Diplomacy culture is different in different cultures. The exchange between Eero Tuovinen and Valamir (Ralph) in this thread is particularly fascinating, and brings up a very good point: the game of Diplomacy is defined by the people agreeing to play it. If you do not agree beforehand what is within the game then you are playing different games, which is a very weird situation. “Let’s play a game!” “Okay, e4.” “Um, I rolled doubles so I go again. What’s this about pawns?”
If you do agree beforehand, then you’re all playing the same game. But two groups could easily choose different games and still call them both “Diplomacy”… here’s Valamir’s chosen game:
The entire design of the game of Diplomacy is to illustrate the trade off between short term gain and long term plans and the consequences for spending your political capital (aka trust and reputation) frivolously. Making a killer hose move to win a game today is SUPPOSED to have consequences on your ability to win in the future. That’s the point...is winning this game really so important to you that you’re willing to permanently decrease your odds of ever winning again with this group of people? If yes...then do it. If no...then don’t do it and play for the allied victory instead. But don’t do it and then whine about the consequences. Living with those consequences is what the game is about.
whereas here’s Eero’s chosen game:
You’ll notice that I disagree very much with the idea that the board strategy in Diplomacy doesn’t matter because you can always play the people. Assuming that everybody is playing in good faith and is actually trying to win without metagame considerations, then board strategy very much plays a part. You can only negotiate about board strategy, after all, and your options for alliances and stabs are limited by what happens on the board. Therefore a successful alliance of convenience (distinct from the alliance of honor or psychology or whatnot Ralph advocates) is only possible when you succeed in creating a plan of movement that puts everybody’s units in positions where betraying your allies is not to your benefit. To put it simply, an alliance can be solid by investing enough resources in positioning troops in such a manner that betraying the alliance has a negative expected value. This has nothing to do with whether you believe in the other player’s promises as promises, and everything to do with whether those promises make tactical and strategic sense for you and him.
These are different games. Eero claims the second is a better game qua game. I tend to believe him. If during the same “game” one person thinks they’re playing Valamir’s and one Eero’s, it’s no wonder dysfunction results.
I played Diplomacy a few dozen times in college, and the idea of side deals or even carry-over irritation at a prior stab is foreign to me. We would have viewed an enforceable side deal as cheating, and we tried to convince others to ally with us due to game considerations.
Lying in-game simply isn’t evil. Getting stabbed was part of the game. No one played meta-game vengeance tactics not because people didn’t think of them, but because it seemed wrong to do so. Diplomacy’s much more fun to play as a game, like any other, where you’re trying to win the individual game.
And if you’re in a situation where a stab is likely to lead to a much better in-game situation, you should do it. The discussions in this post are about a game I do not think I would like.
This was exactly my reaction, and I’m preparing a potential top level post as a response—to me the game described in this article is not Diplomacy but rather one of the more common failure modes of those attempting to play Diplomacy. I’ve participated in both, and to me Eero’s game both is Diplomacy and is in my opinion a vastly better game qua game.
Incidentally, the other failure mode is not having enough time and ending the game after the opening or middle game, frequently in a four or five way draw.
Good point. I’d consider it cheating someone made an enforceable out-of-game contract with another player. I wouldn’t consider it cheating to throw the game to get a reputation for vengefulness. But if one player starts doing that, then everyone is forced to—and some people might not like that game.
I agree with Eero’s perspective in general. But notice that he is an experienced player who plays with experienced players where everyone can “trust” each other to play to win.
Another way that Diplomacy can lead to different games is disagreement over playing to win. What constitutes playing to win? Going for a solo win, obviously. But what if the game isn’t going well and you have no chance of soloing, or your chances are low? Here are a couple examples.
You have a 40% chance of a solo with one strategy, and a 60% chance of a draw with a safer strategy. What should you do?
You are Turkey being invaded by Russia. Your elimination seems inevitable. You could do your best to slow the Russian invasion, but then Austria would take some of your territory. Except that even though Russian is your main invader, Austria stabbed you earlier and you are pissed at him. So is it justifiable to hand over your centers to Russia so he will expand more than Austria? If you’ve made a precommitment to Austria to give Russia your centers if he stabs you, does that make it OK?
You are Russia and you have nearly eliminated Turkey. But it’s actually better to make Turkey your puppet regime, because you can use his fleets now rather than eliminating him and rebuilding those fleets under your own banner. Should he agree to be your puppet, or is that dishonorable by screwing over other people on the board? If you successfully expand, should you stab him later, or is that “dishonorable”?
Different diplomacy groups may have different norms for these sorts of cases.
This point about Diplomacy culture illustrates one of the most important ways in which it’s not particularly true that
The conditions of Diplomacy—competition for scarce resources, rational self-interested actors, importance of coalitions, lack of external enforcement mechanisms—mirror the conditions of game theoretic situations
as stated in the OP (emphases added). The players aren’t self-interested because, in the usual case, they’re playing with friends and acquaintances. (Or even simply because they’re typical human beings interacting with other human beings.) And the availability of external enforcement mechanisms has already been pointed out.
Of course, game theory doesn’t actually require self-interested actors either. At least not in any sense of “rational self-interest” which goes beyond “rational interest” or, for brevity, “rationality”.
Diplomacy rant/warning!
Diplomacy culture is different in different cultures. The exchange between Eero Tuovinen and Valamir (Ralph) in this thread is particularly fascinating, and brings up a very good point: the game of Diplomacy is defined by the people agreeing to play it. If you do not agree beforehand what is within the game then you are playing different games, which is a very weird situation. “Let’s play a game!” “Okay, e4.” “Um, I rolled doubles so I go again. What’s this about pawns?”
If you do agree beforehand, then you’re all playing the same game. But two groups could easily choose different games and still call them both “Diplomacy”… here’s Valamir’s chosen game:
whereas here’s Eero’s chosen game:
These are different games. Eero claims the second is a better game qua game. I tend to believe him. If during the same “game” one person thinks they’re playing Valamir’s and one Eero’s, it’s no wonder dysfunction results.
I’ve noticed that even when people say “Let’s play chess”, they get confused when I reply “Okay, e4″, like they were expecting to use a board.
I’d be confused. d4 is better and everyone knows it.
Just checking, but which type are we signing up for?
I played Diplomacy a few dozen times in college, and the idea of side deals or even carry-over irritation at a prior stab is foreign to me. We would have viewed an enforceable side deal as cheating, and we tried to convince others to ally with us due to game considerations.
Lying in-game simply isn’t evil. Getting stabbed was part of the game. No one played meta-game vengeance tactics not because people didn’t think of them, but because it seemed wrong to do so. Diplomacy’s much more fun to play as a game, like any other, where you’re trying to win the individual game.
And if you’re in a situation where a stab is likely to lead to a much better in-game situation, you should do it. The discussions in this post are about a game I do not think I would like.
--JRM
This was exactly my reaction, and I’m preparing a potential top level post as a response—to me the game described in this article is not Diplomacy but rather one of the more common failure modes of those attempting to play Diplomacy. I’ve participated in both, and to me Eero’s game both is Diplomacy and is in my opinion a vastly better game qua game.
Incidentally, the other failure mode is not having enough time and ending the game after the opening or middle game, frequently in a four or five way draw.
Good point. I’d consider it cheating someone made an enforceable out-of-game contract with another player. I wouldn’t consider it cheating to throw the game to get a reputation for vengefulness. But if one player starts doing that, then everyone is forced to—and some people might not like that game.
I agree with Eero’s perspective in general. But notice that he is an experienced player who plays with experienced players where everyone can “trust” each other to play to win.
Another way that Diplomacy can lead to different games is disagreement over playing to win. What constitutes playing to win? Going for a solo win, obviously. But what if the game isn’t going well and you have no chance of soloing, or your chances are low? Here are a couple examples.
You have a 40% chance of a solo with one strategy, and a 60% chance of a draw with a safer strategy. What should you do?
You are Turkey being invaded by Russia. Your elimination seems inevitable. You could do your best to slow the Russian invasion, but then Austria would take some of your territory. Except that even though Russian is your main invader, Austria stabbed you earlier and you are pissed at him. So is it justifiable to hand over your centers to Russia so he will expand more than Austria? If you’ve made a precommitment to Austria to give Russia your centers if he stabs you, does that make it OK?
You are Russia and you have nearly eliminated Turkey. But it’s actually better to make Turkey your puppet regime, because you can use his fleets now rather than eliminating him and rebuilding those fleets under your own banner. Should he agree to be your puppet, or is that dishonorable by screwing over other people on the board? If you successfully expand, should you stab him later, or is that “dishonorable”?
Different diplomacy groups may have different norms for these sorts of cases.
This point about Diplomacy culture illustrates one of the most important ways in which it’s not particularly true that
as stated in the OP (emphases added). The players aren’t self-interested because, in the usual case, they’re playing with friends and acquaintances. (Or even simply because they’re typical human beings interacting with other human beings.) And the availability of external enforcement mechanisms has already been pointed out.
Of course, game theory doesn’t actually require self-interested actors either. At least not in any sense of “rational self-interest” which goes beyond “rational interest” or, for brevity, “rationality”.