Played a lot. Made it to 3rd highest in the world. Had some fun and and a lot of frustrations. My last game I tried to bring my friend into it. He was brand new. We teamed up off the bat only to have our allies betray us because they thought we were cheating. It was a 1200 rating game and I could have still slaughtered them (double king and admiral) but my friend quit playing because he said to me, and I quote, "It's my first game and people are already backstabbing me -- no thanks". Quite frustrating, but to be honest it was one of the better reasons to be betrayed. I quit too because the negativity in the game was beginning to get to me.

Betrayal was pretty common in the games. Anonymous games were a lot worse.

The reasons I'm quitting are as follows in order of importance (just if anyone was interested):

1) Time commitment. You really do have to log on every hour or so to be competitive. Best is if you can always respond immediately. Sometimes not responding to an attack within the hour can be fatal. I thought this game was low time commitment (like I could log on once a day) but to be effective you have to log on all the time. My competitive edge was encouraging me to have this affect my real life far more than I would like.

2) Politics. I hate the politics. The truth is people like it if you talk to them. The more you talk to them (within reason) the more likely they will like you over someone else. Many games I would win simply because I talked more. Many games I would lose because I didn't want to initiate verbose campaigns with all of the other players in the game. It was time consuming and often encouraged me to be manipulative to win; which I didn't like.

3) Betrayals. They aren't THAT common but unfortunately they are quite effective. I betrayed 1 player once and got an easy 1st place due to it. I betrayed another player a 2nd time, felt bad, offered truce and gave him drillers and an outpost as an appology. I could have killed him but didn't like doing the betrayal. He then broke the truce and with another player slaughtered me. I think I only betrayed people twice in all my games. However, I have been betrayed MANY times. Most of the time I was betrayed the game was an overall negative experience for me. High level play does not make betrayal less likely.

4) Subterfuge. Basically your friends and allies are rewarded if they try to take more of your territory while still being your friend. Boy is this a crappy way to interact with my friends IMO. Sure they are just "playing the game"; but I liked them less after doing that.

Having said all that I really liked the strategy and the good politics of the game. I think I also enjoyed it because I was good at it. =P

Thanks for the enjoyment I had and to all the good allies I had out there.

I think if you climb high, you can fall deep. I'm sure there is an English saying about this.

By teaming up with friends and going in a game with a premade alliance, you're giving an unfair start to players who join such a game alone and carefully build trust with strangers over the course of a few days. Of course you can do that, but it's only fair for those only players to team up against you with their newly made alliance. At many places in this forum that's exactly what several players suggest, when someone complains about encountering people who are probably friends in real life etcetera.

Subterfuge compares to sports in some sense. Many many people play it for fun on the streets, but a few top athletes/teams play the national championships, and they have to work HARD. It takes lots of time, dedication and focus to keep your top spot. Subterfuge doesn't demand physical activity like regular sports, but I assume in your games you had to use alarm clocks to wake you up during the night? It takes a certain mindset that I admire in top athletes, but at the same time I'm not jealous of the offers they have to make.

I'm sad to see you go, but it's a move I can understand. Even a league below the top, I sometimes feel I need a break after a game. (I never take that break, haha.) I can only imagine how it must be after much more demanding games.

Hopefully you'll come back some day. Play some casual games, or just forget about your ranking points. The casual interactions are real, the rest is just pixels on a screen. Have a nice, easy, day tomorrow.

stefan wrote:I think if you climb high, you can fall deep. I'm sure there is an English saying about this.

I think from the sport of boxing comes the phrase, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

Try some casual unrated games, and just play for fun rather than rating.

For example in your 1200 game with your friend, you both probably would have had a lot more fun if you hadnt been stressed about the prospect of losing so much rating in one game.

I have started keeping one of my (around 3) games as an unrated game. I then find the newest guy I can and team up with him. It has been fun and low pressure lol. Plus, I'm hoping he will have a good experience and then buy the game. The betrayal does suck I agree. More then once I have found myself being annoyed and cranky to other players in the game haha.. by the way, sorry I snapped at you Ucross I only played with you once, but you were true to your word, and other players mentioned that about you also. You have a rep for being honest. I hope you decide to come back to the game!

ucross wrote:4) Subterfuge. Basically your friends and allies are rewarded if they try to take more of your territory while still being your friend. Boy is this a crappy way to interact with my friends IMO. Sure they are just "playing the game"; but I liked them less after doing that.

Having said all that I really liked the strategy and the good politics of the game. I think I also enjoyed it because I was good at it. =P

Thanks for the enjoyment I had and to all the good allies I had out there.

this is why you should play anon game only when you play with friend.
i think you can note your friend behavior after a game *there is L2 feature for it xD

if you done playing how about give your account for tounament reward. i think there is L1 tournament who need a reward. what a waste if you shutdown your account.

maybe you not read this either :/

I took a break for a while much for the same reasons as you. Number 4 was one thing that really got to me(I said and don't go ahhhg on me [unnamed forumer])

It is just a game really, i understand the frustration and I have been the victim of both betrayal and a mass attack by other players. There isn't much you can do there, i don't make alliences too quickly as I do not betray people, in my experience (and I would like to think I have a substantial amount of it) betrayals do not help you win games, at least statistically speaking the hurt you more often than not. On the other hand breaking a peace treaty is a another story, you can have peace at first and then either turn it into an allience or decide that tactically it is bset to attack that person, at the point no hard feelings, i been on both the dealing and receiving end.

But if you tell me we are allied and then you attack me when I pull off our border thinking I'm safe then I get pissed, that's not subterfuge that plain lying and that's not cool.

Most of my games where my ally betrayed me they ended up eating their words as I came back with the help of other players and knocked them out. This is an open ended gsme but there are certain unwritten common sense rules you should abide by, unfortunately some players don't realize that and end up making rookie mistakes. Most of these players are the newcomers who think they know how to play, that's why I'm reluctant to join a gsme with newer players, and if any noobies are reading this now take this advice to heart: if you see a player with 30+ games and a decent ration of medals behind him talk to him and take some notes he knows what he is doing and even if you think they aren't right, just listen, we usually know seomthing that you dont.

Anyways a bit off topic but I agree with some of the issues in the games that the OP mentioned, it's sad to lose a long time player but I understand. Just remember there are ways to avoid some of these issues by playing unrated games or not joining with certain level of players.

I was in this game with ucross and I am guessing I am one of the people who "betrayed" him.

Long story short, ucross and I had a peace agreement from the opening of the game. I was notified by two other players that ucross was being gifted specialist from another player who had zero games played and was never online (12h gaps) we all came to the conclusion that we either try to put a stop to it now or just let him run away with the game. It's obvious what we decided to do, once ucross realized we had him cornered he quit and came to the forums to write this whiny post.

Whether or not it was actually his friend or multiboxing you cannot come into game, gain an unfair advantage by getting gifts, and expect other players not to ally against you.

Here is screen shots of all our exchanges:
http://m.imgur.com/TZnURb2,B59YOM1

You can solve a lot of what is mentioned in here with two things.

Firstly, and most importantly, is the amount of time that Subterfuge takes up. I often find myself (as a L1 player) spending more than an hour per visit calculating all the possible ideas and variation and predicting my opponents moves and so on. There has already been an discussion about the implementation of quicker 40 minute or so games. And the Devs said they will be making a 2-3 hours version soon (which I personally still think takes up too much time; its still about the same amount of time I can spend on subterfuge per day, and I think many people would agree that 2-3 hours is too much time spent). This would create the possibility of spending much less time on the game if desired.

Secondly, I have always wondered how anybody would ever achieve a very high rating (into the 2000s perhaps) playing competitively and in an environment with 6-10 players. It would only really be a fair test of 'skill' (which I understand that many people don't necessarily want) if it was a 1v1, like in so many other board games. (except games like monopoly, scrabble, etc. but in those you cannot 'ally' with other players while playing competitively as such). The problem with this however, is that, although I haven't ever tried a 1v1, I can see its not going to be a good idea. Definitely not a good idea. The game will favor someone at the very start and the other person will hardly be able to counter (because of outpost position or specialist hires) which make it very hard for the losing player to make any significant progress for the remainder of the game. However, what I suggest, is that a sort of 'team deathmatch' is implemented, in which any drillers or specialists landing at an ally outpost is automatically gifted upon arrival. It would create more of a 1v1 feel (except of course, as teams). The teams are most likely to be randomised by the computer to create fair play, and other mechanics such as sentry firing and map view will probably have to be changed. Winning is achieved by certain criteria that a whole team must satisfy in total. What I would suggest in order to create more of a 'team' feel is that you reduce the sonar range by some amount, but let team members access each others' sonar. There are various other ideas which could tune down the 'subterfuge' environment if you don't feel like getting back-stabbed that day.

These ideas could solve all of the four points mentioned above (with my first idea addressing 1, and my second addressing 2, 3, and 4)