It's Led Julio.

You can say anything you like to him.

how do you know the offer was real?? he could be lying to you too

That's besides the point.

It is indeed. Whether your opponent is cheating or not, you can tell him you'll metagame with him, tell him you'll pay him, tell him you know where he lives and you'll kill him, tell him you know how to hack the server, tell him anything you like....

I expect the discussion will soon move to the respective merits of the players involved, now that names have been named, but I find the theoretical question more interesting.

I would say that no, you should not tell him that you will metagame, for the following reason: metagaming is "bad" because it introduces in a game external factors to the advantage of one or more players (e.g. player A helps player B in game 1 and player B helps player A in game 2. This distorts both games to the advantage of the two players). In the case in question, even though lying to a metagamer would be justified in itself (come on, we lie to all other players, after all... :P ), if player B lied to player A he would still have an unfair advantage in game 1 with respect to other players in the same game, deriving from factors that are external to game 1 as such. So, even though it might teach a lesson to player B, I would say that player A should not enter such an agreement, even if he were lying.

DarioD: well, i would normally say that you SHOULD teach player B a lesson, but if you did that, it would just be for the purpose of teaching him a lesson, and that would be metagaming.

Exactly, aoe3rules, exactly ;)

I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here, but where in the rules of Dipomacy does it state that metagaming is not allowed?

In fact, I was under the opinion that anything could be done diplomatically: the only rule that applies is that no agreement is binding.

My answer to your question is that your diplomatic motives and actions are your own and so are the consequences.

yes, we know. there's no rule against it at all. metagaming is not not allowed. anyone can do it.

see, it's only disallowed by common consent. Kestas (as far as i know) has never blocked anyone for metagaming. the point is, everyone agrees that it ruins the game. the only thing you can do is not play with them, but that works very well. if you're ultra-paranoid, use passworded games.

as long as you are trying to win, it can't be considered metagaming

> Kestas (as far as i know) has never blocked anyone for
> metagaming.
I have banned people for metagaming, the problem is it's so hard to enforce. I was planning to write code to build a moderator control panel to make it easy to spot and ban metagamers, and I built a few pieces (the access logs, moderator user accounts, moderator control panel classes) but never brought it all together.

If you want to help take care of metagamers check out this thread: http://forum.phpdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=17

Let me start out by mentioning that I don't metagame.

That said, I would consider all means, outside of multi-accounting, legitimate means of winning. That includes promising a player that you will help them out in a future game (let me also point out that you are a fool if you follow through with it). In the original boardgame, the rules stated that you could do absolutely anything during negotiations. that includes listening in to other's conversations and even placing extra units on the board, which would be left there if nobody noticed. I've even read one rulebook which stated that the order reader or unit-pusher could purposefully alter the reading/moving to their advantage...it's only cheating if somebody catches you...which they almost certainly will. Also it will be a short game for you.

But the point is that although ill-advised, you could try anything short of murder to win. I feel that this is in the spirit of the game.

Kestas: oh yes, i remember now. we had a discussion about this a long time ago. and i tried to start a list of known metagamers, but in the end we chose to just ban them.

Tetra0: well, if by the rules you're allowed to kidnap and are crazy enough to actually do it, by all means go ahead and murder them. but don't ask why no one wants to play with you. or, for that matter, go anywhere near you.

aoe3rules, how dare you insult the proud people of columbia and their traditions with your reckless slander of kidnapping.

ive killed people to win a game of diplomacy. The court didnt think the "the rules say i can do anything to I want" defense was very good.

zeriously [i noticed this was misspelled, but decided it was better that way] though, metagaming DOES break the rules. You can make any deals or do anything you want to win the game. Notice that 'the' is singular, as in deals cant be outside the scope of that game.

Now with that said, i have no problems with spouses or friends or whomever playing as a team. Thats totally acceptable because it is effectively no different from making an alliance with someone every game. Since each game is distinct from the next, it is perfectly fine to ally with someone at the begining of each game. Metagaming is just a bad strategy because country assignments are random. Look at it this way.Germany and austria almost never attack each other early on and no one would say that germany and austria start as allies. So if a pair of metagamers always started as germany and austria, you would hardly notice. However, the chances of starting as adjacent powers every time is slim and even then, it doesnt eliminate the need to make deals with other powers. All the deals are made within the scope of the particular game. In the case of the endlessly allied metagamers, they are only breaking rules in theory, not in practice. Ultimately there are other players on the board and, just like any other strong alliance, if other players suspect it, they will team up against them in order to maximize their chances of winning.

Right, in theory it's a question of economics. I apologize if I gave the impression that I support metagaming. In my opinion those who practice are the scum of th earth. The bottom line is that its a rule based on the honor system, and really a waste of time for anyone to post a topic demanding consequences for a player they suspect of it (obviously I am not including this topic since it was started for a legit question, not to accuse)

no, there's nothing wrong with spouses or friends playing as a team in every single game. there is, however, a problem with the alliance being automatic.

The easiest thing is to say that any meta-gaming including promising it is disallowed because then we know that somebody is breaking the rules. Remember that rules must be empirically verifiable.

a total aside, aoe3rules, do you play The Asian Dynasties online? If so what is your pseudonym?

i don't play AOE online. too many idiots.

I find it laughable that so many players scream and yell about metagaming, yet see no problem with using information about a player from previous games in the next.

What? Isn't the very definition of "metagaming" to allow other factors to enter into a game, including other games? What, exactly, is the difference here?

yes. but people are stupid materialistic hypocrites. get over it. by the way, do you want an alliance in our next game?

I would just like Feckless Cod to be made aware that I, er, know where he lives and will kill...

I also know where Feckless Clod lives...

Oh, what a clever typo.

Wait.... are you going to kill ME, or are you just going fishing?