Illegal Move

[RobLaoWai]

What the shitake? Illegal Move? Is that basically saying, "The computer let you do it, but in retrospect it shouldn't have, so we're just going to cancel the whole move and assume you HOLD for that season."???

I'm glad the IRS doesn't do this.

[Fatmo]

Yea, you're allowed to enter illegal moves on this site. On some sites you can't.

I actually like that you can enter them.

You can in the actual board game. And yea, if you do that in the board game, same thing. The units that made illegal moves will hold.

There may be diplomatic or even humorous reasons you might want to enter an illegal order.

I get that it can be kind of annoying if you're newer or actually made a mistake. You should always be sure to double check the rules if you're not sure a move is legal or not. Or ask another player in the game, if you trust them enough. There's even a moves sandbox on the site, though it can be a bit tedious to set up.

[Fatmo]

https://www.playdiplomacy.com/judge/new_manual.php

Here's the orders solver.

Looks like there's even a thing where you can enter the game number and it maybe gives you the current setup of that game. I don't remember that being there before, so maybe that's new. I guess I've never really had the need for it, so maybe I didn't see that and it was always there.

[Woolgie]

There are times when people will want to enter an illegal move such as ordering a fleet Rumania - Bulgaria south coast, so then they can say to their opponents ‘oops sorry I miss-entered my orders’ when in reality they did it deliberately to look like their attacking a Turkey when they’re not.

Consider also ordering an army from Rumania - Armenia. Looks like an illegal move, but it’s not if there’s a fleet in the Black Sea and it convoys the army. It’s easier/safer for the adjudication to allow illegal moves just in case they’re not always illegal.

Third case, someone has already won and in the last moves orders a bunch of illegal moves so that the order arrows spell out their initials.

[jay65536]

There are times when people will want to enter an illegal move such as ordering a fleet Rumania - Bulgaria south coast, so then they can say to their opponents ‘oops sorry I miss-entered my orders’ when in reality they did it deliberately to look like their attacking a Turkey when they’re not.

And then of course there is the “badly written order” rule which can come up in a human-adjudicated game, by which I might say that Rumania actually moves to the east coast of Bulgaria instead of holding, because the order can only be interpreted that way.