Just to reassure new players, Diplomacy games tend to be pretty leisurely affairs, although percieved time does funny things. Once you’ve sent in your orders it can be infuriating to have to wait 3 days to see if your brilliant strategy worked. On the other hand, if you are trying to arrange something via email and your partner only checks his email once per day then it can be almost impossible to set things up in the required time.
Also, the biggest rule of thumb in Diplomacy is: the player that talks the least becomes the biggest target.
Unexpected news, I’m going out of town all this week from tomorrow til next Sunday. If you have a game ready before next Sunday, then someone can take my place. If not, I’m still game.
Flood, it probably won’t be an issue. Odds are I’ll be looking to get things organized this week and the first set of orders likely won’t be due until at least middle of next week. Please send me your country preferences, ranked from 1-7, before you go. If you do I can get the game set up and ready to go while you’re gone.
I’ll play if I could figure out what the heck it is and how it works. If anyone needs another player, feel free to e-mail me and explain exactly how it works. All I’ve comprehended thus far is it started as a board game, and it’s about European domination. Each person picks a country, and tries to take over. But how does that work? Or you can explain here. I don’t care which, but I’m curious now.
Do we have two full games yet? Who will be in which game? Does anyone else have their country preferences selected yet? No updates for a whole day and I’m getting antsy!
Did you check through any of the links I posted on the first page? There is an explanation of the rules there, and another that discusses strategy.
The moves are pretty basic. For example, one Army versus another Army is a “bounce” or a tie. Neither gets to move where they’d like. But you can also support moves from adjacent spaces, so an Army supported by an Army vs an Army would win. It gets a bit more complex when you taken into account that Armies can’t support into water and Fleets can’t support inland (past the coast). But you should get the hang of most of these pretty quickly.
The much trickier part is convincing other people to do what you want, or not do what you don’t want. The game was designed to be extremely balanced. There is no luck involved. And it’s impossible to go it alone and win. So you have to convince someone else to help you, just to survive, much less win. Wins are actually not as common as draws. Usually some Great Power (or two) is eliminated in the first 5-7 years. The pecking order is often set early than that, but can change dramatically.
It’s a decent strategy game, but it’s a great game to practice your skills of persuasion.
Whenever I see commands issued for email games the syntax looks rather different from a head-to-head game. Am I correct here? Or have I just always been sloppy with issuing commands
I don’t really know/recall the syntax for head-to-head games. An example of email sytnax:
Turkish Orders:
A Bud-Vie
A Gal-Bud
A Tri S A Bud-Vie
F Gre-ION
F ION-ADR
Which means
Army in Budapest moves to Vienna
Army in Galicia moves to Budapest
Army in Trieste supports the Army moving from Budapest to Vienna
Fleet in Greece moves to the Ionian Sea
Fleet in the Ionian Sea moves to the Adriatic Sea
Now lets’ say that an opponent ordered
Italian Orders:
A Trl-Vie
F Ven-ADR
A Rom-Ven
which means
Army in Tyrolia moves to Budapest,
Fleet in Venice moves to the Adriatic
Army in Rome moves to Venice
The result is
Turkey
A Bud-Vie
A Gal-Bud
A Tri S A Bud-Vie
F Gre-ION bounce
F ION-ADR fails
Italy
A Trl-Vie fails
F Ven-ADR bounce
A Rom-Ven fails
(Note: above assumes that Vienna was unoccupied to start the turn)
The Italian move to Vienna failed because Turkey moved to Vienna with superior forec. The Turkish fleet in the Ionian bounced with the Italian fleet from Venice (neither gets the space), so the Turkish fleet in Greece could not move into the Ionian. Likewise the Italian army in Rome could not move into Venice since that space was not available, due to the bounce in the Adriatic.
OK guys, I still haven’t heard from enough people yet. So we’re not fully go.
Here’s what I’m looking at from a roster standpoint.
Omni’s Newbie Experience Johnny Bravo (rookie) Mastema (rookie) Erika (rookie) Royal Nonesuch (played in -GRY) Flood (rookie) Einmon (rookie) Whack-a-Mole (might as well be a rookie)
Shibb’s Magical Diplomacy Tour Omniscient (don’t you worry your little head about it) Lockz (played once) Scuba_Ben (played a few times) Lemur866 (played 3 times) Trigonal Planar (intermediate)
We’ve still got Mystery Emailer #1 floating around, they haven’t responded to my message. I’ll be sending another one tonite in hopes that with the start of a new work week, I’ll get a reply. I’ve bumped Royal Nonesuch up to the Newbie game to replace that person to make it a complete 7. Since flood is going out of town I’m not going to rush this thing ahead, and if I hear back from the mystery mailer by Tuesday Morning I’ll stick him/her into Royal’s spot.
Shibb has a friend who’s played in other Dip games who would likely be interested in the second game, and if I hear from both him and mystery mailer we’ll have 14 and should be able to get under way. If not, then I’ll go ahead with the Newbie game as listed above. When I decide you’ll all get a email from me requesting country preferences. Don’t worry, I won’t forget about you. A few of you have already sent them, thanks, though I’ll probably request you resubmit them once things are finalized as a formality.
If there’s anyone else out there who is interested and hasn’t emailed me, please do in case the other two players are MIA for an extended period of time or if someone drops out unexpectedly before the start.
Don’t worry your little heads about Omni indeed. For if I’m the GM we’ll make sure he has a sufficient handicap, like playing Italy or Austria or Egypt or some such difficult starting position.
