[SPOILERS] Margarita and the Lurkers

[Krill]

Full espionage/tech deals are not as stable as you would believe in certain circumstances: The building of specific multipliers does come with a real cost, as does the inevitable back stab...those players that have run espionage for the majority of a game have a strict advantage come the end of an alliance or a backstab, if the economies are even in size...and often they aren't.

[Catwalk]

I still think you misinterpret our plans and intentions suttree. It was very much an alliance of convenience, and as such it was indeed unstable. Had we gotten to the point where we could actually take you down (and that would require both a stronger economy than we possessed in addition to our hands not being tied by the NAP), then I imagine that negotiating a space race victory would be a likely outcome. That way we could be fairly certain that we'd be able to keep cooperating against a common enemy and transition into pursuing a personal victory. It's better to pursue a 40% chance of us winning and a 60% chance of Bisons winning than a 20% chance of us winning and a 10% chance of Bisons winning (those numbers were picked at random, of course). I don't feel there would be anything unsportsmanlike about that arrangement, we entered it for mutual benefit and personal, not joint, victory.

Conversely, DMOC stated in his thread that he signed the t200 NAP with you in order to play for #2. I feel that this is a very different kind of decision, although I will not question his motives. Ultimately, players do not agree about what constitutes fair play. And whether you play with diplo on or off, that can have big impacts on games and lead to bad blood. I think it's a good idea to have a discussion about that before a game starts to ensure that all players are more or less on the same page. You will find many different takes on that question, and consequently many different kinds of games. Some find it okay if a player who cannot win sabotages whichever player he feels like, even if that means playing kingmaker. Some feel that players who cannot win should make an effort to play for themselves and avoid playing kingmaker. It's a very tricky question.

[B4ndit]

I still think you misinterpret our plans and intentions suttree. It was very much an alliance of convenience, and as such it was indeed unstable. Had we gotten to the point where we could actually take you down (and that would require both a stronger economy than we possessed in addition to our hands not being tied by the NAP), then I imagine that negotiating a space race victory would be a likely outcome. That way we could be fairly certain that we'd be able to keep cooperating against a common enemy and transition into pursuing a personal victory. It's better to pursue a 40% chance of us winning and a 60% chance of Bisons winning than a 20% chance of us winning and a 10% chance of Bisons winning (those numbers were picked at random, of course). I don't feel there would be anything unsportsmanlike about that arrangement, we entered it for mutual benefit and personal, not joint, victory.

I agree in 100%.

[suttree]

I suppose our disagreement comes from my claim that the specific treaty you signed is such that, assuming OxySut fell behind, one of you or Bisons was playing kingmaker for the other. Again, if the odds on such an agreement were so close to 50% it would be the default strategy from the start: 1 in 2 is always better than 1 in 10 in a 10 player FFA.

The dangerous temptation with dogpiles is that players are willing to discount future costs in the face of present gains. Everyone stays loyal because the emotional reward of winning the battle (and the emotional cost of disrupting co-ordination) is just so obvious. Imbalances can be resolved when the war is won!

And that's my read on the negotiations between Bisons/B4ndit. Complete subsidy of the Carebears economy. Even split of all remaining gold. Complete specialization of economies. Complete military alliance. Easy as pie, no messy negotiations about how the thing's going to play out or unwind, allegedly by completely self-interested parties.

Bisons was willing to give up after he was attacked because he believed it was him or OxySut. And it seems you believe he only had a chance if you completely funded his economy. In return he 'let' you run an espionage economy and give him gold.

[Catwalk]

I agree with your concerns about that particular treaty. It started with an attempt at obtaining a mutual benefit through shared research, and extended with a few more provisions supporting that plan. I will admit that I personally can still not figure out who that treaty benefits.

As for the basic alliance plan, I still maintain that it makes sense for #2 and #3 to join together against #1 (assuming we were indeed #2 and #3, I can't say for sure). As you mention in your own thread, you were runaways long ago. What's worse, we had a game-long NAP with you. If we played on our own for the duration of the game, our chances of victory were 0%. We grasped at any straw we could find to elevate us above that 0%, and an alliance with Bisons was a very good option for that. I agree there should also be post-suttree discussions, but given how low our chances were in the first place it wasn't a very pressing matter.

DMOC attacked Bisons because DMOC had given up on the game and played for #2. This also reduced both Bisons' and my own chance of victory to 0%. I made heavy diplomatic efforts to change DMOC's mind, but it seems they were in vain. He had already made up his mind, and unknownst to us he had signed a long NAP with you as well.

Personally, I find that the one redeeming aspect of diplo games is the potential to form dogpiles against a runaway leader. I'm glad that a serious attempt was made here.