The diplomacy game. Want to be a bastard?

Anything goes imo

Even backstabbing "carefully" (only every few games when it makes really sense) will probably earn you a bad reputation with some players.

Just find like-minded people, which can accept that a game session is a somewhat contained entity.
There are enough people who have no problem with well done backstabs.
It only becomes a problem if you backstab without much reason or simply for the sake of it all the time.

I can understand "honourable" players, who wont even break a cease fire.
However, why not simply play team games then?
Everyone who plays FFAs should be ready to be backstabbed, backstab themselfs, be ganged up upon and being lied to in a single game session.

It can earn you a reputation online. Though the community should be large enough for you to do this safely.

However, dont do it with more experienced players, they will kill you, then track you down and kill you in many more of your games to come.

Guess that means you have to make a new game name every time you've been playing dirty right?

Even if it's FFA and it's supposed to be everyone for him/her self, not everyone takes lightly to getting backstabbed.

I believe that I was in that game - if so, I was a victim of your deception. The game should have been over in about 1.5 or 2 hours, but because of the lies, it went on almost endlessly and was really one of the most frustrating and boring games I had played. What, 4-5 hours later, the host finally quit and destroyed the game for everyone. It was really a huge waste of time.

To sum things up for everyone, we formed an alliance against some clan guys and the host, primarily because they wouldn't shut up about smoking pot or having pot legalized. The poster of this thread (if this is the same guy) joined our alliance, as he was stuck all alone in the same system as them. We made sure he didn't get bid up on for the pirates, we destroyed a pirate base in our system and then when we went to jump to help him. It turned out he was allied with these guys the whole time. He admitted being allied, but said it was to protect himself. While this is all going on, he's relaying our plans to the clan guys, who promptly show up all at the same time in the system where we were going to meet with our fleets. We got beat back very hard, and our false ally continued to lie and say things like "I'm on my way, I'm taking the wormhole to sneak around them." Yeah, ok.

Really, this isn't the game to sit there and play little games like that. Lying in such a situation will drag the game out to a point where anyone with a life will have to quit or surrender (with most people just flat out quitting to drag the game out more). I can see you lying in a small FFA like a 3-6 player one, but this isn't MTV's Real World. This is a game, it's supposed to be fun. Please try to avoid that type of stuff, it's just not worth it. I've already noted the names of a couple of guys who have played this sort of way and I can tell you I won't be playing with them again. It'd be different if this was a faster paced game, but even in "Fast" mode, it's too slow for this sort of thing.

"keep your friends close & your enemies closer", does that help?

TheMystic:


This IS the game to sit around and play little games like that. Any game with alliances and diplomacy is the game to sit around and play little games like that.

You didn't enjoy it because you received the beat-down. But if he was relaying the other team's information to YOU, you'd be loling as your fleet destroyed the other team's home planets.

And if you're noting the names of people who play the game for FUN and plan on never playing with them again... enjoy single player.

I used to do 4 way FFAs in Starcraft back in the day. Me and a friend even made fake names to play under to backstab people. We'd both be named something like ~-=[BACKSTAB]=-~ and ~-=[STABBACK]=-~ and people would be SHOCKED when we rolled our combined forces into their base. It's a game. I'll admit that doing that is a dick move, but I had fun and so did my friend. And, as I said above, if YOU were benefiting from the backstabbing you wouldn't be complaining.

lol, sounds like a good time. Sounds like good old diplomacy to me (and very poor scouting on your behalf). "Dragging out the game" seems like an excuse, to be honest. Momentum can shift and games can take longer, that's just how it is, it wouldn't be fun if one team could just snowball their advantage and walk over everything. The only reason you could be pissed is because you got backstabbed, but that's the main reason open diplomacy is in the game in the first place.

Here's the thing, we turned the game around. Scouting wasn't an issue at all, I was the one to notice that he was often times bumping into them with no combat going on. I figured that he played a little trickery on them to temporarily give himself a safety blanket until we showed up. The sad thing is, after he realized how powerful they actually were, he did switch back to our side. Even then though, he didn't declare war on the clan guys despite being in a same sector as the combat until after the majority of my fleet and caps were gone.

Point is, this isn't Starcraft, actually it's the farthest thing from Starcraft. This game takes ages and ages to finish if there's a diplomacy shift by even one person in a FFA. FFA technically should be teamless regardless, but we all knew that was impossible due to the clan guys who joined.

If this was Starcraft or Warcraft 3 or any other fast paced RTS, it'd be a different story. SOASE suffers from a much much slower pace and as such, games can drag for so long that you'd be sprouting gray hairs by the time it ended. We're talking over five hours here, with the host then leaving which killed the game. It pissed off my girlfriend because I was supposed to make breakfast hours earlier (the game should have been over many times over already), it ticked me off because I didn't want to leave without finishing it, and the host really wasted the time I spent with my entire morning once he left. As many of you know, a host leaving usually ends in disconnects for everyone.

Not sure what you're whining about. I'm sorry this isn't Blizzard RTS clone #3235?

You knew going in it was going to take a while. A big FFA with teams unlocked is the longest mode of play possible.

If you and your allies are doing well, why betray them in the first place?

If you're playing FFA, and you're playing with another player, you should test the water first. MAKE them give you ship view (and you them) so you can both see the distribution of forces along your borders. Also, make sure that all involved know its a temporary thing--player A and player B teaming up to take out player C, and once that's done, you break and go your seperate ways.

If it works out and you still want to stick with them, more power to ya.

Of course, this assumes parity of force. If you're a MUCH weaker player allied with one of the strongest players on the map (in a FFA, of course), then your only option up to a point is to sneak attack your opponent, smash as many planets and structures as possible, and hope he'll be too busy with the other players to focus exclusively back on you.

Heck, if you could get those other players on your side to start swatting around said strong player, more power to you. You probably won't kill him, since they'll break up in in-fighting when someone backstabs them.

Hmmm, interesting...

I've gotta agree. While I understand why the guy is pissed, going into a 10-man FFA in a huge galaxy is pretty much guaranteed to eat up many, many hours. The only time I play 10-man FFA is if it's one average-sized solar system where the game is more of a deathmatch than a huge galaxy-wide slogfest.

pretty much

hehe, I'm afraid that wansn't the game I used as an example. Mine wasn't so corrupt on the backstabbing as your game, but it still got my mind going after I watched the replay to see what actually went down. (You get to see all the chat between the players.)

I sorta played like this. In the game I was called Cruiser and was red. I allied with orange early on since we were right next to eachother. Two people from our solar sytem later on lagged out, which only left one player in our galaxy, dark blue.

In another solar system where all the other players where, things were a bit different. Two players had allied somewhat before middlegame, to try and take on the rest. The two players almost thrashed a third player and then told him "Pay us all your money and we will let your few puny planets live". He was later bullied into their alliance.

The 4th player in their system lagged out. That left only the 5th player. The 5th was ganged by the first 3 players, and he lived out the remainder of his playtime in exile with a planet in the corner of the system.

Now me and orange have taken some 60% of our own system, and dark blue has a good corner as well. Unfortunately, Dark blue only really have the economy part down and not so much the fighting, so she (litterally she) tries a culture attack on my allie (she doesn't know we were allies), and that basically prompts both me and orange to attack her.

Now here the problem starts for us. Dark blue get's so terrified about us both comming down on her, that she initiates contact with the team in the other system. They advice her to evacuate to their system for protection, and provide planet and ship sight so they can see what's going on.The now 4 man alliance preps for an invasion by spamming bounty on my buddy, (he had some 50.000 on his head at all times). Dark blue, which had a huge economy system, posts close to 100.000 into her new mates, allowing them to build a even more huge fleet than they already have.

Best as me and orange have half-way eaten through Dark blues empire (She had started spamming LRM's on the advice of her team mates, those things can be really had to stop when massivly spammed), a huge fleeet along with two support fleets arrives in our system and starts moving in on me.
Me and my buddy had been totally oblivious to what was going on in the other system, we had just concentrated on taking down Dark blue, so the arrival of a fleet that was bigger than both our fleets combined, with no warning was something of a huge shock.

Best thing is that shortly after the alliances arrival, my buddy tries to sell me out to them, by offering to join them and gang on me. Luckily the "leader" of their team didn't really see the fun in that so he refused. Keep in mind that I didn't know about any of this untill I watched the replay.

Downhill from there. Got my fleet together and reinforced, and went headon with the invasion fleet at my capital planet. My buddy was regouping his fleet and trying to fend off the pirates, so by the time his fleet arrived my fleet was pretty much already dead. I had managed to take down the main fleet of the invasion force, but I couldn't post up any more resistance.
After that we all pretty much had a laugh about it all and shared all the info about how the game had went, who did what and why.

Like I said, not an incredible ammount of backstabbing, and the game only lasted some 3 hours, but it got me wondering about how much the diplomatic relations could get out of hand if someone played both teams at the same time, and what the possible conseqences could be.

isnt it a big problem if « clan guys » show up in a pseudo FFA with the preconceived intent & plan to manipulate & crush non-clan participants ?

I've always thought that if people come into a game with the preconcieved notion to stay teamed the entire time, they should just set up a team game and stick with that, because it's otherwise frustrating to everyone else.

The map was actually average sized that I played on, so it wasn't some jumbo map that should have taken many hours to beat. When the host quit, I'd imagine that we still had another hour at least to go in order to crush planets down to nothing. The clan guys had left near the end after seeing that we were going to have a pretty big stalemate after we retreated back into our systems. The AI was driving their empires from that point on.

I think the issue I have is, we could have played a normal game had the shifting not gone on. Even when we realized the betrayal (I was literally in chat saying "I swear to god, he's backstabbing us."), we intelligently retreated back, and even surrendered a planet to the enemy's coordinated assault. We held our ground, but we would have never been in the odd stalemate situation had our perceived ally not deceived us. Instead of getting the jump on a planet or two, and having the enemy be unprepared, they were prepared and it just resulted in a clash that went on and on and on.

This is great. Anyone who hasnt played a game of Diplomacy before might be a little bit shocked. For those of us who are old hands at it however this is one of the best features of sins.

The game is slow enough to evaluate situations and form stronger opinions as to who can be trusted and to what extent. I for one cant wait to play a long 10 player ffa with tons of intrigue.

In an FFA with unlocked teams, can you have shared victory or can only one person win the game?

I believe you should not hold a grudge against players if you run into them again in another game.

This sort of reminds me of the classic world domination game RISK. You should expect opponents to make alliances to serve their own best interest.

However, I'm sure the element of real-world friendship will affect the game with unspoken alliances. Especially for clans.

[MAGOG]Kruelgor

me and 8 other people i LAN with are setting up a game in the largest map we can make, each one gets own solar system, and then we just TRY and be diplomatic like real governments do today. you dont see us attacking anyone for no reason, so were gunna do a "real life" space sim, starting with a time of peace, then slowly having individuals doing small battles amoungst each other, eventually ending up in total war, with FFA-2-3 side sluging it out over the course of alot of LAN partys. Kinda seems like the way the game should be played if you have the time

See this game was built for this exact purpose. Hidden bounties by pirates, a complicated diplomacy system, long games, all equal a diplomacy central game. This is why I play FFA's almost exclusively. How can someone not get excited by the thought of a temporary alliance of 1 stronger person and you the weaker person ending with the stronger player getting backstabbed before he can backstab his ally. And for kicks the previous ally forming up a coalition of former enemies to destroy said player.

The whole situation makes it so weaker players stand a chance. It really does make for some exceedingly interestingly strategic situations. I do understand being backstabbed can be frustrating, but whats more glorious then coming back from a backstab and cleansing the the backstabber and his ally of his planets. Thus leaving them with nothing else they can do but try and seek a third alliance mate.

I will admit there are some pretty "low" playstyles in ffa even by my standards. I played an ffa where the game was a 6v1.25. The massive gang rape wasn't even warranted as the 1.25 (1 decent player and a newbie) weren't even strong enough to kill the other 3 players in their system. But it was entertaining to pretty much destroy 2 of the players of the 6 player alliance before I fell. And yes I was part of that 1.25 player alliance.

If you get stabbed in a FFA, don't whine. It's a FFA. EXPECT it. I would never hold a grudge for that sort of thing; hell, it's refreshing to get beaten by good diplomacy.

If you don't want to get stabbed, either don't ally, or lock teams. Go into a FFA not trusting anyone. You'll probably ally with someone in your system for the duration of the game, but don't expect to. They could be planning to team up with the third wheel to destroy you.

The best way to ensure you don't get stabbed is simply to be the most powerful force in your system. I usually am, and I usually don't get betrayed. Games where I am are because they see me as a target.

If it's a FFA game then anything goes, the entire point of a diplomacy system like we have. The most basic thing is never ever trust anyone you don't know in real life and even those people should only be trusted as much as absolutely necessary.

The point of the game after all is to win, and yes have fun doing it. However if you are in a FFA game you should expect that everyone is going to be working to achieve victory, however they can. As long as you choose to play games without locked teams that is the risk you take, if that effects enjoyment for you don't play FFA. I'm sure that you can find plenty of people who are of a like mind and want Team games

By looking at the statistics of a game, I learned that the same guy who asked for an alliance with me is the same one who put 1750 on my head within the first 15 minutes of the game. I don't hate him, although I am going to beat the crap out of him next time we play.