A Call for Public Diplomacy

[StratOcastle]

With all the doubt and negativity I'm going to recommend you guys attend a Tony Robbins seminar.

Public Diplomacy ~

Yes you can! Yes I can! Yes we can!

I'll start.

From the enemy:
I say yes to open CFs.

For my enemies:
My word of nonaggression is my CF.

[Andurilas]

This is a classic repeated prisoner's dilemma, lol.

In order for this to work, you need to have a way to punish those who don't abide by this system (all KDs refuse to diplo with them or something), or you can only hope that everyone sticks to the agreement out of sheer honesty. Because with the lack of a deterrent, it is always more beneficial to defect - even in the situation of the depository. And even the "punishment" is based on good faith, because people backdoor diploing with the "punished" STILL stand to gain over those who don't. In other words, it has little to no hope of working because it's simply not enforceable.

The main advantage is not enforceability, but avoiding the stupid posturing. Maybe then certain people would just say, "Yeah, whatever, we're top of the chart and you aren't so suck it."

[Andurilas]

While the sentiment of openness to try mitigate the number of deal breaks is nice enough, it kind of removes a crucial aspect of deal brokering as shpanda and Elit points out.

Contrary to popular belief, top kingdoms doesn't CF to avoid competing between themselves, but rather to make sure that they can compete in a semi-organised fashion and eliminating some chance/luck aspects (making sure prep times are negotiated for instance). With CFs allowing for prep periods, and with a system of staggering CFs to make sure you only have to worry about a limited amount of kingdoms at any given stage top kingdoms have paved wave for something similar to a sport tournament (ideally). But while the seeding is public in sport tournaments, it's decided by closed-door diplo in utopia.

What you are asking for then, is not merely that deals are made public, but that the entire tournament seeding is made public (who will get to engage who and when and under what pre-conditions). While that sounds nice there's a range of problems with that:

1) First deals on the table will put the involved parties at a huge disadvantage. Knowing when/how two kds are eligible to fight will impact how everyone else deals with them (and among themselves) to further their own advantages and opponents disadvantages.
2) Some would claim there would be zero competition knowing the seeding (and seeing kd setups). Wars and crowns in the top are won by superior positioning just as much (or more) than conflict execution. To paraphrase Godly: war is a stance where you collect (or lose) the acres you've already won in prep and positioning. Simplified ofc. But there's something to it.
3) Deals aren't all made from start, but over the course of an age depending on a lot of factors. One such factor is setups. Unlike in sports, utopia kingdoms grow stronger/weaker over the course of an age based purely on setup. Some setups are made for early domination (allowing favourable negotiation position for late game for instance) others for late age utility. Visible deals will severely disrupt the mechanics involved in setup determination. Knowing what deals a weak starter has, for instance, makes countering their late play a lot easier - nerfing some setup considerations and simplifies the game.
4) It will eliminate a quite interesting top-play meta. Playing the diplo-game successfully requires skill, connections and meta know-how. It makes the top community vibrant to a certain extent.

All in all I think open deals would dumb down top play to either a) outcome clear from start or b) evolve the game into a tournament game proper, which is also a dumbing down of the game...

There are benefits to secrecy to be sure. The ideal solution would be to have a verified repository where detailed, written deals are kept and publicized only when necessary.

This could actually be solved by kingdoms just making more explicit and detailed deals in writing, but there seems to be nothing that will get them to do so.

[Attero]

There is no secrecy about a wave. Unless you anon. Even then you are still exposed as a kingdom. Goodtimes!