‘Sovereign chess’ is a battle without loyalty or humanity (2020) | Hacker News Reader

‘Sovereign chess’ is a battle without loyalty or humanity (2020)

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185 pointsamichail40 comments

That just seems like a crazy amount of pieces and complexity. It looks cool but god strategy must be so hard. If you have played people who start taking long times to think through moves, I feel like this would basically lock people up for hours.

I was going to say the same thing. The problem with creating complications is you need a fairly large ecosystem to ensure that you discover (through people playing) the many intricate strategic situations that can happen.

It's like when you play civilization and there's a zillion ways to win, it leads to a lot of time being spent becoming even slightly familiar with the game.

On a player's opening move, their possible move options are identical to traditional chess, since they only control the pieces of their color. As they land on color squares, the move options can increase, but for typical chess players, the learning curve is not too steep.

Most games end in under 40 moves...

Certainly true, but I think there's a niche audience that these kind of games cater to, and for those people a few hours is excellent. Not unlike video games such as Civilization I suppose.

If it's unclear what a good strategy would even look like then you're down to playing by intuition and improvisation.

It sounds fun in the way board games were fun as children, before anyone knew about an optimal strategy for this or that game.

See also the recent review in Abstract Games magazine: https://www.abstractgames.org/gamereview23.html

"But controlling one army through another army creates webs of puppet strings. It’s dangerous, because losing one piece can lose you control of that color and any colors that piece controlled."

"Be prepared to notice you’re in check without knowing when it happened"

This game looks cool, I'd definitely want to try it. However, the potential for long disorienting chains of command and confusion about who owns what through which pieces on which squares tells me that this should be a digital implementation. Maybe after plenty of experience with that, advanced players could successfully transition to a physical board. I think the card game Illuminati does a much more manageable job at creating factional oriented game pieces of which control can be gained and even change hands.

Wouldn't the ambiguous chain of command be part of the charm of a game like this? Emphasises diplomatic ability.

Here diplomatic ability maps to legal deceit through misdirection. Illuminati has an option to enable any cheating that is not caught. I tried playing it that way with my friends once. Our table ended up feeling like a city of thieves.

Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/SovereignChess/videos

Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhq7oppTUuc, this guy does a lot of other board games too.

Can't find any videos of people actually playing it

Chess variants are very interesting. It'd be very nice if someone could build an online version of this actually.

I'm curious what an optimal strategy for playing such a complex game like this is (if it even exists). I also wonder how much of a role intuition plays, i.e. the ability for chess masters to "feel" whether or not positions are winning or losing.

This game looks fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

Finally, a game that teaches principles of realpolitik?

That would be Diplomacy [0]

Worth trying out online for example through webDiplomacy [1]. It's my favourite game.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)

[1] https://webdiplomacy.net/

try dominions 5

There's no point in playing Dominions unless you join one of the online communities of hardcore Dominions players, because as a singleplayer game it's terrible and (unlike Diplomacy) you can't learn the rules in five minutes (or five years), so any casual group will bounce off of its abstruse interface within a handful of turns. Once you get in with some of the hardcore players you will indeed find that it's Diplomacy raised to the tenth power, but you have no hope of ever winning any game unless you're a serious no-lifer.

I would play this more often but I’m running out of friends.

Assuming this is a "diplomacy destroys friendships" joke...

Games are a place where we can see culture clash in the small.

My sister didn't speak to me for days after, having folded to a bluff in poker, she flipped over my hand and called me a cheater.

To any poker player, my behavior was fine and she would be way out of line for revealing my cards.

On the other hand, I was intentionally misleading a family member for personal gain at their expense, which away from the poker table would be a huge breach of trust

It’s a short version of I’m running out of friends to play diplomacy with. Not everyone likes realpolitik as much as I do.

In poker the adversarial aspect is clearer. In diplomacy you have to develop trust to later exploit it by breaking alliances and traitorously conspiring with enemies in a way that guarantees your former allies loss. The betrayal is more acute in a way that feels more fundamental. Telling them that they were naïve for trusting you and they must do the same if they want to win tends not to go down so well.

My question is it possible to be good at Diplomacy without being a socio opath in real life. In poker, someone being good at bluffing is scary (separately from just being better at the math part), much like someone being better than you at sports is physically intimidating off the field because they could beat you up. Diplomacy even more so than poker, because manipulation and deceipt is the only skill in the game. It doesn't even have the cooperative part of the real world's "build something of value together" -- it's a zero sum or negative sum game.

It is Kissinger’s favorite game.

The people I do play with tend to enjoy the departure from normality. One guy I play with is very loyal in real life but will betray as soon as possible in game - too soon so it is actually sub optimal play but for a different reason (newbies are too trusting and think they can hold alliances into late game). Compartmentalization is needed to keep playing - or be a sociopath.

I have ADHD and I feel that my emotional responses are learned rather than entirely natural. I think it makes me an effective lier - but I still don’t like doing it. I do enjoy introducing realpolitik to friends, helping them understand the palpable paranoia of eminent betrayal and how essential it is to maintain strength (the weakest get ganged up in). It’s one thing to read about the mechanics of realpolitik it’s another to emotionally feel them. For a deceptively simple game I’ve had friends stop playing because they found it too intense and damaging to their faith in humanity.

The world is zero sum.

We only have one Earth for now.

That’s not what zero sum means.

One person being harmed isn’t always a benefit to one or more other people.

Though, really, seeing as utility between persons isn’t clearly commensurable, it isn’t clear to me that the statement that the world is zero sum even, like, makes sense as a claim, because there’s no “sum of everyone’s utility” to ask whether this sum is constant.

But, if there was such a sum, it wouldn’t be constant.

I hope it's possible, or I have a lot of sociopaths for friends.

I'd say of course it's possible, but you probably do have to play the game like a sociopath. Just like you can watch a violent movie and not be horrified in the same way you would if you were seeing the same things happen for real, you can behave in a manner in a game that you wouldn't in reality.

As an aside I will say that manipulation and deceit are far from the only skills in the game. There are significant strategic and tactical elements, as well as probabilistic/game theory thinking as well. Plus, on the interpersonal side, it's as much about just reading people as it is about manipulating them.

I wonder if there's a way to soften the personal blow of Diplomacy without changing the game. Something simple, perhaps, like literally wearing masks - to emphasize that this isn't you, it's your in-game persona. Or maybe something more subtle, like making the game really short so you can play many games, where each betrayal in each game becomes insignificant on a personal scale - it impersonalizes, and becomes simply data and decisions.

(I've only played Diplomacy once, and it left a very sour taste in my mouth. I don't think we even finished one game, and it certainly hurt real-world relationships.)

I think fast games are better so people are more likely to experience both being betrayed and being the betrayer. It helps develop cognitive empathy. Plus less time and effort is invested in each game.

Sorry to hear about the hurt real world friendships. The same would have happened to me but being able to play multiple games helped patch things up.

Another problem with Diplomacy is that it kind of ruins the game if someone quits before they're eliminated. And certainly if multiple players do. But most non-hardcore Diplomacy fans don't find it fun to stick around playing the game for potentially several hours after their position becomes fairly hopeless. I roped some friends into an online game in the early pandemic times, and it started out fun, but half of them lost interest once they felt an alliance had 'won'. Of course I'm thinking this is just the beginning of the midgame, but I can see how most wouldn't feel that way.

Best that everyone understands what they're getting into, at least.

Is there a shorter version of Diplomacy one could use to introduce people to the game and its concepts?

Some possibilities here: https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/31753/short-term-diplomac...

I'm not sure how well they'd give people the idea of the full game though. I suppose a better approach might be to take them through a game replay and talk about the strategy and likely communications going on throughout. Even less likely than finding a group of friends willing to sit through a game of Diplomacy would be finding a group willing to sit through a lengthy explanation of the game rather than just jumping in though, so I guess that's likely not such a good suggestion after all.

Give it a sports spin? "Spectacular comeback after dire betrayal ... a must-watch game!"

Would a much smaller board not do it?

Sort of a “Iterated Diplomats dilemma” problem?

If you hit me up on my email I would be willing to try.

What a fantastic game it is. Thanks for that link, maybe I’ll play again.

Have you played on playdiplomacy.com as well? I've played a few games there, but haven't tried webdiplomacy. Curious how they compare.

A long time ago I played Galaxy Plus - a variant of Galaxy PBEM game with simple rules and a galaxy full of races controlled by humans - 50 players start a game, 1-3 win in the end.

It was one of the most intense gaming experience I have ever had. With 3 turns per week, a single game could last for a year, and to win you had to be a good diplomat to not get swarmed by your neighbors. It also taught me a lot about politics.

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