Do Deliberate Misorders Ever Work?

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Some house rules as well as playing on the PBEM judges make it hard
for people to miswrite an order. In RGD debates, I've seen comments
that this is a significant negative, as it takes away the misorder as
a tactic.

How important is the deliberate misorder as a tactic? Does it really
fool anyone? If your "ally" writes an order that messes up your plans,
and claims it a mistake, do you really continue to trust the guy and
treat him differently that if he had just not done what you had agreed
on?

Discuss...

 

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In article <54daff87.0405111046.7d2d89b9@posting.google.com>,
salmoneous@aol.com (salmoneous) writes:
> Some house rules as well as playing on the PBEM judges make it hard
> for people to miswrite an order. In RGD debates, I've seen comments
> that this is a significant negative, as it takes away the misorder as
> a tactic.
>
> How important is the deliberate misorder as a tactic? Does it really
> fool anyone? If your "ally" writes an order that messes up your plans,
> and claims it a mistake, do you really continue to trust the guy and
> treat him differently that if he had just not done what you had agreed
> on?

In FTF, it works. If I say I'll order Ser S Rum-Bul but accidentally
order Ser S Rum-Bud (intentionally, because I didn't really want to
order it), it's really hard to tell if I did it on purpose. Well,
except for just reading my face and telling that I'm lying, which is
apparently pretty easy to do.

So I'll amend: if you can lie in FTF, it works. Your ally doesn't
know if it's an honest mistake or not. God knows enough honest mistakes
happen in the orders that people are trying to get right . . .

Doug
--
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___, Doug Massey, ASIC Digital Logic Designer
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| Phone: (802)769-7095 t/l: 446-7095 fax: x6752 |
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. My homepage: http://doug.obscurestuff.com (|)

 

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In article <54daff87.0405111046.7d2d89b9@posting.google.com>,
salmoneous <salmoneous@aol.com> wrote:

>How important is the deliberate misorder as a tactic? Does it really
>fool anyone? If your "ally" writes an order that messes up your plans,
>and claims it a mistake, do you really continue to trust the guy and
>treat him differently that if he had just not done what you had agreed
>on?

>Discuss...

I played in a game where France kept misordering builds, and we
thought he was just being a ditz. It turns out that the skipped builds
were diplomatically essential for keeping together a cryptic Western
Triple which eventually went public and rolled the board.

(I'm married to the ditz in question, and I must say, he had me
completely fooled. Nice piece of work.)

I think that misorders are relatively unhelpful when used against your
primary ally, because they weaken the alliance; even if the ally
doesn't realize it was deliberate, they will lose faith in you because
you seem to be playing poorly and not in their best interests. Misorders
are much more helpful when used to mislead third parties. For example,
when two powers have been fighting but have decided to ally against
a third, a misorder on their mutual border can conceal the alliance for
an extra turn, which can be very helpful.

The one place this does not seem to work, at least in my local
FTF community, is concealing a Juggernaut (R/T alliance). It has been
tried so many times that the other players will just roll their eyes
at you.

I haven't found the Judges to make misorders too difficult; you can
easily have two units support each other to move when there should have
been one supporter and one mover, or two units try to move and bounce.
These happen often enough by accident that a claim of accident may be
believed.

Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@eskimo.com

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.diplomacy (More info?)

Yes, misorders are very useful in FTF when used sparingly and when used
well. Especially in games where you're under time pressure (drop dead
deadlines or someone being a stickler about ending with the clock). In
cases like these, it often works to simply not write down the move or
support order you were supposed to make. If you're scrambling to get stuff
down at the end, and its not there, it was just an unlucky twist of fate,
right?

Misorders arent as effective in PBEM because most people have the sense to
check their orders before they send them in.

My advice: just misorder every once in a while by accident, so that way when
you do it on purpose it will be believable

And no, I never intentionally misorder.

-Adam


"Mary K. Kuhner" <mkkuhner@kingman.gs.washington.edu> wrote in message
news:c7re16$178s$1@nntp3.u.washington.edu...
> In article <54daff87.0405111046.7d2d89b9@posting.google.com>,
> salmoneous <salmoneous@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >How important is the deliberate misorder as a tactic? Does it really
> >fool anyone? If your "ally" writes an order that messes up your plans,
> >and claims it a mistake, do you really continue to trust the guy and
> >treat him differently that if he had just not done what you had agreed
> >on?
>
> >Discuss...
>
> I played in a game where France kept misordering builds, and we
> thought he was just being a ditz. It turns out that the skipped builds
> were diplomatically essential for keeping together a cryptic Western
> Triple which eventually went public and rolled the board.
>
> (I'm married to the ditz in question, and I must say, he had me
> completely fooled. Nice piece of work.)
>
> I think that misorders are relatively unhelpful when used against your
> primary ally, because they weaken the alliance; even if the ally
> doesn't realize it was deliberate, they will lose faith in you because
> you seem to be playing poorly and not in their best interests. Misorders
> are much more helpful when used to mislead third parties. For example,
> when two powers have been fighting but have decided to ally against
> a third, a misorder on their mutual border can conceal the alliance for
> an extra turn, which can be very helpful.
>
> The one place this does not seem to work, at least in my local
> FTF community, is concealing a Juggernaut (R/T alliance). It has been
> tried so many times that the other players will just roll their eyes
> at you.
>
> I haven't found the Judges to make misorders too difficult; you can
> easily have two units support each other to move when there should have
> been one supporter and one mover, or two units try to move and bounce.
> These happen often enough by accident that a claim of accident may be
> believed.
>
> Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@eskimo.com

 

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salmoneous@aol.com (salmoneous) writes:

> How important is the deliberate misorder as a tactic? Does it really
> fool anyone? If your "ally" writes an order that messes up your plans,
> and claims it a mistake, do you really continue to trust the guy and
> treat him differently that if he had just not done what you had agreed
> on?

Well, I've played FTF with people who do this practically every time
they have lied to you. Of course you stop trusting them after a while.

However, used sparingly, I've found this to work a couple of times.

In general, I'd save this tactic for those times that you have an
alliance that you want to keep, but you _really_ don't want to help your
ally with some particular thing.

Also, it helps to create a bit of confusion about the move in question -
talking about it vaguely, "misunderstand" the other player etc.

That last thing would be harder in PBM, naturally, where your deceptions
can be cited word by word after the fact.

--
Björn Lindström <bkhl@elektrubadur.se>
http://bkhl.elektrubadur.se/

 

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Douglas T. (Doug) Massey wrote:
>
> In FTF, it works. If I say I'll order Ser S Rum-Bul but accidentally
> order Ser S Rum-Bud (intentionally, because I didn't really want to
> order it), it's really hard to tell if I did it on purpose. Well,
> except for just reading my face and telling that I'm lying, which is
> apparently pretty easy to do.

I would never try a deliberate misorder for a "critical" move. If my
neighbor is asking me to do something that he knows is a risk for me and
therefore a big favor to ask for, he will never believe a misorder is
accidental. It's too important for that. However, if you misorder in
such a way that allows your "enemy" to get better position on you (and
your former buddy), I think the tactic could work very well. When used
very, very rarely.

It would probably help to do a misorder when pressed for time writing
orders. Also, in order to mask the misorder, you obviously can't be
thought of as someone who never makes errors in his orders; so it may
even be a good strategy to screw up deliberately in a way that is
neutral or actually hurts your own position once in a while. If playing
with a new crowd, pretending to be a newbie might be helpful as well if
you can pull it off.

I think there will always be ways to misorder, even if the kinds of
misorders possible are reduced by future revisions of the rules. For
example, if supporting a move to the wrong coast when movement to only
one coast is possible is explicitly allowed in the future, misorders
will just be done as supporting outright impossible moves, such as
fleets moving from Norway to Finland.

--
Will Berry
Co-founder, Second Brain website hosting
http://www.secondbrainhosting.com/

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.diplomacy (More info?)

There is the flip side to this issue too: how to try to convince peole
that a genuine mistaken misorder was actually an intentional misorder.
I've had to (unfortuantely) use that trick from time to time, and the
more well known you are the more likely it is to succeed!

I think my best one to date was as Austria, ordering A Ser - Bud as
part of my spring 1901 orders - everybody immediately thought me a
dolt (as I was!) but then I worked pretty hard to convince them all
that there was some ulterior motive to it. Not sure how well it
worked, although the Turkish player at the time (a certain Yann
Clouet) was convinced enough to follow with a misorder in F1901, not
actually denying me Serbia as he'd intended!

Millis