What are the best powers to play in Diplomacy? | Hacker News Reader

What are the best powers to play in Diplomacy?

uk.diplom.org

99 pointspolm2364 comments

For those who haven't played but want an understanding of Diplomacy, here's how it was described to me:

It's like Risk without luck, but instead of taking an hour it'll take seven, and instead of being mad at your opponent at the end for a few days you'll hate them for the rest of your life

The way it's played is that there are seven players who are effectively equal in power. There is a timed period where you can discuss your intent freely with others(as open or closed as you'd like).

During this time you strategize, plot against, make deals and offer support.

At the end of the timed period you write down your moves, they're put into an envelope and opened all at once.

No single nation is more powerful than another, you almost always need another's support to make any progress. That said, you don't have to stick to your word, and neither does your opponent.

Did you promise Germany you'd help them into Warsaw, but also promise Russia you wouldn't? It doesn't matter both were plotting against you the whole time because they overheard you talking with England about how you were going to stab both of them in the back.

It's a really fantastic game that has unlimited re-playability.

There's also an urban legend that it was JFK and Kissinger's favorite game[0][1]

[0]: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1529003/kissingers-favorite... [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/6je8nu/til_henr...

> No single nation is more powerful than another

Except Italy, who always gets the short straw :p

Apparently, in high level play, the countries are all viewed as essentially equal despite them being asymmetric.

For example, in the novice games I've played, Austria is always the first to bite it due to the fact that they have the most borders to defend. However, if they play their cards right and can eliminate a neighbor, they end up in a pretty powerful position on the board.

In high-level play the countries are essentially equal because high-level players adapt to compensate - powerful countries are early targets. Doesn't mean the advantages don't exist.

I've played a few times on central power alliances in which Italy was a part, and we ended in three-way draws.

I would imagine based on your description that the replayability is in fact limited by the number of new friends you can generate. Or at least how good your post game negotiations are.

there are web-based implementations that hide who's playing what country, and online matchmaking, so the ability to generate new v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶s̶ friends is very high.

"hate them for the rest of your life" is hyperbolic. My friends and family have a good gaming culture, and when I've played Diplomacy with them no hard feelings last past the end of the game.

You can't really have fun playing this kind of game seriously with people unless you're able to separate what happens in the game from the rest of your friendship.

There is online play for that, mainly at backstabbr.com.

Risk already takes seven hours to play.

Recommended reading to get a feel for the game (even if you know the game, and even if you read it before): https://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-t...

I've designed a Diplomacy card game that plays 3-6 players and takes about 15 minutes per player. It still has all of the backstabbing and alliances but abstracts the map away in favor of a "your borders are the people on your left and right". It is a lot of fun and less friendship ruining. I'd love for some hard core Diplomacy players to give it a try.

A lot of people in this thread seem to have experience playing Diplomacy in person, which surprises me.

If you play in person it takes a very long time, but if you're inexperienced it's not unlikely someone will get knocked out after just a few turns. So you'd need to be prepared to set aside a day but also prepared to have nothing to do for most of it.

While I'm sure the in-person experience offers something special, this seems like a game that's much more accessible play-by-post. The internet makes this easier than ever, but even in my limited understanding the history of play-by-mail Diplomacy is basically as old as the game itself.

I've only played in person a handful of times (hard to organize even if you really want to). But every game ended in a story which we friends have retold and mythologized over the years. I'll probably never play a real game of Diplomacy again, but those games were way better than whatever else we were doing.

I tried playing PBM, and IMO it misses the entire personal charismatic essence of diplomacy.

> I tried playing PBM, and IMO it misses the entire personal charismatic essence of diplomacy.

It depends on the people you get. I've had great random games where everyone ended up role playing as the period appropriate leader of their country. I've also had games where nobody talked to each other leaving me wondering why we were playing.

Two of my friends sometimes enjoyed role playing as me. Imagine Robin Williams playing board games who always tried to "shoot the moon" (Hearts card game reference).

Another fun variant is "backseat driver". 14 participants. Each country has a "mover" and a "talker". Movers cannot communicate, only observe. Talkers cannot move.

What is PBM? I didn’t find it on google.

play by mail

In high school my friends played a lot of "gunboat", where you stay at the board and all negotiations happen in the open. Seasons can be as short as you want, we usually aimed for around 10 minutes. Obviously lacks some of the planning/scheming of the full game I think its a much faster way to learn the mechanics of openings and builds and such.

Indeed. I've played both online and in person, and I don't think I'll ever play it in person again even if it would be with my friends.

I could envision playing in tournaments or other set ups that could be fun (maybe you do a game where each nation is led by a team so when you get out you at least have a few friends to hang out with), but those are different from casual games with friends.

The one time I played it we all conceded the game pretty quickly, because nobody was that interested in doing any scheming... and without schemes it becomes a pretty boring zero-sum stalemated game.

I feel like the gameplay everyone talks about comes from the large metagame that has grown up around it, the game itself is very small and boring.

I played this with colleagues, with a move every lunch break. Not a good fit for every personality type on the team....

Us nerds would play Diplomacy, Star Fleet Battles, GURPS, those railroad games in person. There was usually games, VHS movies, pizza, video games and whatnot off to the side. Kibitzing and arguing about the rules was half the fun. Turns spanned hours, games spanned weeks.

Finding new players (aka freshmeat) was always a challenge.

Then we transitioned to online hosted games (someone wrote a Diplomacy adjudicator for our BBS watering hole). Our only face to face games happened at the conventions, like DragonCon.

Then one die hard Diplomacy fanatic adjudicated our games via email.

There was one older fellow in our orbit, nym ToadFather, who reportedly still did postal games, spanning years. I think he also had a zine, for updates, commentary, and analysis.

Relationships, pets, offspring, mortgages, other interests decimated our collective time for board games.

I have played many games, but only won one- the first one I played. I was Italy, I made deals with everyone, backstabbed with multiple written orders to show different alliances to players, and won. But then nobody ever trusted me in Diplomacy again, so I could never make any deals and was always eliminated.

Yeah, there's a huge meta that goes along with diplomacy. I've heard numerous times that those that play competitively rarely ever backstab. They understand that there needs to be a certain level of trust in order to succeed.

They way I would describe it is that 3-way ties are very stable. Backstabbing to get into a 3-way tie is certainly considered fair game and there should be no hard feelings among experienced players.

But not respecting the 3-way is a whole other thing. 2-way ties are extremely tricky, so eliminating the third player will usually result in a solo win, often with the third player throwing in to punish the perceived aggressor.

So experienced players do tend to play for the 3-way and will only work with others that they know will respect the 3-way draw. On the other hand, solo wins are wicked fun and one solo win is worth ten 3-way ties (even though tournament scoring and other rankings don't reflect that fact.)

EDIT: I should add that there is one other dynamic that comes into play, and that is that 4-way draws are really frowned on by many players. A larger player with a smaller ally that stays "loyal" to their small partner can force the elimination of a medium size power that would otherwise have participated in the draw and that can upset the apple cart, possibly in the larger player's favor. But this strategy is pretty transparent and is usually unsuccessful among better players.

I also won early, also by backstabbing people. It was completely known that I was not to be trusted.

But it almost made the game easier. Facing someone with blind rage would cripple their game. Either they would paralyze themselves defending non-existent threats from me, or they would go after me hard. But blatantly going for someone just opens the door for someone else -- and that's who I would make the deal with. It seemed I could always appeal to someone's greed.

For anyone who hasn't played Diplomacy, it's a very interesting game but can take a very long time to complete. There's a round of negotiation where you can meet with other players and coordinate moves, then all moves are executed at the same time. Much of the length of the game is dependent on the personalities involved and any rules you apply to limit round length.

I started a game at 7 PM and left at 4:30 AM. None of the players had been eliminated, but we all had a great time backstabbing.

I play an open strategy, and hold conversations at the table with anyone. Of course I lie on occasion, and expect others to do the same. Overall I feel like it adds a nice dynamic and helps move the game along. I'm not sure it would be as fun if everyone took the same approach.

Its actually a game that lends itself well to playing very slowly asynchronously (i.e. on the internet or mail). I've only ever played games where you have a full year every day. Those games take weeks to complete.

The site appears to be down, here's a recent archive of it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200510060156/http://uk.diplom....

For anyone interested in a slightly lighter Diplomacy, I recommend checking out Game of Thrones the board game. Like Diplomacy, it can be played with no randomness, but the way orders work is much less tedious. It ties in nicely with the themes from the books. It is still pretty intense, so more for the Risk crowd than the Catan crowd.

I really like GoT but the main game is quite imbalanced. Here are the stats for thronemaster (online version of the game) after tens of thousands of full games: https://www.thronemaster.net/?goto=statistics&sub=games&type...

As you can see, some houses are 3X more likely to win than some others.

It IS a fantastic game however, it just needs a few house rules to balance it.

For another truly exceptional game with even more treachery than Diplomacy, may I suggest Dune (1979 with a reprint last year)? It has my favorite power of all time in a game: before the game starts, the Bene Gesserit write down the name of a player and a turn. If that player wins on that turn, the Bene Gesserit win instead.

I don't think that anybody's ever complained about "the way the orders work" in diplomacy being "tedious"? Do you just mean that the game is faster?

Can anyone clarify what "white", "gray", "partial", and "fake" mean? "Broadcast-only" seems pretty self-explanatory, but I can't figure out what these other terms refer to in terms of allowed communication.

There's a full explanation here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20151123190951/http://diplom.org...

I see, thanks!

For some weird reason, I've always had the most fun playing Turkey. I've never played a game where you weren't allowed to discuss things with other players so maybe that would change things, but it just seems, well, undiplomatic and frankly I want the interaction if I'm going to play this type of game.

I am curious about the whole psychology of going for a draw, but I guess I've just played with people who I or they will curse the sudden but inevitable betrayal.

For those that think diplomacy is a bit slow but still like the idea, Colonial Diplomacy is a bit faster and pretty fun.

My first game was as Turkey, got lucky with a ton of conscript armies and rolled Europe. Was fun, would do again.

My first game was as Turkey, got unlucky when Italy and Russia decided to murder me, left the game in under 20 minutes. Wandered the hall until I found an open game of Alhambra, and never had a chance to play Diplomacy again.

I've played as Turkey a number of times. There's a natural stalemate that occurs with the Black Sea. If either Turkey or Russia take it they can steamroll the other. If they both try to take it then they just waste their time. If they're able to trust each other and not try to get it, then there's a lot of potential for them to win, along with plenty of temptation for the other party to stab their counterpart.

If you enjoy diplomacy but are after a more short/casual game, I highly recommend junta. It's a great game where players are controlling the ruling families in a banana Republic and are trying to funnel as much money as possible to their Swiss bank accounts. Lots of backstabbing involved, but much shorter games than diplomacy, so one can easily incorporate it into a short game night.

Junta's rules are quite complex and it will take you a while to start your first game. But if you don't care losing a few of your best friends (maybe because they execute you after you fought a revolution together), it's really worth playing.

You might also enjoy Coup ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/131357/coup). There's a bunch of other board games which are short/casual and have elements of back stabbing / bluffing.

I heard a (probably apocryphal) story about a couple breaking up due to a diplomacy game.

Bet to worst: Russia, Turkey, England, France, Italy, Germany, Austria-Hungary.

"It sucks being hyphenated" has been a watchword for me since high school, I like that it's been proven out here.

I prefer to think of it as "The Habsberg Empire" to avoid the hyphen.

Article makes a reasonably compelling argument that France is the best, rather than middle.

They're in a tough position without a navy

Huh? Fleet Brest.

agree with that. russia has too many fronts. can easily be ganged up against. if the western powers are united in the opening, they can completely neutralize russia's northern port.

Funny coincidence, I was randomly thinking about Diplomacy the other day. Where are the best places to play Diplomacy online these days?

I’ve never played here but this is what I’ve heard: https://www.playdiplomacy.com/

Playing online kills the best aspect (IMO), that is, careful deception and ... diplomacy.

Gunboat is an awesome version of the boardgame -- no messages other than the moves on the board. There's plenty of diplomacy and careful deception involved.

Playing online through exchanging letters is slow (e.g. a week per game year), but it definitely has very serious deception and diplomacy.

I played a game of Diplomacy online where people started doctoring photos of texts and sending them to each other to spread misinformation. I started only collaborating with people over phone calls and told everyone I would not be making any strategies over text, so I could have plausible deniability about any fake photos.

Wow.

Are the players aware of message signing?

Not true at all. It's different, but plenty of deception and diplomacy. I've played werewolf online as well (in forum threads, way back in the day) and it's quite similar!

https://www.backstabbr.com/

webdiplomacy.net has an old-timey interface but it's a great site to play on

Personal preference: France, England, Russia, Austria, Germany, Turkey, Italy.

(2006)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com