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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What can you get away with in Diplomacy? The article The Coast of Moscow (published in Diplomacy World 74, 1995) gives an idea about how you can sway a game. The article itself is a lot of nonsense; it describes a game where Russia built a fleet in Moscow! However, it is useful in showing how 'cheating' can be achieved, and how persuasion works.
Nonsense
In the article, Calhamer reports that Russia ordered a build for Moscow. However, the build was of a fleet. Let's take a look at a map.
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Unfortunately, most game maps won't feature the 'coast' in question (see quote below) simply because the far eastern edge of the board is usually surplus to requirements. This, then, is an image of a game board. The space in question, Moscow, is the central space of Russia, the one with the picture of an armoured hot air balloon.
There is a sea space which shows to the south-east of the space, which is unnamed. The fact that it is unnamed means something: in the rules of Diplomacy units cannot move to an unnamed space.
However, the player didn't intend to move the fleet there:
None of us was surprised when Russia ordered the raise of a Fleet in Moscow; but we were when he insisted it were legal. In the ensuing discussion Russia indicated further that he intended to move the Fleet coastwise to Sevastopol; and then, on the understanding that Sevastopol had only one coast, to move it on to Rumania, the Black Sea, or Armenia.
So, what do the rules say about this? Well, nothing. This is one of the unfortunate times when the silence in the rules can lead to poor interpretation. In this case, though, it isn't poor interpretation, but deliberate use of the silence.
The sea space in question is the Caspian Sea. It is unnamed, so a fleet cannot move there. It creates a pseudo-coast with Moscow, and a second false coast with Sevastopol. All spaces with two coasts have those separate coasts named; for instance, St Petersburg (the space north of Moscow) has a north coast and a south coast. Sevastopol has no named coasts; this is because it has only one coast (on the Black Sea).
So, Russia intended to build a fleet in Moscow, based on the pseudo-coast on the unnamed Caspian Sea; move it down that pseudo-coastline to Sevastopol, and from there move it as normal for a fleet in Sevastopol.
There are multiple levels of nonsense in this:
- Moscow doesn't have a coast. Although the rules are silent, it stands to reason that a border - and, hence, a coastline - with an unnamed space, a space a unit can't move to, doesn't exist. A fleet can't move to the Caspian Sea because the space doesn't exist; therefore the alleged coastline for Moscow, the border between Moscow and the Caspian Sea, doesn't exist.
- The coastline from Moscow to Sevastopol doesn't exist. Even assuming that, as the rules are silent about the ability to build fleets in a space with a pseudo-coast, Russia could argue that building a fleet in Moscow is not specifically illegal, the fact that Sevastopol has only one coast (based on the naming convention of having spaces with two coasts) means that a fleet in Moscow couldn't move to Sevastopol.
- Claiming that Sevastopol has only one coast defeats the move F(Mos)-Sev. As we can see from the above quote, the Russian player then went on to claim that Sevastopol has only one coast, which reinforces the illegality of the fleet moving from Moscow to Sevastopol. If Sevastopol only has one coast, which the Russian player says is true, then a fleet cannot move along a non-existent coast between Moscow and Sevastopol.
What Russia argued, however, was that Moscow clearly bordered a body of water, therefore a coast existed. Remember, Russia never intended to move to the unnamed Caspian Sea, so that rule wasn't involved. Moscow's coast allowed the fleet to move to Sevastopol. As Sevastopol isn't a province named as having two coasts (based on the fact that these provinces are identified in the rules and Sevastopol isn't in the list) then it has only one coast and that therefore the coast Sevastopol has on the unnamed Caspian Sea is one with the coastline Sevastopol does have with the Black Sea.
Mindgames
Some players don't like these. They claim they are ungentlemanly.
Well, this is Diplomacy and it is a game which allows - I'd say encourages - 'ungentlemanly' conduct. What is 'gentlemanly' about stabbing an ally? About agreeing to do one thing and then completely going against that agreement?
It would be interesting to see if the players who don't like mindgames in Diplomacy correspond with players who maintain alliances. It wouldn't surprise me to find that there is some link.
Let's take not replying to messages. This is specifically a feature of remote play: one player messages another and the recipient doesn't reply. Why not?
Well, there may be a number of reasons, but the one I'm looking at is that the recipient is deliberately not replying because she wants to make the sender worry. "Why hasn't she replied? What is she planning? Is she going to betray me? Or has she simply not had time to reply? Has she dropped out of the game? What's going on!?!"
I know of one player who isn't a Drawmonger or a Carebear who hates this kind of thing. He'd argue that players should - perhaps even must - reply to all messages as doing so just isn't polite. And I go some way down the path of agreeing with him: it isn't polite... but I'd also say that this doesn't mean deliberately not replying should not be a strategy a player might employ.
For me, the problem is more that it is a risky strategy. What will it mean? On a very basic level, not replying is going to erode trust between you and the sender. And all relationships are based on trust or a lack of it. If you're going to use this strategy then you need to be confident that you can deal with any consequences of it!
But that doesn't mean that it should be completely removed from your options.
Another strategy that can be employed in internet play is the copying and passing-on of messages. Let's say England sends France a message rubbishing Germany. France could copy that message and send it, in its entirety, to Germany, spoiling any attempt England has of an agreement with Germany and - at the same time - possibly strengthening Germany's relationship with France.
The same player I mentioned above hates this tactic as well (perhaps not surprisingly). He stated that there is an agreement among Hobbyists (he has strong connections to the arm of Dip players who don't play on the internet, or not on Diplomacy websites, anyway) that letters or emails are never passed on this way.
His argument goes that it is - once again - ungentlemanly. It erodes any trust that any player can have that his communications are secret and secure.
This is a strange argument. In a face-to-face game, what is there to stop one player passing on the communications she has had with another player to a third player? Nothing. However, the argument goes, this is somehow different to passing on a written message.
This is - to some extent - true, but only as far as the now all-but-defunct play-by-mail (or postal) game is concerned, and I think it is likely that this 'agreement' comes from the era of this kind of play. If France received a letter from England - rubbishing Germany - and sent that letter on to Germany - actually posted the whole letter to her - then there could be no serious doubt as to what England had said!
In modern remote play, though, there is a much more realistic element of doubt as to the veracity of the passed-on communication. Copy and paste is a useful tool if you're seeking to do this... but copy and paste isn't reliable in that the copied message can be edited before being sent on.
France may well copy England's message, paste it into his own, and then edit it, exaggerating, or otherwise falsifying, what England said. Germany, upon receiving this message, could naively accept France's intelligence as being accurate, or she could take the more cynical view of asking herself just how much truth there was in this 'as written' intelligence.
There is another more realistic problem with this kind of tactic. Germany, upon receiving this copied message from England to France, could then ask herself: "If France is doing this, what is stopping him from doing it with my messages?" The result is a break down in trust between France and Germany, rather than what might have been France's true aim in passing the message on, building trust between them.
In fairness, this is something of what the gentleman who hates mindgames says: Diplomacy is a game of trust and, if you can't trust that your messages are being kept secret, you're not going to say anything meaningful at all, communications are going to be almost pointless, and you stop playing the game as it should be played.
However, the clever player can use this to her advantage. Perhaps she can feed some falsehoods into her messages to a suspected copy-and-paster, giving her some indication of which players she can trust. Or she might give a false set of orders, or a clear piece of misinformation, that will give her an advantage over the power that receives the pasted message.
In truth, any player that receives a pasted message, or a forwarded message, and takes it at face value, probably deserves everything she gets.
Cheating
If you take the time to read some of the articles on the Diplomacy Archive you'll see some interesting, usually pre-website, examples of cheating and the lengths players would go to. Some examples are:
- Threatening a player who was having an affair with telling his wife.
- Buying drinks - or even offering money - to persuade players to play for you.
- Entering games with agreements between groups of players to never attack, or to ally with, each other.
- Slipping additional pieces onto a board.
- Replacing genuine written orders with an alternative set - surreptitiously, of course!
- Multi-accounting. This is where a player creates more than one account and plays the accounts in the same game. This means he has a clear advantage over the other players in the game.
- Metagaming. A definition of metagaming would be bringing aspects outside the game into the game. The first three examples above would fit into this definition. On the internet, this would more likely be something like: cross-game agreements (whereby players agree to swap favours in one game for favours in another); entering a game with an agreed alliance, meaning other players are at a disadvantage; persistent alliances (whereby players helped each other in most games, effectively playing as a team); acting on grudges between games (for example: "Because you stabbed me in that game, I'm going to go after you any time we meet again"); threatening to take actions in real life ("If you attack me, I'll get you at school!"), etc.
- Playing the meta-game. This is either playing to improve your standing for future games, by never breaking an alliance for instance, or by playing to maximise points in a game which is part of a scoring system.
There is an acknowledged agreement that, if a player gets away with something in a game (such as slipping an extra piece onto the board and it not being spotted) then he's got away with it. On internet sites, however, this is likely to be both impossible (as an example) and anything else which is clearly cheating is likely to result in being penalised or even banned.
Multi-accounting on websites is easy - and never legal. It is also pretty easily detectable. There is never a reason to operate more than one account in a game.
Metagaming is, perhaps, more difficult to detect and is open to some interpretation. A good site will make some kind of differentiation in dealing with players who have proven themselves untrustworthy (the very human reaction to being betrayed in the past) and threatening retaliation for a broken trust, and between allying with someone who you believe you can trust based on past experiences (again, a human reaction) and allying with someone who - for instance - you ally with simply because you know them. Team play is not allowed.
The meta-game is more troublesome. Most sites have some kind of ratings system, whereby players score points for playing in ranked games and these go to producing a cross-game, whole site, rating system. The question is: Is it cheating to play to maximise your results in this system, rather than playing the game as a single entity?
For me, it's wrong. Diplomacy wasn't designed to be played as a series of games. Although it can be argued that, when playing such a game, this brings in a new dimension and, therefore, other considerations, if you play to score points, then you're not playing the game; you're playing a variant of the game.
However, I also understand that, if you choose to enter this type of game, then you ought to be prepared to come across players who will be playing the meta-game. For me, therefore, it is more of a philosophical argument rather than out-and-out cheating.
If you enter a tournament, you must accept that players will be playing to maximise their place in that tournament, and that play will be different in games because of that. In the same way, if you enter a game which is part of a bigger series or games, you also have to accept the fact that some players will see maximising their potential in the series as part of their play.
This, however, doesn't mean this kind of play is right, from an ethical viewpoint. Often these players will not see that playing this specific game the way it was designed to be played will achieve the goal they have. But, of course, this depends on how effective the scoring system is in promoting playing the game the way it was designed to be played.
Etiquette and Ethics
There is often a blurring between the philosophy of a Diplomacy player and the expectations of how games should be played. What one person believes is cheating, or impolite, another might see as being acceptable.
Personally, anything which changes the way Diplomacy is designed to be played is questionable. If, therefore, I think a particular type of play is wrong, should I be playing in a game where that type of play is likely to be advantageous? More appropriately, should I be criticising it and moaning about it?
Well, I don't see a problem in my criticising it; discussion is always going to be good for the game, assuming it doesn't slip into the area of abusiveness. If I believe something is wrong, and I don't question it, I'm implicitly accepting it, surely? And it may just be that I can make a difference by questioning it persuasively.
Moaning about it is a different matter. After all, it is my choice whether or not I play that game. If I choose to play it, then I have no right to moan when I come across a feature of the game I don't like.
Equally, unless something is actually banned - such as metagaming - then it is allowable. If I don't like some aspects of play, such as the ability to forward messages, then I have to make a choice: Do I refuse to play in games where this is possible, or do I accept it and make allowances - even set traps - for it?
What I think is important to understand is that, while I may be convinced that this or that is acceptable or otherwise, if it isn't illegal in the rules of the game or in the rules of where I am playing, then I have to accept the right of other players to play that way. I can argue against it, but I don't have the right to impose my beliefs on others.
Heathley Baines (Nibbler)
Editor
The Series "How to Play Diplomacy"
Part 1: "Introduction"
Part 2: "Origins"
Part 3: "Corrections"
Part 4: "Deceptions and Betrayals"
Part 5: "Excuses"
Part 6: "Conclusions"
Part 6: "Conclusions"
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