NYC Rationalist Diplomacy Post-Game Discussion
In addition to the two games currently being played on Less Wrong directly, the NYC group formed a third game; we filled five of the seven slots, with two being taken from an open call on LW when it was clear we would not reach seven players otherwise. While there were some technical problems for a few players, I feel the game was quite interesting. The game can be found here: http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=42765. Commentary was posted to the discussion group LW-Diplomacy@googlegroups.com which you can access here: http://groups.google.com/group/lw-diplomacy/browse_thread/thread/e8141331abf8a114, which all are free to join and review. These were neutral point of view overviews of the situation, to help bring everyone up to speed, and were done without private knowledge. While some figured out who I was right away, we didn’t reveal it explicitly until much later. In terms of the software, a lack of good notifications makes it problematic for games that aren’t either very long deadlines or very short, but it is a strong system otherwise.
Also available there are all my communications and my journal, which I updated as the game progressed. I will give an overview here of what happened, as I understand it, and am happy to discuss anything and everything related to the game or Diplomacy in general.
Early on, Italy and Russia quickly realized I was Turkey from my messages, and given my experience in the game and in games in general decided to try and take me out, agreeing on a triple with Austria, while in the west England and Germany formed an alliance against France. In the fall, both Austria and England had technical issues that cost them a center, which served to help keep France viable in the west and position Austria’s units in awkward fashion. The first key movement in the game was that Austria decided that he felt that taking me out for who I was wasn’t sporting, and so he backstabbed Italy but without making a deal with Turkey because he’d read (correctly) that Austria/Turkey is not a good deal for Austria in general. However, by lying to all and refusing to make a deal with Russia or with Turkey until too late he put us all in a position where it was easier to take him out. France jumped on Italy while he was weak and took advantage of England’s struggles and Germany’s fleets to realign the west. With Austria out of the way, Russia jumped on Germany and Turkey continued west safe from a Russian stab due to the tactical situation. I spent a lot of the midgame trying to get Russia to stall as much as possible in the north while I made progress in the south, with mixed results as England joined the alliance in exchange for assistance growing and once again becoming relevant. France asked for too much in deals with me and with Italy, forcing him to agree to be a Turkish puppet and me to stick with Russia until I could go for the win outright.
In the Fall of 1906, Russia repeated even louder than usual his request that I leave Black Sea, which of course I had no intention of doing, and it was the natural time for him to try and build a southern fleet. He however had been following orders for some time, although they were strong orders, so he was out of position for a war. I guessed he might move to Romania so I went for Sevastopol, which is harmless if it fails, and I got it, preventing a Russian build. He then backed off since he wanted no war, but I couldn’t let him pick up more centers and build a defense, so I pretended to agree to peace and went straight for him; he bought that the first turn’s move was defensive so I got two free turns. Meanwhile, Russia pulled off a stab of France to get into Burgundy, so France agreed to let me into the Mid-Atlantic in order to help him survive since I didn’t need him dead, but giving me Mid-Atlantic sealed the board’s fate unless everyone could perfectly co-ordinate at a minimum, which did not happen (and rarely does in my experience) because Russia broke ranks. I believe that starting in Spring 1908 Turkey probably does have an eventual forced win because he can hold Portugal for years via support cuts but it took me a long time to see it.
The biggest thing that I think is worth noting is that I made painstaking efforts to be friendly and helpful to all players in-game and not to break my word unless absolutely necessary. Early on I couldn’t have kept my word to both Austria and Russia if they had both played along, but it never became an issue, then I lied once to Austria, arguably once to France and then once to Russia, and in two of the three cases presumed total war would be the result. I’m curious what other things that came up are considered by others to be worthy of discussion/exploration, and to see the after action reports from the other survivors.
Russia here.
This game was an interesting experience for me. I was completely unfamiliar with Diplomacy coming in, and it came at a point in my life when I was incredibly busy with other things. I didn’t even realize the game was beginning until it was hours before the first turn was going to end. I exerted no effort whatsoever to learn the rules or any basic strategic considerations until several turns into the game! During that point my play was entirely experimental, playing around with different diplomatic styles, seeing how people would react to things. The game was also initially anonymous, and I was very concerned with attempting to conceal my identity, which prompted a lot of reflection on my usual writing and decision-making habits. I was also wrong about Scott’s identity, which was very surprising to me.
Basically I failed to optimize the game in a very serious way, and I am not pleased with my performance. I don’t really want you guys to see my moves or my chat logs, but they are posted to the Google Group nonetheless. That said, I was legitimately doing other things with my life, and this game already started eating up hours/day. In the future I think I will do a LOT better. I will also make sure I can seriously devote the time and effort to a game before signing up next term. I recommend either doing very short turns that finish the game in a single day, or week-long turns which don’t require a continuous time investment in negotiation.
Despite my disappointment in myself, I had an enormous amount of fun playing this game. The intrigue brought us all closer together. It has also changed the way I conceptualize the world, which I always appreciate. On net, this was an awesome experience, and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.
In retrospect, I think there was quite a bit of this going on with regards to my play vis a vis Turkey.
I was France.
In retrospect, I got overextended and overly greedy around 1904-5, trying to grab all of Italy. I wasn’t sure of Turkey’s sincerity, so I decided to try to move as quickly as possible before he could intervene; I wound up facing a Turkish-Italian alliance. After Germany and I lost Tunis, Rome, and Munich, I lost most of my offensive ability and didn’t have too much of an impact on the remaining major event, the Turkish backstab of Russia.
I also waffled too much at the end, mostly due to the fact that both Turkey and Russia were attacking me, and I wasn’t sure which was the more immediate threat. In retrospect, it was obviously Turkey, though there wasn’t really any way for me to win or draw by that point.
And again, thanks for the analysis, Zvi!
For me, the key moment was when I asked you what you felt was a fair division of Italy. While you did hold Rome and Tunis at the time, my units were in a strong position to fight for the area. I was looking for a 2⁄2 split so I could go after Russia, or at least strongly consider doing so, but when your description of a fair offer was a 3⁄1 in your favor with you having the ability to stab me for the Ionian Sea at will I realized that negotiating with you was too risky; if I made legitimate offers it would be clear to you that we’d never reach a deal, and I needed you to think a deal was reachable. My instinctual response was going to be “If I agreed to that, would it be credible?” to point out how absurd it was before I realized why I couldn’t do that.
In terms of the end, to me supporting me into the Mid-Atlantic was accepting the Turkish win, either because it was inevitable or because this was France’s way to survive, and that was accurate; if I was forced into a draw it would have been easy to reduce it to E/R/T by withdrawing from the French front and letting France (and Italy) be safely wiped out.
England reporting in. I mostly agree with Will/Russia/Cosmos about the game. While I don’t think I was as busy as him, my newbishness with the rules (especially convoy rules) really held me back. I got lucky that I was England, and land locked enough that, at the beginning, nobody could take advantage of my blunders.
My favorite part was the diplomacy under anonymity, coordination being a real problem when you can really only use in-game incentives.
My chat logs are also posted as well as the first turn game journal, which I couldn’t maintain.
Special thanks to Zvi for the in-game analysis and for staying impartial (as possible) for the running analysis.