First Contact Planning

We don't have contact yet, but we should be prepared for it anyway. How do we want to handle contact with another team? Does it matter who the other team are? Does it matter if they find us, we find them, or our explorers meet in neutral territory?

I'm in favor of having a plan in advance, perhaps with an initial message already drafted for the various possible circumstances so that we only need to fill in the blanks. I don't know exactly what it should say, so will leave the details to people who are better at this than me.

I do think it's almost a given that we'll start off with peaceful overtures, even if we decide to attack. Maybe start off with a NAP for a term long enough to allow either offensive or defensive preparations if things go sour. As to whether we want to war, or more properly when, that goes in another thread for strategy. This is just to discuss how to approach making contact.

I think a NAP is generally a good idea with the first team we meet. We'll want to have such a relationship established early to make sure that we have at least one team on our side. We may gain other allies later and abandon our first friend but in the meantime it will be good to have one secure border. I'd also include something about establishing borders. I wouldn't propose any lines immediately, as we won't know what the land looks like well enough, and neither will they. It would be good to say that's something we're willing to discuss once the open territory has been revealed.

So, to wit:

Greeting.
Let's point our pointy sticks at other people instead.
Land division to wait until we can see the land properly.

Sounds good to me.


From (Chief Diplomat/Ambassdor), CivFanatic Foreign Minister, Domainal Protonotary, (other honorific to satisfy the rule of threes), to (Rival Team Leader), (honorific or two), greeting.

It pleases our peoples to make your esteemed acquaintance, and we would hope our jubilation echoes in your halls. The prospect of peace and friendship for both our nations is a most happy one. We inquire as to when we may receive assurances of your similar joyous intent.

It has come to our notice that both our nations possess the means to fight. In order to avoid such a tragedy, we would like to formalize a non-aggression pact with your government. Kindly give notice if this would meet with your approval.

To strengthen that pact, we believe it may prove wise to come to a gentleman's agreement on the matter of territorial division. To avoid undignified outrage in future, we propose to postpone such division until such time as both parties have better information regarding said territory.

We look forward to your prompt response.

Nice, does this assume a meeting in the middle of nowhere? What should we do if our explorer stumbles across a city (a few centuries from now) or one stumbles on ours? Same message?

Are the other diplo savvy folks on board with this?

My RP genes love the floweriness of it. The other teams may think we are slightly insane, of course, but that's no matter.

In other words, I like it

It does matters much the circumstances and who we meet. Also it matters what we want to achieve. For instance as Dave already said, it will be difference do we find them do we meet in the wilderness or do they have their unit on our border. Also, is it an axe which stays on our border or a scout? Do we meet CivUni or Apolyton who like to roleplay a lot or we meet the overweening RB or the cold-blooded killers from The League? Yet again, if we aim to secure a NAP and one border making true friends with one team, then we speak one thing, if we want to gain on them (i.e. more favorable land division or something else) we speak another thing.

The high style of this message fits in the category of the role-players. For the rest we must have at least one other message - more dry and business-like.

One thing which worked for me almost each time is greeting the players in their native language. Just "Hello" in their language. Simple thing, yet it shows attitude.

"Bonjour/Guten tag/Privet/Hola...etc.

We are glad we finally meet.

Let our two teams develop in peace and make the others suffer. We propose a simple Non-Aggression Pact "No one will declare war to the other team till turn xx" between us and a simple border agreement so we can be safe from one direction and expand in the other directions with confidence instead of hurrying to grab the land which lays between our two territory.

Looking to hear from you soon.

Xxxxxx on behalf of Team CFC"

The letters to Poly and WPC should contain some strong roleplaying ESPECIALLY the letter to Poly. To the French sites we should speak in French, Spanish to SpanishPoly, German to the German sites, and to RB we should be direct and honest with absolutely no Roleplay or vagueness.

The Poly guys love Diplogaming and RobWorham of WPC really likes to use RP in his letters. Sending RP letters to these guys will make them like us right away. We should also participate in the Storythread that Poly started as it will make them appreciate us more as fellow participants HOWEVER...

We must make sure we don't become Poly's rival in the storytelling aspect, because that will carry over to how they deal with us in-game. Be careful how you respond to insults, etc. If you are thinking of posting something controversial, run it by the team first is my recommendation.

Also, storyposts can be mined for inadvertent give-aways... try to resist the temptation to talk about what our team is doing or planning... Maybe we need to have an ongoing discussion about what we storypost... I would prefer keeping it mostly tabloid "Sources say that Daveshack and 2metra are no longer speaking to each other after the latest run of polls" and stuff like that...

Reading the RB threads, I noticed that they have a sharp distaste for Roleplaying. They were ridiculing RPing, diplogaming and anything related to it. I don't know if this sentiment is limited to the persons who posted, but I would recommend against using the same RPing approach with everyone. To me the most important thing about our First Contact (and contact in general) is that it be tailored to cater to the RECIPIENTS rather than to OUR own desires/sensibilities.

I think it was crosspost with Sommers, but we speak for one and the same things.

I was going to comment on the story-telling too and even was constructing my post in my head while riding home tonight

So, on the story-telling - I would be reeeally careful as to what we post there. Stories can be a two-blade knife. As much as it can give away information or make some specific teams look at us as lesser civvers, it can be also very powerful weapon of propaganda and seeding doubts in our competitors hearts. In the DoE game which is mentioned, we won mainly based on heavy propaganda and strong character build. People like to feel they are doing "the right thing" and fighting for the "just cause". Well, some teams with strong totalitarian leadership like RB or The League may not fall for it, but some other will. We are humans before all. And humans are usually easily manipulated if done correctly

Of course, proof- reading the text from the team before posting there is absolute must.

Hmm, I thought I posted here. Hope it didn't end up somewhere else. At least it wasn't anything of substance.

The info on other teams is good stuff, maybe post that in the individual team threads too? We'll probably look there once we find someone.

@2metra -

Do we meet CivUni or Apolyton who like to roleplay a lot

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Is that UniversCiv?

Salut, UniversCiv

Cet occasion de réunion joyeux nous fait féliciter, et nous espérons que vous partageriez de notre joie.

C'est le savoir commun que nous pourrions faire la guerre, mais nous espérons que ce jour noir n'arriverait jamais. Afin de nous assurer de paix, nous voudrions formaliser une pacte de non-agression. Afin de renforcer cette pacte, nous suggérions de diviser la terre entre nos frontières. Cependant, une division fera meilleur d'attendre avant que nous aurions une image complète de la terre dont on discute.

Toujours et gracieusement vôtre,

Ambassadeur (name), Equipe CivFanatics

Or, for a less RP-inclined French team,

Bonjour, CivFr,

Nous sommes joyeux de faire votre connaissance. Nous voudrions conclure une pacte de non-agression, si cela serait à votre approbation. De plus, nous voudrions arriver en accord sur la division de la terre entre nos frontières. Veuillez nous répondre à votre meilleure convenance.

Ambassadeur (name), Equipe CivFanatics

Is that UniversCiv?

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Yep, that is, Uciv as they call themselves

I never browsed their site, as I can barely read any French, but from the PMs exchanged with their Team Captain, this is what he said to me - that they are small community and the games they organize are not-so competitive, focusing on role-playing and story telling. Which is just as what Apolyton guys do. This is not to be mistaken that they dont posses good players amongst them.

Can you translate the above letters to English Talon?

Ah, right.

Both say, hi, nice to meet you, we'd like to hammer out a non-aggression pact, and to strengthen it, we'd like to come to an territorial division agreement, but that should wait until we both know what the land looks like, signature. In the first one I just took longer to say it.

Are there two Ps in "equippe"? And is it not "Equippe de Civfanatics?"

Also, dont we want to at least put a NAP proposal in there like "Nous voudrons un NAP (pacte de non agression) avant tourner 100" or something like that (my French is really rusty)

Using English abbreviations in middle of French text be confusing. French equivalent of NAP would be PNA, I believe. However, my French is probably even rustier than yours since my last lessons were way back in junior high.

The best thing would be to find out how the French Civers refer to a NAP and just use their term rather than a translation of ours.

I just used the term itself, without abbreviation. And it is "équipe", the accent is missing due to capitalization.

I can help translate messages into Spanish. I prefer not to be an ambassador though, or craft messages myself. My Spanish grammar and spelling can be pretty bad, so I encourage someone to look over my translations before sending them off, whenever possible. Here is my rough and simplified translation of talonchild’s message:

Nos da mucho gusto en conocer a su equipo muy estimado, y esperamos que ustedes tambien se siente nuestra alegria. El prospecto de amistad y cooperacion entre nuestras naciones nos da mucha felicidad. Esperamos oir su respuesta para saber si tambien tienen nuestras intenciones pacificas.

Es claro que los dos tenemos la capacidad de pelear, pero preferimos evitar esta tragedia. Les gustarian firmar un pacto de no agresion con nuestro equipo?

Para mejorar nuestra cooperacion, pensamos que seria sabio entrar en acuerdo sobre el territorio en medio de nuestros equipos. Le sugerimos que esperamos hasta que los dos tenemos mejor informacion de estas tierras antes de entrar en este acuerdo.

Esperamos su pronta respuesta.

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I browsed through Spanish Poly’s Demogame sign-up thread today trying to get a feel for whether they like role-playing. I didn’t see a lot in there about story-telling, but here are some observations, in no particular order:

• Most of the thread was (understandably) related to the Spanish Mod (APTMod) and how to convince the other teams to use it.
• They are very proud of their mod and could not understand all the objections based on obscure, unlikely scenarios. They were especially confused by the request to make sure the mod would allow altering the turn order. The response on their thread was something like “Sure, we could do that, but that would mean a double-move, which is exactly what we’re trying to prevent, right???”
• They seem to view us and RB as the leaders of this game. When someone mentioned that a French team had joined and suggested sending them a French overview of the APTMod, the response was along the lines of “No need, just let the Americans (RB and CFC) decide whether we’re going to use the mod or not.”
• The mentality of most seemed to be “Let’s play regardless of the particular rules. This is our chance to show the international Civ community that we’re just as good as any of them.”
• I think we should refer to them as the “Spanish Community”, as they seem to play some games on todocivilization and some on Apolyton. I was specifically looking for a reference to what they call themselves, and this was the closest I could get.
• Some seem to have a bad taste from a previous game they played with other sites, in which they felt they lost because they were stabbed in the back, and now seem to assume that other sites do not place value on agreements.
• They worried about the diplomacy aspect and having to keep up with diplomacy in English. They were turned off by the long posts in the planning thread.

Great job, Yossa (it becomes something like regular lately ) for looking up in their forums. Those bits of information can be highly valuable.

I would like to copy this in the Spanish thread and will comment on it point by point lately (if I dont fall asleep immediately after I go at home after sleepless night last night )

The translation is mostly fine, a couple of minor glitches that could be cleaned up pretty easily. For example at the very end, "pronta respuesta" has the form adjective noun, where it should be noun adjective "respuesta pronta". I'd need to do some reading to know if the idioms are correct. Also there should be accent marks given that many words, but I'm rusty enough to not be certain where.