Ok I was looking at some old 3ed forum posts and something came up that I am a bit confused on for any edition. The player in question was asked how many planets he had and lied to the person about how many he had, then the next phase won the game when his public objective stated I collect VP if I own 11 planets outside of my HP. There was a pretty strong opinion that the player was a cheat and should not be played with again. I looked through the 3ed and 4ed rules and no where can I find that states that planets or trade goods are public knowledge and therefore must be truthfully advised when asked. I find no issue with lying about what you own. It is not my job to keep you in the know, that is your job. If I need to only conquer 1 more planet to win it is not my job to tell you that, you need to be paying attention to that. I am not saying cover up everything and dont let anyone see it, but during the course of play things will get mixed up and moved around. I do not feel under any obligation to straighten it up so you can count things. I guess it is just how my group plays, but we cheat, lie and steal to win and no one I play sees an issue with that. Is it just me or do others play this way as well.

I think there are two issues here: volunteering information, and telling the truth when asked.

For the first bit, you are not obliged to say "hey guys, I'm a planet from winning here".

If someone lied about the number of planets, and gained advantage from it, I would seriously consider playing with them again. At the very least I'd demand to look at their position from their seat, and count their planet cards myself. The reason that the shorthand is you tell the truth when asked is that it saves time, but if someone opts out of this, I'll absolutely waste their time, my time and everyone else's time to count their stuff (planets, techs ect). And I won't apologize for it.

We are ultimately here to have fun, and this would be a fairly serious way to put a black mark in a ledger. I'm only playing a few times a year, so why play with someone like that?

The number of planets a player controls is public knowledge because it can be calculated from the state of the board. By allowing a player to lie about the number of controlled planets, it encourages all players to calculate or track this information instead of simply asking another player which does only one thing: slow the game down.

While not explicitly against the rules, my opinion would be that intentionally misrepresenting public information would be cheating

On 9/9/2018 at 6:24 PM, Robofish said:

I think there are two issues here: volunteering information, and telling the truth when asked.

For the first bit, you are not obliged to say "hey guys, I'm a planet from winning here".

If someone lied about the number of planets, and gained advantage from it, I would seriously consider playing with them again. At the very least I'd demand to look at their position from their seat, and count their planet cards myself. The reason that the shorthand is you tell the truth when asked is that it saves time, but if someone opts out of this, I'll absolutely waste their time, my time and everyone else's time to count their stuff (planets, techs ect). And I won't apologize for it.

We are ultimately here to have fun, and this would be a fairly serious way to put a black mark in a ledger. I'm only playing a few times a year, so why play with someone like that?

Completely agree. You can say what you like about stuff that's not public knowledge, but lying about what's in front of you face up is just a complete lack of integrity and poor sportsmanship (gamesmanship?) If someone pulled this **** in a game with me they would not get invited to the next game, end of.

The number of planets you have is public knowledge -- but what "public knowledge" means as far as self-reporting is 100% down to table/group rules, not game rules. It's all about how cutthroat (and, dare I say, mature) your particular group is.

Our group plays to have fun, socialize, and enjoy each other's company as much as try to win. So if I asked how many planets someone had and their response was, "I don't have to tell you that," I'd probably respond, "Do you really want to slow the game down by making me come over there, touch your cards, and count them all myself?" and if they did, I'd take my sweet time doing so every single turn until they realized how silly and counterproductive that sort of stance is.

If someone actually LIES about something that's public knowledge, they get one warning that we don't do that. Do it again, and we'll find an adult to play with instead. (Exceptions made, of course, for the VERY FEW games where "lying about public knowledge stuff" is explicitly part of the game and expected.)

For all public information (planets, objs, technologies, number of ships in a system) we have a specified rule(home?) that you CANNOT lie about game mechanics information.

Ofc you can lie "im gonna use CARD x" or something like this. But you cannot lie if you asked "do you own technology Y".