SUBTERFUGE Forums

I'm wondering what level of cooperation with another player is considered inappropriate or downright against the rules?

I've found a couple of threads related to this..
Here: http://forums.subterfuge-game.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1576&hilit=real+life&start=10
Here: http://forums.subterfuge-game.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1059&hilit=real+life&start=10

But I'd also be interested in feedback on a specific scenario in which I may have actually crossed the line..

I joined a game with another player with whom I'd already played two previous games of Subterfuge, and knew beforehand through another game we played together.

In the game in question, he was on one of my borders (so there was sort of an implicit alliance). On an opposite border was someone who seemed a fairly skilled player, but in chat struck me as fairly disrespectful and rude. Fast forward a few days -- I didn't do much early in the game and quickly felt I'd fallen behind the rest of the field. It seemed I didn't have much hope and the "rude" player seemed to be doing fairly well. Everyone else seemed somewhere in the middle.

I thought to myself, "rather than let this rude guy win, lemme give a bunch of outposts, drillers and specialists to the guy I know and hope HE can win it instead." Shortly after I'd done so, we were accused of multi-boxing and in hindsight, I can see why -- the trades we made were extremely lopsided.

I'm wondering, is this level of cooperation considered cheating? Or is it just considered by many players to be extremely poor form? The above threads give me the impression it's the latter, but I'd like to figure out where we stand and proceed accordingly in future games.

Thanks!

This is an unanswerable question my friend.

Subterfuge is above all a social game. Players that were reliable allies in the past are invariably leaned on in other games, especially at higher levels. The game is unfair in that light, but also seems to reflect real life because of that fact.

Wish I had something more concrete for you but I've always thought it's the truth. You can't win them all, but you can maximize your winnings over the long term just by keeping your word and having a stellar reputation.

Like life.

Yeah, I mean you'll always have one view of the situation and your opponent will always have another. In one of my recent A to Z games (#shamelessplug) (a to z is a video series I do about subterfuge you can find some records of it on here) me and another player had a disagreement on an alliance I made. A player who was my irl friend joined me after telling me that he was actually my irl friend (I didn't know that at the start of the game) and we fought to take him out. Z (also an irl friend) helped the other player the entire game, but he still mistrusted him simply because we knew each other irl. I thought I had done nothing wrong, but to him I was pulling in friends to make winning easier, it's just gonna be a matter of opinion.

I think that is more of less king making. You may want to check if the person you are gifting stuff to is interested. It doesn't just impact the person you dislike but the other players in the game. Or if you are going to cheat do it more subtle like! Like unintentionally send all your specialist with a double agent near his base . Sometimes you can hamper a person from winning even though you are losing without gifting someone else drillers and specialist. You can stall until your specialist becomes a big threat. Throw everything at one person so they have to divert attention to you causing them to fall behind and etc or accept that the jerk won and move on or just give an old partner all your specialist as a final middle finger to the rest of the players. It isn't necessary inappropriate collusion. People who lose and who are part of an alliance sometimes will gift their specialist to another member when losing as well not that I think its appropriate.

I'll give my take on this; I'm in this game and have just come back from a weekend away.

I share only a tiny border with, and a larger one with your Allie. I honestly didn't know about this until I was told in a group chat, as suggested to do with alleged multiboxers. From what I could see, gifting large amounts of drillers and outposts to this apparent Allie, what do you expect me, and others to think? Whilst I haven't seen a case of multiboxing in the flesh (assuming your innocence) to me it looked exactly what I thought it could be.

Just my 2 cents anyway.

I would say it crosses the line when you are giving things to your ally without reason (e.g. they are under attack) and without doing a proper trade.

hey guys,
so im also in this game, i spawned to the left of the *ACCUSED* multiboxers, we spawned in the shape of a triangle so i can see a lot of them. ill color code everyone so that names stay private, blue spawned northeast of me, his "buddy" spawned southeast of me, i will say that although these accounts has both tried helping me, i cut ties with them when the serverwide opinion that they were boxong reached me through the words of gray,
i do not play nice with multiboxers, many of you know that normally i am very respectful, and very trustworthy, however it came to my motice that blue was not attacked by anyome but his "buddy" at first, i saw a lot of shields get cut and even a queen being moved blindly at anothers outpost. a king, and many other specialosts were gifted, so far two mines have been gifted, i accused blue of multiboxing in a private chat, i never said anything to the other suspected account, the mext day the other suspected account went on to inform me in private chat that he was not boxing that it was a rumor, (but remember i never accused him, unless he was the same guy as blue), so the whole server has banded togwther against them. from our points of view, there is no other way to look at this other then that you are multiboxing, we have talked a lot about it, and in the end everyone else on the server decoded that we all felt you were multiboxing.

in america we believe in proving things beyond a reasonable doubt, not one person doubts that you are multiboxing, so we have decided to act on our suspicion,

we are truly sorry if these are false accusitions,

thanks for reading, sorry if ive said anything offensive, looling forward to your reply

Words I live by: life's not fair. Especially true in subterfuge.

This game is never gonna be fair, you just have to hope next game will run better for you

This is always an interesting debate, as you can see from the amount of replies you have gotten back already. I'll try to keep my comment brief and not repeat all of the good wisdom already said.

If multiple people are accusing you of multiboxing, you probably crossed some line. Subterfuge kind of balances itself. If you are only doing what is seen as fair, no one will call you out except for the salty person that you beat but you will know when you have gone into multibox territory when more than a few people are calling you out and everyone gangs up on you.

You can argue that this moral subject can be determined by what you see is fair, but really it has more to do what others think is fair. Because otherwise they will all gang up on you.

Thanks to all for weighing in.

And thanks to those from the game in question who took up my invitation to reply to this post and did so in a civil manner. Seriously, I know it's easy to get riled up in these games, so I appreciate everyone keeping cool heads. Thanks guys!