The time has come to revive a long standing series of games, which has driven the people of the forum at eachothers throats like no other.
Welcome to Diplomacy, a game of tactics, negotiation and deception.
Diplomacy players by their very nature are a political and argumentative lot who have always made more noise than their numbers would warrant, and more often than not they would refer to wargames in the past tense: “Oh, I used to play those until I discovered Diplomacy.
What is Diplomacy?Diplomacy is a strategic wargame, created in 1954. Set during the first world war, 7 players take the rolls of the 7 big european players during that time, england, france, germany, italy, austria, russia and turkey. The game is entirely based around strategy and negotiation, not a bit of luck is involved. Units have no stats, all of them are equal in strength. Due to that, the game focuses heavily on an element almost completely devoid in any other game of this nature. Negotiaton.
No player has the means to win the game by his own power, yet there can be only one winner. Alliances must be forged, and broken. Trust must be gained, moves coordinated, and all of it under the looming dread of paranoia.
Diplomacy is a game for the scheming, with a strong will to win, and the will to do what it takes to win. Under no circumstances is it a game for people who are easily offended and hold grudges easily, because nothing upsets the game balance as much as a player who can not keep a cold head. Flexibility is key, because the one who backstabbed you just a turn ago might be the one you need to cooperate with the very next turn. A fight to the last man, where everything is allowed, and only the strong willed will make it.
How does one play Diplomacy ?The map is divided into a plethora of regions, 34 of which are marked as supply centers. Whomever is first to claim 18 of these supply centers wins.
The game has two kinds of turns, spring, and autumn. In spring, each player can create new units in his core-supply centers (the one he started with), to a maximum amount of units equal to how many supply centers he has. In autumn, if one of your units occupies a supply center at the end of the turn, the supply center is captured.
There are two types of units, armies and fleets. Armies can only move over land. Fleets can only move over sea, and through costal regions, but not further inland.
Each unit has 4 basic types of action.
Hold - The army does not move. Hurrah, nothing was accomplished, but nothing has changed either. Has a strength of 1
Move - The army attempts to move to a neighbouring region, has the strength of 1. If there is a unit in the region you want to move to, or another unit is trying to move to that region, the one with the higher strength wins, at equal strength, both units will stay where they are
Support move - the meat of the moves. Raises the strength of a moving unit by 1. If another unit attempts to move into the region where the support comes from, the support is canceled. You can only support moves into regions that you could move into.
Support hold - raises the strength of a unit that is NOT moving by 1. Same rules as above apply.
additionaly to that, fleets can attempt to convoy armies over the sea. such convoys can be linked over several squares. a convoy only works if the strength of the moving unit is high enough, as if it was a regular move. the convoy is disrupted if the convoying fleet is attacked by a unit strong enough to beat it, but not if the fleets strength is equal to the attack.
retreat - after a unit was attacked by a strong enough attack, it will be dislodged. if there are empty regions it could move to, it may. if there are no regions to move to, or if you simply decide to, it will disband, and may be rebuild next spring (if you still have enough support centers at that time)
complete rules, with nice pictures to make things easier to understand can be found here:
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/intro.php And where are we going to play ?For convenience reasons, we will be playing on webdiplomacy.net
signing up is free, and you get no spam mail from that website, there's no problem
once signed up, go here:
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=100254 password is "urist" with no "
Innitial time to join up is 24 hours, turn-time is 24 hours.
note that 24 hours is the maximum time. when you have already decided on your moves, then please have the decency to press the finalize button, because if all players have finalized, the game will move on, no need to keep everyone waiting.
looking forward to the game
for additional reading, visit
http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/the greatest archive of strategies and general advice. it can make the difference in a battle between life and death to be well informed
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Topic: Where friendships go to die. Bay12 Diplomacy (Read 5460 times)