interesting perspective on diplomacy, i always viewed it as a flawed game because of how easy it was to draw for rational players, but looking at people going crazy over stabs and stuff as part of the game i guess makes sense.
(i thought making the victory limit unofficially 15-17 to make the stalemates much harder to bring together, most games with 1 dominating power end with 17 centre draw)

i think players surrendering in general was just terrible, why would you ally together, ignore good stab opportunities, and then surrender when you realize i was right all along? zz
theres no point playing diplomacy is all you intend to do is ally together and give up if it doesnt work
also theres an error on front page, in TL 2, I won the game, not you kronen
staphp brags

I also agree about people playing too slowly
I lose interest quickly when communication is almost non existent, due to cetain players checking once a day and barely reacting, as it's a simple game without the intrigue.
So I suppose it's not about the time it takes, it's more about lack of activity at all encouraging me to just do my orders and stop checking until the deadline

MoltkeWarding

5195 Posts

March 09 2014 16:53 GMT

#202

There was a good deal of intrigue in the East in TL-4, most of it orchestrated by Italy.

After reflection on this game, I am satisfied that no Austria should never offer a Key Lepanto, unless the two players are married or Siamese twins. If he had offered me a regular Lepanto, there was a good chance that it would have worked out for him. Stenole after drawing Austria probably lapsed into a Götterdämmerung mentality about the game, and wanted to get it over with.

Turkey of course was an Italian tool for most of the game, but I think the only alternative for him was early elimination. He was the next logical target after Austria's defeat, due to the natural alliance between Italy and Russia. The only reason it became Italy and Turkey vs Russia rather than Italy and Russia vs Turkey was because of two factors:

1. Russia was too greedy and demanded Budapest (which was my hard-earned prize for a successful stab against Austria) as the price of our "equal" alliance. Turkey was more reasonable and was willing to play Italy's junior partner.

2. Personality management. Russia struck me as a stabber, and Turkey as a stooge. In the stooge and stabber option, you always ally with the stooge and kill the stabber.

The other option was the Juggernaut, but if I saw that, I would have gone through with the Key Lepanto. The key in coercing the other player into letting you win is to slap them with the gunman dilemma; if everyone in the room tackles the gunman, you can take him down, but the first one to move gets shot. In that game I was careful to make it clear to Turkey that that would be him.

Slayer91

Ireland23442 Posts

March 09 2014 17:02 GMT

#203

As I said to stenole in my messages after he got fucked over, what he did was a total bastardization of austrian openings.
Had he went to Serbia Galacia and Albania, with Vienna or Serbia bonucing Trieste in Fall 1901 to prevent any italian triple build, it would be much more likely to succeed
obviously you'd still be able to kill him with allies but if there was reasonable threat of juggernaught it would be a little bit risky
not to mention Italy being able to get 2 fleets and use one of his armies to go roaming allows a strong Italian start

the issue is always with backstabs but the problem with lepanto openings is that Italy is super weak suffering from 2/3 of his forces being largely inactive for most of the game and a see-through attack plan

stenole

Norway869 Posts

March 09 2014 18:04 GMT

#204

I had completely forgotten I was in TL-4. It must have been a slow game. Thankfully Austria is never forced to stay in the game sequestered in a corner till the end. My poor choice in strategy was based on my read of both Turkey and Russia. They both seemed fairly hostile and uncooperative. So I assumed my only chance to get anywhere was to ally with Italy. I decided to play experimentally and do a particular key lepanto variant which I had read about. But for every turn, it became clearer that both the strategy was overly optimistic and that I was unable to manipulate the other players as much as I wanted.

My TL-1 Germany must have seemed equally crazy for outside observers, but I had to change my strategy twice there because of things that happened in the south east. There were also diplomatic exchanges which made the "rational" alliance choices impossible. It turned out pretty well if you take into account that I broke promises to every country at least once, and we were still able to deny an Italy victory with a stable(ish) 4 way alliance.

Both games I played recently have turned out very different from past experiences where the pattern was that there would always be a 2 way alliance emerging at turn 1 and would steamroll the board with a weak stab by the weaker alliance partner at the end. I am pleased that the diplomacy has been much more dynamic in these games.

Edit: Only need 1 more player in TL-5 to get it started.

Obzy

United States525 Posts

March 09 2014 18:56 GMT

#205

Well, although I made quite a few mistakes, I had fun ^^ I'd sign up for TL-5, but will be moving sometime in the next week or two, and probably shouldn't make any commitments until that's done.

re: finalizing - I think the best solution is just to get rid of the no-deadlines-on-weekends. Everything else is relatively fast and pales in comparison to multiple days of inaction. I lost interest in the game completely every weekend due to such huge periods of inactivity, and then scrambled to pick up the pieces at the beginning of each week. The time settings for TL-5 look perfect in that regard. I'll be watching with interest ^^

porkRaven

United States953 Posts

March 10 2014 03:03 GMT

#206

I created an account and was intent on joining the game but I can't seem to find it, I can find TL 2-4 games but not the 5th. Am I being dense? How else may I find it?
Edit: Nevermind it started

Obzy

United States525 Posts

March 10 2014 03:39 GMT

#207

Yep - TL - 5 is active here: http://www.playdiplomacy.com/game_play_details.php?game_id=78239

As a general recommendation to anybody interested in watching it, if you create an account, you can look up the game in "Active Games" and set it to be watched (to find it more easily from your main account page typey-screen), and having an account lets you view the order history (and if you can't view that, why watch? ^^)