Play Diplomacy Online

Just had an experience of a player acting - in my view - unsportsmanlike.

It's in a game, where a player is on his way to soloing, and the rest of us would have to fight him to stop. One players suddenly just makes a nonsensical move away from defending his own centers that the leader is moving forward to try to take. The player instead just moves away and takes a center from another player on our side, and then just surrender no explanation at all.

I don't really know what to do in these situations. It completely destroys a whole game, that you have spent a lot of time on.

Kingmaking...someone who has decided they want a specific player to win.

It's not against the rules...its allowed...its annoying...but that guy must have diplomacied his way to getting the guy to do it...so its allowed.

Would behavior as described above be considered sufficient grounds to investigate possible multi-accounting?

TiberiusG58 wrote:Would behavior as described above be considered sufficient grounds to investigate possible multi-accounting?

In itself, no.

Imagine I am a player in a game, and somehow one player talks me into letting her win (maybe she tells me he loves my hair, or I look like I've lost weight). I decide to do so. Or maybe I do it because I am just fed up and want the game to end. Is that annoying / irritating / maddening to the others? Yes, absolutely. Is it a sign I am cheating? No.

HOWEVER, it may prove an incentive to for example check out how often the two players play together. If they HAVE played together before, you might look at the games. If this is a pattern, with one player giving the other the win and then vice versa, that is highly likely to be cheating!

Note that we would expect this type of research to be done BEFORE reporting it - in other words, you have to do some work too!

For the record, it's sometimes the best play to partially throw a game! If you're a small power, I find the best way of scoring is to make one other guy very, very big - to the point of almost soloing. If you thread the needle just right, he gets shut down at 17 or so. If you don't, you lose, but you were probably going to lose anyways!

condude1 wrote:For the record, it's sometimes the best play to partially throw a game! If you're a small power, I find the best way of scoring is to make one other guy very, very big - to the point of almost soloing. If you thread the needle just right, he gets shut down at 17 or so. If you don't, you lose, but you were probably going to lose anyways!

True, though mixing that with a surrender is a particularly bold strategy.

Massive stupidity? Mental disorder? Cheating?

I happens too often (I play many gunboat games and have seen it too many times).

I would also say that this type of behaviour can sometimes be for vengeance.....I know some players who react like this if a player stabs them for example. It is almost like they see it as 'teaching the other guy a lesson'. Diplomacy can get emotional

I am in two games where one of my neighbors started attacking me in 1901 (despite only offers of friendship form me) and sent me almost zero press. I continued to offer friendship for several years, preventing the player from making any headway. Meanwhile, he permitted himself to be chewed up from his other frontier, only making a nominal effort to fight back. In both cases, the player continued like this through elimination, putting his aggressor in a very strong position. When the games conclude, I'll be cross-checking the players' histories. However, the play does not qualify as a enough to ask for an investigation.

Is it suspicious. Yes. However, insane play does happen online and sometimes you get players who are simply...... whatever. If there are common players between the games (besides me), I'll send a PM to a mod.

blazebbc wrote:I am in two games where one of my neighbors started attacking me in 1901 (despite only offers of friendship form me) and sent me almost zero press. I continued to offer friendship for several years, preventing the player from making any headway. Meanwhile, he permitted himself to be chewed up from his other frontier, only making a nominal effort to fight back. In both cases, the player continued like this through elimination, putting his aggressor in a very strong position. When the games conclude, I'll be cross-checking the players' histories. However, the play does not qualify as a enough to ask for an investigation.

Is it suspicious. Yes. However, insane play does happen online and sometimes you get players who are simply...... whatever. If there are common players between the games (besides me), I'll send a PM to a mod.

To be fair, crazy things like that happen in FtF too.