't generally turn down an offer from the President of the United
States of America, so my team finds it hard to say 'No' to a friendly
PAL, when the Templars as an individual team can benefit from it. In
fact in this time of war, the team can use any help that is being
offered.

Still, the attitude in the team is that they want to give peace a
chance if not quite for free, as I explained before, but then we
should make haste with peace deals, because we can't first say 'Yes'
to PAL and a day later turn our back on PAL. Your first proposal,
which you sent by e-mail last week was not deemed sufficient.

That said, a mistaken post by Zeviz on our wall, which Hercules
informed me about, but which I haven't been able to read, about an
all-island alliance was well-received.

I don't want to give the impression that I am trying to see what I can
get, but other members are more of a mind 'grab whatever help we can
get' and given the war situation that seems quite understandable.

The Templars are unsure which way to go, which side to choose, and as
much as I have expressed my faith in our negotations, I stand
currently rather empty-handed and with little more than messages of
good intentions from RB to convince my team. I give this hint to you
that they might need some persuasion from your team, a response to
this move from PAL. A bold move perhaps. That is a difficult situation
for you, which even real world foreign-policy makers like in the State
Department would have difficulty with, but try to make a decision om
that shortly.

Best, Aidun.

Check out the next post for the summary.

[Sullla]

OK, cutting out all of Aidun's BS, we get this:

Our proposal is:

1. An immediate peace. We re-open borders and sign a 20 turn NAP.

2. You do not pillage the roads in neutral territory.

3. We have attempted to talk to Imperio about peace. They have continued to state that they will not sign peace with us unless we give them our city of Cape Town. Clearly we will not do this. If we cannot agree peace with Imperio, then we cannot have them using your lands to attack us from. Thus while we are still at war with Imperio we must insist that you close borders with them. If you wish to broker a peace between our nations then take your best shot at it. However we will not be giving them Cape Town. Maybe they would be more willing to sign peace if our civilisations sign a peace treaty first.

And the Templars (wel, Aidun speaking for them) responded with:

Still, the attitude in the team is that they want to give peace a
chance if not quite for free, as I explained before, but then we
should make haste with peace deals, because we can't first say 'Yes'
to PAL and a day later turn our back on PAL. Your first proposal,
which you sent by e-mail last week was not deemed sufficient.

So the key point is that we made fairly neutral terms for a white peace, and they rejected them. Obviously, the strategic situation has changed significantly in the last two weeks. If Templars think that they're getting the original terms of peace, or even something better, they are completely insane. Instead of running back and forth with "he said, she said" messages, they might want to start making us some real offers before we overrun the rest of their pitiful civilization.

[ruff_hi]

How about we take Sullla's summary, dump it into a text file and send it attached to a summary such as ...

Templar,

We are attaching the full correspondance that we have had with Aidun. In that, we offered the following on May 7th:

1. An immediate peace. We re-open borders and sign a 20 turn NAP.

2. You do not pillage the roads in neutral territory.

3. We have attempted to talk to Imperio about peace. They have continued to state that they will not sign peace with us unless we give them our city of Cape Town. Clearly we will not do this. If we cannot agree peace with Imperio, then we cannot have them using your lands to attack us from. Thus while we are still at war with Imperio we must insist that you close borders with them. If you wish to broker a peace between our nations then take your best shot at it. However we will not be giving them Cape Town. Maybe they would be more willing to sign peace if our civilisations sign a peace treaty first.

This was rejected by Aidun / Templar as being insufficient. At that point, we suggested that you make a counter proposal. We are still waiting for that counter proposal.

Be aware and as we stated earlier, our war preparations will continue.

Regards,

Team RB

[sunrise089]

We could also offer the following:

"Templars,

We'll take peace in exchange for Jerusalem and a 50-turn no-tech trading clause with PAL.

-RB"

[Dreylin]

So we just say:

Templars,

We did propose a peace deal. The response we got from Aidun & yourselves was "Your first proposal, which you sent by e-mail last week was not deemed sufficient" and instead of suggesting what you would want, instead we got: "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" - talk about nebulous!

In truth, we were (and are) not willing to engage in a game of 20questions to find out what terms would be acceptable to sign peace. Make us a concrete proposal and we will consider it.

TeamRB.

[ruff_hi]

nice Dreylin. I approve this message (with the attached summary of Sullla's)

[MyOtherCar]

I like Sunrise's addition as well

[sooooo]

Yeah fine, Dreylin's email with Ruff's attachment sounds good.

[Swiss Pauli]

I'd go with Dreylin's email without attachments.

[sooooo]

Dreylin's email sent.

[Swiss Pauli]

*bump*

With Imperio switching sides, Templars have every incentive to go for an AP 'Stop The War' vote. Seeing as this could happen any time after they log in (I've no idea where are on the AP voting cycle), we should probably decide whether to vote 'No' or 'Defy'. Pink would suffer citizens as a result of defiance unless we get more in there.

[sooooo]

PAL will vote yes. I say defy and take the happy hit at pink. I want to build a forge next here - that should get us 2 hammers. And the 3 x whip unhappy should wear off eventually.