Foreign Policy and General Diplomacy

[Caledorn]

Our current state of diplomacy can be seen on the diagram within the spoilers (Last revision of the chart: 28.11.2012#6)

Spoiler :

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Direct links to the team-specific diplomatic threads:

Team RealmsBeyond
Team Civ.de (Germans)
Team Civ.fr (French)
Team Apolyton
Team WePlayCiv
Team Spanish Apolyton
Team UniversCiv
Team The CivPlayers League

 

[YossarianLives]

Foreign Minister Caledorn, your wise words will spread tales of our glory around the world!

Based on their posts in the public thread, I fear Spanish Poly is the team who will be hardest to negotiate with, as their persona seems to be first, talk later. Fortunately, they start with a scout, so we don't have to worry about them in our current vulnerable state. The rest of the teams I think we could convince to turn away for good will alone.

 

[talonschild]

Figured this could be moved here.

Initial missive for anglophone teams:

From (Chief Diplomat/Ambassdor), CivFanatic Foreign Minister, Protonotary Domainal, (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 bothour nations is a most happy one. We inquire as to when we may receive assurances of your similar joyous intent.

It has caused some slight concern that we may soon experience the agonies of war. We are certain that our scouts can adequately secure our capital, both our nation would benefit the more from continued peace. To that end, we suggest you confine your explorations to the following path in an expression of your continued amicability.

(Insert our recommended path here)

We look forward to your prompt response.

 

[2metraninja]

Based on their posts in the public thread, I fear Spanish Poly is the team who will be hardest to negotiate with, as their persona seems to be first, talk later.

This might prove not true at all. Many times someone will claim something like: "we are strong, we will bash you" so the other players think "I better watch out and stay away from those" or "those guys I must befriend at all costs". I cant speak Spanish myself to be reading their forums, so I dont know if ancient onslaught is how they are used to play the game, but I just doubt. War is not an end in itself. War must be fought for a good reason and a purpose. It will be really interesting to see some team starting a war just like that
On the other hand, some warrior seeing our empty capitol from one of the three corners hmmm... I am not sure if someone will fall for this that we have defenders, but we have sent them scouting, but still, they are close enough to return in time (this must be 2 tiles from the capitol or in some specific cases even 1 tile from the capitol). Yes, it is highly unlikely that someone will send his first and only warrior (some teams have built second warrior already, right? ) in straight line in the hope he will catch an unprepared team with empty capitol, but still - I see this more often than someone can imagine. I myself was caught in such situation few games ago - the enemy warrior showed up from unexpected angle and I though about myself: well, that was it, he is going to declare and I am dead. Hopefully he was not able to see my empty capitol so he decided to just turn around, but there I got lucky. Elkad was warrior killed in the ISDG2 warmup game. And Elkad is no fool, he is damned experienced pitbosser.

I only hope my fears are pure paranoia and nothing such happens

 

[DaveShack]

I think it would be better to send a friendly greeting and say nothing about recommended path etc. Mentioning those things might just be an indicator that we're undefended.

 

[YossarianLives]

That's a really good point. I think the reaction would vary with each team. At RB, where I have lurked many games, it is not uncommon to ask someone to turn away their warrior for a variety of reasons. For example, "if you get near my border I will need to change my worker micro, so please stay away." More often than not, the request is adhered to just to earn good will with a potential ally. The only place someone could come out of the fog and immediately see the empty city is the NE corner near our warrior. Anywhere else, we would get a one-turn warning to send a message and force the team to choose between continuing blindly towards our capital after we asked them not to, or getting on our good side by honoring a very minor request.

 

[DaveShack]

Would it help to know as much as we can about the players on the other teams? Things like their playing style, diplomacy style, any particular friendships or grudges, etc? I've seen a thread per team used before as an organization method. Maybe link to them from this overall foreign policy thread, since they'll fall down the thread list for a while until we make contact.

 

[talonschild]

The Eight Embassy-Threads:

WePlayCiv
The Germans
Apolyton
Spanish Apolyton
CivPlayers
RealmsBeyond
UniversCiv
CivFr

 

[Caledorn]

The Eight Embassy-Threads:

WePlayCiv
The Germans
Apolyton
Spanish Apolyton
CivPlayers
RealmsBeyond
UniversCiv
CivFr

Added to the first post!

Dave: Could you perhaps sticky this thread?

 

[Aivoturso]

I think it would be better to send a friendly greeting and say nothing about recommended path etc. Mentioning those things might just be an indicator that we're undefended.

I totally agree. Since other teams cannot know for sure that our warrior is not close enough, bombing all possibility for diplo with a nearby neighbourg to find out would be a risky move indeed. There is no spot outside our borders where they can see to our city center.

 

[talonschild]

Fair enough. We'll strike that paragraph.

From (Chief Diplomat/Ambassdor), CivFanatic Foreign Minister, Protonotary Domainal, (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 bothour nations is a most happy one. We inquire as to when we may receive assurances of your similar joyous intent.

The friendship between CivFanatics and (other team) is precious, and we wish to codify it with all due haste.

We look forward to your prompt response.



And Caledorn - is UniversCiv also French, or did my mind invent that?

 

[Sommerswerd]

Let's not kid ourselves here. The other teams can read the demographics and know d@mn well we dont have a second warrior, and the also know d@mn well that we cant slave one. They also know d@mned well that everyone sends their first warrior scouting. If we encounter another capital exploring, I hope we would be smart enough to say something like

Hello,

We see that we are neighbors. We want to know whether you are worthy allies or not. If you are then you can defend your capital and we will withdraw, no harm, no foul. But you should understand that we are going to check. Because if your capital is undefended then you are not a worthy ally.

At least that's what I would say. I have won games with warrior kills on undefended capitals.

 

[YossarianLives]

Well, in the next turn or two, our warrior will be in position to defend our capital anyways (unless the risk-takers get their way ), so hopefully this was just an exercise in preparedness.

However, it will remain an inconvenience if other teams start stalking our borders, tying down our own warrior instead of letting him continue exploring our surroundings. I think it is entirely reasonable to ask other teams to move on or move away once contact has been made, and an annoyance if they refuse. I would be much more inclined to ally with someone who agrees to honor this kind of request. If nothing else, it will show us that they are agreeable and won't kick and scream at every suggestion we make.

 

[Bowsling]

I think this is all moot pint anyway. It is highly unlikely that plako designed a map where an exploring warrior could reach an opponent's capital south of T30, at which point we are safe from a warrior sneak anyways.

 

[talonschild]

No harm in being prepared, though.

 

[YossarianLives]

I think now is a great opportunity to resume discussion on our overall strategy concerning diplomacy. Everyone recognizes how important diplomacy is, but we have different opinions on the best way to get our desired diplomatic results, so let's figure out how we want to run our foreign policy!

I definitely think everyone should get a say in our overall foreign policy and our agreements with individual teams, but our first course of action should be to get a Team of Ambassadors together who will focus on this.

Diplomats/Ambassadors:
Caledorn
Bowsling (UniversCiv & Civfr)
Talonschild
2metraninja (WPC & Apolyton)
socralynnek (Civilized.de?)

Responsibilies:
Contacting the other teams. Drafting diplomatic missives.

This is from a long while back when we were still trying to determine what official positions we wanted to create, and were taking names to guage interest. Things have probably changed by now, but it's a good starting point. That list includes an ambassador for each team except Spanish Poly (Caledorn volunteered to lead our talks with them since he has a good rapport from the warm-up game), RB (who we're talking with right now, and Caledorn has taken lead responsibility) and CivPlayers (does anyone have an existing relationship with them? Maybe Talonschild wants to pick this one up?).

The next thing I think we need to figure out is our Overall Diplo Strategy. Amazon had a very successful and consistent strategy in the last game to create lobsided alliances with the majority of the teams in their alliance. Do we want to aim for something similar here? Do we want to try to make friends with everyone? Do we prefer to establish a few close partnerships and hold those above anyone else? Do we decide who we want to war with, and then focus diplomacy on getting other teams to go against our #1 enemy? Lots of options here.

We should also figure out some Guidelines our ambassadors can follow. Are we ok with throwing out a NAP to turn X immediately to any team we find? Is there any information about the map, our team, or anything else that we can say right away the ambassador is allowed to give away? Are there any teams or situations we want to be more firm with, or any teams / situations we want to be more friendly and open with?

Then, we probably want to have Contingency Plans for all the little details that might change our overall goals. For example, does it matter if we find another team's capital or if they find ours? Does our strategy change if we run into an exploring unit in the wilderness? What if it is a scout, or a UU, or a Chariot?

I'm not suggesting we vote and try to get specific answers here, but just start a discussion so we can get a better sense of the thoughts and opinions of the team. Obviously, everything will change when we actually meet another team and can start discussing details in more concrete terms, but the more we can agree on beforehand, the smoother things will go when we actually meet more teams.

 

[Caledorn]

Great initiative, Yossarian!

I think my views have been thoroughly presented and debated the past 2 days, so I believe most know where I stand.

I will actively participate in the constructive discussion that hopefully arises in this thread

 

[tobiasn]

I know it's still very early, but do we have some kind of feeling of who's started off best, through the demohacking? Obv we know of the merits of RB, and to some extent the Apy crew (at least some of them), but to me most of the other teams are total unknowns. If we can nurture a strong long-term alliance with RB, that would be a good setup for a multitude of scenarios.

I have some concerns about large alliances - I know you built a victory around that in the past, quite nicely done - but I think the strength of that one was not only that it was a large number of teams, but the strategy behing what teams and where they were on the map. So I guess what I'm saying is that maybe it's not in our best interest to go and be best pals with everyone, but find out how we can play the map and our opponents to our advantage. Obviously.. But strength is not only in numbers, if you have a clear cut plan.

What I see again and again from demogames and SGs is that it's the teams that have an early, clear winning-strategy that run away with it in the end. Also, it seems that large alliances always fall apart, often because someone feels marginalized or are lured away.

So yeah.. It's early, but I think we soon need to think about how we want to win this thing. Also how we see the endgame - where we inevitably kill or be killed by our ally.

 

[2metraninja]

Very nice idea indeed. Having an idea how to win is half the win already.

 

[talonschild]

If our aims are peaceful then I'd try a universal friendship policy. If we are going to war we shpuld go for a lopsided alliance strategy - not necessarily 8 on 1, 7 on 2, or 6 on 3, but say, 4 on 1 and buying the othe 4£ neuttrality. Is anyone feeling like channeling Bismarck?

If it's all the same to everyone I'd appreciate dealing with a team/teams with a higher preference for RP. Naturally I am also ready to deal with French teams or serve as translator.
EDIT: I've reread Caledorn's post and seen Bowsling working with Uciv and Civfr. Bowsling, I offer to understudy for those teams.