The proper time to backstab?

[Feud]

I wil admit that I rarely backstab, so i am not as talanted at it as others. I always wonder when I do decide to do it, when is the best time is to break my alliance. Should I brreak early and be civilized about it, or should I wait until the last second befroe my nukes start making contact?

I have always gone for the last second option, although I admit that I feel guilty everytime I do. While it may be more underhanded, it does gurentee the greater chance of success. I won't target military befroe hand though, I usually launch a full attack against both civillain and military, so I all off the alliance before the bombs land.

What do you all prefer to do?

[Soldant]

Leave it to the last minute, but if they're smart they'll get nervous about nukes heading towards them and break their alliance themselves, purely for defence.

[Rich_Zap]

I generally only backstab in diplomacy games, i enjoy bombing at the last second. There was a game the other day where i was russia and an ally was europe, there was a third ally in south asia but he was nearly dead in terms of population. Eu and me were both at 100% population and were basically eyeing each other wearily for about 15 mins lol while we pulverised the remainder of the opposition. When i finally decided to break the ice i launched a massive attack with bombers subs and silos. Amazingly i still lost, my ex-ally managed to rally his fleet and defenses very well and i also got nuked by the south asian ally. I guess my timing was wrong there lol...

[Spacemonkey]

I think the best time to attack an ally is when they're are attacking, or being attack, thefore there defenses will either be down, or already swamped.

[GreatStalin]

I break my alliance just as my nukes are millimetres away from the "ally's" capital city. 'Tis the best way!

[Chezzbian]

careful about other allies - if u r nuking usa from russia, europe gets to think u r bombing them and your missiles get shot at.

geography plays a big part in where u stick the knife in.

[NeSS]

That's why I generally leave cease-fire off with allies.

[SLS058]

Yesterday I managed to pull off two backstabs

It was a Diplomacy game and I was Asia.
I was allied with Europe, SA and the USA and I was plotting a backstab on europe with Africa and Russia, turns out I didn't need to do anything because Russia had launched everything at europe and europe didn't last long.

So I then decided to backstab the USA instead, so I sent 6 subs and 6 carriers to a clear area near the USA with the aid of Africa. So ass soon as I surfaced my subs I defected and joined Russia and africa and destroyed the USA.

later in the game I placed 6 subs and 6 carriers near the east of Africa, defected and destroyed Africa.

So because of the two backstabs I just bearly won the round

[palehorse864]

I have only tried one backstab and it didn't go well. However, I do have some advice.

Make sure you go full into it with whatever you have available and that you want to use. I screwed up by not destroying enough of the silos and airbases. Destroy anything that your new enemy can retaliate against you with.

Be aware that the minute you backstab, you are probably going to suffer immediate retaliation. See above for what to do about that.

Also, consider whether your just better off attacking another target or if this backstab will offer some advantage.

[DrFreedom]

I dont really backstab. i play this game alot with real friends, and we are more into the team concept so the backstabbing is not a compelling feature for me. it is more compelling to be able to set up defenses in a team orientation... and this only really works when you know for a fact that people wont backstab you.

[LordSturm]

Haha, backstabbing is crucial in any defcon game with 3-6 players.

I played a diplomacy with 6 players once, and i managed to work it all out so smoothly noone noticed for a long time that i still had my 100 points.

By the Victory timer, the alliances all broke and with a simple glance at their score board, their target was me, but i held off, ending up with 84 or something, the next highest score being 40.

I had to back stab heaps to get that sort of insurance with people.

[xander]

--==<snip>==--

Damnit! I blocked your avatar! Why is it back! Gah! It itches!

With regards to backstabbing, I had an interesting experience with that a this week. I was playing Europe, he was playing Africa in a six player Diplo game. The alliances had all broken down, and everyone was basically on their own. I was sitting pretty, and allied with Africa (his AA defence was terrible, but he had nukes in the Atlantic that I wanted used against South America). As he is launching his sub based nukes against South America, I sent a metric-fuckton of bombers against his silos, and airstrips. I took out all but one of his silos and two of his airstrips before he noticed. At that moment he said something to the effect of "What the fuck!? You know you are doing collateral damage!" Then he ragequit. The best part of the whole thing was that I wasn't taking a collateral penalty (because I was targetting installations) and, because he quit and his slot was taken over by an AI (which never seem to defect), the rest of his nukes continued to hit South America. He had plenty of bombers, and subs, and could have hit me hard, but, because he quit, I didn't have to worry about it. I took everyone else out, then went after the AI.

xander

[furtim]

Wait until your ally is busy using his silos against one of the other players. Then nail him while his guard is down but the nukes are still in the air.

[blck]

I rarely backstap...

I rarely join an alliance to but if I do (if otherwise it's 3v1)...I'll always be sceptic. I'll have some subs and an airfield close by my allie-friend in case he want's to backstab me. If he launhes his nukes than I can retalliate pretty fast with my subs and some bomber runs. Since he's launching and when I'm fast enough I'll have almost no resistance (no airdefence) and he/she won't know what hit her

Be aware, be prepared and never trust anyone that's my DEFCON mottol

[Jetpac]

nuke the rap out of people with subs
fire the occasional silo

then when victory timer comes up nuke the shit out of the nearest person.