Foreign Policy: CivFr

[2metraninja]

But I also prefer not to give RB a NAP. I think we can do both, as long as Poly and CP are committed to it.

Exactly. I will make conference chat with both MZ and Ot4e tomorrow and ask for their firm position on the matter. I will present things as they are now that we have already alliances war - Number 1&2 civs vs the rest. It is not impossible that we fight them both at the same time, at least defensively. And we have 20 more turns of NAP with RB. We must also talk to Uciv. We can lose nothing with speaking to them. With each turn we dont speak with them, we lose. Also, we must start a bit hard negotiating with WPC. They have long NAP with RB and they wanted us to have agreement for the land between us, so we can use this. "We give you permission to settle all the land, but you give us 15 catapults and join our alliance vs CivFR."

As I said many times, this game will be won or lost on the negotiations tables. We made some mistakes here (as not agreeing on what to send to CivFR before or just after we declared them a war). Hopefully we can still compensate with strong diplomacy with other teams.

 

[YossarianLives]

Well said General.

I also agree with pretty much everything sommers wrote. You called it.

 

[whb]

I don't think any of this matters to them. We are not going to be able to convince them with words to just see things our way. So while I will love to discuss all the logic and reasoning (as you well know ) over who is right (out of CivFr and Us) and who violated what in this whole mess... I just don't think any of it will matter to CivFr. We can send them a detailed treatise on why they are in the wrong and we are in the right, or a lengthy apology explaining our feelings and how it all went sour but they are not going to give us a NAP, until we at least capture one of their cities... 10 beer bet

It's not the NAP that's my main concern there. CivFR are not merely unwilling to declare peace, they are also telling others (RB etc) how they think the team acted dishonestly. Regardless of the game, I think the team needs to respond to that.

(Though we probably don't need to mention that discovering we'd declared war on CivFR seemed to take many of our team by surprise even more than them! )

 

[whb]

As I said many times, this game will be won or lost on the negotiations tables. We made some mistakes here (as not agreeing on what to send to CivFR before or just after we declared them a war). Hopefully we can still compensate with strong diplomacy with other teams.

I think we've done very well in all other regards. That we're in an unplanned war with a close competitor, and yet still in a position to think about handling RB, is a testament to how well the game has been played.

 

[Maga_R]

I think we've done very well in all other regards. That we're in an unplanned war with a close competitor, and yet still in a position to think about handling RB, is a testament to how well the game has been played.

Yeah, I also think it is not good time to discuss whether we make any mistakes here or not. And actually it looks now like the war with CivFr was inevitable anyway.

I also think that the time for diplomacy is over, that the best we can do is to stop communicating with them in any way and keep them guessing our intentions . Additional benefit is that it would allow us to focus our whole mental energy on how to fight them best

 

[Sommerswerd]

Yeah, I also think it is not good time to discuss whether we make any mistakes here or not. And actually it looks now like the war with CivFr was inevitable anyway.

with Maga

I also think that the time for diplomacy is over, that the best we can do is to stop communicating with them in any way and keep them guessing our intentions .

Again, I agree with Maga. We have very little to gain by talking to them

Additional benefit is that it would allow us to focus our whole mental energy on how to fight them best

with Maga again... We shoud all put on our "How to Win the War" hats and hang up the "What do we want to say to CivFr" caps... Talking about what to say to them is mostly a waste of time/energy at this point.

 

[2metraninja]

I insist we send them message telling them we are not the wrong ones. The ball will be in their court then.

 

[Maga_R]

@Sommers - lol, on the reversal of the roles

I insist we send them message telling them we are not the wrong ones. The ball will be in their court then.

General 2metraninja - we now need your all considerable talents focused on fighting the French! If it will make you feel any better, send them whatever you want, but than forget about what you send them and do not wait for their response, just think how we can best them assuming that we may never be able to get peace from them.

 

[2metraninja]

The change of roles, it is other time and development already.

And yes, I wont expect we to clap a hands and hug each-others any soon or at all with French, so we will have to fight a war and do hard diplomacy with other teams, but in the long run, it can have some effect on us.

 

[Maga_R]

The change of roles, it is other time and development already.

And yes, I wont expect we to clap a hands and hug each-others any soon or at all with French, so we will have to fight a war and do hard diplomacy with other teams, but in the long run, it can have some effect on us.

2metra, you are great at war, and bistrita seems to be great at it, too. But you cannot take too much on yourself in such a difficult situation. What about you will delegate diplomacy to Sommers for a while and will focus on beating French into submission without worrying about anything else? Will likely not be easy by itself.

 

[vranasm]

@metra

it doesn't matter what you send to french since you won't convince them... and btw I have the feeling they were hostile to us from beginning of game, never really wanting to have anything with us and they think themself as world power...
if I would draw some picture it would be like RB = USA, us = SSSR (germany of 1939 without that nasty habit of nazis) and CivFR = french/china depends (or SSSR of 1939) .

what I think we SHOULD DO is try to convince everyone else that the war is fault of CivFR (never talking to us, never wanting NAP, threatening with war etc etc... be honest, but we don't have to talk about everything... so take fact that will make us picture as nice guys and them as bad guys and show that picture to our allies and teams on the fence).
Since we were the aggressor in the war we have to send clear picture of why we made preemptive strike...

so french diplomacy = hammer diplomacy from now on, if you feel for diplomacy efforts (which surely distract you) make it with allies and neutral countries (eeehm teams...)

 

[2metraninja]

We cant just beat French in to submission. We have equal food/pop and they have better economics than us right now. Best we can do while keeping our long-term chances are fighting effective defensive war with French and planning bold counter- attacks. And working on our politics with other team in the meanwhile.

As for making other teams believe it is French fault we are at war, of course we want that. And I want to start this with telling French we believe it is their fault

 

[Maga_R]

We cant just beat French in to submission. We have equal food/pop and they have better economics than us right now.

But you still think we do not need NAP with RB and should actually heavily participate in dogpiling them?

 

[2metraninja]

But you still think we do not need NAP with RB and should actually heavily participate in dogpiling them?

I explained it at least 4-5 times already. Dogpiling RB does not means we invade them on t175. It means that we have STANDING army at RB border which, in worst case scenario where RB attack any of us 3 - CFC, CP or Poly, the other 2 will throw their army to force RB pull their invading army back.

No one of our allies have illusions how we invade RB with cracking banners and fanfare music at t175.

 

[Maga_R]

I explained it at least 4-5 times already. Dogpiling RB does not means we invade them on t175. It means that we have STANDING army at RB border which, in worst case scenario where RB attack any of us 3 - CFC, CP or Poly, the other 2 will throw their army to force RB pull their invading army back.

No one of our allies have illusions how we invade RB with cracking banners and fanfare music at t175.

@ 2metra:Sorry, but I am still too dumb to understand the strategic thought behind it - why exactly would we like to create a need for a standing army on RB's border when we will be in deadly war with CivFr?

And as you said yourself, so far the anti-RB alliance was a joke, so betting our very survival on it does not seem prudent, either

 

[2metraninja]

RB are one nation, right? Well, we are 3 nations who will build army and put it on RB borders. they will need to have about 3 times more units than any of us on the borders to be secure from us attacking, which is not really possible. They will pay for and build 3 times bigger army, which will drag them down. The size of our army standing on RB border will depend on how much units RB want to prepare, if they decide not to increase their current army (50-60 units), we might be safe from attack from them only with 20-25 units on the borders, having in mind that our allies will have the same on their borders and will not be afraid to use it if RB attacks us.

And 20 units we can spare from not sending to the French front. And even if we send them there, they will not be game changing and wont give us the upper hand to execute serious attack vs French.

 

[Maga_R]

RB are one nation, right? Well, we are 3 nations who will build army and put it on RB borders. they will need to have about 3 times more units than any of us on the borders to be secure from us attacking, which is not really possible. They will pay for and build 3 times bigger army, which will drag them down. The size of our army standing on RB border will depend on how much units RB want to prepare, if they decide not to increase their current army (50-60 units), we might be safe from attack from them only with 20-25 units on the borders, having in mind that our allies will have the same on their borders and will not be afraid to use it if RB attacks us.

And 20 units we can spare from not sending to the French front. And even if we send them there, they will not be game changing and wont give us the upper hand to execute serious attack vs French.

Hmm, all these depend on many assumptions that I am not at all certain about. All allies will send their armies ... 20 more units on CivFr front will for sure not be game changing...

As you said somewhere else, the general problem with alliances is that everybody wants somebody else to do most of the work Classical prisoners dilemma What if our allies will be less committed than us? What if RB decides - based exactly on the reasoning you present above - that they can afford the standing army on their other two borders while fighting us?

Anyway, as far as I know, CivFr will not need to have a standing army on their other border - that alone seem to put as at disadvantage during our war with them, imho

And actually it seemed that General Bistrita agreed with me on this one - our situation is difficult as it is, no need to make it more difficult by taking on additional duties of fighting RB - perhaps with minimal support from our allies

EDIT: Briefly: I am afraid that now RB is not our main problem anymore, our main problem now is how to survive war with CivFr.

 

[Sommerswerd]

General, I am afraid as well that this response to CivFr is becoming a big distraction for you... But to me, I would rather that you just get whatever it is you want to say to them off your chest so that your mind and heart can be clear

So reading this thread, it seems like the last message we sent them was this:

Dear CivFr,

With the current positioning of troops we feel need to speed up the negotiations.
Next turn we take Zulu capitol and the Zulu are history. Then it is our two teams left to play the game. Everyone took what he could from poor Zulu. We see your four knights and a holkan and we know that you can capture Nobamba from us if you want. But then, we will have 50 units that can be at Nobamba in 2-3 turns. If you capture Nobamba we will interpret it so that you wish to fight a full-scale war with us. We prefer to settle this between us and everyone continue on his way. I am sure each of us have better things to do and better hopes instead of fighting game-long war.

Team CFC

And their response to this message was:

It seems that you don't have realized some points: you have lost the game five turn ago. We don't stand that someone declare war on us without warning us and just after violating an agreement. Don't hope to obtain a peace by sending us such accusations, Zulus are the only master of their units. You can already forget about your last cities

BTW... Just remember that you said this...

It seems we stuck on irrational guys who dont care for winning.

I am already sad we tried to talk to them reasonable.

So anyway, here is my draft of what we can send to them... Keep in mind that I don't think we need to send ANYTHING to them, but I would rather 2metra goes ahead and sends this to them so we can move past this argument about what to send:

Dear CivFr,

We must respond to you on a few points that you are mistaken about. There was no agreed deal as you say, so we can not be guilty of breaking any deal. Our original deal was that you would send a Great Merchant to us and we would send a Great Merchant to you at around the same time. We were hoping to get a Great Merchant very soon at the time, so it was a good deal for both of us. But then we did not get a Great Merchant, we got a Great Engineer instead.

Once we did not get the Great Merchant as planned and wanted, there was no more deal. We told you this clearly, well in advance, and we told you that we needed to come to a new agreement. We asked you to trade with us for wines, and we offered to pay gold to you in addition to giving you a resource. You refused to make any resource deal with us.

All this time we were planning to invade SpAp Zulus. As you know, they attacked us earlier, and harmed our economy and development. We put together the needed forces and then we invaded them. All this money spent and cities whipped in order to fight against a neighbor who threatened us. Then you come along ans say that you will be taking over 3/4 of the Zululands. You also made some threats that you would make War on us if we did not agree. What you said specifically was that we should be aware of what you were taking so there would not be a War.

Of course this is the same as a threat to make War if we don't agree to what you want. But what was the most unfair was that you had no Army at the time and you had made a deal with SpAp that they would gift you their cities as they were being eliminated.

You expected us to do the fighting against CivFr, while you just got the cities gifted to you. How can you think we would agree to this? So you refuse to come to a deal about the Great Merchant, you refuse to trade any resource with us, you refuse to give us a NAP, and then the final insult, is you try to take all of the spoils of War without doing any fighting.

And in response to all these insults against us, all we did was trap your Great Merchant. We did not destroy him, as we could have, all we did was keep him from finishing the trade mission so that we could discuss the situation. And we declared War to show you that we were serious. But still we did not kill the Great Merchant, and if you had just talked to us we would have come to a deal and let the mission be completed. But you just used him for a Golden Age instead of saying anything to us.

Now you say you are convinced we will lose our "last" cities. Do you have in mind our newly captured Zulu cities, or are you saying that you intend to invade our homeland and take all our cities? We will negotiate for the Zulu lands, but we will defend our homeland to our last breath.

We have remained willing to have peaceful and fair relations between us and we still feel this way. You are the ones who are being unfair and violating the spirit of our agreements. In a true fair agreement, both sides should be getting some benefits.

Signed

Team CFC

If that is OK and addresses everything you want to say to them I would go ahead and send it unless people disapprove. That way we can drop this and move on to the War plans.

 

[classical_hero]

Edit. It seems that has come up with a perfectly valid letter to them.

 

[2metraninja]

It is good message as normally, Sommers (many times they are great LOL). I want to change few things in it - more like include 1-2 more details like their INCREASED DEMANDS the second time they threatened us with war in their mail. They said they want 2 more city spots just between the cities they graciously left for us to keep And will change CivFR typo around the middle of the message with SpAp.