A web version of the classic Diplomacy board game
I hope you all are enjoying the mentor game. Unless someone has a topic they would like me to address, I am finished with my broadcast messages. I thought I would leave you with a few excerpts from an essay by Manus Hand, the creator of the Diplomatic Pouch web site, “The Greatness of Diplomacy.” […]
Continue ReadingSo… when the game is over… is that it? In a face-to-face game, calling the game is hardly the end. That marks the time to head out to the pub for a pitcher and kibitz over what just happened. Frankly, that is my favorite part of playing in-person! Do we lose that when we play […]
Continue ReadingIn Chess and games like it, the end-game is when there are few pieces left on the board. In Diplomacy, pieces aren’t removed so that is not an applicable definition. I call the end-game the period of the game when one power is near 18 SCs or one interest group (either a single power or […]
Continue ReadingLooking to join another game? Consider checking the game status box: “Active” and taking over for a surrendered power. This is a nice thing to do for your fellow gamers. If just a third of our players picked up 1 surrendered position for every game they started, surrenders wouldn’t be an issue. We all just […]
Continue ReadingLet’s not mince words: cheaters are idiots. What exactly is the point? And what could possibly be more boring than pushing pieces around in a game that you have fixed to win? Cheaters at PlayDip get caught. There are A LOT of volunteer resources and IT tools that go into making sure of that. Cheating […]
Continue ReadingPlayDip is the largest Diplomacy site in the world with (IMHO) the best interface and by far the best forum, but we have limited resources. This is a hobby site. Nearly all of the effort to run the site is from volunteers. Things can go wrong. Here is what you need to know to deal […]
Continue ReadingThese next few lectures are about PlayDip a bit more than Diplomacy. Today I will start by pointing out a few features of the game interface. 1) PlayDip has a house rule that there cannot be draws in the first four years of a game. However, recently the site has begun a trial allowing draws […]
Continue Reading“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one that is most responsive to change.” – Charles Darwin A common mistake, applicable throughout the game, is worth emphasizing in the mid-game: * Don’t be inflexible. Too often players get to the mid-game with one ally (or less!) and […]
Continue ReadingToday we continue with mid-game strategy, now from the perspective of the laggards – the 2 to 4 smallest powers coming out of the opening. Since in Diplomacy all surviving powers share equally in a draw, smaller powers are always still fully in the game. Further, in a dynamic game, large swings in fortunes of […]
Continue ReadingThe next lectures look at the effect on strategy of transitioning from the opening to the mid-game, first from the perspective of the leaders – the 3 or 4 largest powers. Before going too far, we need to answer: what is the mid-game? Hobby authors have offered many alternatives, but I am going to use […]
Continue Reading