hi,

we just had a live game and a big discussion if its allowed to help someone else win or not.
i'm interested in your opinions to this.

my opinion: the Nr 1 rule in this game is:
only 1 can win.
you should do evrything that you are the one. (breaking your word is not nice but you are allowed)
you should do evrything that no one other is the one!

that means, if your ally is about to win, you should stop working together with him. for me evry alliance is over if someone needs only 1 more city to win, or its clear that he will win, if you dont stop him.
in my opinion its not fair to let your ally win, just because you have an alliance. if he is about to win, you should cancel the alliance. letting someone else win, allthough you could prevent this, is the most unfair thing you can do in this game (my opinion)

theres only 1 exception, when you can let someone win: if its CLEAR that THIS round 1 player will win, and you can decide if its your ally or your enemy, you can help your ally win.

whats your opinion to this?

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"Loras is a living legend. Half the girls in the Seven Kingdoms want to bed him" - Tyrion

the other 50% wants to do it again - Loras, Knight of the Flowers, High Marshal of the Reach

concrete example:

https://game.thronemaster.net/?review=1&game=2282

in round 7 tyrell has 5 cities, but a great advantage in the north and possibility to take MC, WH and FF. its sure that he takes city nr.6 and very probably that he can take city nr.7
i (lannister) asked bara to work together to take reach from tyrell to prevent him from winning. but he refused because they were allys.
its a hard decision if this was fair, because its not 100% clear that tyrell can win this round.

in round 8 it was clear that tyrell can win. he could take LP, MC or FF.
stark decided to let lannister (who was his ally)  win before tyrell wins. because it was clear that 1 player can win this round it was fair what he did.
again its a hard decision because, lannister couldnt win, if stark wouldn't let him.

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"Loras is a living legend. Half the girls in the Seven Kingdoms want to bed him" - Tyrion

the other 50% wants to do it again - Loras, Knight of the Flowers, High Marshal of the Reach

nearly the same. nevertheless there won't be any additional rules, here.
but if players work constantly together to win their games, I would like to be informed to take "counter measures"...

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- What do we say to New Features? Not Today.

I still think Jim's chain of argumentaion is very interesting.

To him it is not okay that I, yes, it was me, do not attack my ally. But it is absolutly fine that his ally surrenders his units in Moat Cailin to a wildlings attack so that he can march there to win.

It was my first live game on this site ever. It was even the first game I finished because all other games are PBEM.

I never complaint about any move. He started whining while the game was still running, complaning it would be totaly unfair and so on.

After some unsuccessful moves, I myself was responsible for there bad outcome for myself, I found myself in a position where winning the game was in my opinion not remotely possible.

So why should I dishonor an alliance n0body honored with every of his moves. If I can't win helping my ally to win is - in my opinion - a valid strategy and also the second best choice following winning yourself.

I do not know n0body personally, like any other player in that particular game. So relex everybody there is no one constantly working together.

Up to some days I played GoT only on the board, never did anyone with whom I played complain like this. I personally think the complaint is quite ridiculous. GoT is a game of intrigue, envy, strategy, politics and it is even insidious.

i didnt open this tread to complain. sorry, if i sound so.

i wanted to tell my opinion, that it is not fair to let someone win - only exception that this round someone else will surely win.

your opinion is, that if you cant win, its valid to help your ally win.

but my opinion is, that if you cant win, you should still try to do the best you can for you, and preventing others from winning, even if they were your allys. for me thats important, because you need to count on the other players, that they will not let someone else win.

another reason is, that its hard to tell, when you have no chance for winning anymore and its valid to help your ally. i know games where someone looks like a looser and than (nearly) wins.
https://game.thronemaster.net/?review=1&game=2116
round 7; martell 1 city, tyrell 5 cities.   round 9: martell 4 cities (no one has 5) . bara won the game, but martell was very close.
so its important that evry one fights till the end, and dont says: i have no chance, i let my ally win.


i choosed the example from our game above to show, that in a concrete situation it is very hard to tell, and can be very controversial and hard to decide whats fair and whats not fair.

i would like to hear the opinions of other games - not particularly about the concrete example, but in general:
is it ok to let someone win? in which case?

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"Loras is a living legend. Half the girls in the Seven Kingdoms want to bed him" - Tyrion

the other 50% wants to do it again - Loras, Knight of the Flowers, High Marshal of the Reach

Jim, in your second example, Martell was very far from winning. He easily gets to 4 cities anytime, but the 5th one is a major challenge, and in that game he was nowhere close. I have a better example: once I got down to 1 stronghold, 1 footman and 2 ships as Lannister in the third turn, with an enemy force stronger than mine attacking my last stronghold. And I recovered from there and won the game. True story (unfortunately it was on a board so I cannot link any evidence). So, yes, I agree with the principle, everybody should play as if he was going to win, even if it does not look so at the moment.

That, however, does not mean people should not cooperate. It is hard to make a rule against that. Perhaps this one, which we use with my friends on board: you do not help an ally if he has only 1 city to take. You do not support him (in fact you support against him), you do not allow him to march freely into cities, you do not left cities bordering his troops undefended, etc. Once somebody needs only 1 city, he becomes everybody's enemy. This is not a perfect rule, because at that point it is often too late to stop him, but is definitely clearer than "he will win in this round", so easier to police. And it does not prevent people from stopping supporting their ally anyway if he gets too strong, regardless of how many more castles he needs.

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You probably mean round, not turn. There's a difference.

All in  all I agree with Jim. If 2 players ally vs 1 this 1 has no chance at all if his skill is not by far exceeding their or he has much luck or at least an ally himself. So if the alliance continues until one of them has won this can be very unfair above all if the ally is the only one remotely close apart from the beaten player so noone apart from the ally can hinder the victory.

If you team up with another good player and you play it through til one of your team wins you play against the principles of the game and destroy its unstable balance thereby increasing your chance to win.

This can be seen in many games where some players just think 2nd place is also good and destroy the game for all the others because the game only works if everyone is trying to win.

Of course breaking an alliance is not the same for everyone and certainly there are players who dont want to do this. There cant be a rule about that but everyone should keep in mind that there is no second place.
At the end everone has to decide on his one but he should keep this in mind.

On this topic I don´t think you can say: That is the right that is the wrong way. Start reading the game folks. This hole game is on a minimum based on luck. So all you do as a player and everything that goes wrong is first of all your own fault.
If I got into the position Barungar described(and it happened often to me ) I think my chances through, most of the time I decide if I can´t win anymore to cause as much damage around me as I can BUT without letting anyone win easily for that I have to consider and think things through I often enough make mistakes on that too but at least I try.
I am with Jim, I think it is unfair if someone gets his victory served on a silver-plate, because another player considers him as ally, it would mean that not the best player wins but the best liked. I think someone deserved his victory if he takes risks and makes own decisions and dosn´t hide behind someone else.

If it comes to the point in which I can decided which player will win this round, I think it is a poor thing if one or another of the two how can win try to blame me for the victory of another(happens more often then one would think), because over a hole game there are 6 players on the table who make decisions which lead one of them to victory not one.
So if I have to decide I´ll chose the one who made own decisions and did not stand still and hope for luck.

I think everybody agrees that too close cooperation is unfair, it advantages players with a lot of friends compared to noobs. No argument there. The question is, can you think of any *rule* against it? Of course people should not support allies until they unfairly win the case, but what if they do, when did they violate any rule? Jim suggested one above, I had a different one. Any thoughts on that?

BTW, somewhat connected: I have a vague recollection that the rules say that all agreements must be public. You can agree on whatever, but everybody around the table should know what kind of arrangement you made. Contrary to this, a lot of time is spent by players on this site to discuss agreements in secret. Don't you think this is against the rules? Or maybe I remember the rulebook incorrectly - maybe this is just a rule we invented with my friends But we play it this way for sure, and I think it is much fairer. So my suggestion would be: no secret agreements.

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You probably mean round, not turn. There's a difference.

We all have different opinions and that's how it is, but this is how I play and I really believe this is the best and the most fair way to play this game:
1. Try to win - secret alliances and NAPs with other players are justifiable.
2. If I can't win, try to be as close to victory as possible - I love seeing myself on the top 30 players page
3. Prevent anybody else from winning by any means necessary - if it means I can't influence the situation directly, I often go as far as contacting 2-3 other players who CAN do something about it, warn them and offer them my advice. Sometimes people even get angry because they get the impression I think they're stupid - I honestly don't, but I don't care, better safe than sorry. Most of us play more games simultaneously so it's not always easy to notice all the dangers.
4. If 2-3 players have a chance to win in the current turn, I will either:
a)try to prevent the guy who's winning probability is directly correlated with the amount of cities he took from me
b)I will help the guy who I either had a NAP with or an alliance simply because he helped me get a city or keep the existing one.

In my opinion, if it matters anyway, the game depicts reality in a certain way. Without going into too many details about that, let's all agree that everything is fair and allowed in war and love, however I'm not sure about the 2nd one

That's why I also think, while secret arrangements should be allowed without question as that's what makes this game extra spicey, people who play together all the time in every game and purposely help each other win games ALL the time, should somehow be detected and penalized.

I haven't given this much thought and I don't know how complicated it would be to implement something like this, but maybe if there could be some report feature where players would be able to report other people's alliances.

For example, I often tried negotiating secret deals and found out that the guy I contacted already made a deal with the guy I want to somehow screw up . So, if I could be able to report it with proof (screenshot or gamed ID + time or something like that) and if 5-6 other people report those same 2 people in other games, in my opinion it would be sufficient evidence that the 2 people in question are purposely joining all games together in order to help each other win.

Because, let's be realistic, each game can only hold up to 6 players max and there are much more people who actively join and play them, which makes it nearly impossible to detect the conspirators at the moment.

tl;dr I agree with Jim Banji, it's really not cool to intentionally help somebody else win if that person can't win otherwise. If I'm allied with a person who is 1 city away from victory, I will backstab him/her without question.

It's a game of thrones guys - you either win or you die

Hm I think I am against a rule or something like that, which forbids you to conspire(even if this helps someone win who did not deserve it). It would be a to constrictive rule.

I like rovads idea better, but you would need to bind the number of reports to the number of the over all games a player played.
The Fast Gamers for example is a smaller round of players, so if I play those games I´ll have nearly the same people around me, which means that you play in alliances with one player more often statistically.Or am I wrong?

I´d also say we need some way to decide if the both reported players, were reported for a reason other than anger of a third person who might have lost the game because of them. We don´t want anyone to abuse this possibility to get rid of people he might not like.

Last edited by Nyxe on 2013-Jan-15 19:25, edited 2x in total

@Nyxe Well, no system's perfect, right? Whenever you make rules, restrictions and control measures there will be collateral damage and also those who find workaround solutions, it's always been like that and will be to the end of day - life's a b***tch

It's obvious that if 2 players registered on or around the same date, have identical number of games running & finished and all of those they play together and help each other in an attempt to win that they conspire to purposely ruin games just to win. It's an easily recognizable pattern. Then there's the other end of spectrum with players who play 100% "fair" (whatever that means actually).

Of course, there's middle ground too - players who would be masking their behavior if something like this gets implemented.

I think as a base idea is good, but I guess something better than this can be thought out as well.

I would go as far and say that I am suspicious about a few of my currently running games too, but I won't be calling names publicly because I have no proof - however, it sux when you notice that, for example, Stark and Greyjoy are helping each other to screw Lannister and Baratheon - Lannister is already in deep trouble with Greyjoy alone, and it's also not easy for Baratheon when Stark only focuses on him and doesn't need to worry about Greyjoy.

Also, on the Internet it's very easy to be multiple personalities/multi accounts - a bit of precautionary measures and not even google or youtube can catch you. And as the number of members grows, this threat is getting more serious so I think at some point things like these will need to be addressed systematically rather than sporadically.

Anyway, enough ranting for today, time to make some moves in those games

there are different types of rules.

the normal game rules which are impossible to break.

and the fairplay-rules, which evryone can break.

1.fairplayrule: Don't lie

it is allowed to break this rule, and its a part of the game, but if you do it often, others will not trust you. so there is a natural punishment for it, and most players try to play honest, so others will trust them.

you should expect that others will break their word if its a big opportunity

2. fairplayrule: don't let others win

this rule is more important. breaking it is not only unfair but allthough destroys the game.
but there is no punishment for this.

it would be nice if you can always rely, that others will not let others win.
evryone should always keep this rule.
especially when there are some players who let each other win, that should be somehow punished.

i dont have any suspicions that some players are doing it, or have double accounts. but if someone has suspicions he should tell it. its easy to look up the games of this players and see if it happens often.

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"Loras is a living legend. Half the girls in the Seven Kingdoms want to bed him" - Tyrion

the other 50% wants to do it again - Loras, Knight of the Flowers, High Marshal of the Reach

It is a game where strategy and politics are both very important ingredients of a win. If I'm figthing with one particular house and the commanding player pisses me off badly, I might be inclined to help his enemy and not letting him win. Part of the game

It's like Doran in the book. Lannisters killed his sister and her children. He will want to see them scream whatever happens. And die trying to get them down. Legit move on the board as well in my opinion

Last edited by mrzygi on 2013-Feb-04 15:16, edited 1x in total

Well, the decision between being honest and playing fair is not easy, but imo u dont have to make the decision. Just say: Yes, we can ally up, but i will attack you, when u are going to win. And when u tell your buddy that you may attack him, if needed, just before the round starts, u didnt break ur word. Hes has some (small time) to get ready being attacked and u played fair since you prevented an early victory.

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"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life." , Terry Pratchett

If you are interested in one of the worst examples of kingmaking, look at this game:
3164
In round 7 a beginner GJ had only one castle and give the victory to Baratheon, but if he wouldn't help him nobody would have an instant victory at all. So it wasn't a choice between multiply possible winners. The Greyjoy player said: "I have no chance to win but in this way I feel useful and be in the winner camp". Even Baratheon didn't understand what is our problem with that decision. I guess he asked for this help because if he lose that battle he will lose his biggest army.
My question is: isn't it against the moral of the game to talk over a noob player to behave in such a disrespectful way?