Does anyone play Diplomacy?

[ShiftyPowers]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)

Read the wikipedia for in depth information, but in short it's a board game where there are 7 players representing the 7 pre-World War I European powers. To win the game one of the nations must take 18 supply centers (a majority of the 34 on the board). Where the game gets interesting is that it is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to do it alone. Before every turn you talk to the other nations and work out deals and that sort of thing. Sometimes two powers wipe everyone else out and declare a draw at 17-17... much more likely is that one of the allies will stab the other in the back at the worst possible time and get the solo victory. Of course, if two powers are clearly allied and start plowing through the board early, it benefits the rest of the world to all team up and stop them.

As far as I can tell the game was it's most popular in the 60s and 70s and counts JFK and Henry Kissinger as two of it's biggest fans. JFK allegedly arranged for games in the Oval Office.

Thanks to the internet, you don't have to actually buy a board anymore, you can just go to Web Diplomacy, create an account, and start playing. If there's any interest maybe we could get some SG games going.

 

[yoyo913]

Nerd-dar is going off.

Never really heard of this game, how does it compare to risk?

edit: I looked at the game site and saw that the games took more than a day to play.

Shifty, remember when you owned SG at fantasy basketball?

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Nerd-dar is going off.

Never really heard of this game, how does it compare to risk?

Risk is basically the checkers to Diplomacy's chess. And yes, it's nerdy.

 

[Rocky]

I signed up. Get some more nerds together and we can get a game.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

7 people are needed for a game. I suppose we have 3 now. When we have 7 I'll start a private game with turns every 24 hours (It will take awhile to complete the game, but I don't know if we can get everyone online for 2-5 hours at the same time for a live game).

To anyone who wants to play, DEFINITELY read the wikipedia entry. Also, this site is very good:

http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/strategy.htm

And you might want to play a few games just to get the hang of movement, support, and just some general things about the game.

 

[Ubik Valis]

I'm willing to give it a shot if we play with a 24 hour turn-limit...

 

[ShiftyPowers]

lol

I have no idea what's going on. I'm playing a game with 5 minutes/phase, but I'm just trying different things. I guess for beginners it's easier if we start playing a game from the beginning, coz as I'm doing now, this is looking very tough. I'm just waiting for the moment when I'm gonna lose lol.

EDIT:

Actually, I'm getting better. lol It looks an interesting game though. Must play some games to get use to it though.

What game are you? Link? I want to see how you're doing. Also, what power did you draw? Hopefully not Austria.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Just play new games, usually when people leave it's for a reason.

http://webdiplomacy.net/profile.php?userID=23718

That's me, btw

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Probably not tonight. I'm going to take a little break from the quick public games.

 

[Sir Calumn]

I have heard of this game but never played it, would like to though, I am a keen Risk player but am frustrated with the amount of luck involved in Risk so the lack of dice in Diplomacy is a great attraction. I do, however, have a major set back playing such games as they last a long time and require whiskey and by the end I tend to be so drunk I can hardly see the bloody thing, which tends to have a serious affect on my gameplay. Someone once described me as "the best risk player I have ever met when sober, the worst when drunk".

My friends and I once had dreams of creating a new 'super'game, Risk meets Monopoly (so you could trade countries for money, collect revenue from your territories, buy troops or trade them with each other etc etc), plus a full set of naval rules. However our plans spiralled out of control and we realised it would never happen when we decided we would settle for nothing less than a giant metal globe with every country in the world, and magnetic pieces which you push around with sticks. The marketing price was going to be around £3000.

 

[ShiftyPowers]

Anyone interested now?

 

[Mus]

I'd give it a go, wouldn't be the best though

edit: Just realised after registering I've played the board game version in my high school history class

 

[Sepak]

Sounds cool.

 

[RobbieD_PL]

I'm up for it.

 

[Mus]

I'm up for it.

Can you be Poland?

 

[RobbieD_PL]

Apparently there are only 7 powers:
Tsarist Russia, Ottoman Turkey, Italy, France, Germany, Hapsburg Austria-Hungary and UK.

You have to strategize battle-plans and verbally negotiate potential alliances among them, depending on how many players are in a game. The less players you have, the more countries they can control (min. 2 ~ max. 7). Going over the very basic movements, this reminds me of Rise of Nations and moving over the strategic maps; the difference being that in RoN, you had to capture as much territory on the map as possible, with supply centres being a secondary thing. Here - the strategy is aimed precisely at capturing the supply centres, as winning = a simple majority of 17+1.

EDIT: How does attacking neutral countries work? You simply put your troops in a neutral territory? Also, what are the benefits of attacking a neutral territory which doesn't have a supply centre?

 

[Mus]

There's different campaigns though, I played one with USA only and each player is a region

 

[RobbieD_PL]

There's different campaigns though, I played one with USA only and each player is a region

http://webdiplomacy.net/variants.php

Which one from the ones in this link do you mean?

This is the classic one from Shifty's earlier post:

 

[Mus]

That one the fall of american empire,

I'm also playing another at the moment modern diplomacy II

 

[RobbieD_PL]

That one the fall of american empire,

I'm also playing another at the moment modern diplomacy II

Ohk. So I think Shifty wants to play the Classic one.