Diplomacy is a complicated game. Now, there's an understatement! However, when learning how to play it, there is one source which can't be ignored: the creator of the game, Allan B Calhamer.
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In the Diplomacy Archive, there are two articles which deal with how Diplomacy came into being:
- A Dozen Years of Diplomacy (1966; First published in Diplomania, issue 12, Aug 1966.)
- The Invention of Diplomacy (1974; First published in Games ad Puzzles, issue 21, Jan 1974.)
Both articles explain the forces that led to Calhamer creating Diplomacy and they are, pretty much, repetitive of each other. Although they explain how the game was formed, they also have implications on how Calhamer intended the game to be played.
The Influences
At the end of World War II, I came across an article on "post-war planning" which reviewed the European diplomacy of the period 1815-1914 and argued that coalitions tend to shift and form so as to oppose the most powerful or most aggressive elements.
This was the idea behind the making and breaking of alliances in Diplomacy. Calhamer had found that he wanted to make a game that involved unsettled alliances, that could "shift and form". The idea was that alliances would have the aim of stopping the most powerful element; in this case, the most powerful player. Developing this idea more in The Invention of Diplomacy he wrote: "... the system of multiple and flexible checks and balances offered itself as a possible basis for a strategic parlour game of some depth and colour."
In 1952 I studied 19th century European history at Harvard under Professor Sidney B. Fay ... whose book Origins of World War One details the two or three party ‘arrangements’, contacts and projects, wholly or partly secret in nature.
Secret alliances were a major part of WWI. Germany, for instance, had alliances with Austria-Hungary, Italy, Austria-Hungary and Italy, Turkey, and Russia. These were often contradictory. Austria and Italy were never completely friendly; much of Italy had, throughout the 19th century, been subject to Habsburg rule (the Habsburg Empire became Austria-Hungary), and Italy wanted land on the Adriatic Sea that was under Austro-Hungarian rule.
There was the long-standing Russian and Turkish (or Ottoman) rivalry, also, formed through Ottoman control, for centuries, of the Balkans, which Russia saw as 'naturally' her protectorate for Orthodox Christian reasons. Russian/Ottoman aggression had been the basis for many conflicts, included the Crimean War.
But, for Germany, this didn't matter, This web of alliances, treaties and pacts was created with one intent: to maintain German security, integrity and power. If one ally was attacked by another, Germany would have the freedom to choose which to support.
Some players believe that there should be a class of alliances, possibly written, which should be binding under the rules. ... I understand that a Californian group experimented with binding alliances and found that they spent the whole game litigating over whether an alliance had been violated or not, and also spent a lot of effort tricking people into agreeing to things they did not really intend.
Alliances are not, in Diplomacy, meant to be binding. They are made and broken as best suits the player - or players. In The Invention of Diplomacy, Calhamer puts it more bluntly: "To require players to adhere to alliances would result in a chivvying kind of negotiation followed by the incorporation of contract law."
Several of us were playing Hearts, a card game in which several players participate, each independently of the others. We observed that the game was best if all the other [players] co-operated against the current leader. Thus the lead would tend to change hands, giving more players a chance to win the game.
The Lessons
I should probably say, before going on to the lessons of these design ideas, that these articles contain many more interesting explanations of the rules of Diplomacy, making them good reading on their own.
The lesson of these ideas, though, with regard to playing the game, is that alliances, treaties, or whatever you want to call them, are never meant to be binding. This has something to say to those players occasionally known as 'Drawmongers' and more often (and more judgementally) known as 'Carebears'.
I plan to discuss this type of play in later posts but, as the main debate today is often about the role alliances play in Dip, it is worthwhile touching on this here.
Drawmongers believe that alliances should be game-long affairs; that there is an equal skill in maintaining a successful alliance as in making short-term, advantageous alliances, and that, once an alliance is formed, there is equal merit in staying with it as in using it for personal reasons.
Calhamer's idea behind alliances is very different. They are stepping stones to winning the game, to becoming the hegemonic power in Europe. They are not meant to be maintained at all costs. They are about achieving the best possible outcome for your power.
Personally, I wouldn't like to contest the "equal skill" argument. As I have said elsewhere, I can see that the skill needed to maintain an alliance is, at least, as great as the skill needed to manipulate an alliance - or multiple alliances - to put your power in a winning position. Given the amount of pressure applied on a successful alliance to break it, maintaining that alliance requires either a great deal of skill or the gross determination of one or more players.
The skill required to maintain an alliance, though, really isn't what Calhamer's idea of the game is about. If it isn't clear that he intended alliances to be fleeting, and shifting, you're missing something.
He also intended alliances to have a purpose - to prevent a clear leader from winning the game outright. Should one player emerge as a a potential victor, the others should aim to ally against him. In other articles, and in later writings on Diplomacy by other authors, this kind of alliance became known as the 'Stop the Leader' (STL) alliance or 'Grand Alliance'. I prefer the latter term, personally; although it comes from pre-WWI history, it relates to the alliance formed to stop Napoleonic France cementing it's hegemony over 19th Century Europe.
Here, then, is a lesson for those who play to help another player win, for whatever reason: Calhamer designed the game to include negotiations and alliances to prevent someone winning!
To explain this best, I should add to the quote from The Invention of Diplomacy linked to the lessons Calhamer drew from Hearts when designing Diplomacy: "It occurred to me that if negotiation were permitted between players it would be possible to persuade people to co-operate to stop the current leader." Again: "Competition was further enhanced by a ruling that if two players tied for the lead at the end, then all players shared equally in the tie." Allowing shifting alliances and playing in this way means that you have a better chance in the game.
Diplomacy presents a player with three possible outcomes: win, lose or draw. To win, you have to gain control of 18 supply centres. If you achieve this, every other player loses (see Objectives other than Winning, discussed in Part 3 of this series - see below for link - for a discussion of this idea). If you are eliminated from the game, or if another player wins, you have lost. If the game comes to an end before any player wins outright, the surviving players share equally in the draw.
The rules of Diplomacy provide for two possible game-end scenarios: either one player wins (commonly known as a 'solo') or it ends before victory is achieved. The idea behind a game ending before a winner can be crowned is that, given the length of a Dip game, some players may no longer be able to play.
This has become adapted for different situations to the one for which Calhamer designed the game. In tournaments, for instance, games are seldom played to the end: there simply isn't the time to wait for a winner to emerge if all rounds are to be completed, so games often end at a certain game-date. In remote play - usually when played on websites or by email today - if it becomes clear that a game is unlikely to end in a solo, players may agree to end the game early.
It should be said that draws have to agreed by all surviving players (other than in tournaments, obviously). It is a unanimous decision. As this situation often corresponds with some kind of scoring system, one or more players may decline a draw simply because they wouldn't gain the maximum outcome from the scoring system used in the game. This is not how the game was designed but, as Calhamer didn't envisage a scoring system for his game at the design stage (although he was still commenting on Dip when these systems were in use), it is somewhat arguable whether this kind of play is 'Calhamerist' or not.
What we can say about Calhamer's philosophy for the game, though, is that preventing a solo is definitely what alliances should be about, not just about winning. There are a couple of terms in use for players who act against this idea, either Armoured Ducks or Kingmakers. I tend to like the collective term Mules: they are too stubborn or too stupid to see - or care about - what they're doing.
Alliances, then, are meant to be temporary, advantageous constructs in Diplomacy. Any other type of alliance is not how the game ought to be played.
Heathley Baines (Nibbler)
Editor
The Series "How to Play Diplomacy"
Part 1: "Introduction"
Part 2: "Origins"
Part 3: "Corrections"
Part 4: "Deceptions and Betrayals"
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