Is Diplomacy worth it?

[Witchblade]

I've never played Diplomacy, either the board game or any of it's PC derivatives.

I saw the PC game by Paradox Interactive and thought it looked like something I would like.

Some reviews are less than flattering, but I don't trust professional reviewers.

Any input about the game from Codexers would be welcome.

 

[Ashery]

Haven't played the computer based version of it, but I've played the board game version of it as well as a game via email (Same group of people each time).

The mechanics of the game are very simple. The attacker needs to have at least one more supporting army than the defender in order to take the territory (Troops can support an attack if they are adjacent to the territory being invaded. Similarly, they can support the defense of a territory under the same circumstances). If the attacker loses, nothing happens and if the defender loses, his defending army is displaced to an adjacent territory. The army is only lost when it has no where to retreat to.

Located throughout the map are support points. During the Fall turn (Two turns a year, Spring and Fall), you issue build orders if you control more support points than deployed forces. If you have more troops that support points, you must disband some forces if you don't recap a supply point by the end of Fall.

As I said, simple mechanics.

The backbone of the game is the player interaction, which is done beautifully. For the board game, each turn involved, if I recall correctly, fifteen minutes of discussions among players (Not necessarily at the table in front of everyone) in which they made plans for what they'd do. None of which are binding...after the fifteen minutes are up, every player submits their orders on a sheet of paper and all turns are executed at the same time.

The game ultimately boils down to excessive amounts of plotting and backstabbing. Enjoyable as hell if you like that type of thing, but I only enjoy reading about politics, not participating...

I've been wondering how well it'd play with a group of drunk players, however...Would make the plotting far more interesting, haha...

 

[Spectacle]

I haven't played the Paradox game, but I can't possibly imagine it being fun to play Diplomacy against an AI. The game is all about talking with your fellow players.

There are several places to play diplomacy for free online, you should check that out instead, or invest in the board game and round up some friends.

 

[Witchblade]

Thanks for the info, I'll google it and see what I get. It does actually sound like fun to me, and I think I'd like to try it.

 

[asper]

In the one game of Diplomacy I played, there was just so much lying that nothing was sure anymore, and any conversation became useless.

In my opinion a much better (the best?) talk-based game is Mafia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)

It's varied and has a lot of dynamics. And you don't need any equipment to play it

 

[Witchblade]

In the one game of Diplomacy I played, there was just so much lying that nothing was sure anymore, and any conversation became useless.

In my opinion a much better (the best?) talk-based game is Mafia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)

It's varied and has a lot of dynamics. And you don't need any equipment to play it

LOL!

um... mmkay.

I checked it out, and I suspect this is the link for the game . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(game)

It looks like fun, but I prefer to stick to the PC. (Antisocial personality and all that)

So anyways, I had already ordered the PC game, as I'm too curious not to check it out.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Elwro]

Yeah, Mafia as a party game can be loads of fun if there are many participants and you create some inventive variant of the functions.