Toto wrote:

BTdubs wrote:

Back-stabbing is not cheating. 

Cheating is doing things outside the rules.  It should be punished by an admin.

Back-stabbing is doing something outside an agreement.  It should be punished by players who hate that kind of thing, and by players who got screwed.

Avoiding back-stabbing is easy: don't make alliances.  Otherwise it's just the price you pay for the advantage an alliance gives you.  Keep in mind that plenty of players think that having an alliance at all is already cheating.  (It's not, for basically the same reasons.)

I appreciate that you try to play like a gentleman, Toto.  Can I recommend that you read stuff by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes?  It may help shed some light on why life on WarGear is "nasty, brutish, and short."

Thanks for your reading recommandation. If I find some time...

You are right about what you said. I was not clear when saying "What General Patton did was back-stabbing, and even cheating". I should have said that it was not back-stabbing, it was cheating. Indeed, I discovered recently that these 2 players are 1 player using a double account.

IMO that is especially low...to use one false account to make a fake alliance with a player to gain even more advantage...then back stab them so their main account can take the win.

Hmmm...wasn't it Hobbes (referring to BTdubs quote now) who basically made the case the human nature is inherently evil?

Thingol wrote:

Hmmm...wasn't it Hobbes (referring to BTdubs quote now) who basically made the case the human nature is inherently evil?

I would make the argument that human nature is inherently of the self-preservation mindset...which may be interpreted as evil by others.

Good point.

AttilaTheHun wrote:

Thingol wrote:

Hmmm...wasn't it Hobbes (referring to BTdubs quote now) who basically made the case the human nature is inherently evil?

I would make the argument that human nature is inherently of the self-preservation mindset...which may be interpreted as evil by others.

In order to continue the hijacking of this thread...I would contend that human nature should be inherently set on the self-preservation mindset if purely naturistic, but would propose that in human nature many times the species is defined by the weakest individuals rather than the strongest, it's not necessarily true that "only the strong survive" when talking about humans.  It's fun to debate both sides, and depending on the circumstances I would :P

Would be a good OT thread!  Should have the Monkey Doc (RiskyBack) in it too.

/unhijack

Yertle wrote:...I would contend that human nature should be inherently set on the self-preservation mindset if purely naturistic...

<hijack>
Yertle -I think you mean nautralistic, not naturistic.
Naturistic is generally synonymous with nudist, which is different than naturalistic which means imitating or being derived from nature.

Or maybe you were talking about naked people....
</unhijack>

BorisTheFrugal wrote:

Or maybe you were talking about naked people....

usually yes, but not in this instance i don't think. :^)

Does any other species wear clothes??? I think both words fit

Yertle wrote:

Does any other species wear clothes??? I think both words fit

I've seen a lot of dogs running around in clothes.  And at the zoo sometimes I will see a gorilla wearing a hawaiian shirt.

And at the zoo sometimes I will see a gorilla wearing a hawaiian shirt.

I've seen one of those on TV.

http://www.popcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Tom-Selleck-As-Magnum-PI.jpg

Well, way back before we were talking about gorillas, I meant that Hobbes accurately described human nature when a) it's a zero-sum game and b) there's nobody around to deal out justice and settle disputes peacefully.

He calls this a state of war, and if that doesn't apply around here, I don't know where it does.

"Fear and I are twins." --Thomas Hobbes.

I once wrote a paper entitled 'Locke Hobbes Up'...so you know where I fall on the Locke-Hobbes theories.

BTdubs wrote:

Well, way back before we were talking about gorillas, I meant that Hobbes accurately described human nature when a) it's a zero-sum game and b) there's nobody around to deal out justice and settle disputes peacefully.

He calls this a state of war, and if that doesn't apply around here, I don't know where it does.

"Fear and I are twins." --Thomas Hobbes.

That may be true for limited games like Risk, but it surely isn't true for the human condition. Life most definitely isn't a zero sum game- that's the whole point of trade. I have something you want, you have something I want. We decide what rate of exchange is fair and we both gain.

bdf101 wrote:

That may be true for limited games like Risk, but it surely isn't true for the human condition. Life most definitely isn't a zero sum game- that's the whole point of trade. I have something you want, you have something I want. We decide what rate of exchange is fair and we both gain.

Agreed.  And we invent a government so that I can't just take what I want from you. 

Personally, I'm more of a Locke fan when it comes to actual beliefs. 

But wargear is all about Hobbes--you enforce your own agreements, and there's only one winner per game.

"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."  -Thucydides, ~423 BC.

I like checking profiles, and looking for the message notes from peers about the players... shoulda thought of this thread when I first started, was very appropriate for some. And I hate the whiners about luck, who have better luck stats than you, but complain (and will also get mad if you "woe is me" due to dice or starting position.) yeah, hypocrites are the worst (csecu).

I wrote this in a game "geez, practically gave u Australia and some neutral bodyguards as a bonus! well, wish me luck going 2nd!" cuz he almost had 3/4 of Australia, a neutral bodyguard in Siam and got to go first... here was his reply

"I have totally lost all respect for you. I've played you for years on WF and now here. Who knew you were such a crybaby whining bitch. If you were worth that 2100 rating, you could surely strategize your way into a win. But instead you whine. What a shame."

(and I did win btw, mostly with good dice). But I woe is me often in a joking way... you can ask 5RC anytime I meet him on antfarm in a 1v1, cuz that is almost an automatic loss against his skill!

Then in another 1v1 game he complained "Check the luck chart. You're way out on top. So you lost one 3V1. I've lost a couple of 8V3's already, and even though we were even in in NA and I had you in Russia, now you've taken it all. Nothing bold about the fact your dice are exponentially better than mine."

The luck was 1.50 (-1.93 + 3.43) for him, and -0.76 (-3.43 + 2.68) for me...

so avoid unless you like players who complain, falsely accuse and assume the worst in people with no justification.

Still I'd take him over Wurzel any day. His list would be much, much longer.

Well, some of my favorite players are constant luck-complainers, but I do generally dislike the whining. If you play me and ever hear about luck, I'm not trying to deflect responsibility or diminish your strategy; I'm just commenting. At home I'm slamming my fist through furniture, but I somehow find it weird that people need to communicate such trivialities to the other players :)

More than anything, if I mention my poor luck, I want you to know that I'm not playing as poorly as my armies are. (Because, you might, you know, think I'm a bad player or something.)

Hugh wrote:

...

More than anything, if I mention my poor luck, I want you to know that I'm not playing as poorly as my armies are. ...

It seems to reason that there have been many generals throughout the ages who have thought the same...

AttilaTheHun wrote:

Hugh wrote:

...

More than anything, if I mention my poor luck, I want you to know that I'm not playing as poorly as my armies are. ...

It seems to reason that there have been many generals throughout the ages who have thought the same...

+1

It makes sense. There is a difference between pointing things out compared to the cursing, conspiracy theories and whining. The former evokes sympathy... we've all had incredible runs of bad luck, but most of us remember the good and just make a joke about it. And I relate. But then comes the whining, where it comes regardless of what has happened on the board... they say to look at the luck stats but don't look at the history to see their amazing defensive rolls or to see that they are actually waaaay ahead on the luck stats. That is gutsy to be so blatantly classless.

I like to whine and complain about luck which is why Mongrel and I worked to create the luck stats and graph (tom did all of the pretty work, we just did a little math).

I say that jokingly; I have been happy to have seen a decrease in such complaining and whining about luck since the stats have been made available (this observation could be coincidence).  I have experienced terrible luck and great luck in the 1000 games here (and easily as many in the old world).  Sometimes luck comes at a crucial moment in the game and is the defeat of someone's good strategy and other times it goes mostly unnoticed.  This in my mind is what makes basic risk so much fun.  Perfect strategy can be clouded by the dice; "I played perfectly, but I still lost"  (This makes finding perfect play a difficult task).

I do from a practical standpoint feel the need to point out when my attacks have landed me in the 1 in 10000 range (like losing a 12 v 1 or winning a 20 v 40), but this is not whining or complaining, I intend only to point out that an event worth taking note of has just occurred.