I still get confused over some finer points of this game. Here’s one that’s currently stumping me.
Russia:
A Mun-Tyr
A Boh S Mun-Tyr
Italy:
A Bur-Mun
A Tyr S Bur-Mun
Is this a bounce? Does Mun-Tyr win? Do they both win?
I’m sure I’ll have more.
I would expect it to be resolved like this: Mun-Tyr stops Tyr supporting Bur-Mun. So, Bur-Mun only has one attack behind it. However, the army in Mun is moving out - to Tyr, which is attacked twice and only defended once (by itself). So I would expect both attacks to succeed, and the army in Tyr has to retreat.
This seems to me to be how it might work ‘in real life’ as well. The army in Mun marches to Tyr, supported by guns from Boh. This leaves Mun open for the army in Bur to come in from a different direction. They don’t get support from Tyr, because they’re too busy trying (and failing) to fight off the armies from Mun and Boh, but that doesn’t matter to them because they’re unopposed.
Also, presumably the army that was in Tyr will be able to retreat into Bur in the next phase, so the result is no net change in number of regions or units for either side, they have essentially swapped Mun for Tyr. Which, of course, is likely to be strategically significant nonetheless.
The alternative seems to be to say that the fact Mun is under attack stops the attack Mun-Tyr. Therefore the guns of Boh have nothing to support (i.e. they are facing the wrong way), and the attack Bur-Mun succeeds. But this would seem very harsh to Russia, giving them no ‘credit’ for their move Mun-Tyr. It’s much messier and seems less fair/natural than my suggestion above, which gives each side equal ‘credit’ for their similar moves.
Disclaimer - I am a very inexperienced player of Diplomacy so could well be wrong, just thought I’d move the thread along until someone more experienced spots it.
Russia moves to TYR. Italy moves to MUN. A point that is really important for understanding moves: determining whether support was cut is always resolved first. After support is cut, you can resolve moves. In this case Dead Cat’s intuition is correct.
If Italy had ordered A TYR - MUN and A BUR S A TYR - MUN then it would have been a standoff assuming no other attacks cut support for either of those supporting units first.
Logically, think of it like this. An army (or fleet) can only do 1 thing at a time, it can defend a hold or it can be part of an attack. It can’t both hold a position under attack and support another units attack. In this case the A BOH is not affected at all by the A BUR unit so it’s free to support the attack on TYR. The A MUN unit isn’t trying to defend MUN at all so A BUR has essentially a 1 on 0 attack and it just moves. A TYR however is getting it’s teeth kicked in by 2 armies with no other distractions, it never gets a chance to use it’s surplus strength to help another unit because it doesn’t have a surplus to give.
This. It’s been long enough since I played Diplomacy that I’m not even sure where my copy of the rules is, but IIRC, the rules actually say that you can cut a support, but you can’t cut a ‘cut.’ So an attacked unit cannot lend support.
Even without that, Mun-Tyr is moving with the strength of two units, being supported by Boh. Tyr isn’t supported in staying put, so it’s dislodged.
Since Mun-Tyr is successful, there’s nothing to keep Bur from moving into Mun.
Now if Italy had ordered Tyr-Mun with support from Bur, it would have been a standoff, two on two.
Thank you, that was very helpful.
So now a Diplomacy question on…diplomacy. In this case, more of a meta-question. This game was started by my brother, who has been playing with his sons pretty frequently. We roped in our other brother, and his son - both complete beginners. The beginner nephew was France, and was very quickly overrun by Italy. As Russia, I managed to stab Germany pretty severely, then England. I currently stand at 16 SCs to Italy’s 16 SCs. Italy doesn’t have anything to gain at the moment, and I can finish the game off in the next move (it’s currently in 1910 Spring retreats). Is a solo win here justified, or because there were extenuating circumstances (the new players), should I offer a draw?
Once there was a site where you could type in moves, and the computer would tell you the result. Did it (or a similar page) come back on-line?
Anyone up for an all-Doper game?
I found one yesterday, it was playdiplomacy.com. Pretty slick. We played our actual game on webdiplomacy.net, which is an awesome interface.
That depends on two things:
#1 - who’s Italy?
#2 - how important is it that you two remain on speaking terms?
You may get varied answers here, but I think most Dip players would agree that there is no such thing as sportsmanship of extenuating circumstances in this game. It, by design, is cut throat and stabbing friends and allies in the back is as much part of the game as reading maps.You do no one any favors by not playing to win.
Teach the lesson now that the goal is to win the game, there’s no reward for second place. This is a very important lesson because players who are satisfied with being first loser tend to totally imbalance the game and make it not fun for others. The rules are written in such a way that surviving with 1 SC and surviving with 16 SCs are the exact same result, just like losing with zero SCs or 16 SCs are the exact same result. This fact is an important motivator for ensuring that alliances are tenuous and that the game is dynamic and fair.