In MTDG diplomacy is a bit different than in normal mp games. However a lot of the same things apply. Every deal you make is like a prisoners dilema http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma . And as long as the possiblity of future deals exist the deals will work as an iterative prisoners dilema. However since this is a game between teams and not between individual enteties it won't work as an interative prisoners dilemma between games meaning we can't use past experience against the other teams and there will be no reprecursion of actions after the game is done. What does this mean? Every deal you make with another team gives incentive to keep the deal as there will be deals in the future to benefit from if you keep it. When and/or if someone(we or they) break a deal they better be damn sure they don't want to have any further dealings(other than fighting of course) against the team they break a deal with as the other party won't trust you. There are tons of different deals you can make with different teams. With tech trading on the most obvious is trading deals. These are all well and fine and who and when to trade is a matter of another topic, but sufficient to say that you probably want to stick to a set of trading partners(either one or two other civs depending on how the game fan out), and you want to be consistent with who you trade with so they don't broker your techs around to other civs(assuming brokering is on) or make deals with other teams that are not beneficial for us. The more interesting deals to make are naps(non-agression-pacts), cfs(ceasfires), peace deals and maps(mutal agression pact). Due to the nature of iterative prisoners dillema if you make other sort of deals(like trading) with a team they are more likely to make such deals with you, however even if you don't trade there is plenty of benefit to be had from napping, however then obviously trust will be an issue. With naps both teams don't have to spend as much hammers on military and can focus on rexing or you can just focus on someone else. Similary with a map both teams can easier outproduce/outmanouver the target and hence win the war.
Obviously napping your neighbours will be way more powerful without barbs. Due to the fact that i belive that i am capable of getting such deals in most circumstances(at least i have had not problem with it in my pitboss games), i don't belive barbs will be a good thing for this team. It is true that barbs is the same for everyone, however those that spend the most effeort on expansion will still benefit more, this is obviously easier done if you manage to get deals with your neighbours very early in the game. In several of my succesful pitboss game napping the right people have lead to very good position by allowing me to do what i want for a very long time.
Obviously napping your neighbours will be way more powerful without barbs. Due to the fact that i belive that i am capable of getting such deals in most circumstances(at least i have had not problem with it in my pitboss games), i don't belive barbs will be a good thing for this team. It is true that barbs is the same for everyone, however those that spend the most effeort on expansion will still benefit more, this is obviously easier done if you manage to get deals with your neighbours very early in the game. In several of my succesful pitboss game napping the right people have lead to very good position by allowing me to do what i want for a very long time.
