PlayDiplomacy approach to game rules

[rick.leeds]

TWC, this is covered under Via Convoy, Autodisband and Paradox Resolution rules - just looked it up myself for the FAQs

You're correct - distance from a home SC (furthest), fleets before armies, alphabetical order (earliest to latest or first to last).

And, yes, one move per sea space as if there were a fleet that could convoy the army.

I think that, rather than expanding (8) in the post (as the post shows how we have approached an ambiguous/silent aspect to the disbandment rules for a CD power and that the tie-break rules are specifically laid out in the rules) it would be best to link to the other thread. Maybe a bit 'picky' but consistent

[Jegpeg]

Another deviation from the written rules is that the rules do not give a minimum time before a draw can be agreed, where this site does not allow draws until the end of the fifth year (I think?)

Probably worth adding to the list I was looking here to confirm when draws can first be posted.

[WHSeward]

The site "temporarily" removed the draw restriction... I don't know, it was a long time ago. It is passed time we recognized it was a permanent change.

[Shyvve]

Hey everyone,

I thought I'd post something here about the Szykman convoy paradox rule we implement here. I've been playing at PlayDip for about 3.5 years now and have yet to have seen it invoked - until today that is!

This is a game currently in progress (174465) so I'm most definitely not asking for advice or comment on the game. I just thought I'd post an example of it being invoked. And this thread seemed to be the best place.
It occurred on the F03 turn with these orders:

Italy
F Ionian convoy A Tunis to Greece

Austria
F Greece support Aegean-Ionian

Turkey
F Aegean-Ionian

The resolution was:
Tunis MOVE Greece -> Order changed to Hold to resolve paradox
Ionian Sea CONVOY Tunis to Greece -> Dislodged by F Aegean Sea - Ionian Sea
Greece SUPPORT Aegean Sea to Ionian Sea -> resolved
Aegean Sea MOVE Ionian Sea -> resolved

So it's a really simple invocation of the Szykman rule. I also conducted a test using the Orders Solver - to see if the aborted convoy (with the order for the convoyed army being converted to a Hold order) would allow that army to also receive support in place.
So I input the above orders and also added:
F Wes support Tunis Hold
F NAf support F Tyrrhenian - Tunis
F Tyrrhenian - Tunis

Lo and behold, Tunis was not dislodged, so it was indeed able to receive support in place from F Wes.

Good stuff to know...

EDIT: Actually, I'm unsure whether this is truly Szykman or not. The rulebook discusses what happens when a convoyed army is sent to a province containing a fleet, and the fleet in the destination province is supporting an attack by another fleet against the convoying fleet. I seem to recall that, provided there is no alternate convoy route involving another convoying fleet, then the convoyed army's movement order doesn't cut the support. Anyways, I thought this occurrence was rare and interesting enough to highlight.

[Jack007]

Yes that is interesting. Makes sense in my opinion as the attacking army never arrives at the shore to fight the supporting fleet and thus cut her support. Just wondering what would have happened if Greece would have attacked ION, supported by AEG.

And what would happen if there was let's say an army in Serbia supporting Tun-Gre? Probably the same (supported unit failed).

Another question is whether WES should be able to support Tun to hold or not. Logically it shouldn't, as from view of the army in Tunis, the convoy is a simple move, and therefore should not be qualified to be supported to hold. On the other hand it can be said, that if the troups are not embarking they are able to defend with support, depending of the point in time when they find out that they cannot embark, at the beginning of the turn or at the end.

[NoPunIn10Did]

EDIT: Actually, I'm unsure whether this is truly Szykman or not. The rulebook discusses what happens when a convoyed army is sent to a province containing a fleet, and the fleet in the destination province is supporting an attack by another fleet against the convoying fleet. I seem to recall that, provided there is no alternate convoy route involving another convoying fleet, then the convoyed army's movement order doesn't cut the support. Anyways, I thought this occurrence was rare and interesting enough to highlight.

The first and second examples both show Szykman in use, as far as I can tell. The way Szykman phrased that opinion on paradox resolution was that in the event of a paradoxical convoy, the attacking army (who is being convoyed) will have their order converted into a hold. The way I think about it is that it makes the convoyed attack an illegal move because that move is the key element in a gamebreaking scenario. It's not inherently illegal on its own, but it must be treated as illegal in order to make everything else work.

[Shyvve]

I don't want to go too far down the ol' Szykman rabbit hole with this, but, I did a bit more Orders Solver exploration,
I've read a few articles on convoy paradoxes, involving Szykman, and they're usually these horribly contrived and convoluted things wherein A gets convoyed to B, B convoyed to C, C convoyed to A, etc. And there may be any number of supports involved for the both the convoying fleets and supports for the armies attacking their destinations. Makes my head hurt reading them...

First, to Jack, if AEG s Gre-Ion there's no issue/paradox at all in my view. The convoy is blown-up and the army stays in Tunis. (However, there's a twist to this, which I found out in my second test!).

NoPun's point that, in effect, the army's movement order is converted to a Hold - before adjudication and also reflecting what the in-game message says - similarly to how any illegal order is converted to a Hold before adjudication, is the right way to look at it. For example: A Bur-Mos & A Par s Bur does result in Bur holding AND receiving a valid support.

Also, per the rulebook, if there is another, alternate convoy route for the same army order (imagine Ionian being split into an eastern and western sea zone) and Italy having a fleet in each zone. Tun-Gre is ordered with both fleets ordered to convoy the army. In that case, the army would cut any support Austria's F AEG attempted to render, since the convoy has an alternate route which wasn't disrupted. The army movement wouldn't succeed though, unless sufficiently supported.

I peeked at this article on Szykman and noticed the following:
"If a situation arises in which an army's convoy order results in a paradoxical adjudication, the turn is adjudicated as if the convoying army had been ordered to hold, except that that army may not receive support to hold."
So we may be using a different implementation of Szykman (or Szykman has itself changed over the years) as we saw that Italy's A Tunis was indeed able to receive support to Hold, in the case where the convoy was cancelled due to a paradox.

But, lol....here is the result of my new Orders Solver test. What happens if?:
Turkish F AEG s Austrian F Gre-ION
Italian F ION c Italian A Tun-Gre
Italian F WES s Tun
French F NAf s French F TYN-Tun

Note, there's no Szykman here. So there's no cancellation of the convoy and no conversion of A Tunis' order to Hold before adjudication takes place. So the question becomes, is A Tunis still eligible to receive support as it was under Szykman?

Answer in spoilers. You might be surprised!

FRANCE
North Africa SUPPORT Tyrrhenian Sea to Tunis -> resolved
Tyrrhenian Sea MOVE Tunis -> resolved

ITALY
Ionian Sea CONVOY Tunis to Greece -> Dislodged by 'f gre - ion'
Tunis MOVE Greece -> Destroyed by 'f tyn - tun'
Western Mediterranean SUPPORT Tunis to HOLD -> Supported order does not correspond

AUSTRIA
Greece MOVE Ionian Sea -> resolved

TURKEY
Aegean Sea SUPPORT Greece to Ionian Sea -> resolved

Tunis gets zapped in this scenario (!) and this time F WES' support order is tagged with "Supported order does not correspond". So while A Tunis' move order was of course unsuccessful again, it was definitely not converted to a Hold order before adjudication in this case.

[DQ]

That result doesn't surprise me. Argh, I don't know how to use the spoiler button? Time to learn.

Is this the spoiled bit?

Tunis' move order is a legal one, and a moving unit can't be supported to hold. The conversion to a hold order on paradox is crazy-making, because now what you are doing is looking to see if there is a valid convoy before you check to see if the move order is valid! There isn't supposed to be an order of operations for this stuff, which is what leads to paradoxii in the first place.

[Jack007]

That's indeed astonishing. Because in both cases (Gre s AEG-ION vs. AEG s Gre-ION) the orders of the convoying power are exactly the same. Thus, the survival of the army in Tunis is SOLELY dependent on which of the two variants Turkey/Austria chose to defeat the convoy. That makes the destiny of Tunis very arbitrary for the convoying power, considering that neither Gre nor AEG have direct contact with Tunis. It is very difficult to find a (real world) narrative which would describe that mechanism.

DG is right in his judgement that declaring the move Tun-Gre an invalid order in the Szykman constellation is problematic and crazy-making, and probably unnecessary at all.

Jack

[NoPunIn10Did]

That result doesn't surprise me. Argh, I don't know how to use the spoiler button? Time to learn.

Tunis' move order is a legal one, and a moving unit can't be supported to hold. The conversion to a hold order on paradox is crazy-making, because now what you are doing is looking to see if there is a valid convoy before you check to see if the move order is valid! There isn't supposed to be an order of operations for this stuff, which is what leads to paradoxii in the first place.

I think when it comes to paradox resolution, you have to just accept that you're doing something different than ordinary adjudication. The normal formulas just simply don't work for the inputs given, so you have to amend the inputs before you proceed. The holy grail would be a paradox resolution rule that (1) only fixes paradoxes and (2) doesn't actually require you to determine whether a paradox exists first.

As for the army not being able to receive support to hold, that appears to be an amendment to the original Szykman rule that was proposed.

I can see the logic behind not allowing the army to receive support to hold. I think the better option detailed in Shyvve's link would be to have every fleet convoying that unit to be converted to hold orders instead. It's such a rare scenario that I don't think PlayDip's resolution of it is going to be altered at this time, however.