Imperio: Diplomacy Thread #2

[darrelljs]

We can send a brief "got your message, discussing response" message

This idea gets my vote.

Darrell

[sooooo]

If we give them the city and recapture it, do we get any time that the city is in revolt? When you recapture a city you have owned for a long time then you get all of your culture back instantly. But we've only had the city for a few turns.

[sooooo]

I don't think we want to send a "got your message, discussing" response because that gives the impression there is something to discuss. From there point of view there is nothing to discuss because it's all in the agreement. We have to be cleverer, though I'm not yet sure what to say.

[Sullla]

For what it's worth, I like Ruff's suggestion of an "Aidun" message spreading mass confusion over what city(es) we are supposed to turn over to them. With the language barrier issues, it's plausible and should buy us the day or two we need to put our plan into execution.

[Compromise]

Am I misreading Naldo's statement? In 3 turns--that would be T170--we can give him Constantinoble[sic]. Things might look different at that point.

I think if you give it back, then recapture it, you have to wait for the full turns of anarchy again.

Almost anything sounds suspicious: We're healing units there (but why do your units need to heal quickly?). We're building something there (but the deal is that it's his city, so why doesn't he get to build something there).

What about giving the city back after he makes his moves? [Caveat: I don't really understand the move-order here, so maybe this isn't an option.]

I think the best is to (mis?-)interpret his comment as expecting to receive Constantinople on T170.

[Kodii]

IMO give something saying that we want to complete a build or give the cities all in one go or something along those lines.

I think this idea is pretty good. Tell them that we might as will complete the current build before handing the city over to them in say... a couple turns

[sunrise089]

Option 1: Don't say anything. This isn't totally transparent because we have to many people logging in. Unless Imperio is really suspicious, they'll wait a bit and then ask about it, at which time we can claim the player who logged in didn't know what they were doing and must have accidentally closed the message.

Option 2: The turn timer is about to tick over, right? So we can not send anything this turn, and then send them an email or PM next turn saying we will hand them the city over this turn, but that the sender of the email can't log into the game to do it. We can even complicate things by asking them to re-send the offer, "accidentally" closing it, and PM'ing them letting them know we sent the offer again. We then either send nothing, or send the offer for the wrong city.

Option 3: Just gift the city over. Lessons suspicion, and who cares if we loose a few hammers and some cultural turns? It isn't fun, but it might be a small price to pay for the element of surprise here.

[mostly-harmless]

Are we in Org Rel? We could say we use the city to get us a quick missionary, making use of the double religion there.

mh

[Zeviz]

An obvious delaying message such as "we are building things", or "we want to give all cities together" would just look suspicious. I agree that "we are discussing" would look suspicious too, but we could still say something like:

Some members of our team believe that witholding Jerusalem is an adequate punishment for you failing to give us Gunpowder (article 1? of the peace treaty). We are still discussing the course of action internally. However, we are wondering if you can offer alternative compensation for failure to provide Gunpowder.

A message along these lines is the only plausible thing we can send, because anything else would look like a stalling tactic.

PS Just giving the city could also be an option, because we can recapture it before they can get any defenses in there.

[Dreylin]

Are we in Org Rel? We could say we use the city to get us a quick missionary, making use of the double religion there.

mh

I like this suggestion - Jerusalem has Buddhism & Christianity; I know we have Christianity in PD, do we have Buddhism anywhere?

On problem we have though is that if they are expecting to receive the city this / next turn then they are likely to be sending someone towards Jerusalem for CG duty, and they'll run across our carefully hidden stabbing preparations....

[regoarrarr]

How about something simple like

"We got your message - we are on track to turn over Constantinople on T170."

Delay sending it till the timer ticks over, and just ignore the part about Jerusalem and focus on what he said in the chat.

They'll say something about Jerusalem maybe but in the time it takes to sort that out, it will be too late.

[sooooo]

Unless we can think of a convincing argument to imperio why we should keep the city for another turn then I'm in favour of handing it over.

People advising "just hold them off with some distraction": can you come up with an actual paragraph so that we can consider if it appears plausible? The success or failiure of operation backstab is solely dependent on Imperio not suspecting anything.

IMO unless we can guarantee this then we should just give the city up. It's annoying but it's a small price to pay in the scheme of things.

[sooooo]

Checked in the worldbuilder and if you gift a city to a third party then declare war on them and retake the city then you don't have a period of revolt. Probably we hire an artist this turn to get a border pop on the interturn. That should seal it, didn't check what happens if only have one ring popped.

[Zeviz]

There is still danger of them sending in a defender from main stack and accidentally discovering our SoD, so giving them the city might be as bad as sending a bad message. I still prefer the message I suggested before (saying some members of our team want compensation for Gunpowder, and asking what alternatives they can offer).

[ruff_hi]

to be honest - when I saw Sullla's post, I only saw the comment and totally missed the city demand. As such, sending something like regoarrarr's comments fits perfectly. Now, send it very late in the turn and then no one else log into the game until we are ready for Op BStab - that is next turn right?