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Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest

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PoptartProdigy said:
As the door to your quarters clicks shut, Kirai turns to you. "She is a novice."

"I noticed that," you say, crossing to your desk and putting down your belongings. "Goddess, that felt easy. Was I that bad when I first took office?"

She shakes her head. "No. No, you were much better! She's not merely unpracticed and loose with her tongue, she is a walking disaster! If I worked for her I would have locked her in her office rather than allowed her to speak with you face to face!" The Matriarch grimaces. "I suppose the upside is that you've made it clear to her exactly how the situation stands."
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oh, that had not occured to me. They might just be really bad at diplomacy. I mean, a constant issue is that they were not acting like a rational power, that could be due to incompetence rather than insanity. I'm not sure if that really helps us because them being stupid rather than nuts doesn't help us that much. The result is still that they don't understand how bad their position is. Maybe we could explain it to her in small words? politely if possible.
 
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I chortled most heartily when she gave away the merchant hostages, her only leverage, for practically nothing.

I'm highly tempted just to say no and walk out of the negotiations since there is literally nothing keeping us there anymore.
 
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Considering how we can still get a lot of stuff out of the Lystheni, we should still negotiate instead of just going to war. We now have nothing to loose by humoring her for a little while.
 
Well I am glad we managed to get our citizens back since the Dalatress tried to claim that we were violating the treaty I am tempted to bring up their treaty violation about building those research stations in neutral territory as our next demand that's probably why she wants the neutral territory enlarged.
 
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ok, so this again brings us to what do we want? what deal can we compel them to offer that would satisfy us that they are no longer a threat, and how could we enforce it?
 
Well, there we go. Now the only leverage she has is the annoyance and resource drain an invasion and occupation will be.

@PoptartProdigy

Question:
Concession
--[ ] Economic support of Lystheni interests, working towards a common understanding and cooperation (basically civilian Marshall Plan by Virmirean companies).

Do you mind elaborating on this? As far as I understand, our own companies are already strained by the war-effort, I can't imagine them being nearly as generous as America post-WW2 was.

Is there a risk the companies end up with very strong influence over the Lystheni gov, Shadowrun style? I.e, Or the Mass Effect version of East India Trading Company?
 
:jackiechan: The supreme leader of your cult/government is someone barely capable of negotiation? Did they chose the option with dipo as dumpstat and Learning/Stewardship? Intrigue is certainly not her strong suit.
 
wow she really is a dumpster fire of a diplomat. do they have literally no one who could coach her a little, or is she just that stubborn? seriously, get an earpiece and have your assistant feed you something as you go. there has to be at least one diplomatic Lystheni.

VoidZero said:
:jackiechan: The supreme leader of your cult/government is someone barely capable of negotiation? Did they chose the option with dipo as dumpstat and Learning/Stewardship? Intrigue is certainly not her strong suit.
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I think you're correct and they went with the Learning/Stewardship leader. they've done quite a bit with not very much at all, and they prioritized the Prothean ruins over their relationship with a far stronger neighbor. it's worth noting that she cannot be as bad a steward as she is a diplomat, since she recognized the trade deal trap for what it was and avoided it.
 
VoidZero said:
:jackiechan: The supreme leader of your cult/government is someone barely capable of negotiation? Did they chose the option with dipo as dumpstat and Learning/Stewardship? Intrigue is certainly not her strong suit.
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They are mess of a government, being sneaky it hurts their intrigue and economy. So Stewardship is out. That leaves learning, martial and/or piety. I will laugh if she has high piety.
 
Doomed Wombat said:
God DAMN she's as bad as the MS3 Dalatrass.

Do they not give these people diplomatic educations?
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Honestly? Probably not. Or rather not inter-species negotiation.
VoidZero said:
:jackiechan: The supreme leader of your cult/government is someone barely capable of negotiation? Did they chose the option with dipo as dumpstat and Learning/Stewardship? Intrigue is certainly not her strong suit.
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Got to remember, salarian Dalatrass's rarely interact with anyone other then other salarians, and would predominantly interact with their own families. Salarian's psychologically imprint on those they meet when very young, automatically deferring to them, and especially to their own mothers.

Or, put another way, the only people she would readily interact with are those she doesn't need Diplomacy with. And diplomacy amongst Dalatasses likely takes a very different form then traditional diplomacy.
 
Wow, that went incredibly well. In hindsight, going to war with these guys might be a big mistake. So... let's take them to the cleaners in negotiations?
*rubs hands together*

Would love to see how a stick and carrot approach would play out with the Dalatrass
 
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Let's remember that just because she's bad at negotiation doesn't mean she's literally stupid, or that she won't recognize a bad or damaging deal in general. Assuming that she actually cared about getting the Lystheni spies released, and I suspect she did, then we kind of had her over a barrel with the prisoner exchange. She had one card to trade for one thing, and it would have been a minor miracle for her if she'd gotten a second thing out of that.

random_npc said:
oh, that had not occured to me. They might just be really bad at diplomacy. I mean, a constant issue is that they were not acting like a rational power, that could be due to incompetence rather than insanity. I'm not sure if that really helps us because them being stupid rather than nuts doesn't help us that much. The result is still that they don't understand how bad their position is. Maybe we could explain it to her in small words? politely if possible.
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They might be intelligent in other areas and atrociously bad at diplomacy. They've been isolated out here for, what, 100 years? 200? Maybe even a bit more. For salarians that's several generations to live in an isolationist cult, an isolation deeper even than that of, say, North Korea. They could simply have no institutional memory of how to negotiate or make rational threat assessments anymore.

trooperist said:
I chortled most heartily when she gave away the merchant hostages, her only leverage, for practically nothing.
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To be fair, the lives and safety of individual Lystheni might actually be very important, to the Lystheni. They may consider that point to be so significant that it was worth giving up their leverage.
 
VoidZero said:
:jackiechan: The supreme leader of your cult/government is someone barely capable of negotiation? Did they chose the option with dipo as dumpstat and Learning/Stewardship? Intrigue is certainly not her strong suit.
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They looted a planet under our nose without our noticing. They managed to establish a major signals intercept facility in hostile territory.
They have managed to keep the internal workings of their society secret for over a decade in the face of our ginormous resources.

High Learning. High Intrigue. Poor Stewardship. Poor Martial. Middling Diplomacy. ? Piety.
 
uju32 said:
They looted a planet under our nose without our noticing. They managed to establish a major signals intercept facility in hostile territory.
They have managed to keep the internal workings of their society secret for over a decade in the face of our ginormous resources.

High Learning. High Intrigue. Poor Stewardship. Poor Martial. Middling Diplomacy. ? Piety.
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I think it's more High Learning, High Intrigue, Middling Stewardship, Poor Martial and Poor Diplomacy.
 
So, do we just hit her with the full list of demands right now? or hold off on the ones we really want and they'd hate, like opening up, bringing them in in return for a later concession to some of her demands?
 
I'm kind of leaning towards the classic here:



If we can maneuver them into becoming an economic dependent then fine, but any kind of long term deal has to be predicated on them giving us the information we need and ponying up some kind of reparations for their assorted fuckery.

We don't have to make nice here like we do with the Citadel. They certainly haven't given us a reason to make nice.
 
...Why are we having another vote I thought we already had all of that already up?

I think the vote should go something like this, does anyone have any suggestions as to what to change?

[] List the various ways they've fucked with us, Bases and space stations in the LBZ, STOLEN ship designs, tampering with our election, and the various other bullshit we have proof of.
-[] List our previously agreed upon demands as of now. As they've completely broken trust, despite us bending over backwards to give them advantageous trade status, and the LBZ they intended to abuse from the moment they brought it up, this is how things will be until they can behave like a sane civilization instead of a bunch of delusional paranoids unable to keep their word on the most basic level.
-[] List our previously agreed upon carrots. While we don't have to do this and frankly after the shit you've pulled a good deal of my people would prefer I leave you with nothing good coming from this. I however believe that make some progress from this and behave like adults.
-[] Lastly before she has the chance to put her foot in her mouth we explain the very big stick we will use as they've attacked us in every way but the physical, and that they've betrayed EVERY trust we've put in them. Making our previous agreement obviously not worth the tablet it was written on from the moment it was signed.
 
random_npc said:
the issue is that she might not recognize the stick until we hit her with it.
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Really? I think both Mira and the Dalatrass already know that armed conflict is still on the table. Even without war, if worse comes to worst, we can always tell them that they can play alone in their corner of the sandbox (i.e. no trade, no embassy, blockade).

But again, negotiations look like they might work out in some fashion. If the stick and carrot approach doesn't seem to work, we have the option of playing bad cop/ good cop with Mira and Kirai.
 
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-[] Full disclosure of Lystheni history and society, including their origins and the nature of their animosity towards the Citadel (Lystheni forced to stop being cagey).
--[] Full disclosure and surrender of the stations in Sikel in violation of the Virmire-Lystheni Border Treaty (get the artifacts and the stations on which they sit, along with experimental records).

I think these are the two things we absolutely want. Quite frankly, unless they're hiding something truly incredible, they're too small for their trade or military to be that important to have. Enforcing their economic subordination would still be nice, of course, but if needs be we can live without it. And the listening posts would probably be flatly unacceptable to the Lystheni without a war, for obvious reasons.
 
Gore17 said:
I think it's more High Learning, High Intrigue, Middling Stewardship, Poor Martial and Poor Diplomacy.
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They opened Diplomacy first.
I'm betting their Diplomacy is better than their Stewardship.

Simon_Jester said:
To be fair, the lives and safety of individual Lystheni might actually be very important, to the Lystheni. They may consider that point to be so significant that it was worth giving up their leverage.
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This.

Like I said, a population of less than ten million people doesn't really have that deep a bench to call on.
And given the way the Dalatrass referred to them as her children, they might literally be her biological children. And people do not do rational threat assessments when kids are in danger.
 
Ideally we'd set them up to become a dependency, which we can diplomatic-annex in time.

So how to do so without having their liberty desire sky-high from the start?

*EU4 Logic*
 
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