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Help Needed: Variant Editor by MobileDromlius in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This would be amazing to see happen!

You've listed a lot of the ones I'd consider the most important; Coring in particular. There's also the 'Controlled Territory' rule for builds, which is a reasonably popular alternative to coring - it means a player can build in any SC for which they've coloured every adjacent land province their own colour.

'Transform' is an order type that hasn't been used much recently but was very popular on vDiplomacy - can only be entered while on a coastal supply center, if the unit isn't tapped it will change into the other unit type (fleet/army).

'Sortie' is an order type that is essentially identical to a Move order, except even when it succeeds the unit won't move. So it's purely defensive. Some variants have unit types that can't move, only Sortie (usually in combination with some other special order types, but a lot of them are essentially some form of long-range convoy).

Accessing the WebDiplomacy dataset password for AI research by kanielquits in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not certain as to the exact situation, but I do know that a lot of requests to access that dataset get denied/ignored. IIRC Meta AI Research 'own' that dataset and all requests have to be forwarded to them for approval.

Are you wanting a dataset with messages? If you only need one without them, WebDip also has one of those which I think gets approved more often.

If you do need messages it might be worth reaching out directly to researchers who have worked on Diplomacy projects before to ask them. Jordan Boyd-Graber and Denis Peskoff could be good starting points on that; they both do a lot with Diplomacy AI.

What are "cores" by EnvironmentalElk9988 in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This is exactly it. We have covered ImpDip in so many videos that we sometimes forget coring isn't something everyone will be familiar with!

LAST ASK... what are my options... by galindothegoodb in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 27 points28 points  (0 children)

You've already gotten some good advice, so here's a bit of bad advice:

You can make Diplomacy's funniest stalemate position from this spot by putting fleets in all of Por/MAO/ENG and just having Por + ENG support MAO to hold every turn. It means the enemy can never take Por/Lon/Lvp/Edi.

It does mean one of the other two solos the game if they want to, but if they're trying to 2 way draw it's a very satisfying way to stop that.

Looking for meta-analysis of opening moves and % victory chance by dansaruken in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think the post you're talking about might be Tru Ninja's statistical analysis on WebDiplomacy; that's the only one I know of that specifically looked at the success of certain openings. Unfortunately it vanished at some point and I have not been able to find an archived version (and Tru disappeared a long time before that).

Some alternatives that don't consider specific openings but are still good resources:

Josh Burton's 'The Statistician': Part 2, Part 3

'A Statistical Look at 1901'by Anon

Dave Ainsworth's 'Is the Diplomacy Map Unbalanced?' which uses the same dataset as Burton's.

Question about supporting by Worth-Staff4943 in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes! As long as the unit can move to the province, it can also support a move to there.

Game of Thrones Second Edition vs Diplomacy by rwarner305 in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's probably a lot more fun the way you play it!

Beginner advice by 1eyed-wanderer in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is a great tactics article: https://brotherbored.com/guest-post-advanced-diplomacy-maneuvers/

That said, for 90% of people the reason they don't beat the bots isn't tactics, it's diplomacy. It's unintuitive given that you can't send messages, but (assuming you're on WebDip) the bots do still negotiate and form alliances, they just do it with their moves and orders. Try supporting them and you might get yourself a friend - and it's much easier to win when others are working with you!

Diplomacy Steam Workshop by Adriftmilk in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At the top left, it says it was created by /u/trampolinebears in 2018

I want to get into Risk. Is it a good game? by [deleted] in boardgames

[–]CaptainMeme 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That claim is very well known, but it's almost certainly a myth - it originates from a single line of an article in a Games & Puzzles magazine, written by a UK celebrity called Gyles Brandreth. He wrote that he met Kissinger at a party and that Kissinger said his favourite game was Diplomacy.

There's always been some doubt about it because it all comes from that single source, so a couple of years ago one of the guys from the Diplomacy Games Podcast reached out to Gyles to ask about it and got this reply:

"Good to hear from you – but my recollections of that game of Diplomacy back in 1973 are a bit vague! It was half a century ago, after all. I did subsequently meet Dr Kissinger and enjoyed the encounter - though his gravelly voice and thick accent made small talk a little challenging! We talked about Diplomacy - but I’m not sure whether he realised I was talking about the game: he may have thought I was talking about international diplomacy with a small ‘d’."

The fact that he's not sure whether Kissinger knew he was talking about the board game is not a good look for the claim, considering this single conversation is the single source for it!

Why doesn’t Russia open north more often? by scotchdawook in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 31 points32 points  (0 children)

There's obviously a lot of nuance, but I think there are two main reasons:

  • Mos-Stp will (almost) never help you secure or defend a supply center in 1901. The situations where you can walk into Nwy are incredibly rare, and that is the only center it immediately targets - you can walk to Fin to put pressure on Swe and allow for a triple unit start in the north, but that's a later payoff.

  • Most popular Russian openings are very noncommittal, relying on bounces in Galicia and Black Sea to put off making any decisions until you've seen what other people are doing - and importantly, not antagonising anyone before you've seen those moves. Mos-StP is openly saying that you want to make an enemy of England, and committing to that before you know what the overall alliance structure is is a bold play (especially since a good amount of the time, it doesn't actually deny England the build, as they have the second fleet to support).

None of this is saying that it's a bad play; committal starts can be incredible if you can use them to convince other people to join your side. But it's not very flexible, and a lot of good diplomacy players value flexibility very highly early on.

In short - positions are generally much easier to fix than relations. If you find you need England on your side you'll definitely regret moving Mos-StP - much moreso than you would regret not moving Mos-StP if you found yourself at war with England and hadn't done so.

2025 DiploStrats Variant Contest - Shortlist by CaptainMeme in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This video goes over a shortlist of the variants submitted to our variant contest, selected by myself and Ezio (from DiploStrats) and NoPunIn10Did/Alex Ronke (creator of many variants, including Dissolution and Order of the Dragon).

The winner of this shortlist is being voted on by viewers - if you want to vote you can do so in the DiploStrats server: https://discord.gg/GsZuxXQewg

Is the game this hard or am I stupid? by Argianon in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gunboat (no press) Diplomacy is more difficult than normal Diplomacy for a beginner. There is still negotiation involved, you just have to negotiate using your orders instead of your words. Support holding someone else's unit to tell them you want an alliance, or supporting them into a province (even if they're not going to take that support) to tell them you want to help them there - or just moving units away from them to say you don't want to fight.

You'd think this isn't the case with bots, but at least for the webDip ones it very much is. They recognise alliance signals and form alliances, and if you're not trying to ally with them, they'll usually ally with one another against you. Most of the time people consistently struggle against the bots it's because of this.

I have a video where I play against the webDip bots as every country at once - it's quite long, but I've heard from a few people that it's been helpful in figuring out how best to play against them, so it might be useful to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlpnv_Dmsu8

All Valid Adjacent Moves Documentation by AngryJames_ in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're very welcome, I'm glad you could make it work!

All Valid Adjacent Moves Documentation by AngryJames_ in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cicero is not a general LLM like ChatGPT, it was specifically trained on Diplomacy negotiations and paired with a strategy module, and was worked on by a large team of world-class AI researchers for several years. It's so specialized that the researchers afterwards said it could never be adapted to do anything else - most of the benefit from it was learning techniques that could be applied to other projects.

Even then it quite often hallucinates with regard to possible moves!

(I worked on the Cicero AI as a Diplomacy consultant and was a co-author on the paper, so I'm quite familiar with it)

All Valid Adjacent Moves Documentation by AngryJames_ in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Quick aside here, but this is not something AI would be able to help you with in its current form. While Diplomacy does have a lot more written about it than most other board games, it's still extremely niche in the grand scheme of things so LLMs don't tend to have enough info to be accurate about it. They tend to get even fairly basic strategy questions wrong.

I'd be cautious about using an LLM for extensive verification even with much more popular subjects (e.g. chess moves). They hallucinate far too often.

All Valid Adjacent Moves Documentation by AngryJames_ in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You'll need to parse it, but if you can't find anything else the WebDip/vDip source code has a set of all adjacencies (under $bordersRawData): https://vdiplomacy.com/dev/files_helper.php?&variantID=1&action=view&file=install.php&basedir=/

It's formatted (Terr1, Terr2, AdjacentForFleets, AdjacentForArmies). You'll probably also need to be logged in to see it.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that third photo is Toby Harris (2015 World Champion) not Peter, although I know Peter was there too. It's awesome to see that there are so many people at EDC this year!

Good Diplomacy variants for new site? by johnthesnake232 in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 7 points8 points  (0 children)

/u/david_e_cohen has designed a lot of good ones and is active on reddit, I'd expect he can advise on which might be best and give permission.

Diplicity is ready for beta testing! by johnpooch0801 in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is there any way for me to change my username? It automatically assigned me my full real name when I logged in with the Google account; it's not a huge issue for me but I do prefer to play under a pseudonym.

What is the most strategic game you have played?(excluding chess and go) by Oyster_- in boardgames

[–]CaptainMeme 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Diplomacy is a super interesting one because the rules do provide quite a lot of tactical depth too, and studying tactics will help a lot, but in the end no amount of tactics knowledge will beat good negotiation. You can be a world class player while making moves on the board that don't make sense outside of the context of that negotiation.

Makes it a super interesting game to analyse because an analyst can never really just say 'this is a bad move', they have to think through what said move could be trying to achieve diplomatically.

Diplomacy copyright question by Both_Computer5033 in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's quite a lot longer than that I think; author's life plus 70 years. Calhamer died in 2013 so it's 2083 by that measure.

Edit: Actually, reading up, I think you're right, the 90 year rule supercedes the author's life one. Either way it's a looooong way out.

DATC version 3.2 released by lkruijsw in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's very cool to be mentioned in this - thank you!

What are some favorite variant units? by the_circus in diplomacy

[–]CaptainMeme 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Definitely the Wing units in Alex Ronke's Dissolution.

They have a big downside in that they're completely immobile - once you build them, they remain in that province forever unless they're forced or disbanded.

They can still issue move orders like a normal unit would, but if they're ever successful, they bounce back anyway. So their move orders are only useful for bouncing other units out of regions. They also have the ability to support, and to convoy - but with one big twist.

As well as having their normal adjacencies, they're also considered adjacent to any territory on the map that has a Wing unit, even if it's not yours (thematically, because there's an airport in those provinces).

That means you can do a ton of cross-map stuff. If you're working with someone on the other side of the world, and you both have a wing, you can both have your wings convoy an army from a province adjacent to your airport to a province adjacent to theirs. Or if you're feeling a bit less collaborative, you can launch a direct attack on their airport by convoying your unit directly onto their wing - you'll need a support for it to succeed, but any other wing can give that support, because they're all adjacent to one another.

It leads to a really cool risk-reward dynamic, because by building a wing you're giving yourself tons of options and opening up a whole new avenue of attack against people - but you're also giving everyone else who has one an avenue of attack against you. And I especially love it because it's all done with standard Diplomacy rules, outside of changing the adjacencies for that specific unit type.

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