Exactly -- Kuma, Tez, and I haven't been farming anyone, in fact we could in theory move to a 5- or 6- player format where it would increase the likelihood that the statistics wouldn't even be close to insinuating that we're somehow ganging up on other players. The whole point though has been to play fast 4-player games, and as Kuma mentioned we don't have a regular 4th to include, so have just been leaving a spot open for someone to join us. Look a little deeper at the statistics, we don't jump all over the 4th player, and knock him/her out first, if you look at the strategy in our games, I'm sure the pattern would show that normal game strategies are applied, attacking the troop/terit leader first, eliminating the player who's weakest with the most spoils, etc.
Game 11516882 -- a very even battle so far where most of the attention has been on tez (yellow) who established an early bonus
Game 11364891 -- round 91, ask DTT if he feels like we're ganging up ... this one is a close battle too, where he (yellow) has the advantage at the moment, and potentially a large stack lurking out there.
Game 11180759 -- game won by the "4th" player, who collected 76 points ... seemed to enjoy the game with us too, and we could have prevented the loss if we truly were working together as a team of three.
Game 11127054 -- round 107!!?? Surely the three of us could have knocked off the 4th player here by now?
Game 11081553 -- most interesting game chat of them all, we came out and let the 4th player know that we know each other, and yet it still looks like a clean game was played where he was interested in playing with us again.
Oh, and then there's a whole series of 3-player games where we only played against each other. These should in no way be considered part of the statistical analysis, they're a whole different type of game.
Is afroaction suggesting we need to post a disclaimer in all of our games ... something along the lines that the three of us know each other, and we are in no way acting in collusion to knock off whoever joins our games? Kuma, Tez, and I could be a formidable force if we set up trips games and just camped out waiting for unsuspecting trips teams (or random singles) to join those games. I'm sure there are plenty of other dubs/trips/quads who do exactly that -- they've played countless games together and will win a majority of their games played. For that matter, that's exactly how clan wars work, the same teams will undoubtedly play many many many games with each other, and you could probably build a statistical case that looks like they win "more often" than they otherwise should.
As I said, if it helps, we could add a 5th or 6th random player, and see if that slows down our gameplay. 4-player games have a tendency to move pretty quick when we know at least 3 of us tend to take turns fairly regularly and often. Just check out the games listed above that have gone more than 90 rounds, mainly due to that fast play.
Anyways, it's late i'll finish this up tomorow.
