Opinion on two-player no-attack agreement in a three player

[delilahplay2]

In a three player game its arguably reasonable for two players to agree (explicitly or implicitly) not to attack each other in order to temporarily concentrate on the third player who's way ahead, or way behind.

Interested in opinions in the alternative scenario where all three players are roughly equal, and two players explicitly decide to enter into an agreement of indefinite length to take down the third together in order to increase their own chances of winning.

This has come up in a few of my games and it seems to be a bit of a conundrum (I'm undecided); Is this good strategy or unfair play?

[Lindax]

Everything is fair in love and war. That's why I don't play 3 player games.

Lx

[delilahplay2]

I take your point. But How about when the game starts off with more than three players but the others are eliminated/kicked out so only three remain? Genuinely interested in the answer to this.

[Nut Shot Scott]

Annoying but is what it is. It's a game of math after all - if you can increase the odds to 50/50 and someone wants to help, might as well say yes and see where the chips fall.

[delilahplay2]

I don't know whould you be OK with it Nutshot? - I've been on both sides of this. If I'm the one benefitting from the agreement it feels good... But if you were faced with two players who always made such an agreement in games with you - openly, so no secret diplomacy - it means you literally can't win.

[degaston]

Two weaker players having a truce to fight the stronger player is really the only logical strategy for them in most cases. If they fight each other, they're only helping the stronger player increase his lead. If they are able to get things back to being relatively even, then the truce should end. If it doesn't, then...

If two players team up against me and I'm not the strongest, I'll pick one of the two (usually the weaker player) and tell them I'm going to only attack them as long as they continue the truce. I'll try not to hurt them so much that they can't recover if they break the truce. This doesn't guarantee a win for me, but it does make it so that it is not a winning strategy for that player.

This won't work if they have some sort of secret diplomacy where they don't care which one of them wins, or if the player you target gets so mad that they suicide into you out of spite.

[Nut Shot Scott]

Two weaker players having a truce to fight the stronger player is really the only logical strategy for them in most cases. If they fight each other, they're only helping the stronger player increase his lead. If they are able to get things back to being relatively even, then the truce should end. If it doesn't, then...

If two players team up against me and I'm not the strongest, I'll pick one of the two (usually the weaker player) and tell them I'm going to only attack them as long as they continue the truce. I'll try not to hurt them so much that they can't recover if they break the truce. This doesn't guarantee a win for me, but it does make it so that it is not a winning strategy for that player.

This won't work if they have some sort of secret diplomacy where they don't care which one of them wins, or if the player you target gets so mad that they suicide into you out of spite.

Exactly this.

[Donelladan]

I don't know whould you be OK with it Nutshot? - I've been on both sides of this. If I'm the one benefitting from the agreement it feels good... But if you were faced with two players who always made such an agreement in games with you - openly, so no secret diplomacy - it means you literally can't win.

If they always make such an agreement, and play lot of multiplayer game together, I'd say that should be a case of game abuse. Because as you say in your next post, then they don't really care who wins, it's always one of them.

Interested in opinions in the alternative scenario where all three players are roughly equal, and two players explicitly decide to enter into an agreement of indefinite length to take down the third together in order to increase their own chances of winning.

In reality I think it's rarely a smart move to do that. You're not going to increase your chance from 33% to 50% to win the game.
Because when the 3rd player is eliminated, the 2 remaining players will not be equal, so one of them will be screwed and lose quickly.
I've done such agreement in the past, and I've only respected them because I was sure I wasn't the one going to be losing at the end.
And if the other player was becoming stronger than me, I was quick to break the agreement, and with the help of the 3rd one, re-establish balance.