a boring, long, serious response:

i think there is a lot of "ethics" involved in kdice. in real life, we distinguish "the legal" from the "good" or the "right". similarly, in kdice the official rules are distinct from unofficial conventions that govern behaviour like flagging and trucing. we might call this whole murky area of community norms which fall outside the official rules the realm of "ethics" in kdice. backstabbing is a good example of a behaviour that is perfectly legal according to the official rules but considered "wrong" or "bad" by much of the community. although kdice ethics is certainly distinct from ethics in the real world, and right and wrong matters much less in kdice than in the real world, we can definitely speak intelligibly of an "ethics of kdice".

in this sense, the question raised in the original post is definitely an ethical one. i don't think there is an absolute answer; rather it depends on the situation. if your flag is weak, and the person you flagged could have easily taken your lands with little risk to their game, then I think it is definitely "wrong" to accept a higher place than them later on. conversely, if you flag later on in the game, when the person you flag had little opportunity to expand into you anyway, then i don't its definitely not wrong to finish above them.

again though, doing the "right thing" is much less important in kdice than in real life; i play in an unethical way. sometimes its fun to be bad; and its an internet flash game, so who cares? the only thing at stake is really your reputation with other players.

Purp agreed to a 1/3. I'd have no issue ending up higher than him in that instance. He agreed, it's as simple as that for me. You should have sat for 2nd.

"Brown declares he's going 1 / 3 with purple "
in no way does this statement imply that purple agreed to this.

...if purp didnt agree, brown is just trying it on. No worries 2 v 1 him!

yeah i misread it

My simple rule is self first, be as fair as you can without violating rule 1, although I almost never attack a flag after round 4.

I didn't read all this, but Deadcode is correct. It is a question of expected value. Don't do something "unethical" if it's against someone that will PGE you, but go ahead and do it against some random player that you probably wont see again. I personally wont backstab, but I will manipulate the 1/3 to my advantage if I can, if I wont see a negative meta-game impact.

I like Boogy's post, I often troll 100 tables just to stab people i will likely never play with again. :D

Problem is, very often people call 1/3. The one that has a flag does not agree and the one calling for it announces "who cares, I'll kill him if I win"... Usually the original flagger sits and watches.

This fucks the game for the player accepting a flag.

So I agree that you could watch the person you flagged to die and then get a higher rank (dc said that) if that person fails to flag himself.

You could pick the side of the person you flagged to in an endgame, making a flag similar to a truce (which is why they get countered if called to early).

You can not finish above the person you flagged to unless that person is killed. So if purp does not accept 1/3 and does flag up 2nd at some point, you are to flag 3rd (or kill brown and get 2nd). Re-negotiating your surrender (that's what a flag is) later on is not ethical.

My probably a bit simple and straight forward 0,02 Euro.