I have a couple of general questions about truces. I don’t typically do truces and as a result I tend to lose most of my larger games. So I’m not really savvy about these things.

I’m currently in an Antastic game and a player offered a truce, saying “I’ll respect your bonus if you’ll respect mine, until the two of us are left”.

I agreed and used some creative strategy to pigeon hole him into a corner. If honoring the truce, his only option was to attack the only other player left who had a big defense built up — otherwise he could not take a territory and earn a card. (We are well into the game and cards are important). I was pretty proud at how I strategized the game to get him to that point. Instead he proceeded to attack me which resulted in me reducing my territory bonus. I called him out as breaking the truce and he claimed territory bonuses don’t count. Granted, things would have been made clearer if he said “I’ll respect your continent bonus...” but he didn’t.. He just said “bonus”. A bonus is a bonus in my book - and it doesn’t matter if it is a continent or territory bonus. I take this at face value - he simply reduced my bonus, so he broke the truce. Am I wrong? I didn’t want to Telegraph this issue or I may not have been able to pigeonhole him,

Secondly, even after having him break our truce as described above and thus taking a huge advantage in the games as a result, I was still able to pigeon hole him again. Again, I was pretty proud at how I did this. This time he can not attack me without breaking my continent bonus. He has absolutely no moves and cannot earn a card. I however, to my advantage have the third player surrounded and extremely weak - and because of that I can attack him one territory at a time and earn cards. Eventually I should be able to build up enough armies to be able to take out both players. The player I have the truce with now is calling for an end to our truce in two turns, even though our truce was clearly set to expire when only two of us were left. Again I called him out and explained that he can’t just unilaterally change the rules of our truce. Our truce clearly stated it should end when only the two of us are left. He said it is a “common rule” on this site that any truce can end with two turns notice. I have played more than 2,000 games with three or more players on this site and have never heard of such a common rule. Have I been missing something?

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/658019

I haven't done many truces myself but I can confirm than often when people ask me they specify two rounds notice. Even if the idea is until only two are left. So it's likely as common as he says. I don't think you're bound by common practice, though. Anything should be specified properly.

I see from your game your opponent will win easily if he breaks the truce since he's got a lot more units then they two others combined. Your only chance is him sitting still while you pick up those 14 extra cards (you'd likely only need ten or so). It's an interesting situation for him. Break the truce, win trivially, or keep it and his only chance is the 3rd man getting booted before you've picked up many extra cards. 

I have to admit, I always find this topic somewhat amusing ..mostly because the only truces I am willing to participate in are of the obvious and necessary persuasion.  For me, truces are meant to be broken because nothing less than world domination counts. We are all Hannibals, Alexander the Greats, Ghengis Khans, Hitlers and Darth Vaders ..in it to win it.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), I'm not conniving enough to enter into truces and make the most of them.  The best I will do is in to remind a player or players (and I almost never do) when someone else is almost certain to win, that if we don't work together, we will surely lose.  These are inevitably truces that are implied and I wouldn't even bother to point them out to better players.

Also, there's just too much ethical grey area in trucing, fraught with slippery slopes. Is it OK for two players to hammer out an agreement before turn one?  If so, is it OK if they tend to do this whenever they happen to be in the same game? I wonder if there are players somewhere on that spectrum, and if the former is ethical and the latter is not, that sure would be hard to prove.

Yes, it's possible that I lose a non-proportional number of games to players who truce. Similar to fighting in hockey, it's part of the game, and we all have to be willing to deal with it if we want to play with the big boys. Honestly, I don't let it bother me. I figure (actually, I hope) there's good amount of backstabbing going on.

Interestingly, I can scarce remember ever being asked to enter into a truce with any I consider to be among the very best players on this site. Of course, that could be because they know that I don't, but I'd like to believe otherwise.

That's an interesting observation, M57. I can't remember truces with the highest ranked players either. 

I can add as a former chess player that it used to be considered cheating to prearrange a draw - in other words agree to a draw before play started - but perfectly legal to propose and accept a draw after move one. I'm inclined to think the same thing here, that you should not have a truce before the game begins but can enter one after you've seen the board. Of course, in chess there was no way of knowing if the draw was prearranged or not so noone ever got punished for such an offense. 

I agree with you both. Truces have rarely ended up good for me and thus I try to avoid them. My problem is I take them for exactly what was stated, and the other parties tend to create their own version. I’ve lost more than my share of games simply because I dont truce. However, I do enjoy playing against good players who understand strategy well, which may include an unsaid alliance. In those cases ia clear risk is taken on by both - and I love the suspense of who is going to be in the better position to attack first - and I never feel bad or ‘dirty’ about it. Truces almost always make me feel dirty.

This idea that there is a “common rule” that anyone can break a truce with two turn notice, even if the truce was based on another clearly stated ending policy just seems like something he made up. I just wanted to check with the forum to see if there is indeed a common rule to be able to make up and unilaterally revise new endings to stated truces. Seems fishy.

I also don't truce. I tried a couple back in the day and was either too clumsy or had them broken and decided it just wasn't an element I wanted in my games.

When offered one I usually respond with some version of "I don't do formal truces, but will agree its probably best we don't attack each other for awhile. That will change eventually." and then just play. Sometimes I send that to another player first if I feel like it. 

It's one reason I don't play the big world maps much as those tend to attract the trucers. And that's one reason this site is fun - plenty of sandboxes for us all to play in. 

Yeah, Amidon put it nicely. I too try to avoid big games unless we have total or at least heavy fog, apart from on smaller boards (in number of territories) like WGWF where big games can be interesting even with no fog. 

But if you like them (and there is certainly nothing wrong with that) it is probably best to be very specific about truces, say too much rather than too little, and also try to remember for future games who keeps his word and who doesn't.

Truces that stipulate it’s to a point where it’s just the two of you left are cheating. Period!

It means you are conspiring to beat a certain player or players. It’s probably a dominant reason why we have lost so many good players from the site.

The only truces I enter into is over a certain shared border, and even then, it’s designated to be a temporary thing, with N turns heads-up if ending the truce.

Amidon37 wrote:

I also don't truce. I tried a couple back in the day and was either too clumsy or had them broken and decided it just wasn't an element I wanted in my games.

When offered one I usually respond with some version of "I don't do formal truces, but will agree its probably best we don't attack each other for awhile. That will change eventually." and then just play. Sometimes I send that to another player first if I feel like it. 

It's one reason I don't play the big world maps much as those tend to attract the trucers. And that's one reason this site is fun - plenty of sandboxes for us all to play in. 

👍

Thanks for all your feedback. I learned a good lesson - and I appreciate your comments. Robert The Great proceeded to violate the terms of the clear truce, and took over the game. Needless to say he’s now my enemy and I encourage you all to watch out for him in future games. He’s a snake.

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/658019

Truces are the worst. I have agreed to a truce proposed by someone else far too many times and regretted it. Just recently, I was accused (publicly) of breaking an "implied" truce. Apparently, when you discuss about a truce about one thing, some players also assume that a bigger truce is "understood".  (In quotes are the words used by the player who accused me of "backstabbing").

 

Truces with ambiguous wordings are an even bigger problem. And the OP's case is clearly one of ambiguous wording. I do get your point, Big Skin. A territory bonus is also a bonus, and one could quite easily interpret the word bonus as you did. However, by my little experience with truces, I believe that most users on this site consider the term "bonus" to mean only continent bonus. So, I can't say that I am surprised that someone who proposes a truce to "respect bonuses" is referring to only continent bonuses.

I concur with Pratik and others on here. In regards to what’s considered a ‘bonus’, almost everyone considers the continent bonuses.

I agree wholeheartedly Pratik. I may be convinced to give him a pass for breaking the territory bonus truce, and frankly I still overcame that issue in the game. But there is no way to deny that he unilaterally changed the ending of the truce. A player can’t agree to ending the truce when there are just two players left, and then a few turns later when he realizes he is cornered and he made a mistake, change it to say it’s ending in two rounds. That’s just really a crappy thing to do.

Again I learned my lesson, and will certainly not be playing any more games with Robert the Great! I need to find better sandboxes to play in!

Thingol wrote: I concur with Pratik and others on here. In regards to what’s considered a ‘bonus’, almost everyone considers the continent bonuses.

I guess I’m too literal of a guy. That’s the scientist in me!

I'm of the opinion that if someone breaks a truce because it enables them to have a clear victory, then that is the appropriate action. Now if they break a truce and cause both of you to lose...

Korrun wrote:

I'm of the opinion that if someone breaks a truce because it enables them to have a clear victory, then that is the appropriate action. Now if they break a truce and cause both of you to lose...

What is the purpose of setting a truce if you create your own rules to break it?  Unless of course, those rules to break the truce are set at the onset.   Seems pretty deceptive and shifty.

When you have such an agreement in place, one party may make strategic decisions based on the parameters of the truce, based on the trust that the agreement won't be broken.  You may weaken your position in one place to strengthen another based on the explicit promise not to attack.  For the other player in the truce to take advantage of that is clearly unethical, backstabbing, and negates all principals of what a truce is. 

This type of deceptive play is exactly why I will not be accepting truces moving forward, and attempting to play with players who are proven to be more honest. 

I engage in truces in less than 5% of my games, and only when the terms are pretty clear and I feel it's the only way to avoid certain defeat.

This is my standard agreement: Let's not attack each other across border x/y, 1 turn notice to break truce, but player being notified gets to make first attack. All other attacks are fair game. If we're last two players on the board, whoever eliminates #3 gets to break the truce immediately.

I know some players don't do truces at all, and some would not agree to holding onto a truce till there's only two players left, but that's what works for me. It's rare that someone doesn't respect the terms I stated above, but then, I hardly ever play no fog or light fog multiplayer games, because those are exactly the games that lead to truce-making and back-stabbing. If someone violates the terms we agreed upon, I add them to my black-list and don't reach out to them again.

Games with medium or higher fog discourage truces because there's just not enough info to necessarily know who's winning the game, so you have to rely more on strategy and careful study of the history that you are able to view.

If you play games that have no fog or light fog you are almost always going to find truce-making and back-stabbing from your opponents, so playing those types of games and not engaging in truces will automatically put you at a disadvantage. But I just avoid those fog levels because I prefer to leave truces as a last resort, not a standard practice.

I rarely get into truces as well, but on the rare occasions i've underwent them, i actually got the better end of the stick. I actually just had a truce with Robert on a World War game, and after i eliminated the second to last player there, instantly broke it with him. never had issues with that as well.

Never had any situation where the other truce player does it in order to gain an advantage over me, because in some of the instances, i had a pretty significant ground advantage to such player.  Around 60% of my truces came from Medium Fog games, usually between well-defended players over a tight border.

I agree, when I engage in a truce, I don't look at how to undermine the player I truced with, but rather how to survive first of all, and if that works, to eliminate the rest of the opponents before the other player does so

Chele Nica wrote:

I agree, when I engage in a truce, I don't look at how to undermine the player I truced with, but rather how to survive first of all, and if that works, to eliminate the rest of the opponents before the other player does so

Yeah, I think most of us think that way. I think trying to undermine a truce that was just entered into is a mindset that is quite insidious (prevalent in the GOP since WW2 btw, but sorry, that's a political tangent).