(A note to those who don't like my block of text, or would like to go a bit more in-depth with specific country tactics- the
Diplomatic Pouch contains many great resources despite the eye-blinding retro-90's layout. I especially recommend reading through the digitized book
The Game of Diplomacy by Richard Sharp; he's got a couple chapters on general tactics and strategy, and a specific one for each country.)
Here's a picture of the map on the eve of the first turn:
As you can see, the map is divided into territories. Some have units in them and are owned by a certain country. Others, the tan-orange ones, aren't. As the game progresses, this will change. (Ignore the box in Moscow with extra units.)
Note the circles in the middle of some territories. As it happens, these are called supply centers, and there are 34 of them on the map. You need to get 18 of them to win. In all cases, this will consist of your own, some neutrals (ones that aren't owned initially by anyone), and some home supply centers from someone else, so (yes!) that means war. We'll get back to that later, since I should firstly explain the mechanics of the game.
They look complicated, but they're really not- they're a very simple system, and most of the wall of text will be explaining the sorts of situations that can arise. You can always check them later, in any case.----------------------
There are two moving turns per year, in the Spring and Fall. In all stages of each turn, you will send in orders to me so that I can feed them through the judge, a computer program that works all the moves out (since all moves are executed for each country simultaneously). Here I'll explain basic moving, with screenshots for illustration. As we'll see, although the individual moves are simple, when on the board they come together to produce complex and often hilarious situations.
UnitsThere are two kinds of units on the board: fleets and armies. And that's it. Armies move on land, and fleets move on water, although fleets can also be docked in coastal provinces. Each unit can make one move per turn. You send in orders every turn, I execute them all simultaneously (we'll see how that works), some units' orders fail and some succeed. And then we'll see an updated map with the end result of those orders, ready for the next orders to be sent in. Turn by turn, armies and fleets will be built and die, nations will rise and fall, until we have a victor.
AttackThe order form for this is:
U (Territory1) to Territory2where U is either A (army) or F (fleet). Here's an example on an empty example map. Russia has ordered
A Moscow to Warsaw. On the map, the order is shown as:
However, in this (very theoretical) example, Warsaw is empty. A far more realistic example would look like this:
Here a German army is already in Warsaw, but is holding (staying put). In the former example, there was nobody in Warsaw (force of zero), which was attacked by one army in Moscow (force of one); 1 > 0, so the move went through. In this example, there is an army in Warsaw (force of one) being attacked by one army in Moscow (also force of one); 1 = 1, so neither force can overcome the other and Moscow's move fails, or bounces; everyone stays put. To overcome an enemy unit, you'll need to
support.
Incidentally, since units can only move one territory at a time, it should not be surprising to discover that you can only order a unit in X to go to Y if X and Y border. (Well, that's not true; you can
order anything you like; I once read the summary of a game where somebody had attempted to use his fleet in Norway to convoy [we'll get to that later] an army from Piedmont to Switzerland for the lulz. But invalid moves will be resolved as "hold").
SupportSupport is basically when a unit adds force to an existing attack (supports it) without actually moving. This is the heart of the game. The formula for orders is:
U [Territory] supports [formula for the move the unit it is supporting is making].A unit can only support a move into territory Y if it itself borders Y; that is, a supporting unit must border the destination (and be able to move into it, too, which is important for supporting fleets, since for fleets these are not always the same), but it need not border the origin. Here's an example. As described in the section on attacking, Germany has ordered
A Warsaw holds, and Russia has ordered
A Moscow to Warsaw. In the section on attacking, this bounced. But now, Russia has an additional army in Ukraine and orders
A Ukraine supports [A Moscow to Warsaw].
Here, the force of the army in Ukraine has been added on to the force of Russia's army in Moscow. Now Russia's attack has the force of two armies behind it, which is more than Germany's measly one, so Germany's army in Warsaw is dislodged (it, rather than Russia's order arrows, gets the big orange X).
Of course, things can escalate. In the following map, Germany orders
A Prussia supports [A Warsaw holds]. Now it's two versus two again, and Russia's move gets the orange X.
Russia's move is bounced, and everyone holds. You can see how this escalates: Russia might have seen Prussia's support coming and backed up the attack with an army in Livonia, etc. However, there's another way you can try to beat support races, as shown below:
Here, Russia has ordered
F (Baltic Sea) to Prussia. (Since Prussia is a coastal province, if it were unoccupied, the fleet could move into it.) In the above map, the fleet doesn't actually move to Prussia- Prussia is occupied and the fleet has no support for its move, so Prussia's army cannot be dislodged.
However, Prussia has to defend itself, and it can't give support if it does that. So its support is cut, Warsaw is on its own again against Russia's armies in Moscow and Ukraine, and Russia can again dislodge Warsaw.
Incidentally, these sorts of arms races and extravagant support chains are part of what make the game so fun- they're built up of very simple moves, but they often require more than two people to make them work, and persuading other players to go along with your plans is the fun of the game. For example, if Russia hadn't have a fleet in the Baltic that turn, but Austria had an army in Silesia, Russia might try to persuade Austria to send in
A Silesia to Prussia in order to cut Germany's support line. (It doesn't actually matter who cuts the support. It just matters that support is cut.) This is why even if you're not in a position where winning is viable, the game is still a lot of fun- even if you're not strong enough to take the number one spot yourself, you may well be the kingmaker.
Nota bene, however, the following scenario in which a very stupid Austria tried to help Russia out the wrong way.
Here Austria didn't have a unit bordering Prussia, so it couldn't cut off Germany's support from there; but it did have a unit in Galicia, which borders Warsaw, so it tried moving Warsaw. It bounced, and nobody budged. The lesson here is that
you can cut a support, but you can't cut a move or a hold. You can't cut a hold, because when you cut a support, the unit you cut just holds, and to cut a hold the unit would have to do something other than holding, and you can't really make it go anywhere it doesn't want to go. And you can't cut an attack, because, well, you can't cut an attack and can't make a unit go somewhere it doesn't want to go. Even if the unit is going to be annihilated, it will still execute that move before kicking the bucket.
The above example also showcases something else: what is counted when determining to dislodge a unit isn't how many units are ganging up on it total (in the above case there are three units total going against it), but the largest single force attacking it. The largest single force attacking it is the Russian Moscow-Ukraine combo, and that's not enough to dislodge Warsaw. In addition, there must be a largest single force- ties always bounce. Even if you just have a single unit holding with no support that is set upon by two other units each having support of their own- they will bounce, even though if just one of them attacked with their support, your unit would be dislodged.
If this all sounds complicated, it really isn't- it's a very simple system, it just produces complex results.ConvoysThis is the last kind of move (besides holding, which is self-explanatory, I hope), and it is not as common as the other two, although it is important, especially for England. Convoying is how you get armies across water. The formula is
F (Province) convoys [A (Province) to Province], while the army being convoyed must send in the order to move to its destination province as usual. Here's an example.
Here Italy has an army in Tunis it wants to get to Spain. It has a fleet in the Western Mediterranean, so it orders:
F (Western Mediterranean) convoys [A (Tunis) to Spain]A (Tunis) to SpainNow, there are two units involved in getting Tunis to Spain, so you think the move would have a strength of two. In fact it has a strength of one- convoying fleets can't be counted in the strength of the attacking force- so if someone else had a unit there already, you'd want to arrange for yourself or someone else to support the attack from Portugal or Gascony or someplace bordering Spain.
Note that more than one fleet can be involved in a convoy, and indeed convoy chains can theoretically get pretty big! Here's an example:
England has ordered:
F (Norwegian Sea) convoys [A (Norway) to Portugal]F (North Atlantic) convoys [A (Norway) to Portugal]F (Mid-Atlantic) convoys [A (Norway) to Portugal]A (Norway) to PortugalDespite the map, the convoy doesn't actually move through the English Channel or North Se- the program only has one arrow available for any given move. The convoy is still going through the Norwegian Sea, the North Atlantic, and the Mid-Atlantic; there could be French fleets in the English Channel and North Sea for all the convoy cares. There's an interesting side note to make about convoys: just moving one unit against a convoying ship isn't enough to make it stop convoying like it's enough to break support. You'd need support for the attack, and the defender could summon up his own support for the convoying unit to stop you; only a truly dislodged fleet can be forced to stop convoying a unit.
You do not have to use your own fleets to convoy a unit; if you can persuade someone else to send in convoying orders for your unit, the game will recognize them. In effect, the game doesn't really recognize nationalities for orders; an order from one person is as good as an order from another. The only time nationality really matters is the rule that you can't cut your own support.
Finally, convoying fleets must be in water provinces. They can't be sitting in a coastal land province.
DislodgementsIf a defending unit has been overcome by an attacking force, it will be dislodged and must move to a free bordering province, if there is one. If there are two or more options, you'll need to send in orders telling me which one you'd like the unit to move to. If there's one, that's where it will move, and if there are no options available, it will be destroyed. In all cases, the unit that attacked it and defeated it will move into the province it was previously occupying. For example, in the previous example from the section on supports where Russia takes out Warsaw, its army in Moscow will now occupy Warsaw (the army in Ukraine, which supported, will sit). Now the German army formerly in Warsaw will need to move somewhere else; in all cases shown, Livonia was unoccupied, so perhaps it will move there.
Supply CentersYou need 18 of them to win. Everyone starts out with three (their three home centers), except for Russia, which gets four. (This doesn't actually unbalance the game all that much).
Basically, after every Fall turn, everyone's supply centers are counted. If you hold an SC when the dust clears from a Fall turn, it's yours, and it stays yours until somebody else reclaims it. This means that if you move onto a territory with an SC in the Spring, but immediately get kicked off in the Fall, you do not get to count it towards your total, nor does your move erase previous ownership of the SC. (There are "house rules" where one or both of these occurs. But we're playing the classic game.)
After everyone counts their total number of supply centers, they then count the number of units they have on the board, and then get to build or- ouch!- have to disband units until they have as many units as they have supply centers. You can only build units in your home centers (any of the ones that you owned at the start of the game that you continue to own- you can't build in what you don't possess). You can't build in a home center that's already occupied, so if you conquered a SC during the year but all your home centers have units on them, you can't build. Once everyone's built, we go on to Spring again. The game ends when, at the end of a Fall turn, somebody has eighteen SCs. And that's the game!
(In practice, honorable two- or three-way ties are quite common. The interested should check out the concept of stalemate lines.)
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Topic: FJ's Diplomacy Game: Fall 1903 Orders due 8 PM GMT 14/1 (Read 10522 times)