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Diplomacy

Dad_Scaper

Dad_Scaper

Enjoy the Sausage
Anyone here interested in a game of Diplomacy?

Diplomacy over the internet, done right, is an investment of a significant period of time. Not lots of hours in one week, but lots of smaller blocks of time over a much longer period. And if you agree to play and then drop out or go silent during the game, you are significantly harming the experience for the remaining players.

On the other hand, it is a truly great game. Of all the older games I know - chess, Scrabble, Risk, whatever - it is the only one that I believe is still the kind of its niche. It is an abstract (in the sense that there are no random elements) game of negotiation and tactics set at the dawn of 20th century Europe, and it needs seven to play.

Any interest?

Spoiler Alert!

And, over three years later, at the dawn of our fourth game, here are the standings:
History of the Heroscapers Dipomacy Games:

Game 1: 2 Way Draw (Kinseth/Turkey-kevindola/Italy) - March 2017
Game 2: Solo (Kinseth/Russia) - August 2017
Game 3: Solo (Kinseth/Austria) - Feb. 2018
Game 4: 2 Way Draw (scorpiusx/England-kevindola/France) - Jan 2020
Game 5 - 5 Way Draw (kevindola - Italy/Kinseth - England/Ranior - Russia/Dragon Ruler - Austria/quozl - France) - November 2020 5 way Draw

Participants
Spoiler Alert!


Many thanks to @kevindola for compiling that record, which is current as of 11/11/20.
 
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Me! (Or I can act as referee and teach others to play.)
 
@Kinseth has been bragging about his most recent Diplomacy success for months now.
 
You know what you are getting yourself signed up for! :)
 
Yes, (8)), but I'm not going to push it. If we don't have seven people genuinely committed then I'd rather not bother. I've had a lot of fun in the PBEM community in times gone by, but it's a pain when someone goes AWOL.
 
Dad_Scaper said:
Yes, (8)), but I'm not going to push it. If we don't have seven people genuinely committed then I'd rather not bother. I've had a lot of fun in the PBEM community in times gone by, but it's a pain when someone goes AWOL.
Click to expand...

Yes, agreed. I am finishing a game where one player went AWOL.

I've played on Dip2000.com (A strict play by email site.)since about 2002, but the site is shutting down now. Signed up for a game over at Diplomaticcorp.com. Will give this one a try, feels more PBEM.
 
I played on the Ken Lowe judges for a few years. I think that community is dormant. I can reach out to some people to get us set up on one, or on one of the current versions of that type of setup, if we get enough people.
 
I'm not a huge Diplo fan but if it's all 'scapers playing then I'd play if it gets us to 7 players.
 
The rules are not hard at all. It's an area control game played on a map of Europe. Armies move and fight on land; fleets move and fight in the water and on the coasts. Fleets may also convoy armies. There are seven players and the winner is the one who controls most of the supply centers - specially marked zones on the map - first.

The challenge is the negotiation. From the beginning to the end you will be (hopefully) communicating with other players to achieve your own goals.
 
And a successful player communicates constantly with both friends and enemies so that no one really knows who is a friend and who is an enemy.
 
Yup. We could write pages and pages about how to play *well*, but the rules themselves are simple.

Diplomacy invites more than the usual amount of scholarship like that.
 
Just heard of this game tonight. Some friends had a housewarming party/board game party and this game was talked about. One guy is a teacher and he runs a trimester long game in a class. Class is every other day so they get the full time to discuss before returning to class and taking the next turn.
 
PBP or PBEM sounds like a much more sane way to play than in real time.
 
For me, PBEM is (by a wide margin) the best way to play, and miles ahead of in-person. I know others would reverse the two and perhaps would reject anything other than face-to-face, but I think PBEM is fantastic.

The "Ken Lowe judges," which I mentioned before, are, essentially, programs that run games. You send in your orders and the judge processes them when the deadline comes; you send in your press and the judge forwards it to the intended recipient(s). You would be surprised how complex those commands can get, given the simplicity of the rules, but the judges could handle it all. I *think* the KL judges have been overshadowed by a newer generation of judges, but I'm not sure.
 
Oh, you know I'm in.

I agree, that the true game comes out in the PBEM format. Yet I have many fond memories of playing real time games with my high school friends. We probably played 30-40 times in real life over those years. We often tried to organize weekend game days to play. Although we usually only played for like four hours and had a general consensus about the winning player(s). We didn't find it fun to try to truly play things all the way out to 18 supply centers, especially since there are so many stalemate lines where sides can stay tied at 17-17 and it just takes hours to truly finish. We were more than happy to play and just decide the two players who were at 12 and 11 were the winners and either one of them actually would have gone on to win or stalemated probably. To this day I still really do enjoy real time Diplomacy games, but not really the late game.

So I'd agree PBEM is ultimately better. I do somewhat miss the mad dashing around the room trying to talk to all the other countries that a real time game provides, the PBEM environment is much better--not to mention it's easier to pull off those famous blindsides. Real life certainly had some issues when your ally noticed you having lengthy talks with a mutual enemy....

Anyhow I'm super interested in playing. I'm good with whatever site others want to play on. I haven't been in the PBEM community for Diplomacy in years, so I have no clue really what people use anymore. My friends and I used to use the Diplomacy app/game on Facebook that worked alright, but I had always heard there were better sites and communities. Whatever people pick I'm happy to register there.

Finally, as for others who are new--welcome! It's a fantastic game. The rules aren't that tough to grasp either, the complexity arises from the tense negotiations and the board positions that can happen. But that's part of what makes it so great--there's no luck, there's relatively few units, but the game gets deliciously cutthroat and quite deep strategically without having tons of mechanics or rules.

And actually speaking of this...no clue if they'd want to try learning or joining, but @Dysole, @scorpiusx might want to check this out.
 
If you need another player, then I'll definitely give it a go, but I have never played. So if you get 7, maybe I could just observe for the first go around.
 
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