Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Annoyed by formation of large alliances (was Re: Backstabbing)
| Re: Annoyed by formation of large alliances (was Re: Backstabbing) |
Tue, 03 August 2004 06:41   |
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| Steve1 |
 | Officer Cadet 2nd Year |
Messages: 240
Registered: January 2003
Location: Australia | |
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| Quote: |
Or some minor race helps the rank1 race without reason and makes it the winner, not caring for his own position, and the one wins because of this support, and others who play much better are defeated.
I hate this 
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I had a situation just like you're describing where I did support the eventual no.1 player into victory and it was a last man standing game, but I found it very difficult to extricate myself from the alliance for a few reasons:
1) We had exchanged ships and tech for almost the entire game and being IS and SS respectively, we both gained a fair amount of advantage.
2) We had built up an excellent repoire.
3) We successfully battled and had severely damaged the other main alliance.
4) I couldn't seem to relate to one of the players in the other alliance. We attempted numerous times to negotiate various aspects or conditions, but almost always seemed to take each other the wrong way (or perhaps not ).
5) I originally had an alliance (or so I thought  ) with the other member of the eventual losing alliance, but some double crossing went on and I lost a little faith in his race (not him personally).
6) First, second and third placed players would then qualify to enter a championship game and I thought to myself, hmmm .... do I want my current ally in the next game (not necessarily to be my ally in the championship game) or a guy that I definately can't relate to ?
So even though our temporary host was insisting that it was the right thing to do in joining the other alliance, for the above listed reasons I chose not to and the game consequently ended; admittedly on a sour note 
BTW, I ended up coming third, so whilst I didn't exactly qualify as "some minor race" I was still quite some way behind the first ranked player.
Anyhow, the point I was trying to make is that there may be valid reasons for not defeating no.1 and it's possible they may not be obvious to all the players involved.
[Updated on: Tue, 03 August 2004 11:18] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Annoyed by formation of large alliances (was Re: Backstabbing) |
Tue, 03 August 2004 09:56 |
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| Steve1 |
| Officer Cadet 2nd Year |
Messages: 240
Registered: January 2003
Location: Australia | |
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| Quote: |
Erie, I'm fairly sure you're not talking about RWIAB I, but you almost could be, many of the details are similar, IS & SS alliance, for most of the game. And I think my ally ended up in 3rd place.
We didn't have a temporary host however.
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Nope not the same game, mine was Sky Harbor 2, but interesting to hear of others experiencing the same kind of situation.
BTW, have you noticed that SS never seems to come first (assuming that players are relatively equal in experience). Certainly can be a fun race and at times can be a difficult race to have as an opponent, but economically just doesn't seem to do well enough to be number one. 
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| Re: Backstabbing & Grand Alliances |
Sat, 09 October 2004 15:00 |
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Quick and dirty way to avoid permanent alliances.
Forbid password sharing between players who are not officially starting the game as a team. This will immediately kill a lot of the newbie alliance bungling such as an inflexible alliance in a last-man standing game. It had not really occurred to me to forbid this until recently.
g.e.
g.e.
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"When the newspapers have been read, the TV sets shut off, the cars parked
in their various garages. Then, faintly, I hear voices from another star.
(I clocked it once, and the reception is best between 3:00 A.M. and 4:45
A.M.). Of course, I don't usually tell people this when they ask, "Say,
where do you get your ideas?" I just say I don't know. It's safer."
-P. K. DickReport message to a moderator
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| Re: Backstabbing & Grand Alliances |
Tue, 19 October 2004 07:19 |
|
 Madman |
 | Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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| SinicalIdealist wrote on Sun, 10 October 2004 08:00 |
Quick and dirty way to avoid permanent alliances.
Forbid password sharing between players who are not officially starting the game as a team. This will immediately kill a lot of the newbie alliance bungling such as an inflexible alliance in a last-man standing game. It had not really occurred to me to forbid this until recently.
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Good idea.
A few months ago, I was in a game that had a rule that no more than two players could win. I (playing an IT) found myself in a corner very close to a CA who was very amenable to an alliance, and we allied and cooperated very well. At the time I thought it was necessary because everyone else would be making such alliances.
Yes, we did swap download passwords, but with some reluctance on my part, but because of unanticipated real life concerns, and the 5 turns/week schedule (which with the rl stuff I found rather gruelling, and I was hoping would drop to 3 turns/week, but never did), it was the only way of not getting overwhelmed in communication.
The problem was in this game that I rather suspect we were the two best players, or at least two out of the three best, and by year 100, we had easily destroyed the third ranked player (in the far corner of the universe). We quickly got agreement after public scores at year 100 that we were unstoppable, and so won the game.
Looking back on it, I think that allowing for two player wins was a mistake in that particular game, in that it allowed a victory without being strongly challenged (turns out no-one else had made such a strong alliance). I find myself determined after that to only play in either pre-alliance (team) or Last Man Standing games, since otherwise the players who make a permanent allianace have such a huge advantage. (Also to only play in games which have a 'move to 3 turns/week at or before a certain year', but that is a side issue).
SinicalIdealist's suggestion of forbidding password sharing (how would you enforce it? and would you also ban sharing of the report files?) means that such a strong alliance would be much more difficult to form (of course, if it does form, it means that the two people are communicating so well that the alliance is even less likely to be broken). Our alliance would certainly have been much weaker under such conditions, and maybe even degenerated into a tech-trading + non-aggression pact (although it is less than ideal that real life stresses make an alliance unworkable), and probably resulted in a more balanced game.
Are there any other suggestions for how to make a Last Man Standing game actually work out that way, without precluding alliances (which are an important part of the game)?. I've done a lot of boardgaming, and I've seen very few unbreakable alliances - of course the attitude about backstabbing amoung my wargaming friends seems to be a lot milder than it is on this forum too - for boardgamers, it is kind of expected that an alliance will last only as long as everyone in the alliance finds it useful, but a boardgame played in an evening has a much smaller investment than Stars!.
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| Re: Backstabbing & Grand Alliances |
Tue, 19 October 2004 14:33 |
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There is another way of doing it.
Alternative ending conditions.
Example: Winning party must hold x worlds (that have all very different habs) for y number of years, with starbase of z rating.
It's a pain in the ass to set up, but it will more effectively ensure only a single victory. Make it a condition that only x races can hold said worlds, and only those races then win.
g.e./Gakl
g.e.
====
"When the newspapers have been read, the TV sets shut off, the cars parked
in their various garages. Then, faintly, I hear voices from another star.
(I clocked it once, and the reception is best between 3:00 A.M. and 4:45
A.M.). Of course, I don't usually tell people this when they ask, "Say,
where do you get your ideas?" I just say I don't know. It's safer."
-P. K. DickReport message to a moderator
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| Re: Backstabbing & Grand Alliances |
Tue, 19 October 2004 17:11 |
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Because if one player decides to go for the goal, all players have an obligation to do everything to stop them. This should create a necessarily unstable environment which will be severely hostile to anything long-term. As a result, it seems more likely to lead to the desired result. Then again, I think the only time (or only time I know of) this was really tried was w/ a crowd of advanced players. Most advanced level players are much more nuanced w/ diplomacy.
g.e.
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"When the newspapers have been read, the TV sets shut off, the cars parked
in their various garages. Then, faintly, I hear voices from another star.
(I clocked it once, and the reception is best between 3:00 A.M. and 4:45
A.M.). Of course, I don't usually tell people this when they ask, "Say,
where do you get your ideas?" I just say I don't know. It's safer."
-P. K. DickReport message to a moderator
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| Re: Backstabbing & Grand Alliances |
Wed, 20 October 2004 14:43 |
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| SinicalIdealist wrote on Tue, 19 October 2004 22:11 |
Because if one player decides to go for the goal, all players have an obligation to do everything to stop them.
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No more so than with regular VCs. You'll still get players not wanting to attack an obviously stronger opponent, despite the fact that that opponent will obviously win if they don't help bring them down.
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| Re: Backstabbing & Grand Alliances |
Wed, 20 October 2004 19:55 |
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| Madman |
| Officer Cadet 1st Year |
Messages: 228
Registered: November 2003
Location: New Zealand | |
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| vonKreedon wrote on Wed, 20 October 2004 06:35 |
As far as dealing with unbroken Alliances in Last Man Standing games, I can't think of a structural way to prevent this. The host should perhaps nudge the players by periodically broadcasting a reminder that there can be only one and everyone is expected to do their best to ensure that their race is the one.
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I don't think there is a structural way to prevent it. What I am interested in is ways, structural or otherwise to encourage a culture of going for the win. That is not to say that backstabbing is always a good thing - I've hardly ever done it in any sort of game, and a senseless backstab ("oh, I was bored") annoys me about as much as a winning alliance.
Perhaps a suggestion or requirement in the game setup rules that all agreements between races must have an exit clause of not more than 5 years notification? A little artificial, and not enforceable, but might provide a nudge in the right direction.
Dealing with this is of more than academic interest to me ... I'm wanting to host a game at some point. {A brief plug - pretty much vanilla game, Last Man Standing, non AccBBS, Intermediate and up, schedule about 3 turns/week so that people want to play Stars without it taking over their life can play. Maybe starting early next year}
| vonKreedon wrote on Wed, 20 October 2004 09:52 |
There is still the issue of other players not doing their Machiavellian best to win that is the core issue for this thread.
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Actually there are lots of legitimate reasons that someone might not do their Machiavellian best to win. For instance, if I've suffered enough setbacks that I can't possibly win whatever happens (and it's got to be pretty bad - I'm usually willing to try and turn a nearly impossible situation around), I might decide on my own private conditions to aim for that are different than winning conditions, or (more likely) do whatever I can to bring down the race responsible for me doing so poorly until I can find a reason to do something different. If I can't win myself and am just paying kingmaker, who happens to be #1 #2 or #3 matters less than which one of them played a part in _me_ not being in the running.
The time that the game suffers are when a race or an alliance of races is left to get so far ahead without being challenged, and the people that _are_ in the running don't make a go of it, that the game essentially doesn't happen and just ends up as a peaceful growth competition.
Stars! is a huge investment of time - I'm interested in getting as much out of that investment as possible, and playing for months for someone to win without a fight is an anti-climax.
{Partly offtopic happy memory} I was playing a game of Risk quite a few years ago when two other players decided to form an unbreakable alliance from the start (effectively a pre-game alliance). This destruction of game balance annoyed me so much that I dedicated my game to trying to hurt them instead of winning. As it was, I destroyed them both, then went on to win the game 
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