This whole forum thread which started with a fairly simple argument has now evolved into idiotic never ending struggle to convince the other person to play how you play. There is no good answer to this question as it depends on your opinions and ideas on making peace, but anyway you may continue. I will go get some popcorn.Cheers

popcorn with butter??

i agree backstabbing is a bit low and stuff, but ...
you can call a 2v1 just as low/backstabbing as breaking your alliance ;)

so i suggest that, if you do not enjoy games like that, turn off PM's in the games you create and put "no alliances" in the game-message

Octavious, in response to your comment about never being allied with BigPie16, I would just like to point out that 1: He felt like you had one, as he chose not to attack you with his 86 visible armies to your 12, and 2: You failed to mention that at the beginning of the thread... if you were not allied with him ever, why did you wait so long to mention it? Regarding your comment about being allied with Darica, I would like to point out that you did nothing to further his chances to win the game, which you labeled a characteristic of allies, but stockpiled your armies until you swept in and wiped them out. How is that being an ally to Darica?

Oh, hello again Maugrim. I have to admit I thought this thread was dead, but it's a fair question. I fear a robust answer will have to be annoyingly long though :p.

A bit of background game history.

At around turn 7 Yellow was looking like the main threat and I thought something must be done to counter it. To set up a counterweight against him I offered BigPie a truce on the condition that he gave up his ambition of being the sole owner of Europe (which at the time would have given him a huge advantage). He refused. Fair enough. No worries.

Pretty much immediately after I offered Darica assistance to fight Yellow. He agreed (nothing much to lose one way of the other, really) and my way of offering assistance was to attack BigPie full on so Darica could fight Yellow. This may or may not have worked well. We will never know as yellow buggered off on the next turn.

So, the situation was this. I was in the middle of a war with BP and loosely allied to Darica, I had a decent stack of units, I had Australia, life was good. Plan A was to finish off BP, the finish of Darica, and win the game. I should point out that in situations like this on Diplomacy, when a major power resigns without warning, I offer the draw. To be honest I have no idea if this is even possible here, and neither of the other players asked for it if it was, so I shrugged and carried on.

Anyway, a few turns later BP is almost gone. Darica is getting close to taking North America, which he does so by moving against me (without warning, if you're interested) which is frankly rather sensible and a good move. I make the error of ignoring the remnants of BP and hit Darica with everything I have to stop him. Against the combined efforts of BP and Dar this fails and I get beaten back. I change plans to hiding in Australia and hope BP and Dar will instead see each other as their main threat and fight each other to a standstill.

So... we are now in the early 20s. Dar has NA, BP has Europe and Africa (major warning signs going off, and I have Australia and a big stack. BP is clearly the major threat. I make a deal with Dar to work against BP and that deal includes him withdrawing from asia to give me a power base. This is what I considered to be the closest I got to a genuine alliance, although the word "alliance" itself was never used. To be honest, after previous actions in the game, I was very cautious about trusting Dar and never really did to any great extent.

I also made asked BP to consider letting me have Asia if I let him keep Europe and Africa. Amazingly he agreed. I was in no position to attack him alone, and had severe doubts about Dar, so it sounded a good deal. The deal held, I picked up Asia, and became something of an equal player again.

From that point on I used my time to build up a force that would be able to take down BP and not leave me open to being wiped out by Dar. The fog encourages paranoia and makes this a lot more fun than you'd first imagine. I fully expected to be attacked at any time, but we had achieved a sort of Orwellian 1984 balance which held rather well. I fed stories to BP about a major build up of force on my boarder with Dar which seemed to discourage him from attacking my apparently weak boarder. At the same time I was (this time more or less honestly) discussing with Dar about my build up of forces against BP and trying to work out the right time to attack.

Again, I will stress that I made no formal offers of an alliance with either player. My agreement with dar was rather stronger (to my eyes at least) and I treated it as an alliance. My deal with BP rather more short term. I will also stress that I was half expecting these agreements to change at any time and was prepared for it.

Turn 32: BP invades Dar in South America. It seems likely that this indicates he perceives himself to have a major advantage and is on the way to a win. I immediately move my forces against BP to stop this. To Dar this appears to happen too late, he assumes I am with BP, and he attacks me (again without warning). The game descends into a right royal mess and I end up on top.

Them BP goes off on one :p.


So, to counter point one:

I am aware that BP believed we had an alliance, although the evidence for this is rather weak. I was willing to go along with the idea for much of this thread as I do genuinely believe in the ideal that alliances should be rather more fluid that BP thinks they should be. However, in the example of our game at least, to claim it was even an alliance is the first place is stretching the truth a bit far.

To counter point two:

I fully intended in this game to be a good ally to Dar (better than he was to me, in fact). In hindsight I may have waiting to long before engaging BP, but my actions throughout our agreement were carried out with the intention of favouring both mine and Darica's interests.

I would also remind you all that I am a beginner at this game and haven't yet grasped the finer details of timing and what makes up a strong hand.


Again, sorry about the huge post... But I felt it important to make it as clear as possible as this thread has gone on for longer than it really should.

"as this thread has gone on for longer than it really should."

Now there is an understatement. LOL

Bury this thread and spend time playing other games where you can backstab more :P

Ah, but for the most part it's been a fun one that largely served its purpose well. And it did spawn the highly regarded poetry thread (may it last 1000 posts)!

Speaking of which, aren't you meant to be off in deepest darkest China? I take it the search for an internet connection went well?

How is this thing still going?

Octavious the fact that you would such a long response and summary of the game (Which frankly is a bunch of BS) shows that you can't let the little things go. This thread should be dead yet you respond in self-defense yet again. I don't really care what happened in that game and I've moved past that... Why can't you??

Go away, BigPie. Maugrim asked me a question and I answered it. It's what civalised people call a conversation. Your feelings on this matter, whilst intriguing for a short time, are no longer of any interest to me. Frankly your abrasive attitude is more than wearing a bit thin and is in sharp contrast to the friendly and helpful nature of most people on this site.

Oh well then on behalf of that I'm sorry that my last post was a little too "unfriendly" as you call it. However I find it interesting how you can say the same thing over and over and still get the same response back. Have you noticed? 100 posts now on a stupid argument and we have gotten nowhere. I've moved past this thing days ago. Some people side with you and some people side with me. That's not a problem for me. I don't see why you have to carry it on

Personally, breaking alliances robs the game of fun for me. The problem is that I make strategic decisions resting upon the assumption that an alliance will not be broken.
However, if they are broken, it renders the point of the game (strategy) moot.
With the point of the game gone, then it's not entertaining, challenging, or fun anymore.
Aside from that, backstabbing is a very bad idea. Why? Vengeance. The other player will try and drag you down to hell with them if you backstab them. If you just give fair warning, they usually do not attempt to self-destruct and destroy you as well.
Furthermore, if the backstab is unsuccessful, then you are in a REALLY bad position, because the erstwhile ally is going to basically tell all your allies that you broke an alliance and soon you will be surrounded by hostile nations and unable to ally your way out.
In certain situations, I can understand the allure, but overall, the blacklisting, the danger, and the drawbacks all have me convinced it's just not worth it.