stormeagle wrote:I typically target stronger players first haha, because I feel lots of gold medals means the player has a better chance of successfully backstabbing/deceiving me. Even though that makes no sense for me to think as I personally have a good ratio right now and I rarely backstab, just good at getting people rallied for large scale gang shank. This game got me paranoid.
I used to think that way, but then thought more about what leads to my success in games, which is fair dealing and sticking to agreements even if there isn't a short term maximization of value for me. As long as I've negotiated fairly and agreed, keeping my word has earned me far more than betrayal has. I've tried both routes and working well with others has been far more successful.
I think that players who have been long term successful are players who certainly know what they are doing tactics wise so they are more feared as adversaries, but these players also tend have the diplomacy part figured out too. You probably want them as allies, more than you want someone with no medals, and even more so than those who have quit several games. Quitting a high percentage of games makes it far more likely that the player will quit if things get hard, and it's when things are hard that you most need a good ally. Since you want to be sure that an alliance is good for the long term and you have someone who will stick with things (agreements and the game in general) on your side - my matrix for rating who to work with is to first avoid those who quit and then to prioritize finding an ally with a good medal count.
Of course, I'm only L1, so I only play in casual matches, medals might mean different things in the more competitive ranked play environment, but here in the noob lands lots of casual games - a good number of medals has more often translated into dependable than it has materialized as 'threat'.
