Make Friends, then Choose Enemies

[swordsman3003]

It's possible to simultaneously pursue multiple alliances—in fact, I strongly advise it. Check out this new piece!
Solo Win Tip #7: Make Friends, then Choose Enemies

I worked on this one for a long time, and it's pretty thorough. Hope you learn something!

[Sunstriker]

Sweeeet! I'm excited to give this a read. Thanks for sharing your knowledge! :DD

[Carol]

That was an interesting read. I always assumed that telling someone you're faking an alliance with a 3rd party would make them doubt your sincerity towards them. Though perhaps that's because I myself lean towards paranoia.

[swordsman3003]

When playing a close alliance, it is important—critical, even—to convey to everyone else that you are NOT playing a close alliance; if you make the fact of your alliance too obvious, the other players will unite against you. A great way to stop players from uniting against your close alliance is to create Trojan Horse alliances with your victims (e.g., Russia and Italy play Wintergreen, but start with a Trojan Horse alliance with Austria to prevent an Austria/Turkey alliance from forming).

This is pretty common. At a high level of play, the point I just made is common knowledge. So, it's not bad form to say that are forming a sham alliance with an eventual enemy of your actual alliance. In fact, that may be the only way to prevail. Since it common and effective, this kind of play isn't any more inherently suspicious than anything else.

[VillageIdiot]

I can relate to all of this. Another great article!

[swordsman3003]

I got a really positive response on this article from experienced players; thanks VI!

[Fitzy6]

Have just joined the site and looking forward to a few games!

Am interested in how we ensure people with friendships don’t taint the game and work against lone wolfs or noobs like me?

[TemplarsBane]

Have just joined the site and looking forward to a few games!

Am interested in how we ensure people with friendships don’t taint the game and work against lone wolfs or noobs like me?

Well there are a couple things in place. First off Rule 2 (no metagaming) exists. It prevents anyone who knows each other in real life to knowingly join a game together on the site. So you can be safe knowing that in your games, no one will join that has a friendship outside the game.

There are certainly some vets on the site that know each other by reputation, have played games together on here, have grudges against or preferences towards each other. That's sort of the nature of the thing. But in general, if you've played long enough to "get to know" anyone in the game, you've also played long enough to know better than to let it influence the next game you play with someone.

So it is very very rare to find a game where people are teaming up based on knowledge outside of that single game.

Another good tool to generally prevent that is to play in anonymous games. That way no one knows who anyone is and you don't have people looking up your profile during the game, seeing how skilled you are, remembering past games they've played with you etc. You don't know who anyone is.

I actually like anonymous games as a high point player because sometimes people will target me just because I have a lot of points (which just means I've played a lot of games, not that I'm good). So anonymous games sort of protect everyone.

[GracchusBabeuf]

This is a great thread. A lot of what is stated here is stuff that I was starting to glean from my games but hadn't really formulated into concrete ideas.