Comment by jboggan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jboggan | Hacker News Reader

When I was at my last gig we had a very active board game community and Diplomacy was eventually brought out. We played twice while I was there and it sowed an unbelievable amount of enmity and discord. It was incredibly fun.

The first time we played a majority of the players had never played before. We got through one "year" a week, with Spring and Autumn troop movements due by the end of the day on Tuesday and Thursday respectively. Then we'd resolve conflicts and submit build or retreat orders. Then we'd plot.

It was really fun but I think it was too fun - I think office productivity seriously suffered for it. Especially considering the amount of time we spent thinking/scheming/talking versus the scarce minutes in the evening actually "playing" the game. Still an amazingly well balanced game once you understand the subtleties. I fared extremely poorly by treating it like Risk and being far too aggressive. On my second playthrough I became much more docile and cooperative, and was thoroughly stabbed in the back for being so trusting.

We had a game of it erupt at my office as well. I wasn't even an actual player to the game but had _far_ too much fun seeding discontent among the alliances and feeding real/fake information to the other players (all good friends of mine).

The best is when someone actually got betrayed and then I'd get to say "I TOLD YOU THEY'D DO THAT!"

Can confirm it's a game for trolls lol!

Here at Standard Treasury, for awhile we had exactly six people. We played a bunch of Diplomacy games on http://www.playdiplomacy.com/ (terrible site). It was really fun, but terribly time consuming. We eventually stopped because six games over six months with the same six people is a little much.

...but you need 7 people.

You can play with Italy in Civil Disorder. It's a rotten variant.

In the only game I have played I was France with no Italy.

Far too advantageous for France.

I would hate that, gives too much strength to the southern powers.

Italy was my favorite country to play as. You absolutely need a strong ally, but if you don't get one, you can be a thorn in everyone's side.

I only really enjoy playing face to face. I just started a one move per week game at the office. Should get interesting.

Considering the age and popularity of the game, I'm surprised we haven't seen a solid boxed-set that includes alternate maps for different playercounts. I would expect the mechanics to work fine with any group large-enough for flowing alliances (5+) so it should be possible to design boards that work well with anywhere from 5-12 players.

The WW1-era setting of the game is interesting but really isn't essential.

But if course, this is exactly the kind of hardcore game that attracts hidebound players who scream bloody murder at things like alternate maps.

There are actually a number of alternative maps available online. I played several games on the Ancient Mediterranean map, which works well.

Indeed!

http://www.diplom.org/Online/variants.html

Do you know of a better site for playing diplomacy?

I hope you won't mind if I promote my site, http://backstabbr.com. We felt like none of the other Diplomacy sites on the Internet had a modern interface (and they weren't compatible with mobile phones) so we set out to fix that. We also have a Sandbox that you can use to play around with potential moves. If you give it a shot, I'd be eager to hear your feedback. Thanks!

I'm going to need to actually see how the controls work during play, but signup and creation are far better than any of the other web judges I've played under. Good job!

There is a sandbox you can try.

The Sandbox is definitely where I'd recommend you start. It'll give you an immediate feel for how everything other than press works. (And the press is pretty straightforward.)

Would be nice to have some tweens/effects for movement & resolve phases.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Could you elaborate?

When you look at the resolve phase, to have the lines/units tween into their new position (or bump one another in case of a draw), makes it easier to see what went where and makes it a bit juicier.

Ah, yes. Well, I can tell you that one of the things we've talked about a fair amount recently is changing the color of displacement/retreat move orders, so that they are more visually distinguished from a regular failed move.

I was sold right up to the point where I needed a Google account to sign in. Is that strictly necessary?

I'm afraid so. We presently use Google exclusively for user management. For whatever it's worth, the only thing we take from your profile is your email address.

unfortunately the people I would want to play this with don't all have gmail accounts.

Looks quite nice, but doesn't appear that you have had time to make it much mobile friendly?

Is it feature complete otherwise?

Well, our website is only partially responsive (if that's what you mean) but you can definitely use the site from any of the major phone platforms. To the best of my knowledge, none of the other online Diplomacy sites are fully playable via phone.

And yes, the game is fully implemented. We lack a lot of the alternate rules and maps you can find on other sites, but our goal was to make the best possible experience for the core game instead of trying to cater to all the variations.

Similarly, I introduced our office to Conquer Club (an online, slow-turn, RISK clone [0]) and it led to such a lack of productivity that it was subsequently banned. Too much fun!

[0]: http://www.conquerclub.com/

Hey, I didn't need to get anything done ever again anyway, cheers for linking it, it looks awesome!

Here's another online Risk clone with a variety of maps and house rules: http://landgrab.net

I have a couple friend groups that I play Warlight [0] with. It can be a slow, massive multi-day game down to a fast paced 2-on-2 "realtime" game.

[0]: http://www.warlight.net/

http://www.kdice.com is my favorite risk-like

I've been playing this with online friends:

http://triton.ironhelmet.com/

It's a space-based strategy game that has a lot of diplomatic elements, and the thing we really like is everything about it is completely deterministic, other than one researchable ability that gives you research points in a random field every turn.

Anyway, the default one turn per day is fantastic, and the game "ticks" once per hour, meaning it can take between a few hours and a couple of days for your fleets to transit between stars. It's a great pace for checking in a few times a day, and the game has calculators to help with timing coordinated attacks.

Finally, and I think this is key, do not enable formal alliances. They allow allies to share vision and they require a 24 hour notice to break the alliance, which takes all the fun out of it :)

I distinctly remember people storming out of games, including one who would not talk to us for weeks afterward. It is definitely a game that fuel emotions but it also helps you understand how to best deal with people, especially sensitive types.

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