Post-Game Map Writeup

[Sommerswerd]

I'll briefly share my own thoughts.

"Briefly?" 3 Posts? Over 10 paragraphs?

In all seriousness, I will respond since this is the second thread decrying my "bluntness" (1st was in Kaz forum)... (Ironic since anyone on team Kaz can tell you I'm usually very long winded) ... I had to keep the message short because our team had alot of strife over diplo. The more I said, the more I would have to explain/fight over in our forum, which was already rife with arguments. So I tried to keep it short and sweet. My mistake, I realize now.

BTW, this statement:

sommerswerd@live.com sent 23/03/2009 7:25 p.m.: Will you guys tech Aesthetics for us?

Was an Instant-Message right? Forgive me, but it does seem a little harsh/unfair to characterize all of team Kaz's diplomacy based on one IM

At any rate, I appreciate all the thoughts... anything that makes the next game more enjoyable is greatly appreciated... at least by me.

Anyway, I already offered my mea culpa, so I wont bore everyone with another.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Yeah, my definition of "brief" is often a bit long-winded, I have to admit.

Even if you had to keep your diplomacy "sweet and short", there are far better ways to put things while still keeping them short. For one example, you could have rewritten

"Will you guys tech Aesthetics for us?"

as:

"Just wondering, would you guys be open to teching Aesthetics? I'll have to check with my team, but I believe there may be a possibility for a good trade for both of us there."

Do you see and understand the difference in tone, and how it might influence our opinion of you?

Also bear in mind that this was only one of several examples of blunt messages which we recieved which reinforced our negative opinion of you. It's not as if we saw one instant message and thought "that's it, we hate these guys" - instead it was a long cumulative process over many dealings with several diplomats from Kaz, most of which we percieved to have an unnecessarily blunt and arrogant tone in deals with us. It's true that in some cases this arrogant tone might not have been intended, but in at least some others, you have to admit that from our point of view (tech loser against a big alliance and all) many of your team's comments seemed crazy and pretentious.

 

[Sommerswerd]

This is the First Post in Saturn's Kaz embassy thread... Which says in relevant part:

We need to send a ... message to Kazakhstan... depressing... they're already in a alliance... I don't think there's much point in trying to open trade relations with them

I mean... c'mon... that is the first message that the leader and captain of Saturn gives to the team... Maybe you can see how this statment sort of doomed relations with Kaz from the beginning... even before we sent any of our "arrogant," "blunt" messages. The team had already been steered towards disliking us... before we even said anything.

Also, I see your point about the message being blunt, but I (mistakenly) assumed that it was obvious that I did not expect Saturn to tech Aestheics and give it to Kaz for nothing... I assumed (again mistakenly) that it would be obvious that I was inviting Saturn to say what they might want in return.

That is why I don't really see the BIG difference between the two messages, especially since Saturn opinion of us was already poor. Also, Remember, the message you quoted is an IM... Don't you think your suggested message is a little long for an IM?... But this has been instructive for any future diplo I do, so thanks

 

[Lord Parkin]

I guess, to me at least, instant messages are not a good way to try to conduct diplomacy in this type of game. These democracy games are always mammoth in length - I haven't seen one completed in much less than a year. As a result, it seems that there's really no need for suddenly sending out quick one-liners about "can you research this?" or "do you want to ally?". That's the kind of thing I'd expect in a fast-paced death match game played in one sitting, but it seems pretty cheap in a very slow paced democracy game. Surely you have the time to put a little more effort into messages in a game spanning as long a time scale as this one.

Maybe part of the problem is that you hadn't played in this sort of game before, so we weren't used to your approach. Usually it's standard for teams to have a single point of contact, so that diplomatic relations are much more streamlined and less confused. However, to us it seemed that conflicting messages were coming from all angles from Kaz, and we could only conclude that either you were being overly brazen and arrogant, or that you had practically no diplomatic organization whatsoever. I guess the latter was close to the truth, looking back on it - but if you check out our diplomacy threads with the other teams and compare them to yours, you can't exactly blame us for percieving that you had a high opinion of yourselves.

I mean... c'mon... that is the first message that the leader and captain of Saturn gives to the team... Maybe you can see how this statment sort of doomed relations with Kaz from the beginning... even before we sent any of our "arrogant," "blunt" messages. The team had already been steered towards disliking us... before we even said anything.

All I was expressing was a statement of fact that reflected the general sentiment of the team at the time. Put yourselves in our position: a horrible start, a long streak of bad luck and misfortune, and being fixed at the bottom of the score table for pretty much the whole game. Then we meet this new team who is miles ahead of us technologically, and who we're 100% positive is already in an alliance with at least 1 or 2 other nations (due to watching tech trades, etc). They are so ridiculously far ahead that we have absolutely nothing to offer them techwise. When I said "I don't think there's much point in trying to open trade relations with them", I meant precisely that. How in the heck, exactly, were we supposed to open trade relations from our position with zero to offer, when we'd only ever end up being the useless third or fourth wheel of a pre-existing alliance?

Anyway, if you actually read further in that first post, I still tried to make an offer even despite my forbodings. So you can't say we didn't try.

We are impressed by your level of technological advancement - clearly you have powerful friends. It is sad that Saturn has been isolated for so long, and has fallen behind as a result. Perhaps you would consider extending a generous hand to our poor nation at some stage. We would certainly be open to negotiation, and would be willing to return any favours or kind shows of heart. Maybe it would be possible to coordinate our research, so that we could obtain a tech that you do not already have?

Hopefully our two nations will be able to arrange a mutually cooperative, peaceful and prosperous future together. We look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Less learned: When you're in a far superior position to an opponent tech-wise, and both you and that opponent know you're already in an alliance with 1-2 other people, you can't expect them to take to you like ducks to water unless you start right off by showing good intentions and acting kindly towards them. If you check out the early parts of the thread in SANCTA's forum for your embassy, I think General_W in particular provided some excellent examples of how best to handle diplomacy when you seem to be in a superior position. Essentially: If you're in a position of power, you've got to act generously towards those who are weaker than you, if you want them to have any respect for you. You can't expect to forge an equal partnership when you are not on equal ground to start with. (Heck, I don't even think we were in the same era!)

 

[Sommerswerd]

You are certainly correct that I had never played a Demogame before so I suffered from being inexperienced with this type of game. I agree that it hurt my diplo skills. The whole experience with Saturn was definitely a lesson learned.

One thing I don't agree with though, is the characterization of Kaz as failing to act "generously" towards Saturn. We may not have been as "generous" as SANCTA, (we also were not asking you to break agreements with anyone) but we did give you tech up-front as part of an agreement.

It was OK with us that you had "nothing to offer" right-then, because we were willing to trust you with an up-front gift in return for a payback later... we felt that you had something to offer long term. We had little to gain and everything to lose by trusting you because we already had 2 allies... indeed, trusting Saturn ended up biting us in the you-know-what.

SANCTA on the other hand had nothing to lose by being "generous," because they knew that three other teams had already joined up against them. If they did not get Saturn to join, they were doomed anyway, so they were not really being generous. So all General_W's "sweet" talk, and "niceties" were really just intended to lull Saturn into the smaller alliance.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to like you are saying that Saturn rejected the better deal (cozying up to a potential 4 on 1), because the salesman was "blunt," honest, straightforward and confident (arrogant). Saturn instead bought the lemon (smaller alliance) because the salesman was a smooth-talker

 

[Lord Parkin]

Once again, while we did appreciate having the techs in advance, I think we're not understanding the same definition of a "gift". A gift to most people is something given freely without the expectation of something else in return, except perhaps goodwill. We may have recieved some technologies from you in advance, but as I recall the overall trade agreement was pretty much even beaker costs. In that sense you didn't really give us a gift, but a loan. A loan you wanted to be paid back as soon as possible.

Now that's all well and good, and it forms the basis of many tech trades in many games, but for that to continue to work you have to actually start off being equals (or close to it). In this game's situation our partnership could never continue to function unless you started to actually gift us technologies to get us closer to par. We were like the little dog being thrown a bone while the bigger dogs feasted on a mountain of steak. Your tech lead was so immense that we could never hope to compete if we continued to do beaker for beaker trades with you. As I've said before, an equal partnership between two teams cannot work if one is so obviously not an equal.

I do agree with you that SANCTA had nothing to lose by being generous. However, I don't agree that this means their generosity "didn't count" (that they "were not really being generous"). Generosity is generosity, regardless of how it comes about. Also, there was no "sweet talk" or "lulling" - both our teams needed each others' help badly, and neither of us was on the high ground at this point. Just read SANCTA's embassy thread with us from the very start. They weren't trying to "sweet talk" us to get us exactly where they wanted us - rather, we had both been stuck a long time in situations that seemed hopeless, and we could bond easily over that. SANCTA never for a moment treated us or thought of us as an inferior, either in their diplomacy or (as far as I have read) in their forum. Instead they came to us with open arms, and we were glad to respond in kind.

You also have to understand that by this stage of the game (just before we met SANCTA) we were getting rather fed up and depressed with the situation: two of the most powerful teams in the game were clearly in a major tech alliance from which we were excluded, and the only other team we met (MS) continuously ignored our messages for months and finally ended up tacking out of the blue on to your mega-alliance - which really annoyed us. (I do understand that this was due to internal communication problems within the MS team, but it still didn't help our opinion of them at the time.) To put it mildly, the situation was so obviously and completely hopeless, so heavily stacked against us, that it was ridiculous.

Also, where on earth do you get the idea that a 4 on 1 could ever have worked? If that had happened, Saturn would be the spare wheel to an already complete alliance, and once SANCTA was gone we would obviously be the next to go. We discussed this in our forum, and I see you discussed it in yours as well. So why are you surprised this didn't happen? If we ever joined as the 4th party in that alliance, it was blatantly obvious that Saturn would be the target after SANCTA was gone. What did we have to gain from that?

Not to mention that neither you nor your allies ever made any attempt whatsoever to introduce us to your alliance - I'm talking about the ACTUAL alliance with all the tech sharing. If that was ever your intention, it should have been offered right from the start, complete with full tech gifting to make us equals with the rest of the alliance members. It would have been a joke to attempt to join us to the alliance without bringing us up to tech par, because that would make us an inferior and lesser member. And who wants to be in that position? But that's all we saw you offering. If you intended to offer something more, you should have communicated it.

Thanks for all this discussion by the way, it's very interesting and entertaining to see the different perspectives.

 

[Sommerswerd]

My first attempt to reach out to Saturn, albeit blunt was a request to discuss an alliance. Saturn did not take it seriously. So it seems unfair to say that it was never offered.

It is true that our team never managed to agree on any formal offer of an alliance... partly because our team never managed to agree on anything... and partly because Saturn never seemed to show any interest in joining our alliance... And partly because once Saturn reneged on the tech trade, the people on Kaz who wanted an alliance had no leg to stand on... How can you ally with a team that steals your "loan" as you called it?

Some on Kaz were arguing the merits of a 4 on 1, but as you pointed out there were many on the team that shared your opinion of such an alliance as being impossible. Without any communication from Saturn showing that there was interest in joining the alliance it was difficult to gain any ground with these folks. Since you commented that you say you were "obviously" aware of the "mega-alliance" why didn't Saturn ask to join? It seems more likely that Saturn preferred the more familiar/ more experienced SANCTA players as allies from the beginning.

I mean, the captain of Saturn did not want to join a 4 on 1 alliance... as you said you dismissed the possibility that Kaz and Saturn could have developed close ties because we met the others first and some Kaz team members were also skeptical. The only way it could have happened is if Saturn was willing to try (which you have said, you were not) and willing to help convince Kaz that it would work so that the Kaz folks against it could be won over. The problem was that for that to happen would have taken co-ordination over IM... which the captain of Saturn disaproves of... See the conundrum?

At any rate this has all been very helpful / illuminating, and makes me look forward even more to the next game.

 

[Lord Parkin]

In all fairness, would anyone have taken this message seriously? I quote, verbatim (all caps included):

HEY BUDDY, DO YOU WANT AN ALLIANCE WITH THE GLORIOUS KAZAKHS? PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR MSN IF YOU WANT TO TALK...

In any event, I still DID get in contact with you, and tried to talk out our options. I'm pretty sure I recall that at some point I would have mentioned that Saturn would agree to an alliance if you would share tech with us as an equal (haven't checked through the chat logs, but it'll be there in some form). In fact I'm almost positive I sent an email to this effect. But we never recieved any response back on this matter.

Anyway, why did you expect us to do all the work if you actually wanted a 4 vs 1? Repeated attempts at negotiations with Cav, MS and yourselves showed that you had little interest in anything except using us to get Feudalism for yourselves as soon as possible. Indeed, after our first contact with Cav, diplomacy with them was downright cold, and of course diplomacy from MS was completely non-existent. There were never any offers to Saturn of being introduced into the big tech trading alliance, and as we'd already tried discussing it with you before there didn't seem to be much point in us bringing it up again. We figured since you didn't make an offer, you weren't interested.

But do you really think we wouldn't have jumped at the chance if you'd offered us equal tech status with your alliance earlier in the game? Such a generous gesture before we met SANCTA would very easily have got you your 4 vs 1. But obviously, a portion of your team and certainly most of Cav's team were not at all interested in having us in the alliance. If you actually wanted the 4 vs 1, you can't blame us for it not eventuating.

And actually, at the time this game started I wasn't really familiar with any of the players on SANCTA at all. I'd seen Krill around occasionally, but aside from that I didn't really know any of the rest of them before this game. In fact I knew far more people from Cav and MS (in particular, oyzar had been a friend for a while and I'd been friends with DaveShack for ages - both of them I'd played with in several multiplayer games before this one). So you can't try to imply that we were always trying to get with our buddies in SANCTA, because all the members of Saturn really didn't know anyone there at the time.

 

[Sommerswerd]

In all fairness... I sent you a message explaining that the all-caps was a mistake... Right?

Anyway my point is well illusrtated by this post in Saturn's Kaz embassy:

they're probably first on our hit list if we get to a position where we can war with someone.

You're talking about Team Kaz right? This message is on March 22nd... Only 2 days after Saturn's first meeting with Kaz and the team captain is already digging our graves... Geez. Plus this was before the IM from Sommers that supposedly offended you so badly.

I can buy the idea that Saturn was not necessarily committed to allying with SANCTA, but it Seems pretty clear that Saturn's dislike for Kaz was cemented from the beginning. So it was sort of like we met you and you decided right away "we hate these guys"... It only took two days for you to name us "first on our hit list."

That is really my main point... Kaz had no real chance to make friends with Saturn... the well was poisoned from the start.

 

[Lord Parkin]

In all fairness... I sent you a message explaining that the all-caps was a mistake... Right?

Sure, and all was forgiven and we had our chat. But you never followed up with the tech alliance, so we assumed (apparently correctly) there was little to no interest.

Anyway my point is well illusrtated by this post in Saturn's Kaz embassy: You're talking about Team Kaz right? This message is on March 22nd... Only 2 days after Saturn's first meeting with Kaz and the team captain is already digging our graves... Geez. Plus this was before the IM from Sommers that supposedly offended you so badly.

You do realise that you edited that quote from me to remove the pokey-tongue emoticon, right? ( ) Obviously I was joking - especially if you actually consider it in the context of the state of affairs in our empire at that time. People make off-hand silly comments all the time. It wasn't as if this one message with the pokey-tongue at the end was in any way a serious attempt at dictating our future foreign policy for the entire game. Please don't quote me out of context.

I can buy the idea that Saturn was not necessarily committed to allying with SANCTA, but it Seems pretty clear that Saturn's dislike for Kaz was cemented from the beginning. So it was sort of like we met you and you decided right away "we hate these guys"... It only took two days for you to name us "first on our hit list."

Once again: Joke. Hu-mour.

 

[Sommerswerd]

OK... Fair enough... but remember the "backstabbing" statement that you quoted me on? Notice the hokey "Duuh..Okay" language that I included in the suggestion? So it was obviously a tongue-in-cheek remark... only half serious with no followup... Clearly not intended as a serious attempt to change our team's policy... When I am serious about a course of action, you can tell... I keep at it in the forums, rather than making one cavalier remark.

So I guess we were both mistaken about statements made by the other... (But not mistaken about the whole Saturn backstabbing on Feudalism deal thing )

 

[Lord Parkin]

Say what you will, but we were stuck with a very uncomfortable choice at this point in the game: we were faced with two conflicting requests, and we had to either betray our ally or betray our rival. It was not an easy or light decision, but I still stand by the choice we made given the circumstances. When push comes to shove, if there is no other choice, I would rather betray a rival and remain loyal to an ally, than betray the ally to remain "loyal" to the rival. I do not see that as a bad thing, but you are welcome to your opinion. Perhaps, in our situation, you would have preferred to betray your only ally and leave the mega-alliance to rule the game. Myself, I could not backstab an ally like that.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Heh... I just found this. In the early diplomacy between Cav and Kaz, there was this little snippet:

We were looking for true friendship and the Respect shared between Equals. Instead our elders got the impression that the role envisioned for us by your emissary was that of a "junior partner."

We got a reply from kazakhstan.

I just find it ironic that Kaz experienced this reaction to Cav early on, then later interacted with Saturn in a way that gave us almost the precise same reaction to Kaz.