I have a philosophical question I want to throw out there. Why do players join an individual player game (with multiple players i.e., 5+), only to then immediately team up with one or more players to easily dominate the game?

When I want to team up - I join team games. When I want to play alone and use my own strategy, I play individual games.

This teaming up on individual games thing is wearing on me and in my opinion, ruins the game for individuals trying to win on their own strategy. I love multiplayer games (particularly on boards like Civil War or Civl War 1860), but it just becomes nearly impossible for any individual to win against teams and then forces the individual like myself to try and make their own team. Then we are back at a true team game - which is not what I wanted to play to begin with. Its a viscous cycle! It just makes this whole thing less fun for some of us - and yes, I understand others get a thrill out of secretly teaming up and dominating and that's why they play. Now I sound like a whiner!

Maybe I'm just a dreamer, but wouldn't it be nice to wave a magic wand and somehow create true individual games where no one teams up or sets up truces? (Yes, I know it's just a dream and would likely never work, because people are people).

Why? Because it makes sense, ESPECIALLY in many-player games. When you are gifted four territories all spacially separated and get targeted on the first turn by multiple players, you often don't have an alternative :-)

Plus, the difference between a team game and a game with alliances, is that you know at some point in the many-player game, you or your ally will utter Wash's immortal phrase... "Curse your sudden yet inevitable betrayal!"

I have initiated (moreso in the past than now) such alliances, and they actually make you think (and worry) more --- because you have to figure out how to build the terms of the treaty so that you can end it successfully (in your favour) or burn your rep by betraying your ally.

The only difference between how alliances are done on Wargear and in real life board gaming (risk style) is that in real life, you can't build treaties in the shadows. The way it happens here is more akin to what happens in Diplomacy (the game) and in diplomacy (the *real* real-life actions to build alliances to fight off a foe).

That all being said ... sure, it would be nice to have 'true' individual games, or come as close to them as possible.

A couple of ways that could be done, off the top of my head (and requiring tweaking in the back end) would be:

• Turning off the in-game chat completely, or at least the private chat option. This would force conspirators to manage their alliance outside of the game (i.e. in their personal chats), which would deter at least some people :-)
• Turning off the in-game chat completely AND anonymizing player names (hide all identifying information - simply have players identified as Player 1, Player 2, etc. No rankings. No country. No *anything*. During the game, there would be no way to tell who is who. The only way people could team up (and I'm sure some still will) would be if they decide to join the game together and tell each other which players they are. So... still not perfect, but I think this might be the closest we could get to a true multi-individual game.

Do you play with fog? Even with light fog, alliances start to require higher levels of trust. Med and Heavy Fog start to bring teamwork into paranoia range, and of course making an alliance in Total fog is for the insane and cheaters. Not only that, but fog makes the game much more fun. Other than on dueling boards, many of the best players on this site don't play unless the game is fogged.

Thanks, agwyvern - that makes sense. It's just a different type of game then. I'm not a big truce or alliance guy, but I can totally see your perspective.

M57 wrote:Do you play with fog? Even with light fog, alliances start to require higher levels of trust. Med and Heavy Fog start to bring teamwork into paranoia range, and of course making an alliance in Total fog is for the insane and cheaters. Not only that, but fog makes the game much more fun. Other than on dueling boards, many of the best players on this site don't play unless the game is fogged.

That's interesting. I do play fog at times, but again I tend to stay clear of alliances. This is probably why my Ranking Score is not higher. I guess I have to learn to play the alliance game - but I still prefer my individuality! :)

A game setting that allowed the creator to turn off private comms messages for that particular game would maybe be a good solution for players like Big Skin.

Kjeld wrote:A game setting that allowed the creator to turn off private comms messages for that particular game would maybe be a good solution for players like Big Skin.

IDK, People would just start using the global PM system. After all, teaming up is apparently not cheating.

M57 wrote:Kjeld wrote:A game setting that allowed the creator to turn off private comms messages for that particular game would maybe be a good solution for players like Big Skin.

IDK, People would just start using the global PM system. After all, teaming up is apparently not cheating.

As I noted, yeah, if people want to team up, they're going to.

Such a setting would put a small block in the way of casual teaming, but wouldn't interrupt dedicated teamers :-)

The furthest you could get, I think, would be my second alternative (anonymized players), which would require people opting to team up *before* they join the game, for the most part.

In general I agree with you Big Skin. I am not here on Wargear to engage in "negotiations" - I do/did that enough in my real life. I have agreed to a few treaties/truces over the years, but doing so generally ruined the enjoyment of that game for me for one reason or another. And when I see in a game that other players have teamed up behind the scenes it just bums me out 'cause I don't want to play like that.

Lot's of players do enjoy playing that way though and I do not think anything can/will be done to limit that type of play. So, I avoid boards whose design encourages that sort of play. It's kind of a bummer because I do like to play those boards (like you said), but there are enough other ones to keep me busy.

I'd play some of those magic games where teaming up just don't happen.

As it is I'm in M57's category, I generally avoid non-fogged multiplayer games. I do play one occasionally and tend to wish I hadn't. I'm in a 16-man antastic! now with no fog, and haven't approached nor been approached by any of the others, but of course someone have been talking (the "post" symbol has been visible which shows a PM has been sent, but of course I can't tell from who to whom) so I don't expect to win that one.

I have tried negotiation games but it's definitely not my preference. On the rare occasion I do I tend only to talk with one. Bigger alliances than that I've only had in proper team games, and one early game where the one person I talked to informed me he's included a 3rd and I went along with that.

Hey Litotes... a couple of quick questions ...

• What's the 'post' symbol?
• alliances within proper team games --- do you mean two teams forging an alliance against the rest? Just curious :-)

agwyvern wrote:Hey Litotes... a couple of quick questions ...

• What's the 'post' symbol?
• alliances within proper team games --- do you mean two teams forging an alliance against the rest? Just curious :-)

Press "My Games". Between Board Name and Options there is a small column with a letter symbol on top. If there are letter symbols in any of your game rows that means someone sent a message. If you can't see it then it means it was private and not to you. 

I meant just one team against the other. I've played 8v8 at most. I've also played 2v2v2v2, 2v2v2v2v2 and 2v2v2v2v2v2v2v2 and in those sort of games I do not seek alliances but only to work with my teammate.

I haven't played that many team games, but if my stats are any indication, teams usually don't team up with other teams.

..or they're really bad at it when they do.

I don't think the letter/post symbol comes up from PMs. Maybe global messages that were immediately deleted?

Turning off the in-game chat would not particularly affect things. In times past people often posted directly on the profile page to coordinate actions.

Another anonymizing option that I saw on a different risk implementation a long time ago was to fog territory ownership. You could see all the unit counts but not the territory ownership (even when you made an attack) except your own. Of course with history you could start making educated guesses based on the order that attacks were made.

Korrun wrote:

..fog territory ownership. You could see all the unit counts but not the territory ownership (even when you made an attack) except your own.

That would ruin the game for most boards I can think of. Anomitizing who they are is better, but even that would ruin it for me. I often consider the known strength of the player when making strategic decisions.

Korrun wrote:

Another anonymizing option that I saw on a different risk implementation a long time ago was to fog territory ownership. You could see all the unit counts but not the territory ownership (even when you made an attack) except your own. Of course with history you could start making educated guesses based on the order that attacks were made.

Long ago I made a post arguing that there should really be two fog settings -- one for unit count, and one for territory ownership. For each type of information, there are four levels of visibility: complete, bordering, on attack, and none. This implies that there should really be 16 total levels of fog, to be complete, rather than the 5 we currently have.

Korrun wrote:I don't think the letter/post symbol comes up from PMs. Maybe global messages that were immediately deleted?

Turning off the in-game chat would not particularly affect things. In times past people often posted directly on the profile page to coordinate actions.

Another anonymizing option that I saw on a different risk implementation a long time ago was to fog territory ownership. You could see all the unit counts but not the territory ownership (even when you made an attack) except your own. Of course with history you could start making educated guesses based on the order that attacks were made.

It's not global messages, no. They will be registered on your ticker even if they were deleted one second after they were created. There has been no ticker activity from my 16-man, apart from informing me about eliminations and when it is my turn. And yet the post symbol has been visible.

Fogging territory ownership would be interesting, I'd try it, but I doubt I'd prefer it. Makes it hard to plan eliminations.