Alliances and other races

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3048 days, 17 hours, 43 minutes ago

jowgar

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Can other races see your alliances? Is there a setting to allow them to be known throughout the game?

3048 days, 17 hours, 4 minutes ago

donaldworrell

RE: Alliances and other races

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There is only a message sent and it is easy to miss it. Since a message is sent then you should be able to see who is allied on the diplomacy page. Perhaps this is some thing that will be addressed.

3048 days, 16 hours, 43 minutes ago

jowgar

RE: Alliances and other races

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Is this a general game setting or does the game need to have it pre-set? This is my second game and I never saw alliances in my previous game.

3048 days, 16 hours, 34 minutes ago

killian

RE: Alliances and other races

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The message you get about an alliance being setup is only you making one with another player. I don't get one about other player's alliances.

The trouble here is Jowgar and I know each other. We are playing a private game with friends. Then he joined a public game and asked if I'd like to join in with him.

We talked about where we were in the game at the start, and decided to go full alliance since it made sense.

Now Turn 3 rolls around and the Bird player has A: figured out we have an alliance, claiming an "image" showed it. And B: called us cheats as being one person playing two accounts.

So, I think it's important to know here if there is a way to determine who is allied with whom in these planetary scoring based games. If there's a way to see it, it's not obvious. If it's not obvious, it's not fair to all players. (I'm wagering it has something to do with the Achievement Scoring, but I don't feel like going all Rain Man on the numbers to figure it out.)

3048 days, 13 hours, 34 minutes ago

donaldworrell

RE: Alliances and other races

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killiam the bird player would have gooten a message like this--

From: Diplomatic Council

An alliance has been formed between The Robotic Imperium {x} and The Lizard Alliance {x}

this is an message I recieved in a game this turn. I x out the names of the players but the birdman would have seen your name and your friends. He knows you are allied from the begining of the game because it got a message from the diplomacy system telling him you have formed an alliance. all players get this message. Well all players but the two forming the alliance.

3048 days, 8 hours, 29 minutes ago

crackpot

RE: Alliances and other races

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interesting .. that wasn't in the original vgap 3.5 .. not sure I like it :o

If this is the case then the diplomacy screen should show who is allied with whom.

3048 days, 7 hours, 3 minutes ago

killian

RE: Alliances and other races

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Well that's interesting because in our private game that didn't happen at all.

I formed an alliance with a player in that game and nobody got a message about it.

Jowgar and I were talking about this last night. We both have alliances with other players, and neither of us got messages about the other person's alliances. We used the handy Time machine feature to go back and look for messages that we might have missed, and there's only the ones for diplomacy that involves our own races.

IE, I received messages about ambassadors to my race, and the alliance I formed with a co-worker. I told Jowgar the exact turn that the alliance was formed and he checked his messages. There was nothing about my alliance. He formed one with another race, and I was sent no notice about it either.

3048 days, 5 hours, 53 minutes ago

rudel

RE: Alliances and other races

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There was a bug that alliances created in turn 1 were not shown to other people, I do not know whether this is fixed already. Furthermore, in a game where the win condition is "hold 250 planets" (with an alliance) you simply need to know who is allied or the game would be over before you realise this threat.

3048 days, 5 hours, 11 minutes ago

killian

RE: Alliances and other races

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In the private game (The first one we played) I made an alliance in turn 8, nobody but the ally and I were notified. In "turn 4 or 5" Jowgar made an Alliance, as far as I can tell, nobody was notified.

In turn 1 of this new game, Jowgar and I made and alliance. Apparently people were notified.

So you see my confusion.

I understand that since holding that many planets is a win condition, it's good to know. But as far as we could tell from past game experience, there's no way of knowing who's allied with who.

3048 days, 5 hours, 8 minutes ago

hpotter

RE: Alliances and other races

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I think alliances should follow original VGAP protocol ... no one should know other than the allies of formed or cancelled alliances. Sometimes there might just be a truce, or an established border, or a non-aggression pact perhaps for a certain number amount of time, or just a ship trade. Of course, if your alliance WANTS everyone to know, there's the message facility. Or, perhaps, make establishment or cancellation of alliance notifications to all races a configurable option for the game.

3048 days, 4 hours, 57 minutes ago

rudel

RE: Alliances and other races

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I'll stick to safety passage agreements if I do not want somebody to know about the alliance (which in most cases applies). They are not reported.

It's not like alliances give you a better advantage, especially as long as you are not able to set up a "full" alliance (see each others planets, minerals, builds etc).

3048 days, 4 hours, 31 minutes ago

killian

RE: Alliances and other races

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Actually, telling other races who's allied with who won't change much, and actually hinders some playstyles.

Example. In VGAP 3.5 days, I played a game where I was allied with BOTH major power blocs in the game. I played both against each other because I could see their ships, and what those ships saw in space.

I led them all to a big battle, avoided it, then mopped up once all ships were dead. (Both sides were counting on my ships to tip the scales in their favor.)

This sort of play cannot be done if everyone knows who's allied with whom.

And regarding the games where alliances with 250 planets win? If I wanted to be all sly about that, I'd not actually ally with anyone (thus no notifications) until doing so would trip the 250 planet totals. 5 turns isn't that long if you have a buffer on the border with hostiles.

3048 days, 3 hours, 28 minutes ago

rudel

RE: Alliances and other races

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Jep, that's the way I deal with it now... :) Safe passage is more than enough... and maybe send your ally a screenshot of your sensor scannings each turn if there is something important.

Allying to someone with everybody noticed restricts your diplomatic possibilities severly.

3048 days, 1 hours, 45 minutes ago

hpotter

RE: Alliances and other races

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A great part of the intrigue of this game has a lot to do with sleuth and surreptitious tactical and strategic plans and action. I think this is why Tim Weisman provided some races with cloaking ships, limits scan results in light years, and requires and provides sophisticated alliance processes. There is a huge amount of alliance discussion on Donovan’s web site dealing with different levels of alliance, VPA features, setting/switching/breaking alliances, and much more detail and examples.

In reality, any country must have a CIA component and must establish secret communications to prevent others from knowing your plans, assets and limitations, logistics, and the kind of resistance, truce or assistance each provides the other. When one sends a message using the “Send Message” facility, only the intended recipient(s) should be privy to such message. VGAP never has had an NSA component to decrypt secrets; I think it should stay that way. It’s up to players to note discovered ships and planets on the starmap and surmise alliances and enemies based on combat messages and observed multiple race ships and planets in the same space where no combat arises.

If allies MUST reveal alliances of any level to all players, a great part of this game is lost.

3048 days, 0 hours, 33 minutes ago

spyre

RE: Alliances and other races

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Many messages that are about your stuff in some way don't include you in the message. When your ship gets killed in combat, you don't get the distress signal all the other players get.

Hopefully they plan to make the diplomacy system better in the future. And while I agree you should have some way of knowing an alliance exists, an ingame message isn't the best option, not only might you miss it, but you have to remember it exists for all further games. Gathering information should have some sort of randomness and/or cost involved.