Accused:
Dion100veek
joehsnipe
Requesting an investigation into the below:
The accused are suspected of:
Conducting Secret Diplomacy/Collaborating Illegally
Game number(s):
Game 12486681
Primary Game (only one with me in it).
This is a Lunar game with Trench and escalating. - Due to the trench its a fairly long game. Things have developed a lot with people going for the cards of the players that didnt make it. We are 4 players left from the original 8.
Red has been moving about some, tried a few different stuff. Got evicted from the ships and decided to stack up on the moon itself and established himself in the NorthEast, building a large stack (1300+ just prior to my suspicions). Green established himself in the southeast and spread slowly across the middle. Profiting from me being the largest player at one point and thus the focus of attention and a couple of players being chased for cards. For a long time he held 2 ships with medium guards and employed bigger guards to take the south and west, guarding 4 mines and edging towards number 5.
Blue (me) build some units, chased some cards and established larger guards on eventually 4 ships. - When green got close to the win clause of the 5th mine, I worked against it, talked in the chat to get support in (Green was by then the largest player as well). I managed in that struggle to boot greens ships more as a defensive manuever, guarded one more (total of 5 and left 1 open).
Pink, the remaining player had struggled some in the southeast as he got edged out on some cards and battled with a now evicted player and fell somewhat victim to Greens expansion across the middle. As I started warning about the win clause in the chat, he placed and moved units well, to allow for support being ready but also to allow me to spend units first.
Thats the situation. Green is edging for the Stevinus mine having locked down his area well on the moon. He is out of the ships, but has a 400+ stack next to the southwest launch base to get onto a ship quickly. Red has the by far biggest stack of the game 1300+ in the sea bordering the Stevinus mine and the east launch site. Cards are climbing to 450 per set.
The safe and default play would be to place much of his stack on Stevinus keeping Green at bay and probably making sure that green doesnt win immediately without spending a single unit as Green wont be able to get enough units to bear on it because of the Trench. - There are other options trying to profit from pink and blue battling green with limited red support, but what red decides to do completely out of nothing is:
Put his stack through the launch site with a set of cards, take out around 1800+ units (most Blue some pink), guarding one base and leaving the rest undefended.
Coincidentally... or not, the next round starts with red and green being online more or less together where Red does little and Green uses the turn momentum (its freestyle) to move into Stevinus base and move pink and me a step away from it.
I have the last turn and can (must) use my cards to get back towards the Stevinus mine, but also hope that pink will take a turn before green, cause if not green has the win clause locked. Green has locked a ship with a heavy guard and pink and me are a step away from a launch site.
At this point, Green has more units than the 3 of us put together.
I feel this is an odd play for red. - To my mind the only logic I can find is that he wants Green to win the game. - It certainly does nothing for reds chances. -
Now in hindsight, 2 things now spring to mind. - Firstly when red for some reason decided to remove 300+ of his and 300+ of my units on a small border that had been sitting for a while in the far east. - Nothing interesting there whatsoever. - Odd, I thought but he must be sending me a message of strength or something...
Secondly red missed a turn out of the blue, when I started talking in the game chat the first time Green was very close to winning. - If I hadnt been very online having a day off, it could have feasibly allowed green to settle into the final mine with only red being able to touch him. - And if he counts out, Green wins without red having to do something obvious such as eliminating all the units on the board taking care not to touch Greens....
But maybe Im getting paranoid, so I look around a bit.
Red and Green has played 10 doubles games together as partners. - Hardly anything conclusive in that of course, they are likely friends and like to play together.
Still, there are 6 other games theyve played together. - Dion (Red) won 3 of them.
Havent looked at the 3 where none of them won, beyond that one is an assassin game finished in round 9, and 1 is a terminator game with escalating, both of which would likely be somewhat harder to control even when collaborating.
The 3 that Dion won:
Game 12544983
Nothing conclusive, but during the entire game they exchange 6 areas (both sides) until the end game starts. - I dont know the map and I cant make heads or tails of the end, but Im hoping an investigator has a tool that will allow him to view the game turn by turn with the graphics and perhaps even the unit count available.
Game 12444599
Yellow complains that red and green are working together. No other responses. A few cooks in the game.
Game 12444539
8 Player game. Nothing really suspicious, friendly chat though not a lot of it. Green and Red (Yes they are seemingly green and red a lot) does an ingame treaty with 2 turn warning.
Now, I dont usually go around crying about games and I wont this time either, and I dont usually reach the conclusion that something is more than just a little bit fishy in a game, but I did this time.
Its not conclusive, but I think it merits an investigation. - Is this just two friends who play games with each other and may have a slight, but legal tendency to attack each other at a later point than other players if there are other options to go for in a game. - And of course a player that suddenly makes a move that defies at least my attempts to come up with a rational explanation assuming that he wants to win the game...
Or is it a case of two people working together under the ulterior agreement that if one of them wins, they kind of both win...?
Im not the judge, but it does smell fishy to me.
Glad to get it off my chest at least, even if it was a bit long.
Regards, Tviorr
) so I would like to know.
