Diplomacy

[Rowen]

Turkey blew up the game.

[Actaeon]

Their sister site is still up. Same interface, same login... Anyone want to play a random varient?

[Callie]

The site is back up and an additional 24 hours have been added.

[VCH]

I do play games to win most of the time, just not always.

 

But it's the time spent with friends that I value not the game itself. I could think of numerous better things to do at times than playing Risk or Diplomacy again, but if everyone wants to do it I'm always game. I couldn't care less what the activity is, it's the people doing it that matter. I find that most people do not share this attitude, and instead say no to way too many opportunities.

 

But if you say No enough times, people stop asking.

 

 

[Randomizer]

The group I played with was passive/aggressive about letting in players that most of the group couldn't stand. This resulted in D&D games where some players would die repeatedly so they would leave for a while to make a new character. Or a night of new character creation where players tried to outdo each other in creating the worst characters.

 

While most of us got along, we had a few that it would have been better if we had just banned for good.

[Student of Trinity]

I used to say that I played Machiavelli (Diplomacy variant I've briefly described before) not to win, but to make the game more interesting. It was at least partly true. I didn't enjoy trying to make long-range plans when the game was far too fluid for any such plans to work out, so I just chilled, and let myself be guided by whim or even historical role-playing, until a clear short-term opportunity might emerge.

 

Partly, though, playing to make the game interesting was actually a way of playing to win. Since I was too lazy to build complex strategies, I preferred to rely on being the first to recognize a simple strategy in a novel situation. So I played to shift the game into favorable territory by creating novel situations as much as I could. Often, of course, someone else got a better simple strategy before me, and I still lost; but I think I did have an edge this way on average, and anyway I was happier to lose that way than to grind through a more conventional game.

[Randomizer]

I enjoyed Axis and Allies for coming up with new strategies for getting a strategic advantage, however it still came down to luck when resolving combat. You really needed a huge numerical advantage to over come a bad streak.

[BJ Back From the Beyond]

Okay, I just want to check that everyone knows that you can enlarge the board on webDiplomacy. You guys did know that, right?

[Randomizer]

Yes. You can also click on orders at the bottom to see what the units did to ease the confusion.

[BJ Back From the Beyond]

Oh, cool, I didn't know about that one.

[Rowen]

You can take away our supplies centers, but you can never take away our freedom! let me keep what I have.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Rowen is off to Palouse Falls

You can take away our supplies centers, but you can never take away our freedom! let me keep what I have.

FYT.

(Although that'd mean more if the players in Anon weren't, you know, anonymous. )

Ah, what the heck. One more just for the heck of it.

[keira]

So I played Settlers of Catan for the first time today.

 

I won, which was cool but prolly just good luck.

 

Anyway it would be totally cool I bet to do an online game of this.

 

Maybe?

[Dintiradan]

I've never played Settlers online, but there seems to be a lot of implementations available.

 

(Anyone up for Eclipse over VASSAL? Anyone? *crickets*)

 

EDIT: Oh, we still have to get a hugemassive SMAC game underway one of these days.

[Student of Trinity]

A lot of strategy board games including The Settlers of Catan can apparently be played online at www.brettspielwelt.de ("board game world"). It's a German site but it's all available in English. Strategy games like Settlers, especially with a medieval theme, are really popular in Germany. There are several really good ones.

 

Another one available on that site is Carcassonne, which is also really cool. I am the proud owner of a paper table mat from a restaurant in the real Carcassonne, on the back of which several family members concede in writing that I won the Carcassonne game that we played in Carcassonne.

[Slawbug]

In fact, Settlers (and to a lesser degree Carcassonne) is somewhat unusual for the genre: it involves more random chance and less strategy than many german-style games, and also more opportunities to attack other players directly. This gives it more in common with typical American board games like Monopoly or Risk, and is often cited as the reason why Settlers has been the main "gateway game" despite its being in the middle of the spectrum in terms of complexity.

[Dintiradan]

Settlers' resonant theme might also have something to do with it. But yeah, while I don't mind randomness in games, Settlers has a far higher variance than most other eurogames.

 

Sometimes I wonder if we're too pampered by eurogames. I have a couple of friends who absolutely detest the Game of Thrones board game. One was turned off after one play; he couldn't fathom a game where players are able to attack each other the first turn. Another couldn't stand the lack of progress; being in a deadlock fighting for incremental advantage bored him. Eurogames tend not to have direct player interaction, and I'm finding that some players now view any sort of conflict mechanic as A Bad Thing.

[Slawbug]

Direct player interaction is not inherently bad. I'd say that any kind of player interaction is inherently good; not interacting sucks. The issue is that direct conflict interaction tends to exacerbate the multi-player dilemma.

 

The ugliest form of this dilemma may be the most familiar: king-making, in which player 1 can't win the game, but either player 2 or player 3 will win -- and which one wins depends entirely on player 1's action. Few players enjoy situations in which who wins (or gets the best outcome) depends on some subjective factor outside of the game rules.

 

A slighter version of the same dilemma is the "who to attack" question. Settlers provides a great example: say the other 3 players have settlements on a critical 8 and you don't. That's an obvious place to put the thief, but who do you steal from? Some players will pick randomly, some will pick the person they think is ahead, or who they think has a certain resource; some will pick a person they dislike; some will pick the person they view as having the greatest skill in the game even if that person is currently losing. When these decisions are made in an arbitrary way, yet have a critical impact on who wins the game, they can be frustrating.

 

It is possible to have player attack mechanics while avoiding these dilemmas. For example, attack cards in Dominion attack ALL other players. That solution is possible largely because there is no map component. It is also possible to have a multi-player dilemma without any direct interaction at all: St. Petersburg has no direct interaction, but if a game includes 2 experienced players and 1 novice, you can bet the player sitting to the left of the novice will win.

 

The best games, I think, have player interaction that is interesting and meaningful, but thoughtfully attach non-interactive incentives to all interactive actions so that it is rarely a question of "who to attack" or "who to king" but rather "what's best for me"? That increases the strategic depth of the game, too, since it becomes easier for people to look ahead to future game states and to develop tactical heuristics. Hansa Teutonica is a shining example of this; Egizia comes to mind as well, and the role selection mechanics used in Puerto Rico, San Juan, and Race for the Galaxy.

[Dintiradan]

Eh, I understand where you're coming from, but fear of kingmaking shouldn't stop designers from making games that feature direct interaction. If I had to choose between a direct interaction game with the potential for backstabbing and kingmaking, and a multiplayer solitaire game, I'd choose the direct interaction game, because all other things being equal I'd rather play with/against people than with/against the board.

 

That said, the better solution is to own a variety of games, so you can pull out whatever one the group wants (and sometimes, yes, that means not pulling out a game if it will lead to ugly situations). Some nights I want to match wits with the other players, others I want to build a VP engine.

 

Quote:

St. Petersburg has no direct interaction, but if a game includes 2 experienced players and 1 novice, you can bet the player sitting to the left of the novice will win.

Never played St. Petersburg, but it's far from the only "sit to my right" game:

 

Quote:

The best games, I think, have player interaction that is interesting and meaningful, but thoughtfully attach non-interactive incentives to all interactive actions so that it is rarely a question of "who to attack" or "who to king" but rather "what's best for me"? That increases the strategic depth of the game, too, since it becomes easier for people to look ahead to future game states and to develop tactical heuristics. Hansa Teutonica is a shining example of this;

What do you think of HT? I've never played it, but the last department games party I went to, some others did, and they all loathed it, partly because they couldn't come up with any good heuristics for the game (and since they were all game theorists, that's exactly the wording they used).

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

If I had to choose between a direct interaction game with the potential for backstabbing and kingmaking, and a multiplayer solitaire game

I think that is an inaccurate label; just because you can't attack another player directly doesn't mean you are playing solitaire. Solitaire implies that there is no real relationship between my tableau and my opponent's, and it's simply a competition to see who can do it better. But I don't know any german-style games like that. St. Petersburg involves no direct interaction at all, but if you play without watching your opponents' tableaus you will lose. In PR/SJ/RFTG you can't touch each other directly, but you have to think about what roles they will choose and how they might benefit from your own role choice.

I think HT is terrific. It's not that there are no heuristics for the game, it's that there are no absolute heuristics: rather there is a cohort of competing heuristics, and you often have to make very subtle judgments about which one is most important to pay attention to in a given situation. You need to use a sort of intuition built up on analysis, rather than just a straightforward analysis (unless you are a chess computer). But I love those sorts of games. Games that lend themselves to easy heuristics I generally enjoy for a few plays and then get bored of. Roll Through the Ages, I'm looking at you.

[Lilith]

In theory, there's actually a simple solution to the kingmaking problem in any game that has a victory point system: just never create a scenario where it's effectively impossible for a player to win in the first place, by adding a random element to the endgame. Add a deck of cards with differently-marked faces for each player. Each player picks a "suit" at the start of the game, and takes a card of their suit for every victory point they have. At the end of the game, all cards that players have taken are shuffled together and a single card is chosen: whoever's suit is picked is the winner.

 

Each player's probability of winning is directly proportional to their final score, so there's always an incentive to play well in order to maximise your own score, rather than choosing another player to favour. It also means that there's an objective (but not necessarily easily discoverable) answer to who to attack: whoever it will cost the most victory points to in the long run.

[Dintiradan]

That sounds an awful lot like your method for stopping strategic voting.

[Lilith]

hey, i didn't write the laws of game theory

 

Seriously, though, I'd be interested to see if a game would be improved by this or if players would just get frustrated by the times they "should" have won but didn't. It does have one or two other interesting effects on the game, like creating a distinction between being in the lead by a little or by a lot at the end, and making two players each with half your score just as dangerous as one player with the same score as you.

[Dintiradan]

Well, one way to make the effect less extreme (EDIT: or more extreme, if you so desire) would be to change the function that maps victory points to winning probability. As long as it's strictly increasing, it will work. Something like the softmax function makes for a good general case.

 

Though really, it would be simpler to do away with the concept of 'winning', and just have every player try to maximize its victory point count. Human players might not think this way, but computer players can be made to, and that's the only aspect of game theory I care about.

 

EDIT: I mean, if I'm trailing behind in a game of Agricola (which is usually the case for me), I don't start mucking up other people's harvests, I keep trying to maximize my own victory point count. Or just try not to starve.

 

I actually have a game on preorder that does something similar. After every combat, each player involved draws a number of victory point tiles, with values ranging from 1 to 4, and keeps one. The more successful you were, the more you can choose from, but every player gets at least one to pick from. That said, the game also gives you victory points deterministically as well.

[Dantius]

Of course, one obvious way to eliminate the possibility of having kingmakers is by only playing two player games. Might I suggest a nice game of chess?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Well, one way to make the effect less extreme (EDIT: or more extreme, if you so desire) would be to change the function that maps victory points to winning probability. As long as it's strictly increasing, it will work. Something like the softmax function makes for a good general case.

I'm trying to limit myself to solutions that are feasible to implement without electronic aid.

[VCH]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

The group I played with was passive/aggressive about letting in players that most of the group couldn't stand. This resulted in D&D games where some players would die repeatedly so they would leave for a while to make a new character. Or a night of new character creation where players tried to outdo each other in creating the worst characters.

While most of us got along, we had a few that it would have been better if we had just banned for good.

I once had a DD group super mad at me because i decided to have my character go off and sleep during a major combat. I don't know, I found it funny. And besides, they all got slaughtered any way.

[Randomizer]

I fell asleep in real life while playing. They didn't wake me because there was more experience and loot for them. The whole time there wasn't anything they couldn't handle.

[Lilith]

i'd suggest not playing d&d while drunk but let's face it that is the best way to play d&d

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Seriously, though, I'd be interested to see if a game would be improved by this or if players would just get frustrated by the times they "should" have won but didn't.

Yeah, this is an interesting idea. I like it. I don't think it will work. The problem is that this method allows you to see two different pieces of information with perfect clarity. One is who actually earned more points, which may involve luck but presumably involves some skill also. The other is who actually wins, which by formula involves more luck than the point tally, and zero additional skill. So even for players who see the point of your additional step, when the player who has 10% of the points and would have been a kingmaker in the old scenario, wins, it won't feel like a great victory, it will feel like "I did badly and then got lucky and won a meaningless distinction anyway."

The other problem is that this will not actually eliminate some kingmaking scenarios. If there is no chance for the kingmaker to earn VPs, or if both kingmaking options offer the same VPs, the choice is there. I guess it is not "kingmaking" so much as "kingvoting" at that point, and it is really more like the "who to attack" problem. But it still remains a problem.

[Actaeon]

In hopes of spicing things up a bit, I've created a new game over at vDiplomacy.net, which uses the same accounts and interface as webdiplomacy. It's an anonymous, public press only game (semi-gunboat), using a variant that lets you build in any supply center you own, not just your home territories.

 

http://vdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=8695

 

Password: fluffy

[Dintiradan]

Holy crap, the World War IV variant is the scariest thing I have ever seen.

[Randomizer]

It just takes some getting used to the variants and looking at past games. A few aren't that bad like Modern Diplomacy. I don't know about 18 player games.

[Callie]

I thought the World Diplomacy IX variant was a lot (17 players). I'm playing a gunboat game right now in which I've conquered all of Africa, but cannot move anywhere else due to the circumstances. (It's annoying how the World Diplomacy IX variant has a bunch of supply centers in Antarctica of all places)

[Actaeon]

Ice can be a pretty valuable commodity, Ex. Providing your troops with cold drinks enhances morale.

 

I figured I'd start us off slow with a minor variation. Eventually, we can run an alternate map (either a smaller one to make sure it fills up, or a larger one if everyone's on board). In the mean time, whoever's playing Russia is cutting things a bit fine.

[Actaeon]

Pardon the doublepost, but it looks like we need a replacement player for Russia. vdiplomacy, apparently, is ahead of the curb with regards to civil disorder. Anyone game? We'll be nice to you (maybe).

[Randomizer]

Only if the new player stays for a few years, game years.

[Callie]

Originally Posted By: Actaeon

I figured I'd start us off slow with a minor variation. Eventually, we can run an alternate map (either a smaller one to make sure it fills up, or a larger one if everyone's on board). In the mean time, whoever's playing Russia is cutting things a bit fine.

We could always do a large variant and just have other random players join. I know that the World Diplomacy IX variant takes a few days to fill up on the main site.

[Randomizer]

We need a player to take over Russia for the first move of this game:

 

Spiderweb 5

 

Password - fluffy

at www.vdiplomacy.net

 

 

Edit - Never mind the spots been filled

[Callie]

Congrats to Dintiradan! I need to learn when to stab people now!

[VCH]

Yeah, I didn't have enough left to stop him at Stalingrad, or push west. Apologies to my Turkish ally.

[Randomizer]

Congratulations Nioca for almost winning Spiderweb Anonymous.

 

Thanks for keeping me alive in Russia even though it was more to win for yourself.

[Nioca]

Yeah, I'd again like to apologize for how belligerent I got near the end there.

 

Anyway, it wasn't just to win for myself. I like to play as honestly as possible; in fact, there were two points where if I would have broken my alliances, I would have won right then and there. I genuinely wanted to see France and Russia through to the end (preferably with me on top with 18 supply centers, but a 3-way draw would have also made me happy).

 

I think I'm sitting the next game out, though. I suspect I'd wind up under fire from a six-way alliance to get me out of the game stat.

[VCH]

It was honestly Frances game to win until they decided that England was a threat. I had no intention of breaking the alliance with France before that point.

 

I pretty much had the worst alliance ever with both Germany and France hemming me in.

 

But thank you to everyone for playing.

[Randomizer]

Sorry about the stab Nioca, but after eliminating Turkey I really was just sitting as your puppet.

[Randomizer]

A new anonymous Diplomacy game:

 

GIFTS

 

password - sanity

[Callie]

I was watching the Spidweb anonymous game and wondered why Russia hadn't stabbed Italy earlier. Austria goofed early on by not countering Italy's march into Bohemia. I was also a bit surprised by France's choice to sit there for several turns.

[Randomizer]

Need a replacement for Austria in Spiderweb 5 over at vDiplomacy

 

Password - fluffy

 

Come on the game is still early.

[Nioca]

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

I was watching the Spidweb anonymous game and wondered why Russia hadn't stabbed Italy earlier.

I can answer that. Earlier on, betraying Italy would have been a fatal mistake; even if Russia succeeded in bringing down Italy, Russia's home territories were held by Germany, so Russia couldn't build additional forces. Germany would have simply swept down and crushed both Italy and Russia, and probably won the game right there.

[Randomizer]

A new anonymous Diplomacy game still needs 1 more player. Nioca is welcome.

 

GIFTS

 

password - sanity