To put things in a slightly different light, Garula’s opponent is breaking an explicit verbal agreement (i.e. the mutually agreed upon treaty or alliance), and then getting upset when **Garula **responds by breaking an assumed unspoken agreement (i.e. the ‘agreement’ that everyone was playing to win this, and only this, game). Seems a tad hypocritical to me.
I have to agree. If you are playing a cooperative strategy game with shifting alliances, that is part of the game. People who complain that you aren’t “playing to win” mean “you aren’t playing to a strategy that let’s THEM win”. And why should you? Basic strategy dictates that you play to your enemy’s weakness and don’t allow him to play to his strengths. It’s not my fault you’re soft. Go play with your grandma or pick up a book on Sun Tzu or game theory or something.
I remember one time I was playing AOE II online against some random kid. He was dominating me except that he left his flank exposed with his king holed up defenseless halfway accross the map. So just as he was about to win, I had a small team take out his king and won the game. He got all bent out of shape because “he was winning” and my victory was “cheap”. Dumbass, that is part of the victory conditions. The “king” represents YOU in the game and I just shoved a flaming trebechet boulder up your ass. Do you really care what happens in the battle after that? If you didn’t want to play that way you should have set up different rules.
It’s like people who get pissed off over “rushing” in online strategy games. THAT is part of the game. Assuming they aren’t using some sort of cheat, your opponent is under no obligation to allow you to build up an invincible army and an impregnable defense.
The only problem I see with Garula’s strategy is that it is robotic and predictable. And if a strategy is predictable, it can be easily countered. I’m not sure what game he’s playing (I’ll assume Risk or something), but if I was your opponent, I would assume you were an enemy for every subsequent game. Of course, if I was a third party who knew this, I would bide my time until you exhaust yourself fighting your sworn enemy and then take you out. And now that I’m your sworn enemy, maybe I partner with all your other enemy’s moving forward.
I tend to play a limited unilateral version of this strategy, myself. Most notably in Shogun (Samurai Swords for you young’ns), I’ll often within the first few turns point at a line of territories on the board on my border and pronounce that crossing said line, even for the usual XP exchange that some Shogun opponents negotiate, will result in disproportionate retaliation.
On the other hand, I also never break agreements unless provoked into it, which sucked in the early days but, since I play with the same people who are mostly chronic backstabbers, it’s now got to the point where people will go out of their way to avoid pissing me off in order to reap the benefits of a stable flank (figuring they’ll backstab me later). Naturally, I try to hem these people in so they can’t bring overwhelming force to bear when they realize they’re hemmed in. =P
It’s all part of the game–massive retaliation for broken promises is perfectly valid for the type of game under discussion. It’s a strategy consideration, and kingmaking is a viable strategic goal for someone who’s had their chance of total victory cut out from under them.
As Wikipedia says, “grim” sucks as a strategy: it pretty much guarantees that the player will lose if it’s ever invoked, since he is willing to destroy himself rather than abandon his pet strategy, and even building up a grim reputation won’t serve in the long run. A pool of regular opponents will know that being the grim’s victim evens out amongst themselves in the long run, and they are all doing better than him in the meantime. After all, for every time they get to be dragged down by the sulky grim, there will be three or four times (give or take, and depending how many sides there are in the game) when they get to live off the scraps of the grim’s squabbles.
A more effective strategy, and one with the useful side benefit of not alienating fellow players who like to see each game taken seriously, would be more like “let’s be adult about this” - penalising alliance-breakers, but only to the extent of exacting a just redress.
Also, what Invisible Wombat said. Being the junior partner in an alliance may be fun and profitable, but being the junior partner in an alliance with only one opponent left is a quick route to defeat, 'cos your chances are nil once the last oppo goes down. Better to see about balancing the game earlier on while you still have potential allies.
I won’t use this “strategy” when playing Diplomacy, but what sucks is that players often assume it’s the standard response to a stab.
It’s predictable and easy to respond to, it’s not a winning strategy, it assumes a loss. That’s no fun.
As I’ve said, the whole point in discussing the worth of the grim strategy is based on the idea that it’s not the best strategy for winning that particular game. The premise is that you’re reducing your chances of winning the current game in hopes that you’re improving your chances of winning future games. Otherwise there’s not much point in “debating” whether you should follow a strategy that helps you win both the current game and future games.
Why would it even out like that? There’s nothing forcing players to betray an ally, grim or otherwise. You’re only a victim of a grim strategy if you choose to be. Better players would see that there’s little advantage to betraying a grim player and would not do so. Two grim players would actually have an advantage because they would be able to form a strong alliance because each would appreciate the consequences of breaking it.
That’s not what it means. Is it any fun to play chess with a three-year-old? No, it’s not (except of course in that it can be fun to teach a child how to play) because you will win every time. That’s why people don’t like it when you don’t “play to win”; it takes all the challenge and the feeling that you’ve earned your victory out. The OP’s strategy is like playing chess with the sole intent of killing the other guy’s queen. Yes, it will probably happen, but the other guy will still win and feel dissatisfied because the OP is not providing a challenge.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: It’s like the Twilight Zone episode where the mobster goes to Hell and wins at gambling every single time, guaranteed.
Why shouldn’t it even out? In a pool of n players plus Grim, the costs of Grim’s grimness will be borne by Grim plus one other player each time it’s invoked. I don’t mind Grim dragging me down one time for every n times he cripples himself, and I assume that the other perfectly rational players follow my thought processes. I won’t betray Grim frivolously, but then I wouldn’t betray Tough-But-Fair frivolously either. But when TBF gets into conflict with me, my own strategy - Tough-But-Fair-And-Forgiving - keeps us from getting into an endless downward spiral.
The occasional betrayal doesn’t cost me as much as Grim’s MAD skillz cost him every time he applies it. The exigencies of the situation may cause someone to rip me off for a province or a supply centre or whatever. I will discourage it where possible and I will punish it where necessary; but I won’t burn my house down to stop someone stealing one of the spoons.
While your analysis is right for gaming groups with one grim, if there are more than one grim or the occasional TBF who’s willing to work on the Grim’s terms, they can get pretty unstoppable–I should know, I have many many duo Diplomacy wins to my credit.
It gets weirder in games with explicitly no alliance victory.
Agreed in my experience as well.
However, as a grim player, you have to trade off getting more alliance wins for fewer mid-game shakeouts and fewer solo wins. If you are comfortable avoiding your least preferred outcome but not often achieving your most preferred outcome, grim is not a bad strategy.
However, it is not subgame perfect, so it is not the best strategy to pursue if your equilibrium is somewhat strictly defined.
In the UK Diplomacy Championships it became clear I was faced with two ‘grim’ players (playing England and France) and a weak player of Germany (who was soon knocked out).
So I organised a 4 way alliance of the other players. They were all experienced and didn’t like ‘grim’ alliances. The only decision we had to make was whether we could take England/France out (then have a proper game 
), or whether they could set up a fortress.
In the end it was a six-way draw, with the two ‘grim’ players both demanding we broke our alliance and refusing to discuss ending theirs. :smack:
It may be a reasonable strategy, and fair, and whatever. But it’s still pretty lame and I wouldn’t want to play with you.
The grim strategy makes the game no fun for your friend, no fun for you, and probably not much fun for the others. What’s the point of playing then? Just to prove something? Congrats, you just proved you are willing to ruin everyone’s good time to fulfill a petty grudge.
Why would I want to be friends with someone who is willing to suck all the fun out of a social activity like that just to prove something?
When I’m with my friends, I want us all to have as much fun as possible. And sometimes this means moving past petty wrongs. And sometimes it means giving myself a handicap so that others can compete in a fun way with me. If I’m playing a fighting game I’m an expert at and my friends is a novice at, I’ll choose my weakest character. I still have a challenge, and she still has fun. If winning is so important to me, I’ll just play against the computer.
Of course this is different between agree hardcore gamers, tournament players, etc. But for a casual game among friends- dude, do what it takes to keep things fun and friendly!
Yes. But even considered as a hardball gaming strategy, Grim seems to me to have at least three huge flaws:
[ul]It’s not an alliance-forming strategy. Anyone would ally with TBF over Grim, as the return is the same and the penalty for transgression is less (TBF stops retaliating as soon as the wrongdoer mends his ways).
[li]It’s not a winning strategy. Grim will persist with an alliance even if it means coming second or worse.[/li][li]It’s not a survival strategy. Grim will retaliate even to his own death if crossed. As a corollary, anyone allied with Grim knows he might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. No point taking one card-gaining province from him in Risk, for instance; the penalty is the same as if you smite him hip and thigh, so you might as well do the latter.[/ul][/li]
In social play it scores at least six on a scale of 1 to asshole, as it’s really a meta-game strategy - it’s less about playing the current game, more about success in repeated play.
I’m surprised how many people seem to take it as an article of faith that betrayal is a better strategy or even that it’s a unavoidable strategy. That it’s just part of the fun of the game and/or something you need to do to win. They’re arguing how terrible it is for Grims to punish Betrayers but avoiding the issue of whether being a Betrayer is a good idea in the first place.
Hardly “an article of faith”. In any game in which cooperation and alliance is possible, the possibility of betrayal must be borne in mind and strategies for dealing with it are necessary. Just as in life, it should be discouraged and perhaps punished. The argument against Grim is not (at least from my viewpoint) because I view betrayal as anything to be encouraged, but because it’s a poor strategy for dealing with it - for the reasons I have outlined. If you want to argue against them, have at it, but don’t duck the issue by talking about articles of faith.
My grim strategy tends to be to sow as much chaos as possible. Often what I’ll do is make sacrifices to my former ally’s enemies. I mean I won’t simply go ape if someone betrays me, unless the betrayal is crippling.
I have, repeatedly. It was other players who kept saying that a grim strategy was bad because it preventing other players from betraying people and thereby having fun playing the game. That argument only works if you assume betrayal is a necessary part of having fun in a game.
Betrayers will argue that grims take all the fun out of a game. And grims will argue that betrayers take all the fun out of a game. Both points of view are equally valid and both sides are playing within the rules.
You’re apparently one of the players the OP talked about who thinks grims are unfair. You admit you want to betray an ally and steal a province or two from him and you wish the other player would just be a TBF and accept that and move on afterwards. But instead the grims over-react and cost you more than you want to pay. So the result is that you can’t make the betrayal you wanted and play the game the way you planned to. Which is good game playing - the grims have figured out a strategy that shuts down your strategy.
First it’s articles of faith and then it’s what kind of player I apparently am. I’ve explained why the grim strategy hurts chances of making alliances, winning or surviving - want to argue against that, or do you have another ad hom. you want to trot out?
glee gave an excellent example above of how grims themselves think betrayal can be a necessary part of game strategy - they just think their enemies should be doing it to each other.
Grim strategy is useful because it makes people less likely to betray players who use it. Can you explain how getting betrayed helps your chances of winning a game? If not, then reducing your chances of getting betrayed is a good strategy.