Trader Joes house of shady deals

[Slick]

Unless it is the point of the game for a team victory, everyone wants to win so everyone will be looking for an advantage and to deny one to other players. I always give players the benefit of the doubt on honesty until proven otherwise. I also scale up the amount of risk by starting small like SJ recommends. It's a game and it should be fun. It will take weeks to months to finish. Not many people will be willing to ruin that much of a time commitment and ruin their reputation over a trade.

Just remember that under most circumstances, in-game good will between empires is simply a means to an end - which is winning the game by eliminating all enemies. Play under that pretense and expect eventual war. BUT, don't take things personally; after all everyone is tring to win. The SEIV community is mostly mature and people usually don't resort to cheap tricks which will end up in being ostracized from future games because of poor sportsmanship.