Board Game The Lost Art of Diplomacy - GAME OVER (E/F 2-way draw)

Fall 1913:
1717565604722.png

Final game state:
1717565724282.png
 
Oh lovely, this was a very cool experience. Full postgame report will come this week (probably) now that my computer is un-fucked. GG and thanks to everyone here who participated or helped out, you guys made my first Circus host experience truly special.

a fairy can I have the OP back pls thx
 
GG, everyone. I genuinely had a lot of fun playing diplo again, even if I was more socially ready for gunboat than press diplo.

It was kind of hard to stomach the long, drawn out, public humiliation of being killed over this much time before the other countries, but I appreciate how nice everyone has been both in general and during the endgame.

I wouldn't have changed much about my decisions throughout. I didn't like the way things were going in the south and I liked less how fast the progress of EF was going. There were absolutely plenty of tactical mistakes, especially during the week I was entertaining guests, but I really enjoyed hashing things out with bluedoom and I'm learning from those mistakes in the future. My only real regret is in taking the coward's way out and stabbing when hope was lost for the sliver of a chance that things might get more chaotic in the endgame when I could have just told the others to fuck off because I knew they weren't going to play ball. The truth is that I'm not a very socially adept person, and that's been made abundantly clear by how quickly the game turned inexorably against me. It's a tough pill to swallow, especially coming off the last game where I was socially iced out, but a place for potential growth as a person. I hope that my presence in this game didn't make it too uninteresting, in that I basically orchestrated the perfect scenario for EF given that I wasn't strong enough to hold up against them. Regardless, I tried my best and will continue to do so in the future.

I certainly don't get to play this game often enough and very happy for the chance. Thanks, everyone, for a great match!
 
Pensées du roi de France

Absent a formal postgame, I was asked in part by DBD to share some of my thoughts on this game regarding my overarching strategy, early-game gameplay decisions, and interactions with each player.

I will say at the outset that my strength in Diplomacy is as a press player. I am neither the best tactician nor the best strategist, although I can hold my own in both areas. But, I like to think that I am most adept at the diplomatic aspect of Diplomacy. Talking to NightEmerald pre-game, I told him that our overarching early-game strategy would be this: we would likely have three salient neighboring countries. The goal at the beginning would be to establish a non-aggression pact with one of our immediate neighbors, and then team up with a neighbor on the other flank to destroy the final country whose borders we shared with our new ally.

It’s no secret that France is one of, if not the easiest, countries to play in classic Diplomacy. Easy access to two builds in Iberia combined with a relatively defensible position against Italy leaves the French player with ample opportunity to attack one of England and Germany to expand. Indeed, most Diplomacy games, barring Western Triples, begin with two of England, France, and Germany teaming up to destroy the third. I hope you can see where I’m going here. Immediately (I believe literally within 5 minutes of the game beginning) I reached out to Aura Guardian (“AG”) to propose a DMZ, and Lonelyness (“LN”) to propose an alliance against Germany.

A smart Italy, which AG certainly is, will know that attacking France early-game (at least 1901-2) is not a productive endeavor. Pie is a chokehold that would stifle any Italian progress, and sending fleets into the Western Mediterranean leaves Italy’s home centers wide open to Austrian and Turkish incursion. It was unsurprising, therefore, when I found him willing to agree to a Pie + Western Mediterranean DMZ so I could focus on the North and he against Austria.

This left a choice between an alliance between England and an alliance with Germany, which admittedly came down to social factors. I believe statistically an FG alliance against England lends better odds for long-term French success, but I knew LN far more than I did DBD at the time, as we had spent time lots of time talking after I was recruited by Bass during MM3. While I certainly knew that LN was smart and not a threat to be ignored, DBD was a total wild card, making LN seem like a more predictable option. The terms of our initial alliance were simple: nobody was to move into ENG, and I was not to build any fleets in Bre. In hindsight, I should have been more aggressive in requesting no fleet builds in Lon in exchange, but thankfully I was not punished for this oversight.

Having these negotiations secured, I felt relatively comfortable going for an aggressive anti-German opening of:
F Bre > MAO
A Par > Pic
A Mar > Bur

With this opening, I was able to secure Bel and Por (I got Por first instead of Spa to keep AG calm), gaining two builds. I decided to build two armies to keep both Italy and England happy, as building a Fleet in either Bre or Mar would inherently telegraph that I was intending to attack, and opening up a second front when Germany was still a very present threat would have been a bad idea.

I’ve spoken extensively about my thoughts re: DIAS in a no-stakes environment in the discord, but perhaps some have wondered why I did not stab LN and go for a solo win when I was (arguably) in the best position to do so. The truth is is that after Germany fell, IRL-induced burnout started to hit me hard. I began to face a lot of pressure from these changing IRL circumstances, which necessarily required that I divert my time and energy away from this game. I was on board to duo with LN from the beginning in the name of friendship, but frankly, I was sorta just willing to just go along for the ride. It wasn’t until he mentioned that a duo victory under DIAS rules would arguably be more impressive than a solo victory did my enthusiasm for this game return.

(We don’t need a recap of the whole game so I will just give some thoughts on each player)

NightEmerald my co-hydra head! I think an unfortunate problem of the inexperienced + experienced hydra duo is that the experienced head is necessarily a bit more “involved”, and there is a presumption that they speak for the unit as a whole. Regardless, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed your first Diplomacy Experience!

Dead by Daylight even though I went for your throat immediately, I still do feel bad that you were the first one to go out. Your opening play was fine; I think you were just the victim of my extremely aggressive play, and unfortunately the fleet build sealed the E-F alliance against you (I don’t think it was as an egregious mistake as some point out, though) Even if you’re the first one gone, I hope that you enjoyed playing with us, and I’m glad you stuck around for more games!

bluedoom My lie to you was easily my most objective and clear-cut mistake, and I do apologize for that. It achieved nothing but built up your hopes of taking Ven only to dash them, leaving you in the unfortunate position of being wide open to a Turkish Stab. You’re a great guy, and in a different timeline I could have seen a scenario where I joined forces with you, which would have been cool.

Lechen just by the nature of the map, we never directly interacted from a tactics standpoint until the end of the game. However, our inability to do anything to each other meant that we were ideal to share info with each other, and it was a pleasure to chat with you from across Europe. I’m glad that you went from the early-game punching bag to one of the last countries to be eliminated, and that I made a new friend out of this game.

Aura Guardian AG, I think you were the best tactician on the board, with LN a close second. Outside of the aforementioned DMZ, I really began to interact more with you when LN was still a majority naval power and I needed to find a way to crack open Germany. This was unintentionally thwarted by bluedoom, and I found myself an (unlikely) ally to you. Unfortunately you were stabbed by Turkey, but them’s the breaks sometimes.

Blazade outside of unnecessarily lying to BD, I genuinely feel bad for your late-game experience here. As you’ve said, it certainly is not a fun experience to be systematically picked apart by the rest of the game board, and this is only compounded by the fact that two one-center vassals survived as long as you did. I think you were worried that many players would unnecessarily trash your gameplay decisions, which is valid; however, it seems that the general sentiment among the rest of the board is that this is not the case. At least, I certainly don’t think you’re a bad player; I think the vast majority of your decisions made sense, and I would have probably done similar actions in your shoes. I will say, though, that if you followed my plan that one turn I actually would have helped you destroy Italy to go for an E-F-T tie.

LonelyNess where do I begin...I'll just let people read the E-F chat on their own time, but it was an absolute pleasure to take over Europe together. You're really fun to play with, and I thoroughly enjoyed sharing pet pictures, rehashing old users, or talking about gameplay strategy. Once I decided on you as an ally, I decided to take a page out of Cold War-era nuclear policy and threatened to throw the entire game suiciding into you if I were stabbed. Regardless, the kind words that I gave you for my 1k post earlier in this thread were true and were actually not a ruse to stave off a stab lmao. The same cannot be said for some of my interactions with you, though. I did intentionally try to seem a little less competent than I otherwise would be in order to reduce my threat level in your eyes. I'm not sure if either method was effective, but it was a thing.

Anyway this is a lot of words and I stopped proofreading halfway through because I got tired so sorry lol. Shout-outs to StupidFlandrs48 for the herculean effort of putting on this show and UncleSam for hopping on a silly end-game call with LN, NE, AG, and I to close out the game with a silly convoy.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top