I have a theory. There are players who do and players who do not accept alliances. I believe that this information is valuable and that there is a way to receive it with relatively decent certainty.

If you get into a situation where there are 3/4/5 feifdoms throughout the map and you aren't the biggest or the best placed, you want to ally. Sometimes, there's more than one potential candidate. You don't want to offer and not be replied to, though, because even if you offer an alliance to the next person on your list the chances are smaller that they'll accept (who want a hand-me-down alliance?) Knowing which players tend to accept alliances more often is a boon in these cases.

So I scout. As players join the table, I open up everybody's (or just the top 2-3) profile. My theory is players who participate in alliances will have either:

* 2's >= 1's or
* more 2's than avg (+17%)

(a 2 being a second place finish).

I'm speculating, but I believe a player who doesn't like to ally will have decent 1st place and 3rd place finishes, but finish second less often(since 2nd in many games is given to the weaker partner of an alliance).

A good player willing to use alliances should have 1st and 2nd place about even or have 1st places occur a bit more often (for games where alliances weren't required). A so-so player that uses a lot of alliance is likely to have more 2's than ones - their entire gameplay style depends on the alliance so you can trust them to take it.


Also, A high 3rd+4th(+maybe 5th) place ratio means to me these players for whatever reason don't often join alliances, because that's where people get left in such cases.

Feedback?