Declaring war on allies while your units are in there cities

    This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to our Cookie Policy.

    • Your units remain there, and do not get "teleported away" or any such mechanic.

      Further note that it is possible to declare war on -some- (but not all) of the inhabitants of a city.

      The troops from the country you did not declare war with will more or less just watch the fight.

      It is often a good idea to give this third (non-enemy) country "Right of Way" if possible, before beginning your attack.


      Take Care!
      - Aarujn
    • We are right now working on a quick and a good solution to backstabbing:

      quick: disallow players from leaving coalitions once formed ( permanent pact until victory with shared victory conditions)

      more complicated: leave timer when leaving a coalition (preventing players from leaving for x days or hours) --- this one is a bit more complicated due to the way the code works so we plan to bring it in in stage 2

      please give me your thoughts on these mechanics

      //G
      "Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion." Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
    • Germanico wrote:

      We are right now working on a quick and a good solution to backstabbing:

      quick: disallow players from leaving coalitions once formed ( permanent pact until victory with shared victory conditions)

      more complicated: leave timer when leaving a coalition (preventing players from leaving for x days or hours) --- this one is a bit more complicated due to the way the code works so we plan to bring it in in stage 2

      please give me your thoughts on these mechanics

      //G
      I think the timer issue rather than preventing them from leaving prevents them from attacking. So in effect they notify that they are leaving and go to a right of way state for both countries for 7 days, enough time to get all your forces out, and prevent you from being able to know where the guy you are trying to backstab has his forces. This also gives him a clear heads up that you are trying to be a backstabbing little slug, and he can get ready to attack you. I would also suggest that backstabbers (quitting an alliance) suffer major moral negatives in all provinces (home AND annexed) as people revolt against you going to war on an ally. Try to imagine if the UK joined the nazi's in WWII, how the citizens of Britain would have reacted. Or France, oh wait they DID do that, and ended up with a massive resistance movement and the Vichy government being despised for rest of time.

      The only exception I see is if a country goes AI, you can break a treaty with them after 7 days because why let the resources sit there doing nothing. You can't capture and use them, but your enemy can. That would suck.
      ----------------------

      Jacopo: Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris - bam, bam, bam, bam. I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?

      Remember that no one ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb idiot die for his country.
    • Note : I deeply hate, from my very guts backstabbing and betrayal. When i say "hate", this means that on a game that i would in theory win easily, i'm more than ready to transform it in a mud and blood defeat for me, to kill a backstabber, even if i don't know the guy that got backstabbed. Even if that guy is my main rival. When i got my sight on one, i basically react like a lymphocyte that found a corrupted cell. ---> I am one of the most biased people on this matter, so keep this "extremist position" in mind ^^.

      I'm an awful player of "Diplomacy" for this very exact reason. (But it's so much fun)

      There are several types of backstabbing that can happen, in multiple ways.



      Major vectors of backstabbing
      -Exploiting the airlift to insta-take the city of an ally. This happens much more while in right of way, instead of share map. The explication may be that under right of way, you don't the see transport planes coming.
      -Exploiting sharemap to wait for the frontier to be empty, and then attack with full momentum
      - Inside 3+ members alliances, recycling or extermination of useless allies, or allies that "done" their part to allow for the 3-good friends to have their podium.
      - Being an agent for another alliance, giving informations and waiting the best timing to enter the war.
      - Lies and manipulation / Beginner tricking.

      If your quick solution is really easy and quick to put in, i'll simply say : Pareto law. It will make 70% of the job for 20% of the work, as coalitions are (REALLY) attractive to nearly all players from all games, in all types of maps. There is only some little things you need to know and anticipate :

      Unlimited coalitions tend to grow without any kind of control to huge sizes. It a very common sight to see, on S1914, Coalitions of 20-30 members (on maps of 100 players or 500 players, doesn't matter). Funny thing, they KNOW the round can only finish with 3 winning players.
      Coalitions have a huge turn-over, due to inactivity, recruitement, and the chaotic maelstrom the average coalition is. Due to what your general goal is concerning AI and inactivity rules, this is another layer upon your system.

      So, about the "permanent pact until victory with shared victory conditions" ---> you need to be careful with size (4 ? 5 ? 10 ? Maybe proportional to the map ?) as well as "replacing players" : 1°) How to handle a player that becomes inactive (surely a coalition will want to replace him, or at least, recycle him) 2°) How to handle leaders (Active removal of players ? Disbanding a coalition/Leader modification due to inactivity ?) 3°) How to put a red line between this kind of permanent pact and push/wolfpack (this is more related to the moderation aspect, of course)


      10% law may be acceptable
      3 for =<26 map
      5 for =<45 map
      10 for =<100 map.

      You can't imagine how much i would sleep better at night (metaphorically) knowing that less beginners are send to the slaughterhouse because the game system actually encourage win-win relationship. Paradoxally, i would also agonise in defeat with more calm, knowing that i mismanaged my diplomacy, instead of having been killed by people i know in my last breath their master is already approaching dagger in hand.

      Now, to come back at the stage 2 :

      It would obviously be the ultimate option to discourage backstab and treason. One can imagine that if he is okay to wait for several days to declare a war, he is motivated by good reasons. And if he's not, then at least his opponent has time to prepare.

      I would advocate for a gradual timer related to the diplomacy state, and after that, the coalition.

      When returning to peace from state of war or embargo : 24 hours cooldown before possibility of attack.
      Degrading Right of Way : 24 hours honor period (either by war or by peace)
      Degrading Share Map : 36 hours honor period
      Leaving Coalition : 48 hours honor period
      Fired from Coalition : 72 hours honor period

      Maybe you can re-use some bits of the code of that honor period feature from supremacy. It worked quite well, except for some glitches.

      To Conclude, however, i'll say that i think this shouldn't be your top priority. You are already trying to focus your funnel at it's entrance (beginner map, map creations limitations, refined tutorial, this kind of thing) and to focus activity : i feel that the addition of such a feature very short term (coming weeks) wouldn't help you to see and analyse clearly the data, and the consequences of the levers you pulled. It's clearly a feature that would benefit from "limited games in number but filled by active players".

      Apart from that : Yeah Yeah Yeah <3. Best update Evar.
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.
    • Opulon wrote:

      ...
      I would advocate for a gradual timer related to the diplomacy state, and after that, the coalition.

      When returning to peace from state of war or embargo : 24 hours cooldown before possibility of attack.
      Degrading Right of Way : 24 hours honor period (either by war or by peace)
      Degrading Share Map : 36 hours honor period
      Leaving Coalition : 48 hours honor period
      Fired from Coalition : 72 hours honor period

      ...
      I am glad to see there is someone else that hates backstabbing almost as much as I do. I went gold spending crazy just to punish a backstabber. I sincerely think I spent about $80 to punish him. And i didn't even win the match as I was so focused on his destruction, I didn't pay attention to another country that hit me and took a bunch of my cities while I was away from the game for two and a half days.

      And that leads to my issue with your suggestion:

      Those times are way too short. If you had a shared map, you might not find out about the exit from the shared map by an 'ally', for 24 hours, and then 36 hours even isn't enough to sufficiently move your troops and build enough to make the information they had not still be fairly useful.

      And I want them to have uprisings and lose production. There has to be a real penalty for being a jack donkey.
      ----------------------

      Jacopo: Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris - bam, bam, bam, bam. I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?

      Remember that no one ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb idiot die for his country.
    • As much i would love to see backstabbers hit by the mighty hand of cosmic justice, impeding their production and morale... I also see that it would impact players breaking off from a bad ally, a spy traitor, and such of the style. In the end, it would possibily hurt as much victims than backstabbers, i think :/. Timer is i think the most natural and clean way to dissipate the most tempting part of treason : surprise and momentum.

      We have a saying in the french community : "The worst fear of a traitor is a man that turn himself despite the wound and draw his sword." Those timers ensure that this fear is permanent.

      As for the duration of those timers, i will never be against longer durations, of course ^^.
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.
    • There is also the argument that diplomacy is fine the way it is as these tactics could be seen as valid. If you are tricked learn and adapt. I played a game with a weaker ally that emptied his homeland of troops and had a direct border with me. I could have easily flown my troops into his homeland and insta-captured his homeland. I didn't but it made me think that if I did would I even be wrong to. It's a strategy game and his strategy was reckless, his fault.
    • I know and i agree. Ultimately, it will always be the individual choice of a human being.

      You could compare it with using snipers in the vicinity of hospitals or carpet bombing of 2nd line field hospital. Who says you are wrong, but a social construct and laws that are never followed ? Bombing wounded and surrendering soldiers/civilians create more mayhem, fear, disorganisation, and such, may be a positive strategic outcome. They are all valid tactics from a nihilistic point of view, and one with cynic view would add that the people countries need to their national decorum, are judged more kindly by their fellows.

      If they say on CoN "Let me betray people it's an inherent freedom of a diplomacy game", they are right. I am opposed to them by pure religion, whatever may be the facts behind.

      Now... Games with no backstab mechanics create their own alternate "feel" of diplomacy. And to be a little roleplay, our age of information makes very hard sudden shift of diplomacy over night. Public opinion shifts, subtle and latent propaganda to raise/decrease awareness, marketing in its more political form... All this take some time, or some brutal shocks, to happen.

      Some Timers on agreements or coalition are a step into mirroring how changes of the geostrategical landscape need some time before being possible.
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.
    • Germanico wrote:

      We are right now working on a quick and a good solution to backstabbing:

      quick: disallow players from leaving coalitions once formed ( permanent pact until victory with shared victory conditions)

      more complicated: leave timer when leaving a coalition (preventing players from leaving for x days or hours) --- this one is a bit more complicated due to the way the code works so we plan to bring it in in stage 2

      please give me your thoughts on these mechanics

      //G
      Sorry mate but this is not a good option. Preventing it completely is bad. Sometimes, there is that one ally who sends information to his allies who are probably our enemies and we would not be even able to remove such players who work as spies for the enemies so please, dont implement this feature. Instead, add a feature in which the production and morale goes down by 20%-30% in case a country turns hostile to its ally. This idea to disallow players to leave coalition is too unrealistic for such a realistic game. A morale drop of 20% or a production drop of 15% would be a better deterrent. I hope you understand why your idea would fail brother. Peace : :) :thumbsup:
    • Jamhougin wrote:

      There is also the argument that diplomacy is fine the way it is as these tactics could be seen as valid. If you are tricked learn and adapt. I played a game with a weaker ally that emptied his homeland of troops and had a direct border with me. I could have easily flown my troops into his homeland and insta-captured his homeland. I didn't but it made me think that if I did would I even be wrong to. It's a strategy game and his strategy was reckless, his fault.
      Yes you would be wrong. It would make you into a pathetic dishonorable dirt bag. I do know now though that if I am in a game with you I will never trust you. Your ally trusted you to have his back and not backstab him. The fact that you didn't doesn't mean you are a hero, it means you aren't a slime sucking roach. Canada has a huge border with the US. We don't constantly have troops mobilized in case the US decides one day to be a psychopath.

      The only thing reckless about his strategy was trusting someone that would sell his own mother if he could get more than $5 for her. It has been around 70 years since the french turned on their allies in WWII and they are STILL branded as traitorous surrender monkeys.

      You want to play a strategy game where you need to leave 3/4 of your forces sitting in your homeland in case your ally decides to backstab you? That is REALLY the game you want to play?

      I think the only fault here is that players like you make me think humanity should be wiped out and let some species that isn't such nutbuckets have a turn.

      You LITERALLY believe in blaming the victim. Maybe you should get mugged and hospitalized for a weeks from the beating, then have the police come by and ask why you left yourself open to attack. I mean why didn't you attack the mugger first? Why didn't you wear body armor and carry grenades? THAT is your level of stupid.

      In international alliances you can't just break a treaty and attack an ally without MAJOR consequences. I sincerely hope that every player that reads your post decides to backstab you in every game you play until you learn that it isn't the victim to blame for backstabbing.
      ----------------------

      Jacopo: Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris - bam, bam, bam, bam. I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?

      Remember that no one ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb idiot die for his country.
    • He didn't said he was a backstabber. He said that he considered this option and had the feeling that he would not be wrong, by the rules, to do it. His individual ethic restrained his arm.

      He is right to ask himself this kind of question. Especially when you are on the "anti-traitor" side. It's important to understand them, see their point of view. It allows for more anticipation, or, in this case of game decision, a more middle-groundesque approach to what can be proposed.
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.
    • I understand your point Opulon, but he did say that although he didn't attack his ally, he saw nothing wrong with it, and if you actually trust your allies it is your fault if they back stab you. That is pretty much lower than snake.. droppings.
      ----------------------

      Jacopo: Why not just kill them? I'll do it! I'll run up to Paris - bam, bam, bam, bam. I'm back before week's end. We spend the treasure. How is this a bad plan?

      Remember that no one ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb idiot die for his country.
    • okay so basically here is the status as of today:

      - we retain pacts as the standard team option
      - we preliminary add Permanent Coalitions with shared victory conditions to the game as the last (and final) level of collaboration (of course with a single digit user limit)
      - we move the share intelligence feature to the coalitions

      The leader of the coalition will have the right to kick players from the coalition if players go absent and get replaced by AI
      Should players abuse the coalition to sow dissent or break the gameplay/fun of the other coalition members, these in turn can write a ticket - and said players will be removed by a GO (with all normal consequences)
      Double accounting players should a) not really be interesting enough with their alt to make it into a coalition b) get caught by our mad-hammer and crushed mercilessly c) get served by a GO with a ticket to the brain

      Additionally, we continue working on adding a timer function - this feature is turning out to be a bit trickier than we thought, but we definitely want to have it. It's just not as simple as 1-2-3 with the current system and we want to drop coalitions into the game asap.

      //G
      "Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion." Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf
    • Ok ;)

      Once you'll release it, we'll do some testing on our side, and propose a document on what and where the moderation can help and intervene for this feature


      About timers, did you looked into the Supremacy Feature of Honor period ? Basically, it was a setting the map-creator could chose (for example : 12 hours, or 15 hours, whatever), and when someone declared war, it forbid (by pop-in) the player to move in ennemy territory, or to bombard, or etc. While it's not exactly what you want, it worked as a framerwork. Maybe you can use that as a launchpad
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.
    • Ok. It's not critical, though, even i do want it too, and quite badly :p.

      But coalitions are more important for entropy between the players. Especially if it adds the layer of allied victory, thing that doesn't exist on Supremacy (and still, Coalitions are MEGA popular)
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.
    • War-spite wrote:

      I understand your point Opulon, but he did say that although he didn't attack his ally, he saw nothing wrong with it, and if you actually trust your allies it is your fault if they back stab you. That is pretty much lower than snake.. droppings.
      Truly earning the second part of your name there, and the first part, actually your name is perfect.

      Look, I don't agree with acting this way, but, and it is a big but. Anything that is allowed within the games construct and is not specifically forbidden by the rules is a valid tactic. I recently played in a game with a high ranking player that was kicking my rear end. I opened dialogue with him and he invited me to his alliance, I joined and have since left. He also tried to open up a right of way with me in game but I flat out refused as I told him I did not yet trust him. I sent him a peace request instead, he declined and sent a right of way again. I was losing badly anyway and the oil changes had crippled me so I dropped out of the game which is irrelevant but what is relevant is that I quite enjoyed the intrigue of the "is he friend or foe?" element. Not knowing how someone will act is a big part of this game and if you are accepting alliances with everyone you meet then you need to check your strategy.

      It's a big world out there War-spite, not everyone is as they seem. If you cant get your head around that in even the context of a game, then perhaps you should stick to something more simple, like a shoot em up with team kill switched off. You know, like the other juveniles play.
    • Accepting too easily an alliance is one of the best way to end with a dagger in the back, anyway. There is always another side to the coin. Usually, being a "cheap" ally (quick to ally and slow to cooperate), doesn't help in any way to reduce backstabs. It's something game design will never be able to do something about. People that understand that to cooperate doesn't need an full alliance, and that you can discuss without a right of way... tend to build more lasting treaties, that are less betrayed because... they are more valuable.

      Nothing Dorado can do about this : Train the youngs and explain them how it works. Pray that they apply, and try to keep a benevolent smile when they don't, but still complain.
      Running an online alliance is pretty much like running a small company, except you need to find other way than money to keep your employees productive. May they play or work, they are humans.