Diplomacy Games

World War IV & Google Translate Diplomacy

This episode was recorded back-to-back with episode 3's discussion of Rinascimento and Bourse. As a result we'd already had a number of drinks. And then we drank some more. So in this episode apologies in advance as the guys get a bit pissy while discussing the wonderful world of Diplomacy. This probably explains why Amby gets rather excited when he discovers from Kaner the "Finished" button within each variant's page. Kaner reciprocates saying he learnt about the archived maps from within any game from Amby.

World War IV - the mother of all variants

Kaner and Amby get into this amazing map that makes this variant one with both the most players (35 or 36 depending on the version you play), and due to the number of territories and SC's its also often one of the longest maps to play:

• Hats off to Tom Mulledy for creating the variant for the original 35 player variant and Tom Reinecker for the 36 player World War IV (version 6.2) variant.
• Amby kicks things off talking about how "drool-worthy" the map is. But yet hates the game: because he never wins. Amby laments amongst the 3 different versions he's played 6 or 7 games but has only survived once. Every other time he gets eliminated.
• Kaner points out with the number of players understandably your odds of winning fall dramatically and your chances of getting shafted go through the roof.
• Kaner finds the original 35 player map very "empty", especially in the middle east. WWIV v6.2 is now overwhelmingly the most popular iteration. Even better Kaner's World War IV Sea lanes version.
• That said, they both agree that when you start a WWIV game, you always feel, "This is it... I'm going to conquer the world!"
• Kaner explains why there's the two versions between the WWIV map. Tom (User ID Tomahaha) contacted the then vDip mods about the site using an older version. Kaner then helped out with porting that map across to vDiplomacy.
• The guys talk about the technical aspects of how the games come together on the site with two maps: a true map (with no more than 256 territories) and then a separate layer with the names and SCs on it.  But with the size of WWIV there's an additional map to help run the variant, which is really fiddly.
• Amby digresses about how the Regatta's toilets disappointed him. During a quick comfort break between recordings he noticed that it didn't have a mirrored wall for releaving yourself, as reported by the BBC on the internet. Amby thinks this could be a result of a more recent renovation done since the 2011 Brisbane flood (confirmed in this article - scroll to the bottom for the wacky picture of how the urinal used to look/work!)
• With dunny talk out of the way, Kaner brings up the common problem in both WWIV maps of sea-based territories forming strong stalemate lines that prevented solo wins.
• Kaner discusses his ideas of creating "overseer" zones at the heart of an original large sea territory, and then splitting the remainder of a sea territory into smaller sea territories. These overseer zones allow for fast navigation, but also play a critical part in supporting activity around them. These changes eliminate the issue in the past of too many strong sea-based stalemate lines. This is obviously good if you get sick of games with stalemate lines, but will drive you nuts if you love creating good strong stalemate lines.
• The guys discuss though that these changes appear to have had an impact on more sea based powers like Oceania, exposing them to greater naval threats.
• Kaner then gives his strategy about the importance of building continental strength quickly and then turning your attention to projecting naval power into the sea lanes. Amby shares his experience of doing the opposite: concentrating strongly on land-based strength but in doing so leaving himself open to naval attack, and ultimately elimination. So pay attention to Kaner's suggested strategy!
• That said Kaner goes on to say though that while strategy is an important component, fundamentally your relationships with players tends to be the determining factor.
• Kaner gets into the sexy talk and discusses how winning a WWIV map would be like ten orgasms at once.
• In WWIV the scale of the map lends itself to more than just an opening game, mid-game and end-game, with multiple opening games and mid-games.
• Kaner recommends in the early game to create a couple of local alliances in your continental block.
• When it comes to continental blocks the guys note that Africa and South America either quickly get their shit together, or totally fall apart. North America usually gets its act together quickly, Asia becomes a knife fight and in Europe one player usually quickly dominates.
• Finally the guys reflect that once you've played WWIV there's no way you can ever again play the World Diplomacy IX variant on webDiplomacy.

Google Translate Diplomacy - when you feel like an entertaining game of Diplomacy

Next after yet some more drinks the guys move onto Google Translate Diplomacy.

• Amby mentions how with his recent efforts to learn Spanish on Duolingo, he created a forum post looking for people wanting to play a game only played in Spanish with four other players putting up their hand.
• Amby discusses how when you're learning a language you can obviously only call upon the words you've learnt, without quickly having to cheat and turn to Google Translate for help.
• The game called Juego en español (literally "Game in Spanish") saw ScubaSteve play fantastically, a good showing by Gunmaster G-9 and surprisingly Dr. Recommended getting knocked out early and gnomius later being eliminated.  Amby felt some players were very competent in Spanish, or hid it well. The only downside he felt as someone with very basic Spanish skills was the amount of time taken to read messages and formulate responses.
• But it got Amby reflecting on the time vDiplomacy created a Google Translate variant and game for Diplomacy, intuitively called "The language of the country immediately after the", although Kaner wanted to call it "The Meat Commission" as we discuss in the podcast.
• Mapu originally suggested the idea. When discussing it originally in the forum there were a number of ideas thrown around for how this could work eg start in your language and then translate 4 or 5 times, through to Kaner's suggestion to use something like Akuna's Bad Translator (note: this service has changed since the original competition and is no longer offered).
• The forum discussion then went on and ended up agreeing that you'd start with your own native language, translate it into one of three obscure languages that were within pre-World War 1 player's borders or nearby (eg France couldn't use French but could use Basque, Breton or Arabic - due to their colonies, England couldn't use English but could use Welsh, Irish or Hindi - again due to colonies, Russia could use Mongolian, Belorussian or Finish etc). Then you would translate this into an agreed totally different language such as Chinese traditional or Hebrew which would then be posted to players.
• Some of the choice postings came out after a number of translations - major major language warning!
• Amby acknowledges that he and Kaner were aiming to have a fun entertaining game although some players were playing it straight down the line.
• Amby goes on to say that he'd often check translation options between the three languages to see what worked best; either keeping it as clear as possible or as entertaining depending on what you wanted to achieve.
• Kaner suggests his brilliant idea on having a Google Translate meets Extreme Personalities game, and seeing player's interest in the forum. Likewise seeing from the forum whether players want to follow the same translation process used in the initial game, or do a 34 translation version
• Amby brings up how the game often felt like the Youtube video by CDZA using Google Translate to twist the lyrics of the "Fresh Prince from Bel-Air" theme song.
• The guys acknowledge that while they still haven't yet had our webDiplomacy 2012 championship winners on for an interview, hopefully it'll happen soon. Then maybe we'll look at the Extreme Personalities in an upcoming variant.
• Kaner also says he'd like to cover off the Sopwith variant very soon. So stay tuned!

Venue: Regatta Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Yenda Hell from New South Wales, Australia
• Amby - The Stag Shiraz by St Hubert's from Yarra Valley, Victoria, Australia

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating and a review so we can get the Diplomacy message out.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

The Italian Renaissance variant Rinascimento & Bourse, a game inside a game

In episode 3 we look at the Italian Renaissance variant Rinascimento. What's great about it, what's bad about it, and how based on recent Forum talk it can be improved. Then its onto a game inside a game (how very enigmatic), with the variant Bourse.

Venue: Regatta Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Dogbolter Dark Ale Reserve, Matilda Bay Brewing, Australia
• Amby - Punter's Corner Cabernet Sauvignon from the Coonawarra, South Australia

The guys discuss their history with the Regatta Hotel, with Amby once working in the drive-through bottleshop that no longer exists and Kaner regularly playing Backgammon there (who knew he played something other than Diplomacy!)

The Italian Renaissance variant - Rinascimento

Kaner and Amby both love this variant created by Emmanuele Ravaioli (Tadar es Darden). Here's what they have to say about this fun filled jaunt through the Italian countryside:

• Kaner talks about how Emmanuele got him into variant creation in the early days of vDiplomacy. Kaner discusses how he talked to Shep and Butterhead when they were playing games of Chaos and Octopus about the idea of combining the two together. After posting their thoughts in the forum Tadar offered to give him a hand, creating Kaner's first variant Chaoctopi. Kaner briefly talks about how this variant played on the Classic map works and the rule changes it spawned for many other variants.
• Amby brings us back to Rinascimento, talking about how he loves the look of the map and its historical setting. Kaner enjoys some of the weird rules such as Benevento's army not being able to move, the French and Turkish players starting with units but no SC's. Amby joins in with how access across the spine of Italy is often limited by mountain passes.
• And the guys forget to totally mention that to win not only do you need to reach 33 SC's but one of them must by the capital Rome. Nice work there.
• Kaner talks about how in his experience the Papal States get sandwiched, and why his favourite country to play is Geneva with its options on land and sea and how you can work with the nearby city-state players, middle and larger powers.  Amby reflects on his one-time surprising win as Turkey.
• Rinascimento is often recognised as one of the most unbalanced maps with mega players Venice, Naples and the Papal States, mid-size players Milan, Savoy and Firenze and micro players Sienna, Pisa, Ferrara, Turkey and France. It means smaller players really need to work hard in negotiating and working with other players to survive.
• Kaner reminds Amby how the points scoring system for Rinascimento is different to most other games to help make things fair eg a small player who survives can get a better share of the pot than a large player who scrapes home with the SCs they began with.
• How whoever draws the Papal States can never help themselves, behaving like the Pope.
• The guys discuss recent discussions in the vDiplomacy forum about creating variations to the Rinascimento variant. Decima Legio has created a number of images showing how this could work. The three ideas that seem to be getting traction are:
  • Combining lesser states into more powerful states to balance things (although not historically accurate)
  • Breaking up some of the bigger states and introducing other players such as the Barbary pirates, the Spanish, etc.
  • Creating a chaos style version with everyone only having a single SC.
• Amby shares ancient discussions with Emmanuele on why France was included on the current map.
• Of course, for any changes to happen the new development site mentioned by Captainmeme in the last episode needs to get up and running first.
• Amby wraps it up with an entertaining twist on the colour scheme of the "Rinascimento" logo in the top right of the map, and shout outs to TheatreVarus' forum thread to start the conversation on improving it, Gopher27's take on diplomacy vs tactics and great suggestions from ScubaSteve, Hirnsaege, Ruffhaus and Ingebot.

A variant inside a variant - Bourse Diplomacy

Next after topping up drinks, we jump into Bourse - a game that can be played just by the players on the map, or them and anyone wanting to play via the forum, or even people just in the forum:

• Invented by Don Miller in the seventies, it essentially has two simultaneous games running: one on the map, the other offboard .
• In the offboard game every player starts with 1000 units of currency for each of the countries on the map. So if the Bourse was being played on the Classic board each player would start with 1000 French Francs, 1000 British Pounds, 1000 German Marks, etc. At the start of the game every currency is worth the same as every other unit (all equal to $1). From there you can buy and sell currency units. You can never sell more than 500 units of any one currency each turn, but you can buy as much as you want. Obviously you need to create a cash reserve through selling currency to then buy more units of another (or multiple currencies).
• Each sale of 100 units of a currency depreciates the value of that currency by 1 cent eg in the first turn if there's a net over all sell off of 500 pounds (France, Germany and Austria sell 500 pounds each [-$1500], Turkey and Russia buy 500 pounds each [+$1000] and Britain and Italy don't buy/sell pounds at all, the over all effect is a sell off of 500 pounds), the pound's value is reduced the following turn by 5 cents, down to $0.95.
• The same works in reverse in appreciating currency value.
• Changes to unit values are based on buy/sell orders in sets of 100 eg an overall net purchase of 300 Francs would appreciate that currency next turn by 3 cents to $1.03. But if the overall purchase was 299 Francs it would only increase in value by 2 cents.
• Critically when buying/selling you're not only betting on the currency, but on the currency's longevity on the board eg if Italy is eliminated and you hold 2000 Lira, their value drops to nothing ($0).
• This tends to see people investing in countries who are doing well on the board. But Kaner explains on top of what decisions you're making, everyone else is assessing the situation. He gives the example of Russia doing very well and as a result people buying up Roubles, while at the same time Germany is getting hammered by France people will be inclined to sell the Mark. This understandably drives up the value of the Rouble while the Mark's value drops substantially.
• Amby builds on this idea by adding a degree of deception. France in the above set of circumstances may decide to privately make peace with Germany and put in buy orders for Marks. This way France picks up the Mark at a bargain basement price, while taking the bet that making peace with Germany will see it recover and survive to the end of the game for a great return on its currency value.
• Kaner explains that in the original Bourse, players of the Bourse don't play on the board. That way the shenanigans above don't happen. But with so many map variants at vDiplomacy with lots of players, Bourse is usually played with just the onboard players. The example the guys talk about is the game Boursed 901 played on the Known World map.
• At the end of the game, every 100 units of currency you own is multiplied by the number of supply centres that country has.  Then you add these figures up and whoever has the highest figure wins.  Kaner is reminded how he in fact won Boursed 901 in the currency part of the game and second on the board.
• Kaner also clears up Amby's question on whether a player eliminated on the board can continue playing in the currency game; they can... and can go on to win that aspect of the game.
• Amby talks about his gameplay in Boursed 901, trying to manipulating currencies but finding that other players - particularly Kaner - were one step ahead and manipulated currencies better. Amby explains how a strategy of spreading your portfolio risk generally won't get you ahead in the game.
• Kaner flags how he's so jeered up about Bourse that he'll propose a new game on the vDip forum. The more players interested the bigger the map will be played.
• Amby and Kaner also discuss how many games are too many games to be committed to.
• Amby gives a shout out to G-Man who experienced all sorts of technical problems trying to comment on the Known World 901 game discussed in Episode 1. The guys reflect on how their enthusiasm and passion is making the podcast happen, despite their piss poor technical skills.
• Finally the guys discuss how feedback to date on recording in a pub has been surprisingly positive... listeners feel like they're catching up with mates over a few drinks. So I guess we'll keep our alcohol and bar themed tour for each episode!

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

Fog of War, Mods and new development talk

In this episode we check out the Fog of War variant of Classic, talk about the role of Mods and what to bring to their attention and conclude with new development server talk that may get variants up and running again for the Dip community! 

Apologies up front on how the ambiance gets louder and louder as more people arrive in the pub! If this pisses you off too much a) go have a drink or two yourself or b) let us know to go somewhere quieter!

How do Moderators (Mods) work?

Both Kaner and Amby have been Mods in the past for vDip, they discuss their prior experience and how it varies between vDip and webDip:

• vDiplomacy - link is in the top right. You can only see posts you have raised with the Mods
• It's the place to bring up concerns about multi-accounting with fake accounts or suspected meta-gaming. Amby discusses how he suspected this occurred in a game and how he raised this with the Mods
• Kaner discusses contacting the Mods where there are technical problems, where a player feels another player has crossed the line with their language
• The guys also digress blocking players, and why you'd do this - if they were obnoxious, or a player seems to CD too often, doesn't communicate well. You can block players by going into their profile page and clicking the smiley face, turning it into an unhappy face (the same functionality doesn't exist in webDip, only vDip)
• webDiplomacy - you contact the Mods differently.  Go to Help and then email the mods. With a larger number of members on webDip, the moderators there tend to respond faster
• Kaner talks about how webDip is starting to add new variants before Amby shoots him down. webDiplomacy focuses far more on Classic games with around 80-90% of all games played on the server being the standard classic game.

Variant focus - Fog of War

We then turn our attention to the Fog of War variant on vDiplomacy:

• In this variant you can only see the territories immediately adjacent to your supply centres and your units. The show notes include an animated GIF showing how things would look as a game evolves as Turkey
• As you can't see where all the other players are, and what they're doing (only the ones immediately around you) it presents a significant challenge.
• This can be complicated further with a Gunboat game (no-press). Kaner talks about the subtle ways you can still send out subtle messages about working together and highlights the importance of checking the large map rather the standard small map. The supports don't render 100% correctly on the small map, but they do on the large map.
• The guys also talk about how in standard press games how you can lie and manipulate players with information - right or wrong - about areas of the map others can't see.
• Kaner talks about two recent Fog-of-War games he's recently played in - Cold Blooded Fog and Pompey . Kaner talks about how his loss as Germany was more a result of absolutely terrible game play rather than the map's fog-of-war element. But as Russia he had greater success getting a draw despite challenges of:
  • subtle overtures to Germany being ignored (no checking of the large map again!)
  • "partnering" with Turkey by sacrificing his southern front... whilst Turkey ignored this and kept eating him up
  • efforts to make this message stronger by attacking Italy... only for Turkey to keep ignoring it!
  • eventually getting French support with a Barents fleet support of St Petersburg to create a stalemate line, forcing Turkey to draw despite only being one supply centre short of a win - and Kaner only having 4 SC's himself
• In addition to playing Fog of War in classic, we talk about how it can also be played in the variants 1066 and Rat Wars (and why the technology behind coding Fog maps tends to limit the number of variants that use it)

New development server talk

Finally we talk about variant development and news from CaptainMeme (vDip mod and regular on webDip) that while the vDip Lab is pretty much dead, a new test server for development is being slowly created in the background. This is some really cool news that could see new variants created again that won't crash vDip. The guys talk about how this could impact on new variants, including suggestions on webDip on air support, Classic with neutral armies, Kaner's Mongolian variant and Amby's ideas on making a massive Cold War variant.

In conclusion we tempt you again about having some of the main players from the webDiplomacy 2012 championship game being in episode 3.

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Venue: The Gresham Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Four Pines Stout from Four Pines Brewing, Australia (although Kaner did call it "Ten Pints" in the podcast)
• Amby - Massolino Barbera d'Alba from Piedmont, Italy and The Gresham Shiraz from Western Australia

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

Introducing the Diplomacy Games podcast, hosts and the variant Known World 901

Welcome to Diplomacy Games! In episode 1 we introduce the podcast and hosts Kaner and Amby and why we play Diplomacy online. Then we jump into discussing in detail the Diplomacy variant Known World 901.

But for starters, a little about ourselves - Kaner and Amby. We discuss our background and experience with playing Diplomacy. We get into the early days of playing, from face-to-face to rather embarrassing first ever opening moves when playing online. We also explain why the podcast is recorded over a few drinks in a bar.

Next up we give a bit of a high level overview of the type of things each of our episodes may cover, including:

• A "deep dive" into a variant
• Features/how stuff works on webDiplomacy and vDiplomacy
• Anything new that's happened on the  websites
• Any threads of contention in the threads
• Interviews

We go deep into the variant Known World 901 by David E. Cohen, and on-boarded to vDiplomacy by Kaner. We cover:

• How at a 15 player variant it fills the gap between large 10 player games and massive 34+ player games
• How Amby loves its historical nature and learns some history, all while continuously mispronounces players' country names
• The really cool transform option for changing armies to fleets and vice versa. Kaner talks about why he did this to improve gameplay
• We then look at an example of the map in the game Vae Victis . Here Amby made it into a 6 player draw despite only having 4 supply centres. What strategies and tactics did he use to make it to the end?
• Kaner discusses how you can use variant statistics to better understand how to play the country you draw

Finally we discuss the WebDiplomacy 2012 World Cup championship, a game that took three and a half years to complete. We're lining up a number of the key players to discuss this mammoth Diplomacy gaming effort in an upcoming interview.

Visit our website for the show notes for this episode.

Venue: Grand Central Hotel, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Fat Yak original pale ale from Matilda Bay Brewing, Australia
• Amby - Rymill "The Yearling" Cabernet Sauvignon from the Coonawarra

And a big thanks to Dan Philip for our rockin' intro music!

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us.

Diplomacy Games: Start Here

This is a pre-intro episode recorded 3.5 years after the Diplomacy Games podcast began, giving an updated context of what the show is all about.

We discuss face-to-face, online, drinking, interviews, episodes and much more. Listen to it first to get an idea of what the podcast has become.

DiplomacyGames is released usually about every two weeks. It is brought to you by two drunk Australians - Kaner and Amby - in various pubs. 

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, DiplomacyGames.com or practically anywhere.