Team games: Teams vs Alliances

[Hoplosternum]

Originally Posted by Septimius Severus

Hmm, sounds great calahan, but it also sounds just like what might happen in a regular FFA game with open and unrestricted diplomacy allowed. So no real distinction there. I sort of like it the other way around starting as a team but having the option to go solo or disband, and perhaps reform or recombine into a new team. When we think of the word team as it applies to team games we generally are talking about alliances that are "fixed" at the start versus alliances that form during the game as the normal course of diplomacy.

Well I like Calahan's ideas. There are very few games that allow for joint winners. Therefore you always know that at some point betrayal or a concession is essential rather than merely a possibility. If you didn't know this site and how the games operate you might assume that FFA games allow for joint wins. But in general they don't. Unfortunately.

And on this occasion I don't like yours Teams which are set up at the beginning but are destined to dissolve simply remove the trust and the division of labour that team games foster. Which is the pay off for all the extra work they involve.

Some people - possibly you Sept - seem to try and make a game more 'epic' than they are. Some games do become epic ones and you don't want them to end or at least last much longer. But the game isn't epic from the start it becomes so by what happens. Most people find the end game dull if it lasts too long and by that stage few people (or teams) can win.

I doubt I am alone in thinking that the early turns are the best. They take less time You are enthused about your build and whether it will work or not. The possibilities are huge. Will you find a lot of sites and enhancing ones (good indie mages etc)? Get good neighbours - either to rush or ally with? Will your expansion strategy work or not and will it be foiled or aided by the map/neighbours? Did you race for Artifacts or unique summons and did you win those races? What will the diplomatic tone of the game be and where will you fit in? But after a while all these questions are answered and there is just playing ever longer and more complex turns. At that point you may find yourself in an epic struggle. In which case great Or it may not be, even if you are one of the potential winners.

Your idea robs you of much of the excitment of the early game. You are stuck in a team so some neighbours are off limits to attack. And you have to have some sort of equitable split of your lands etc. But you won't get the good parts of being in a team. If you get a bad start it really does matter. You obviously cannot be as open about your plans or make sacrifices for your team mates without getting something in return etc. Yet you will need to coordinate a lot to be competitive as a team. And normally if you are a lame duck early on you get killed off, but being in a team you would limp on until either your team loses or one of your team mates kills you off after a long long time. But you then do get a very long end game as first the teams fight, then the winning team fights amongst itself.... So your idea combines many of the worst parts of Team games with the worst parts of FFA games

While Calahan's does the opposite. You get that great early game of a FFA game when there are lots of possibilities. But there is a possibility of trust (not total as in a fixed team, but much better than in a FFA) due to a team win option. So you get some of the pluses of a team game (but not all). And it is NOT in my experience what can happen in a usual game. It is strictly forbidden by convention at least in most FFA.