Woodruff; I understand how you feel. many of us have done a major attack, then had it stopped by a surprise attack from a player who we had helped before. however, every player is responsible to defend themselves. you said it was a factory space; that means within a single turn you could create several troops for defense and simply leave them there.
there is some truth to your point; esp. if there seemed to be a deal, and also if you'd been doing most of the fighting so far, and if john's survival and level in the game was really a result of your efforts up to that point. however, there is some validity to john having moved his units forward on the attack, then offering a truce to prevent further conflict in that zone. remember, all arrangements are pretty subjective here.
Forces games are much more fluid than Risk. unlike Risk, player are not constrained from moving units wherever they may wish; unlike Risk, your units do not have to stay in one place until there is something for them to do. You can move all your units to one side of the map, leave spaces totally undefended, and move them back and forth continually. so players' arrangements may really change unexpectedly.
I just won a world game after having missed a turn a while back, and then losing about 10% of my spaces. the reason was that the brown player and grey player both tried to attack me, then brown turned around and invaded gray in Africa. suddenly I had Asia to myself again. so things do change pretty swiftly here. hope that helps in some small degree. thanks!
Just making light of a serious situation.
