- Location
- The Underdark
you walked in, made demands, and got bupkis. That is far from the treasury controlling what gets done.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
The thing with the Caravanserai was InOps fucking us and the Treasury trying to decide how to respond to the clusterfuck. IIRC, there was an option to do nothing. Instead I think we added Medina to the list of planned cities, handed out scrambled ion cannon beacons so we could tell Caravanserai convoys from Nod forces (and not blow them up), and maybe something else?
--
I too generally thought of it as "we're providing input/influence but it'll largely be happening without us" and figured anything we didn't chime in on was because we didn't really have a firm opinion on that matter and thus didn't really care what the result was for that one. I think, in regards to the maritime part, a ranked listing could've worked better. Something like...
-[X] Maritime
--[X] Territorial Waters
--[X] Limited Navigation
--[X] Campaign (up to -y PS)
where top option is what we'd prefer, and alternate options in descending order, with the bottom line being how hard we'd lobby/politic for any option on the list (so if Territorial Waters is unacceptable to enough other groups, we'd be happy to push Limited Navigation instead to get a consensus for the diplomatic team, etc). Of course, if we only provided one option and insisted on it, there was no guarantee that it'd make it on the table at the negotiations, but could make other groups in the government angry at our insistence (if things went multiple rounds). Same could've been useful with the conference city too, now that I think about it.
Also, perhaps a bit more detail on the difference between options. Like, I figured "propose" meant that we'd put it out there but weren't really invested in it. Like a "here's our thoughts, but we're not really invested in a particular one so you won't get any push back if they don't make it." Whereas insist would be more like "has to have this or the Treasury's scuttling the whole thing."
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An option would be to partially "refund" the PS on options, and do a second round covering certain options (perhaps with changed/reduced choices), possibly adding others (such as, what is the Treasury willing to support providing that Nod is asking for in return for <x>). Like a "Okay, talks started in <city> and while <request> is possible, the warlords are balking at our current suggestions for concessions in return, or we're balking at some of their suggestions for those concessions. We're taking a brief break while all participants regroup. The diplomatic team is asking for options for when negotiations resume." Maybe anything that rolled below a certain total (after modifiers) hasn't been firmly locked in by negotiations and are in the second round (well, aside from the city it's happening in, naturally). Possibly add the final results of the round 1 rolls to the relevant round 2 rolls to see if they cross the threshold. Decide if a third round is needed.
Something like where the conference is being held or the general results of the initial vote could change up positions for the next phase and would allow for external influence to change things up (that Kane nat 100, yo).
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I too generally thought of it as "we're providing input/influence but it'll largely be happening without us" and figured anything we didn't chime in on was because we didn't really have a firm opinion on that matter and thus didn't really care what the result was for that one. I think, in regards to the maritime part, a ranked listing could've worked better. Something like...
-[X] Maritime
--[X] Territorial Waters
--[X] Limited Navigation
--[X] Campaign (up to -y PS)
where top option is what we'd prefer, and alternate options in descending order, with the bottom line being how hard we'd lobby/politic for any option on the list (so if Territorial Waters is unacceptable to enough other groups, we'd be happy to push Limited Navigation instead to get a consensus for the diplomatic team, etc). Of course, if we only provided one option and insisted on it, there was no guarantee that it'd make it on the table at the negotiations, but could make other groups in the government angry at our insistence (if things went multiple rounds). Same could've been useful with the conference city too, now that I think about it.
Also, perhaps a bit more detail on the difference between options. Like, I figured "propose" meant that we'd put it out there but weren't really invested in it. Like a "here's our thoughts, but we're not really invested in a particular one so you won't get any push back if they don't make it." Whereas insist would be more like "has to have this or the Treasury's scuttling the whole thing."
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An option would be to partially "refund" the PS on options, and do a second round covering certain options (perhaps with changed/reduced choices), possibly adding others (such as, what is the Treasury willing to support providing that Nod is asking for in return for <x>). Like a "Okay, talks started in <city> and while <request> is possible, the warlords are balking at our current suggestions for concessions in return, or we're balking at some of their suggestions for those concessions. We're taking a brief break while all participants regroup. The diplomatic team is asking for options for when negotiations resume." Maybe anything that rolled below a certain total (after modifiers) hasn't been firmly locked in by negotiations and are in the second round (well, aside from the city it's happening in, naturally). Possibly add the final results of the round 1 rolls to the relevant round 2 rolls to see if they cross the threshold. Decide if a third round is needed.
Something like where the conference is being held or the general results of the initial vote could change up positions for the next phase and would allow for external influence to change things up (that Kane nat 100, yo).
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
No, in this case, we very much did not get what we wanted, so that's just flatly incorrect.
- Location
- USA
So... what happened?
Not on Discord, but it sounds like something went wrong with the planning or there was a fundamental misunderstanding of some sort that has messed everything up.
I don't really understand it myself but would it make sense to have a redo?
Just... mistakes were made, here's how it was supposed to work, here's what went wrong, here's the adjusted rules, let's try again, no harm no foul.
Not on Discord, but it sounds like something went wrong with the planning or there was a fundamental misunderstanding of some sort that has messed everything up.
I don't really understand it myself but would it make sense to have a redo?
Just... mistakes were made, here's how it was supposed to work, here's what went wrong, here's the adjusted rules, let's try again, no harm no foul.
I agree that this should probably have been multiple rounds of negotiation. Given that it had to juggle multiple internal GDI factions trying to present a position for negotiating with NOD who also has multiple internal factions it was going to be hard to model with 1 vote.
I think what I would do would be to take this vote as the treasuries initial position and have at least another round of negotiation. Then I'd tell us what points the diplomats were aiming for and explain any discrepancies between out position and the diplomats. That way we can see what items the rest of GDI is pushing for. I'd also probably give an indication of how strongly the different factions are pushing for things so we have some idea of how much PS we'd need to spend to oppose them. You might have to give numbers for how much the different factions are pushing for things. I'm not sure how much political pressure an expenditure of say 25 PS is so personally I would find it very difficult to accurately compare the number of PS the treasury is spending with a description of how much the other factions are weighing in on the negotiations.
Regarding NOD I'd take the deal that the diplomats presented and give an indication of how NOD seems to feel about it and some idea of how much NOD values the concessions they haven't gotten yet and how much the demands we haven't gotten yet would cost. I'd include the demands the treasury the treasury asked for but the diplomats didn't because we'd still need to get NOD to agree to them after pushing them through on GDI;s side. It would have to be made clear that this is not completely objective but is our diplomats interpretation of how the negotiations stand and they might not be right everywhere. So in this case we'd know that we probably wont get Karachi diplomatically unless we can make GDI offer more in round 2 and we'd have an idea of which concessions it would take to make NOD agree to it. Since the diplomats negotiations with NOD don't have any numbers already attached to them a series of descriptions that we could use to compare how much they are worth is probably fine here.
The goal of this we be to let us see which items we haven't gotten due to GDI internal politics and which we haven't gotten due to NOD not accepting so we'd know where we'd have to apply our PS to get closer to the deal we want and whether the concessions Wed need to make to get them would be worth it.
If you want the PS cost to be high it might be worth spreading out the negotiations over multiple turns so we have an opportunity to spend dice to acquire more PS in between rounds of negotiation.
I think what I would do would be to take this vote as the treasuries initial position and have at least another round of negotiation. Then I'd tell us what points the diplomats were aiming for and explain any discrepancies between out position and the diplomats. That way we can see what items the rest of GDI is pushing for. I'd also probably give an indication of how strongly the different factions are pushing for things so we have some idea of how much PS we'd need to spend to oppose them. You might have to give numbers for how much the different factions are pushing for things. I'm not sure how much political pressure an expenditure of say 25 PS is so personally I would find it very difficult to accurately compare the number of PS the treasury is spending with a description of how much the other factions are weighing in on the negotiations.
Regarding NOD I'd take the deal that the diplomats presented and give an indication of how NOD seems to feel about it and some idea of how much NOD values the concessions they haven't gotten yet and how much the demands we haven't gotten yet would cost. I'd include the demands the treasury the treasury asked for but the diplomats didn't because we'd still need to get NOD to agree to them after pushing them through on GDI;s side. It would have to be made clear that this is not completely objective but is our diplomats interpretation of how the negotiations stand and they might not be right everywhere. So in this case we'd know that we probably wont get Karachi diplomatically unless we can make GDI offer more in round 2 and we'd have an idea of which concessions it would take to make NOD agree to it. Since the diplomats negotiations with NOD don't have any numbers already attached to them a series of descriptions that we could use to compare how much they are worth is probably fine here.
The goal of this we be to let us see which items we haven't gotten due to GDI internal politics and which we haven't gotten due to NOD not accepting so we'd know where we'd have to apply our PS to get closer to the deal we want and whether the concessions Wed need to make to get them would be worth it.
If you want the PS cost to be high it might be worth spreading out the negotiations over multiple turns so we have an opportunity to spend dice to acquire more PS in between rounds of negotiation.
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- Location
- his hidden lair
I feel like the best way to handle this sort of thing is to basically make each major faction in GDI have their own clear package of proposals: concessions they're willing to offer and demands they want. We look at what these packages entail, what we want and what they include- we either back one of these proposals or make our own. Then we put a certain amount of PS on each major part of the proposal package to influence the weight our proposal is given versus the others (and we don't know how much PS they spend on ours).
Cause the current system is incredibly counterintuitive in that the maritime category had no distinction between bargaining chip and core demand (in part because there's an implied negotiation with the rest of GDI what the fuck our position actually is and the negotiation with NOD itself). Unless we're simulating some pretty extreme incompetence building some kind of consensus with the rest of GDI happens before we sit down at the negotiating table. This system seemed to basically have made it concurrent
Cause the current system is incredibly counterintuitive in that the maritime category had no distinction between bargaining chip and core demand (in part because there's an implied negotiation with the rest of GDI what the fuck our position actually is and the negotiation with NOD itself). Unless we're simulating some pretty extreme incompetence building some kind of consensus with the rest of GDI happens before we sit down at the negotiating table. This system seemed to basically have made it concurrent
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I maintain that Seo only survived his acceptance speech due to Kane recognising him as the closest thing to a potential kindred spirit this misbegotten planet has yet to produce
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Is violence upon us? Excellent.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, the one thing that was missing from this as a "Treasury initial position" vote is that the diplomats never really coordinated with us on what we could offer Nod in terms of secondary stuff.
For example, suppose we do coordination with Nod on tiberium abatement. From Nod's point of view, that's a concession; GDI is doing something that will help them. From our point of view, we have to spend some Political Support to ramrod the proposal through because it involves dangling our people out in a dangerous place, and because it reduces the pressure on Nod. The question is, how much help, and on what timetable? The scale of what can be done and what we say can be done would influence just how big a concession this is. Commitments might look something like "complete five phases of Red Zone Containment Lines by the end of 2065," for instance, possibly with the agreement unlocking more phases of the Lines than ever existed before.
Likewise, there might be other promises we could make, such as straightforwardly giving Yao a pile of Food (how much Food?) ourselves. If Yao is the one who presently controls Taiwan, for instance, she might be quite willing to write the island off plain and simple in exchange for a continuous +10 Food humanitarian relief and guaranteed peacetime access corridors to 'down south.'
Now, maybe these issues don't merit a phase of the vote in their own right, and I know I keep harping on this, but... it kind of weirds me out that this wasn't part of the overall dialogue. Because it's the one area where in a major diplomatic conference in a society where the Treasury wasn't an overpowered super-department, you might still expect the diplomats to be consulting with economic advisors.
That would make a lot of sense.
Also, at least with a politically competent Treasury Secretary like Seo, you'd expect us to have more than a vague sense of just how badly people want things and are willing to push for them. Or rather, Seo would get a sense of that during the internal GDI negotiations over what platform to present during the external negotiations.
That makes sense.
Though ehhh, our PS budget is basically maxed out as is. We couldn't realistically make enough PS in a single turn to significantly expand what we could, in theory, spend. So it makes little difference whether we're recouping our PS investment after the (one turn) conference is over, or continuing to generate it during. The only thing we can do to gain PS that fast, really, is slabs of Interdepartmental Favors, which I suppose would make sense.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
For reference, here are the vote options we had regarding the natural 1 on the Mecca/Jeddah Planned City, from the Q1 2057 Results post. (The full entry is quite long, so I skipped to just the vote options.)
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
That's actually a good illustration. Treasury got a vote on "so, how much can you give to help ensure that this situation has an outcome favorable to GDI?"
To me, that'd be an important first-stage part of any negotiation like this, if Treasury is involved at all as opposed to being sidelined. In a more... cynical or at least 'weaker economic bureau' government, we might see the negotiations happen in the background and the requirements would just be dropped in our lap ("build this, do that")
To me, that'd be an important first-stage part of any negotiation like this, if Treasury is involved at all as opposed to being sidelined. In a more... cynical or at least 'weaker economic bureau' government, we might see the negotiations happen in the background and the requirements would just be dropped in our lap ("build this, do that")
I wouldn't mind a vote on things like offer give Yao food. I'd probably increase the scale of it to prevent the vote from getting to big and to keep it in line with other options. Something like offer the NOD warlords involved in the negotiations humanitarian aid, with the assumption that it would last until we got into a conflict of a scale similar to the regency war with those warlords. I feel like if NOD asked for food most of the thread would shrug and say sure. The main thing would be making sure we had some PS left to get the rest of GDI to agree to it.
Mostly though I was trying to keep the previous vote meaningful and something like that is probably less important to all parties than sea lanes or a route to Karachi so it could be slotted in later as a smaller concession to try and get a deal over the line.
Interdepartmental Favors is where I'd expect the bulk of any extra PS to come from. If Ithillid wanted to the proportion that came from there to be lower they could increase the number of turns between each round of negotiations and/or schedule them in advance so we would know we want to start making progress on things that give us PS so we can achieve them in the middle of the negotiations. Though this would make it take a lot longer and they might not want us deliberately not quite completing certain projects to get the PS at a good time. |These also probably aren't as suitable for the current negotiations since we are in the middle of them right now.
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- Location
- New England
I don't get the problem, honestly. To me, the negotiation vote read as "these are the treasury's positions on the various possible issues being negotiated; these are the abstracted political costs of taking said positions."
Discord drama. Bah.
Discord drama. Bah.
- Location
- ?????????
Nah. Discord is fine. It's that, According to QM, there seems to have been a disconnect with his intent and our understanding.
The problem, as I understand it, is that the options were not understood the way Ithillid wanted them to be, and things didn't work exactly the way he wanted them to. Which is partly not really a bad thing, since we were trying to get something out of the negotiations which was essentially a side issue.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
And lo, there was a voice in the wilderness, as from the Heavens themselves. This voice spake, and the Prophet obeyed.
- Location
- canada
If you're saying that the Treasury's decisions for this peace conference thing was to not try to do much at all, then that just means the Treasury doesn't particularly care that much about it, nor is it dependent on the results for this particular political ploy. That then implies the Treasury prefers to make use of it's political weight on things that are more reliable for the purposes of creating a more useful and lasting result, such as political maneuvering of the GDI's internal workings, as opposed to whatever diplomacy the rest of the GDI's political factions care to attempt with the Nod as a whole.
Because honestly, I don't see a real reason to care all that much about a peace treaty with the Nod of all people when the Treasury's political effort can be better spent on preparing for the next inevitable war with them instead.
In that respect, the Treasury is still controlling what the GDI does. Because no matter the goals the rest of the GDI sets on the Treasury, it's still up to the Treasury to decide exactly when those goals are achieved, which is as usual.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
I mean it's pretty clear that several of us Voters, out-of-character, wanted and cared about a peace treaty. That's the disconnect here, it seems. The impact of what was voted on felt lower than the PS we paid (55 PS!).
Kinda the opposite. We put in 55 PS into trying to accomplish things, but because it was not targeted well (for various reasons that other people have been discussing), we achieved 'bupkis' with the PS.
Keeping in mind that we generally try to keep a floor of 40 PS, and that for most of the last plan we were floating between 60-80 PS on most turns, something went wrong somewhere.
edit:
ninja'd
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Pretty much how it felt to me as well.
I did not participate at all, because the vote did not feel like something treasury would have a major part in to me.
I actually thought that ridiculous PS costs and that there was no option with a PS gain for supporting someone were to show us that it is not treasury's place to interfere and other parties are penalizing us harshly for trying to "muscle in on their turf".
This, on the other hand, I liked a lot.
It felt like something we had control over and could actually decide what to do and how to do it, including outright ignoring it.
This is what I expected from a vote where treasury is actively involved and wanted.
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Spending over half our current PS is not "not trying to do much at all".
As for "why try for a peace treaty" - the end goal of this set of negotiations was not actually a peace treaty. This was like the negotiations for humanitarian corridors for evacuation of Mariupol, or the deal to allow export of grain from Odessa, to take two examples from this year. (But with better faith/adherence to deals, because Yao is one of the warlords who mostly adheres to the laws of war.)
And Litvinov is an idealist who wants to believe that the GDI/Nod conflict can end in something other than military might forcing remnants of the other faction to surrender. (Which is a good thing, given the upcoming Kane/TCN negotiations.)
- Location
- USA
So... um...
What were those dice rolls for?
We already did assassination rolls this turn, so did Kane make a move?
What were those dice rolls for?
We already did assassination rolls this turn, so did Kane make a move?
Deep Dark Mystery.
(Ithillid asked for rolls to be made, with no explanation.)
So... Wild Speculation Time!
My theory: they were for what manners of booze Kane stole and replaced with mutative Tiberium Infusions.
(Ithillid asked for rolls to be made, with no explanation.)
So... Wild Speculation Time!
My theory: they were for what manners of booze Kane stole and replaced with mutative Tiberium Infusions.