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For those hearing of this game for the first time and think it sounds fun. Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted f

For those hearing of this game for the first time and think it sounds fun. Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted for years, and monopoly is considered to be a game that causes less bad feelings. An AI may be able to speak like a person but will never be able to hang onto that long burning simmering hatred from when Brad didn't support my army and instead flipped on me by supporting the f**ing Ottomans instead. I hope you choke on a cheesy pretzel Brad.

stavros 4y ago
I only played one game, and this is accurate.
bee_rider 4y ago
I have heard this about various games (Risk and Settlers of Catan mostly). I don’t get it. The point of these games is to be a bastard. If everyone goes into it with the understanding that there will be double crosses, how could there be hurt feelings? Monopoly is worse; it is just boring, I would dump my friends if they suggested monopoly not because I was hurt by their ruthless gameplay but for their terminally taste.
- tullianus 4y ago
  Two features that make Diplomacy particularly bad: 1. Length. An in-person game can last easily 12 hours, and is mentally exhausting. Getting 10 hours in and THEN getting screwed by your friend feels worse than a game with less time investment. 2. Design. It's difficult to survive the opening few hours without alliances, but only one player can win, so everyone is incentivized to defect at exactly the moment they think they can make greater gains by defecting than by cooperating. Being betrayed, even if you survive, forces a total rethink of strategy and ruins the next hour or two of gameplay.
  - legitster 4y ago
    > An in-person game can last easily 12 hours How are you playing it? We've never had a game run over 4 hours.
    - tullianus 4y ago
      New players and stretchable diplomacy period length :)
      - legitster 4y ago
        > stretchable diplomacy period length Yuck. I can not stress enough how important a timer is to play Diplomacy in person.
    - SamBam 4y ago
      I've generally heard of people playing over a weekend. So things like meals and sleeping sometimes happen during the negotiation turns.
  - mikelevins 4y ago
    I was a member of an enthusiastic friends-and-family gaming group through the early and middle 1980s. We spent a good chunk of that time on Diplomacy, then moved to modified Diplomacy on custom maps (my first wife worked for USGS Map Sales, and so we had good maps to work with in creating our own Diplomacy maps), and from there we graduated to Nomic. If you think Diplomacy is long and exhausting, wait till you get a load of Nomic with a bunch of enthusiastic players.
    - irq-1 4y ago
      This? https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14451/nomic https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14451/nomic > In the words of Nomic's author, Peter Suber: "Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed."
      - mikelevins 4y ago
        That’s the one. An intelligent and enthusiastic group of players can extend it indefinitely. It’s all lawyering and deal making, even more than Diplomacy, it can continue for hours and hours, and you dare not leave the room for a second, lest all your carefully worked out dealmaking be washed away in an instant.
- jaylaal 4y ago
  Many people can't mentally context switch for game and aren't prepared for the behavior that is required of the game from those that can. It's an assault on their world view.
- elijaht 4y ago
  I would say Diplomacy specifically has features that make it cause hurt feelings almost intrinsically 1. It's a long game- after hours of play, getting doubled crossed unexpectedly sucks because of how much you have invested 2. The game almost purely relies on cooperation/other players. So double crossing someone really screws them- it almost certainly means I have no recource (luck, dice rolls, individual tactics). Getting double crossed feels like you got CRUSHED in such a complete way that I haven't felt in many other games I have played a few times with a few social groups. Most were aware of the point of the game and enthusiastic going in, but even with that, people's feelings got hurt quite a bit. I will say that Risk/Catan don't really cause the same feelings when we play. Diplomacy feels like a whole different level
  - irq-1 4y ago
    Uniquely there isn't anything in the game, or on the board, to negotiate other than cooperation. You're not trading corn, or loaning money, or anything. Even "positioning" of pieces doesn't matter because you need allies to do anything, and you'll lose any position without allies; you can't build a fort or get a bonus by holding Indonesia. It's just 'please trust me' and 'please be trustworthy'.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- LanceH 4y ago
  In Risk, you're just fighting over limited resources. You largely wage these battles on your own. There is no real negotiation between players, other than an implicit, passing agreement when you don't provoke someone by attacking them. Diplomacy, however, you can't manage any attacks by yourself. You will either depend on someone helping you with an attack/defense, or you will have to trust that someone doesn't attack you as you overcommit. You don't just verbally agree to these things, either. Every turn, players commit to writing what they are doing and all the moves are resolved at once. So a player can go from imagined victory to catastrophic betrayal in the reading of a single order. This means that someone was just lying to their face for 15 minutes. Some people just can't handle that. Oddly, being branded as a backstabber just entices others to try to use that backstabber against what they see as a common enemy. Best game ever. (I only behave like this in game, I swear!)
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >There is no real negotiation between players, other than an implicit, passing agreement when you don't provoke someone by attacking them. It depends how you play. I've seen people make treaties for all sorts of things for various durations, e.g. don't attack from Country X into Country Y and I won't attack across that border either.
    - munk-a 4y ago
      Binding or non-binding treaties? Because in diplomacy everyone is always making non-binding treaties, promises and threats - and that's where the betrayal comes in. I have heard of some people using binding treaties in diplomacy (i.e. three turn ceasefire between France and Prussia) but that has always struck me as a terrible idea because you're shifting moves into the open and things get boring and cliquish.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        I think I've played both ways (or at least played in a group where people didn't break treaties even if they could) but it's been years.
- jgalt212 4y ago
  > The point of these games is to be a bastard. I guess you never play poker because you don't like to bluff. Or you've never faked a pass in basketball before taking a shot. Or you and the catcher like to announce when you're going to throw a curveball.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I’m not sure why you’d guess that, stringing somebody along for hours in Risk and then backstabbing them at the crucial moment seems to at least match your suggestions in terms of duplicity, and is the height of glorious bastarddom.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  IMHO, Risk is one of the few board games worth playing specifically because it's so engaging. Most of my friends who are "into boardgames" tell me that Risk is a terrible game because it starts fights. But the games they want to play bore me to tears. (I can't even read the manual for Settlers of Catan without dying of boredom, but from what you say maybe I should give it another try.)
  - spencerflem 4y ago
    I'm definitely one of those "into boardgames" people so take this all with a grain of salt :p - Risk is definitely a great game and imo people who are into games and don't want to play are saying that because it's 1. long & 2. they've already played it enough to have mostly figured out the strategy Diplomacy is very good and like risk it has very simple rules, grand stakes of world domination, and actual direct conflict. Unlike risk, there's small numbers of units, no luck, and you need an ally, ideally multiple allies, to accomplish anything. If you're looking to get into it I can reccomend text-based turn-a-day style play with strangers on webdiplomacy.com I can only stomach a game of it every year or two because it's legitimately heartbreaking when someone you've spent two months working with every single day stabs you in the back causing you to not lose the game outright but be a crippled angry husk for the next month, and then lose. Tried it with friends once and it was just too much, even with anonymous strangers it hurts. Anyways sorry for the ramble :) go risk, and go diplomacy <3
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
      >be a crippled angry husk for the next month, and then lose. Do people resign in diplomacy? Or do you stick around to try to punish the player who backstabbed you?
      - thevinter 4y ago
        It depends on the players, but for how the game is structured you still have a good chance of "winning" (finishing alive with in a draw) even if you're way underpowered, as long as you're friendly and provide some value
- Someone 4y ago
  I think the main factors are - Unlike with Risk, Catan or Monopoly, if you lose a game of Diplomacy you can’t blame bad luck, as there is zero luck involved. The only ones you can blame are the other players and yourself. - because it’s multi-player, you can easily get beaten by players that, in your opinion, played weaker than you (“I was doing great until they decided to all go against me”) - There’s no way to really play the game without investing serious attention.
  - jgalt212 4y ago
    > there is zero luck involved I consider decision making under uncertainty well within the purview of luck. There's no luck in tennis, but do I scramble back to the middle of the court, or do I bet my opponent will wrong foot me?
    - vintermann 4y ago
      This is true, there is emergent chance from being a simultaneous moves game, and from being a game with more than 2 players. You can totally win or lose from luck in Diplomacy.
- vkou 4y ago
  Settlers of Catan is in many respects not a very good game, because many of its mechanics are zero or negative-sum, with a heavy helping of RNG. This creates a lot of opportunities for kingmaking and spiteful plays from people who are not able to win, but are able to make sure that you lose. And the worst part is that you're often forced into these situations through no fault of your own. Diplomacy allows for all of the same plays, but as the player, you have way more agency about both getting into, and getting out of them. It makes the adversarial alliance-and-dealmaking part first and foremost.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I didn’t generally experience that. From what I saw, generally everyone gangs up on the person in the lead, if they are getting close to victory (this seems like a fair and obvious thing to do). So, part of the game is hiding how close you are until nobody can stop you. Hiding your strength is part of pretty much every strategy game with more than 2 players… Is it a perfect game? No. But it is pretty good. And let’s not give Risk and Catan the Seinfeld treatment — sure there are better games… made in response to their perceived deficiencies!
- mattnewton 4y ago
  Diplomacy is quite a bit different because you 100% win by being the nicest asshole. Past a small mechanical threshold, there really is no way to make it up in strategy or luck, it is only the interpersonal relationships and convincing that wins games. That, coupled with the fact that the game takes a long time and encourages a lot of communication, means the recipe to get invested and blur the boundary between game actions and lies people told you to your face and got you to trust them, can be very unlike risk. Finding out your friends can lie and manipulate you can be like finding out Santa clause isn't real.
  - CallMeJim 4y ago
    What!? Santa Clause isn't real?
    - mattnewton 4y ago
      Whoops haha. It is the best Tim Allen movie though.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  You may be surprised that some people play board games assuming some kind of "fair play" or "play with fun in mind" rule is implicit. They may get very pissed off if you "ruin" a game by taking every single advantage you can according to the rules. [EDIT] Risk and Catan also have what are sometimes regarded as straight-up design flaws that can cause "zombie players" who stick around for most/all of the game but, very early on, no longer have any chance of winning. In both cases pretty much the only entertaining thing left to do is to be a prick to other players and try to play "kingmaker" by causing the second-place player to overtake the first-place one. Often, in Catan, if you're that badly screwed you don't really even have a way to do that much. This leaves the zombie player having a pretty bad time just about no matter what, and can leave other players upset if the zombie player stopped playing to win and started playing just to mess with other players. Risk, especially played in the (really, really not great, as much as I liked it when I was 10 years old) world-conquest mode, also has a problem with very long games and early player elimination, in addition to sometimes generating hopelessly-screwed-but-not-technically-out-yet players.
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    I've had the inverse happen to me, not playing optimally upsetting someone. Playing the DC superhero deck-building game at a card shop with some friends and a stranger asked to join, he already knew how to play. Well I didn't stop another player from getting one of the final Power Ring cards and he flipped the F!&%$ out. "How could you not block her! She's guaranteed to win on her next turn now! You suck at this game!" Bro, I'm just trying to power up my batman. It's not a very competitive game. Needless to say we asked him not to join in our next round, "that's fine, I don't want to play with a bunch of noobs."
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      > Well I didn't stop another player from getting one of the final Power Ring cards and he flipped the F!&%$ out. "How could you not block her! She's guaranteed to win on her next turn now! You suck at this game!" Bro, I'm just trying to power up my batman. It's not a very competitive game. Ohhhhh yeah, there's "expert" players who hate when others don't play "correctly". You even see it in poker with pros getting really mad when someone wins with an "incorrect" play (among actual pros this can be a sign of cheating, but some of them still get mad when non-pros do it). Some of these like to try to "puppet" other players into doing the right thing, and my god, just... please don't. A helpful pointer or three after a play or after the game is great. The odd "uh oh, if so-and-so gets X on their next turn, it's all over!" said to no one in particular can be OK in many games. Telling people what to do while they're playing, more than very occasionally, is awful though. I do kinda get it, it can be frustrating when you play with someone who gives the game to another player who shouldn't have won on that turn if the other'd made the obviously-correct play, but that's just part of playing a game with a mixed-skill set of players and you gotta roll with it.
- deleted 4y ago
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- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  Different players have different mental "lines that shouldn't be crossed". I play Civ 6 cloud games with friends from college who now live around the world. (No turn timer, you get a Steam notification when it's your turn). Sometimes someone will spend literal weeks on a turn trying to make agreements for war declarations or for world-congress votes. The time that crossed the line: Poland wanted to declare war on Greece, no one else wanted to get involved on either side, and it was a pretty even match between them. A friend not involved in this game was visiting family in the same city as the Greece-player, so we knew he'd be dropping by to visit him too. Poland-player told the "neutral" friend: if Greece-player shows you his civ game, take a picture of the screen when he's not looking and message it to Poland-player. Well he did it, Poland declared war, and his knowledge of the position of troops lead to him winning the war. "How did you know I didn't have any troops in my southern cities?" And Poland told him how he knew. It didn't end the friendship but there was about a month of not talking to any of us. When he cooled down there was a long meeting over whether that was cheating or "All is fair in Love and Civ". We could never come to a real agreement, 3 in favor of cheating, 3 in favor of dastardly but legal. But we now have an explicit rule of no screen sharing of any kind.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I mean that’s clearly cheating, not worth blowing up a relationship over but still annoying.
    - petemir 4y ago
      Clearly cheating? I would call it classic espionage
      - smeej 4y ago
        We played a live-action version of Diplomacy in my high school mock UN club. Each person was part of a team and had a role. I was the Chancellor of Germany. If an assassin from another team was able to get alone with me, without any of my countrymen, and show me a card saying she was an assassin, the Chancellor of Germany would be killed during the weekly meeting and, not having a Chancellor, not get to make any moves on the board for that week's turn. They would instead be distracted by determining the new Chancellor. If the assassin had been caught, her country's treachery would be revealed, cementing any of their opponents in alliance. It was an awfully fun thing to be doing on the side, between classes and during free periods, but it'd be wildly impractical in an environment with less proximity! Our mock UN group was weirder than I realized at the time. Our faculty advisor requires that we each speak in one of the 6 languages of the UN likely to be spoken by whatever country we were representing, and he'd simultranslate into English. Somehow it didn't occur to me at the time to ask why a suburban physics teacher was fluent in those six languages.
- whartung 4y ago
  Yea, it's one thing to drop a SORRY card on your wife. It's another to lie to her for 2 solid hours and then stab her in the back in the end, expected or not.
  - permalac 4y ago
    I'm with bee_rider, the point of the games is what you just said, so why so surprised?
- deleted 4y ago
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- georgeecollins 4y ago
  To be good you really have to build someone's trust and then break it. That's the thing-- people think well if we all go in not trusting each other, who is going to be mad? To be good at that game is to be able to get a friend or a stranger to really trust you.
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  I agree with the gp and the other responders that however much other games might seem like they involve "being a bastard", Diplomacy is entirely another level. Describing exactly how is the challenge. Let me try: The games' mechanic mean that everyone is just fighting for territory, those who intelligently cooperate will defeat others. So in this situation, the most effective strategy is cooperating intelligently early in the game and betraying your allies mid-game. The insidious thing about the situation is that if you're playing among friends, the natural way to cooperate to leverage the trust you already have with your friends. And so what any winner does is be themselves, use the rapport they have with their to get cooperation but be just a little less trustworthy than their friends expect. That is where the tendency to break friendships appears.
- vintermann 4y ago
  I don't play those games much, because they tend to spill out into the next game/real world. It's not that someone will feel betrayed and have hurt feelings, it's that it's a perfectly sensible strategy to have the next game in mind, or to involve existing real-world relationships. I prefer games that are over when they're over. That said, when I have played such games, because my group wanted to play them, I've had a policy of just not lying or making promises. I may say things like "that doesn't seem like it would benefit me does it, because then B will surely just toss me out of the lifeboat next turn", and of course NOT speak up when someone makes a wrong assumption to my benefit. It feels like I've won more than my fair share of those games still.
ndonnellan 4y ago
If you want all these things and exponential growth, check out Neptune's pride: https://np.ironhelmet.com/ https://np.ironhelmet.com/ for basically "diplomacy in space with a few extra dimensions". I haven't played in a few years (it was great at the beginning of the pandemic), but it was a lot of "fun" in the same way that diplomacy is "fun". Except with a space theme and a lot of anxiety waking up at 2am hoping your fleet arrives at an empty star system and doesn't get immediately obliterated.
- easygenes 4y ago
  Fair warning: I played and won my first round of NP when I discovered it ~11 years ago. It required unreasonable amounts of being willing to let the game take over my life at arbitrary hours for a couple of weeks, and a couple of strategic betrayals. I don't regret it, but it was a major commitment as far as games go.
- renewiltord 4y ago
  The last time we played this at the company, we lost maybe two weeks of productivity over the game period. I needed to run polyphasic sleep with 2 h naps throughout but my secret alliance got to the end game strongest and then it was a vicious little fight, and one of us took it.
- julianbuse 4y ago
  IMO a better game is subterfuge, because it allows you to schedule commands into the future, which means you don't have to wake up at ungodly hours of the night to execute a command.
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mabbo 4y ago
"Oh yeah, I really enjoyed Diplomacy. It was weird though because I did punch my very good friend in the face because of it." - My coworker.
legitster 4y ago
There was an amazing profile of the Diplomacy competitive scene: https://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-the-alpha-nerds/ https://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-t... Although I find the fallout has been rather overstated. I'm certain it can end badly for unsuspecting participants - but I've played lots of Diplomacy (and even hosted games with a cash pot for the winners) and it has never ended in fallout. Just make sure everyone knows what they are getting into. It's a really, really fun game that more people should try at least once.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Agreed that Diplomacy is tremendous fun, as long as you have 7+ hours to spare and a house with lots of separate rooms for private conversations to take place in. But the important thing to keep in mind is that the only way to win the game is by first making alliances with other players by promising you would never betray them, and then second by strategically betraying your allies before they can betray you. If everyone goes into the game knowing that betrayal is the point of the game and that they will be stone-cold lied to by their dearest friends, then there's no hard feelings. But if you're a brand new player and this metagame isn't properly expressed to you, then it's natural for fallout to ensue.
  - legitster 4y ago
    > 7+ hours to spare It only takes this long if you don't use a round timer and you don't allow shared victories. Even with new players we usually wrap up the game in 4-5 hours (people will start getting eliminated around hour 2 - so usually we have a "loser room" with other games and stuff to do). You can also do it online with a turn a day (I ran an office Diplomacy League this way). It's worth noting that you can play the game completely openly and honestly. We have had complete victories where the winner never once backstabbed anyone (he was just a very shrewd negotiator). It's just pretty rare because the more honest you are all game, the more reward you will get for a well placed backstab.
    - legitster 4y ago
doctorhandshake 4y ago
In high school our math department had a long-running match in the teacher’s lounge with one move per day. Many times I remember my calculus teacher coming into class after the lunchtime move SEETHING.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Diplomacy is a perfect game to play one move per day among a group of friends/coworkers. Sadly I never managed to find enough people to get in board and commit to playing a weeks/months-long game
  - Scarblac 4y ago
    We did it once with a group of coworkers in the same open office room, it was great. Then I moved to another team in another room and thought I could continue the game as before... Immediately backstabbed by everybody. Bastards.
  - mckeed 4y ago
    There are variant maps for fewer players, like this one for 3: https://www.playdiplomacy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57439 https://www.playdiplomacy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57439
- sib 4y ago
  We did this in grad school and even played a one-more-per-week game. Fun, but man did we spend a lot of time negotiating...
masswerk 4y ago
> Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted for years, and monopoly is considered to be a game that causes less bad feelings. Well, there is also Machiavelli… ;-) *) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli_(board_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli_(board_game)
gcanyon 4y ago
The world champion seems to say that the best Diplomacy involves honesty and cooperation. Is he eliding that point toward the end where you use that honesty and cooperation to flip and really screw someone? Or is there more to Diplomacy than just "convince people you're cooperating until the very best time to betray them"?
- fardo 4y ago
  Anecdotally from prior play, most diplomacy wins have two broad forms: 1. A second place player has fallen behind in a low or no hard betrayal alliance and is no longer capable of a meaningful backstab, and has decided they don’t plan to backstab their partner because through their ongoing cooperation they’re the second biggest player and you’ve had a good game together. They work to cement your win, because picking the winner is often as fun as winning is. 2. Two main players and their side henchmen who are no longer serious contenders are forced into teaming to prevent the other side of the board’s leader alliance from running away with the win. There’s been a massive amount of betrayals and the table is about to have the crucial fight that will collapse one or the others’ line in defense. One disgruntled player who is on the dividing line of both alliances picks the winning coalition by lashing out against the closest player that screwed them over hardest, ruining that side’s coordination. The winning coalition breaks through, then the biggest coalition’s leader backstabs and eats its subordinates for the win. In both cases, honesty and cooperation primarily decide the winner - either because other players have deemed you “deserving of the win” or “designated winner by dint of having successfully avoided leaving one or more key players disgruntled enough to tip against you” You _always_ need cooperation in these wins, but you don’t always per se need to backstab people to win. Insofar as you do, those backstabs come in many flavors and often don’t feel stabby, stuff like “I’m just consistently benefiting a little more from our mutual arrangement than you are” or “I have no plan to personally screw you over, but I’m pretty sure Gary is going to do it for me and I’m not gonna stop him.”
  - gcanyon 4y ago
    > I’m just consistently benefiting a little more from our mutual arrangement than you are Sounds like Go.
cwillu 4y ago
I think some (not all) of that factor is that, being a 3+ player game, it makes explicit some friendship group dynamics that were previously implicit, and potentially not known to all the involved parties.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Ugh, people bringing in outside-the-game relationships to the game itself will ruin Diplomacy. "Tom and Jim never betray each other, and if one is in a position to sacrifice themselves to give the other the win, they always will" is how you get a group to never ever let Diplomacy hit the table after the first couple times. Plus a bunch of other games. Folks who play like that are game-group poison. Hell, they can even make RPGs a lot less fun with that crap.
  - SamPatt 4y ago
    I feel the same about people who favor their romantic partners. Maybe when they're new to the game or a new relationship, go a little easy. Ok. But any longer and that's lame.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      Yeah, I considered putting it in my post but ultimately cut it, but it is indeed often romantic couples who have this problem. Not always, but often it's couples. I think good-natured competition is typically a part of an ordinary friendship, even a very close one (Impro's take on status-games, and friendship being largely defined as a relationship in which you can play such games safely and without "real" stakes, probably factors into this) is probably why this happens less often with friends. Though, certain friend pairs, if you get them together in a group of people they don't know, they'll do this too.
  - cwillu 4y ago
    I was going more for the “Bob is going to blargh, he always blarghs when he gets flustered like when he blarghed at the thinger last year” sort of dynamic that people don't necessarily otherwise talk about. Nobody becomes a completely blank slate when they sit down, and some tendencies are something you might take advantage of in a game, where you would compensate and allow for it in real life. And those tendencies might be something the other party is sensitive about, but because it never came up otherwise…
pmoriarty 4y ago
"Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted for years" I really don't get why people take this game so personally... it's only a game!
foobiekr 4y ago
Diplomacy has nothing on the screaming matches I’ve seen and experienced with Chinatown. And you can get there in a fraction of the time required for Diplomacy
js8 4y ago
> An AI may be able to speak like a person but will never be able to hang onto that long burning simmering hatred Ever heard of Rocco's Basilisk? I am telling you, AIs can hold grudges.
kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
And the most stressful way to play Diplomacy is “one turn per day.” You’ll obsess about it all evening long, then get up and immediately focus on it again!

stavros 4y ago

I only played one game, and this is accurate.

bee_rider 4y ago

I have heard this about various games (Risk and Settlers of Catan mostly). I don’t get it. The point of these games is to be a bastard. If everyone goes into it with the understanding that there will be double crosses, how could there be hurt feelings? Monopoly is worse; it is just boring, I would dump my friends if they suggested monopoly not because I was hurt by their ruthless gameplay but for their terminally taste.

tullianus 4y ago
Two features that make Diplomacy particularly bad: 1. Length. An in-person game can last easily 12 hours, and is mentally exhausting. Getting 10 hours in and THEN getting screwed by your friend feels worse than a game with less time investment. 2. Design. It's difficult to survive the opening few hours without alliances, but only one player can win, so everyone is incentivized to defect at exactly the moment they think they can make greater gains by defecting than by cooperating. Being betrayed, even if you survive, forces a total rethink of strategy and ruins the next hour or two of gameplay.
- legitster 4y ago
  > An in-person game can last easily 12 hours How are you playing it? We've never had a game run over 4 hours.
  - tullianus 4y ago
    New players and stretchable diplomacy period length :)
    - legitster 4y ago
      > stretchable diplomacy period length Yuck. I can not stress enough how important a timer is to play Diplomacy in person.
  - SamBam 4y ago
    I've generally heard of people playing over a weekend. So things like meals and sleeping sometimes happen during the negotiation turns.
- mikelevins 4y ago
  I was a member of an enthusiastic friends-and-family gaming group through the early and middle 1980s. We spent a good chunk of that time on Diplomacy, then moved to modified Diplomacy on custom maps (my first wife worked for USGS Map Sales, and so we had good maps to work with in creating our own Diplomacy maps), and from there we graduated to Nomic. If you think Diplomacy is long and exhausting, wait till you get a load of Nomic with a bunch of enthusiastic players.
  - irq-1 4y ago
    This? https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14451/nomic https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14451/nomic > In the words of Nomic's author, Peter Suber: "Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed."
    - mikelevins 4y ago
      That’s the one. An intelligent and enthusiastic group of players can extend it indefinitely. It’s all lawyering and deal making, even more than Diplomacy, it can continue for hours and hours, and you dare not leave the room for a second, lest all your carefully worked out dealmaking be washed away in an instant.
jaylaal 4y ago
Many people can't mentally context switch for game and aren't prepared for the behavior that is required of the game from those that can. It's an assault on their world view.
elijaht 4y ago
I would say Diplomacy specifically has features that make it cause hurt feelings almost intrinsically 1. It's a long game- after hours of play, getting doubled crossed unexpectedly sucks because of how much you have invested 2. The game almost purely relies on cooperation/other players. So double crossing someone really screws them- it almost certainly means I have no recource (luck, dice rolls, individual tactics). Getting double crossed feels like you got CRUSHED in such a complete way that I haven't felt in many other games I have played a few times with a few social groups. Most were aware of the point of the game and enthusiastic going in, but even with that, people's feelings got hurt quite a bit. I will say that Risk/Catan don't really cause the same feelings when we play. Diplomacy feels like a whole different level
- irq-1 4y ago
  Uniquely there isn't anything in the game, or on the board, to negotiate other than cooperation. You're not trading corn, or loaning money, or anything. Even "positioning" of pieces doesn't matter because you need allies to do anything, and you'll lose any position without allies; you can't build a fort or get a bonus by holding Indonesia. It's just 'please trust me' and 'please be trustworthy'.
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LanceH 4y ago
In Risk, you're just fighting over limited resources. You largely wage these battles on your own. There is no real negotiation between players, other than an implicit, passing agreement when you don't provoke someone by attacking them. Diplomacy, however, you can't manage any attacks by yourself. You will either depend on someone helping you with an attack/defense, or you will have to trust that someone doesn't attack you as you overcommit. You don't just verbally agree to these things, either. Every turn, players commit to writing what they are doing and all the moves are resolved at once. So a player can go from imagined victory to catastrophic betrayal in the reading of a single order. This means that someone was just lying to their face for 15 minutes. Some people just can't handle that. Oddly, being branded as a backstabber just entices others to try to use that backstabber against what they see as a common enemy. Best game ever. (I only behave like this in game, I swear!)
- ghaff 4y ago
  >There is no real negotiation between players, other than an implicit, passing agreement when you don't provoke someone by attacking them. It depends how you play. I've seen people make treaties for all sorts of things for various durations, e.g. don't attack from Country X into Country Y and I won't attack across that border either.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    Binding or non-binding treaties? Because in diplomacy everyone is always making non-binding treaties, promises and threats - and that's where the betrayal comes in. I have heard of some people using binding treaties in diplomacy (i.e. three turn ceasefire between France and Prussia) but that has always struck me as a terrible idea because you're shifting moves into the open and things get boring and cliquish.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I think I've played both ways (or at least played in a group where people didn't break treaties even if they could) but it's been years.
jgalt212 4y ago
> The point of these games is to be a bastard. I guess you never play poker because you don't like to bluff. Or you've never faked a pass in basketball before taking a shot. Or you and the catcher like to announce when you're going to throw a curveball.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I’m not sure why you’d guess that, stringing somebody along for hours in Risk and then backstabbing them at the crucial moment seems to at least match your suggestions in terms of duplicity, and is the height of glorious bastarddom.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
IMHO, Risk is one of the few board games worth playing specifically because it's so engaging. Most of my friends who are "into boardgames" tell me that Risk is a terrible game because it starts fights. But the games they want to play bore me to tears. (I can't even read the manual for Settlers of Catan without dying of boredom, but from what you say maybe I should give it another try.)
- spencerflem 4y ago
  I'm definitely one of those "into boardgames" people so take this all with a grain of salt :p - Risk is definitely a great game and imo people who are into games and don't want to play are saying that because it's 1. long & 2. they've already played it enough to have mostly figured out the strategy Diplomacy is very good and like risk it has very simple rules, grand stakes of world domination, and actual direct conflict. Unlike risk, there's small numbers of units, no luck, and you need an ally, ideally multiple allies, to accomplish anything. If you're looking to get into it I can reccomend text-based turn-a-day style play with strangers on webdiplomacy.com I can only stomach a game of it every year or two because it's legitimately heartbreaking when someone you've spent two months working with every single day stabs you in the back causing you to not lose the game outright but be a crippled angry husk for the next month, and then lose. Tried it with friends once and it was just too much, even with anonymous strangers it hurts. Anyways sorry for the ramble :) go risk, and go diplomacy <3
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
    >be a crippled angry husk for the next month, and then lose. Do people resign in diplomacy? Or do you stick around to try to punish the player who backstabbed you?
    - thevinter 4y ago
      It depends on the players, but for how the game is structured you still have a good chance of "winning" (finishing alive with in a draw) even if you're way underpowered, as long as you're friendly and provide some value
Someone 4y ago
I think the main factors are - Unlike with Risk, Catan or Monopoly, if you lose a game of Diplomacy you can’t blame bad luck, as there is zero luck involved. The only ones you can blame are the other players and yourself. - because it’s multi-player, you can easily get beaten by players that, in your opinion, played weaker than you (“I was doing great until they decided to all go against me”) - There’s no way to really play the game without investing serious attention.
- jgalt212 4y ago
  > there is zero luck involved I consider decision making under uncertainty well within the purview of luck. There's no luck in tennis, but do I scramble back to the middle of the court, or do I bet my opponent will wrong foot me?
  - vintermann 4y ago
    This is true, there is emergent chance from being a simultaneous moves game, and from being a game with more than 2 players. You can totally win or lose from luck in Diplomacy.
vkou 4y ago
Settlers of Catan is in many respects not a very good game, because many of its mechanics are zero or negative-sum, with a heavy helping of RNG. This creates a lot of opportunities for kingmaking and spiteful plays from people who are not able to win, but are able to make sure that you lose. And the worst part is that you're often forced into these situations through no fault of your own. Diplomacy allows for all of the same plays, but as the player, you have way more agency about both getting into, and getting out of them. It makes the adversarial alliance-and-dealmaking part first and foremost.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I didn’t generally experience that. From what I saw, generally everyone gangs up on the person in the lead, if they are getting close to victory (this seems like a fair and obvious thing to do). So, part of the game is hiding how close you are until nobody can stop you. Hiding your strength is part of pretty much every strategy game with more than 2 players… Is it a perfect game? No. But it is pretty good. And let’s not give Risk and Catan the Seinfeld treatment — sure there are better games… made in response to their perceived deficiencies!
mattnewton 4y ago
Diplomacy is quite a bit different because you 100% win by being the nicest asshole. Past a small mechanical threshold, there really is no way to make it up in strategy or luck, it is only the interpersonal relationships and convincing that wins games. That, coupled with the fact that the game takes a long time and encourages a lot of communication, means the recipe to get invested and blur the boundary between game actions and lies people told you to your face and got you to trust them, can be very unlike risk. Finding out your friends can lie and manipulate you can be like finding out Santa clause isn't real.
- CallMeJim 4y ago
  What!? Santa Clause isn't real?
  - mattnewton 4y ago
    Whoops haha. It is the best Tim Allen movie though.
yamtaddle 4y ago
You may be surprised that some people play board games assuming some kind of "fair play" or "play with fun in mind" rule is implicit. They may get very pissed off if you "ruin" a game by taking every single advantage you can according to the rules. [EDIT] Risk and Catan also have what are sometimes regarded as straight-up design flaws that can cause "zombie players" who stick around for most/all of the game but, very early on, no longer have any chance of winning. In both cases pretty much the only entertaining thing left to do is to be a prick to other players and try to play "kingmaker" by causing the second-place player to overtake the first-place one. Often, in Catan, if you're that badly screwed you don't really even have a way to do that much. This leaves the zombie player having a pretty bad time just about no matter what, and can leave other players upset if the zombie player stopped playing to win and started playing just to mess with other players. Risk, especially played in the (really, really not great, as much as I liked it when I was 10 years old) world-conquest mode, also has a problem with very long games and early player elimination, in addition to sometimes generating hopelessly-screwed-but-not-technically-out-yet players.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  I've had the inverse happen to me, not playing optimally upsetting someone. Playing the DC superhero deck-building game at a card shop with some friends and a stranger asked to join, he already knew how to play. Well I didn't stop another player from getting one of the final Power Ring cards and he flipped the F!&%$ out. "How could you not block her! She's guaranteed to win on her next turn now! You suck at this game!" Bro, I'm just trying to power up my batman. It's not a very competitive game. Needless to say we asked him not to join in our next round, "that's fine, I don't want to play with a bunch of noobs."
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    > Well I didn't stop another player from getting one of the final Power Ring cards and he flipped the F!&%$ out. "How could you not block her! She's guaranteed to win on her next turn now! You suck at this game!" Bro, I'm just trying to power up my batman. It's not a very competitive game. Ohhhhh yeah, there's "expert" players who hate when others don't play "correctly". You even see it in poker with pros getting really mad when someone wins with an "incorrect" play (among actual pros this can be a sign of cheating, but some of them still get mad when non-pros do it). Some of these like to try to "puppet" other players into doing the right thing, and my god, just... please don't. A helpful pointer or three after a play or after the game is great. The odd "uh oh, if so-and-so gets X on their next turn, it's all over!" said to no one in particular can be OK in many games. Telling people what to do while they're playing, more than very occasionally, is awful though. I do kinda get it, it can be frustrating when you play with someone who gives the game to another player who shouldn't have won on that turn if the other'd made the obviously-correct play, but that's just part of playing a game with a mixed-skill set of players and you gotta roll with it.
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squeaky-clean 4y ago
Different players have different mental "lines that shouldn't be crossed". I play Civ 6 cloud games with friends from college who now live around the world. (No turn timer, you get a Steam notification when it's your turn). Sometimes someone will spend literal weeks on a turn trying to make agreements for war declarations or for world-congress votes. The time that crossed the line: Poland wanted to declare war on Greece, no one else wanted to get involved on either side, and it was a pretty even match between them. A friend not involved in this game was visiting family in the same city as the Greece-player, so we knew he'd be dropping by to visit him too. Poland-player told the "neutral" friend: if Greece-player shows you his civ game, take a picture of the screen when he's not looking and message it to Poland-player. Well he did it, Poland declared war, and his knowledge of the position of troops lead to him winning the war. "How did you know I didn't have any troops in my southern cities?" And Poland told him how he knew. It didn't end the friendship but there was about a month of not talking to any of us. When he cooled down there was a long meeting over whether that was cheating or "All is fair in Love and Civ". We could never come to a real agreement, 3 in favor of cheating, 3 in favor of dastardly but legal. But we now have an explicit rule of no screen sharing of any kind.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I mean that’s clearly cheating, not worth blowing up a relationship over but still annoying.
  - petemir 4y ago
    Clearly cheating? I would call it classic espionage
    - smeej 4y ago
      We played a live-action version of Diplomacy in my high school mock UN club. Each person was part of a team and had a role. I was the Chancellor of Germany. If an assassin from another team was able to get alone with me, without any of my countrymen, and show me a card saying she was an assassin, the Chancellor of Germany would be killed during the weekly meeting and, not having a Chancellor, not get to make any moves on the board for that week's turn. They would instead be distracted by determining the new Chancellor. If the assassin had been caught, her country's treachery would be revealed, cementing any of their opponents in alliance. It was an awfully fun thing to be doing on the side, between classes and during free periods, but it'd be wildly impractical in an environment with less proximity! Our mock UN group was weirder than I realized at the time. Our faculty advisor requires that we each speak in one of the 6 languages of the UN likely to be spoken by whatever country we were representing, and he'd simultranslate into English. Somehow it didn't occur to me at the time to ask why a suburban physics teacher was fluent in those six languages.
whartung 4y ago
Yea, it's one thing to drop a SORRY card on your wife. It's another to lie to her for 2 solid hours and then stab her in the back in the end, expected or not.
- permalac 4y ago
  I'm with bee_rider, the point of the games is what you just said, so why so surprised?
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georgeecollins 4y ago
To be good you really have to build someone's trust and then break it. That's the thing-- people think well if we all go in not trusting each other, who is going to be mad? To be good at that game is to be able to get a friend or a stranger to really trust you.
joe_the_user 4y ago
I agree with the gp and the other responders that however much other games might seem like they involve "being a bastard", Diplomacy is entirely another level. Describing exactly how is the challenge. Let me try: The games' mechanic mean that everyone is just fighting for territory, those who intelligently cooperate will defeat others. So in this situation, the most effective strategy is cooperating intelligently early in the game and betraying your allies mid-game. The insidious thing about the situation is that if you're playing among friends, the natural way to cooperate to leverage the trust you already have with your friends. And so what any winner does is be themselves, use the rapport they have with their to get cooperation but be just a little less trustworthy than their friends expect. That is where the tendency to break friendships appears.
vintermann 4y ago
I don't play those games much, because they tend to spill out into the next game/real world. It's not that someone will feel betrayed and have hurt feelings, it's that it's a perfectly sensible strategy to have the next game in mind, or to involve existing real-world relationships. I prefer games that are over when they're over. That said, when I have played such games, because my group wanted to play them, I've had a policy of just not lying or making promises. I may say things like "that doesn't seem like it would benefit me does it, because then B will surely just toss me out of the lifeboat next turn", and of course NOT speak up when someone makes a wrong assumption to my benefit. It feels like I've won more than my fair share of those games still.

ndonnellan 4y ago

If you want all these things and exponential growth, check out Neptune's pride: https://np.ironhelmet.com/ https://np.ironhelmet.com/ for basically "diplomacy in space with a few extra dimensions". I haven't played in a few years (it was great at the beginning of the pandemic), but it was a lot of "fun" in the same way that diplomacy is "fun". Except with a space theme and a lot of anxiety waking up at 2am hoping your fleet arrives at an empty star system and doesn't get immediately obliterated.

easygenes 4y ago
Fair warning: I played and won my first round of NP when I discovered it ~11 years ago. It required unreasonable amounts of being willing to let the game take over my life at arbitrary hours for a couple of weeks, and a couple of strategic betrayals. I don't regret it, but it was a major commitment as far as games go.
renewiltord 4y ago
The last time we played this at the company, we lost maybe two weeks of productivity over the game period. I needed to run polyphasic sleep with 2 h naps throughout but my secret alliance got to the end game strongest and then it was a vicious little fight, and one of us took it.
julianbuse 4y ago
IMO a better game is subterfuge, because it allows you to schedule commands into the future, which means you don't have to wake up at ungodly hours of the night to execute a command.

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mabbo 4y ago

"Oh yeah, I really enjoyed Diplomacy. It was weird though because I did punch my very good friend in the face because of it." - My coworker.

legitster 4y ago

There was an amazing profile of the Diplomacy competitive scene: https://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-the-alpha-nerds/ https://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-t... Although I find the fallout has been rather overstated. I'm certain it can end badly for unsuspecting participants - but I've played lots of Diplomacy (and even hosted games with a cash pot for the winners) and it has never ended in fallout. Just make sure everyone knows what they are getting into. It's a really, really fun game that more people should try at least once.

kibwen 4y ago
Agreed that Diplomacy is tremendous fun, as long as you have 7+ hours to spare and a house with lots of separate rooms for private conversations to take place in. But the important thing to keep in mind is that the only way to win the game is by first making alliances with other players by promising you would never betray them, and then second by strategically betraying your allies before they can betray you. If everyone goes into the game knowing that betrayal is the point of the game and that they will be stone-cold lied to by their dearest friends, then there's no hard feelings. But if you're a brand new player and this metagame isn't properly expressed to you, then it's natural for fallout to ensue.
- legitster 4y ago
  > 7+ hours to spare It only takes this long if you don't use a round timer and you don't allow shared victories. Even with new players we usually wrap up the game in 4-5 hours (people will start getting eliminated around hour 2 - so usually we have a "loser room" with other games and stuff to do). You can also do it online with a turn a day (I ran an office Diplomacy League this way). It's worth noting that you can play the game completely openly and honestly. We have had complete victories where the winner never once backstabbed anyone (he was just a very shrewd negotiator). It's just pretty rare because the more honest you are all game, the more reward you will get for a well placed backstab.
  - legitster 4y ago

doctorhandshake 4y ago

In high school our math department had a long-running match in the teacher’s lounge with one move per day. Many times I remember my calculus teacher coming into class after the lunchtime move SEETHING.

andrepd 4y ago
Diplomacy is a perfect game to play one move per day among a group of friends/coworkers. Sadly I never managed to find enough people to get in board and commit to playing a weeks/months-long game
- Scarblac 4y ago
  We did it once with a group of coworkers in the same open office room, it was great. Then I moved to another team in another room and thought I could continue the game as before... Immediately backstabbed by everybody. Bastards.
- mckeed 4y ago
  There are variant maps for fewer players, like this one for 3: https://www.playdiplomacy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57439 https://www.playdiplomacy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=57439
sib 4y ago
We did this in grad school and even played a one-more-per-week game. Fun, but man did we spend a lot of time negotiating...

masswerk 4y ago

> Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted for years, and monopoly is considered to be a game that causes less bad feelings. Well, there is also Machiavelli… ;-) *) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli_(board_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli_(board_game)

gcanyon 4y ago

The world champion seems to say that the best Diplomacy involves honesty and cooperation. Is he eliding that point toward the end where you use that honesty and cooperation to flip and really screw someone? Or is there more to Diplomacy than just "convince people you're cooperating until the very best time to betray them"?

fardo 4y ago
Anecdotally from prior play, most diplomacy wins have two broad forms: 1. A second place player has fallen behind in a low or no hard betrayal alliance and is no longer capable of a meaningful backstab, and has decided they don’t plan to backstab their partner because through their ongoing cooperation they’re the second biggest player and you’ve had a good game together. They work to cement your win, because picking the winner is often as fun as winning is. 2. Two main players and their side henchmen who are no longer serious contenders are forced into teaming to prevent the other side of the board’s leader alliance from running away with the win. There’s been a massive amount of betrayals and the table is about to have the crucial fight that will collapse one or the others’ line in defense. One disgruntled player who is on the dividing line of both alliances picks the winning coalition by lashing out against the closest player that screwed them over hardest, ruining that side’s coordination. The winning coalition breaks through, then the biggest coalition’s leader backstabs and eats its subordinates for the win. In both cases, honesty and cooperation primarily decide the winner - either because other players have deemed you “deserving of the win” or “designated winner by dint of having successfully avoided leaving one or more key players disgruntled enough to tip against you” You _always_ need cooperation in these wins, but you don’t always per se need to backstab people to win. Insofar as you do, those backstabs come in many flavors and often don’t feel stabby, stuff like “I’m just consistently benefiting a little more from our mutual arrangement than you are” or “I have no plan to personally screw you over, but I’m pretty sure Gary is going to do it for me and I’m not gonna stop him.”
- gcanyon 4y ago
  > I’m just consistently benefiting a little more from our mutual arrangement than you are Sounds like Go.

cwillu 4y ago

I think some (not all) of that factor is that, being a 3+ player game, it makes explicit some friendship group dynamics that were previously implicit, and potentially not known to all the involved parties.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Ugh, people bringing in outside-the-game relationships to the game itself will ruin Diplomacy. "Tom and Jim never betray each other, and if one is in a position to sacrifice themselves to give the other the win, they always will" is how you get a group to never ever let Diplomacy hit the table after the first couple times. Plus a bunch of other games. Folks who play like that are game-group poison. Hell, they can even make RPGs a lot less fun with that crap.
- SamPatt 4y ago
  I feel the same about people who favor their romantic partners. Maybe when they're new to the game or a new relationship, go a little easy. Ok. But any longer and that's lame.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Yeah, I considered putting it in my post but ultimately cut it, but it is indeed often romantic couples who have this problem. Not always, but often it's couples. I think good-natured competition is typically a part of an ordinary friendship, even a very close one (Impro's take on status-games, and friendship being largely defined as a relationship in which you can play such games safely and without "real" stakes, probably factors into this) is probably why this happens less often with friends. Though, certain friend pairs, if you get them together in a group of people they don't know, they'll do this too.
- cwillu 4y ago
  I was going more for the “Bob is going to blargh, he always blarghs when he gets flustered like when he blarghed at the thinger last year” sort of dynamic that people don't necessarily otherwise talk about. Nobody becomes a completely blank slate when they sit down, and some tendencies are something you might take advantage of in a game, where you would compensate and allow for it in real life. And those tendencies might be something the other party is sensitive about, but because it never came up otherwise…

pmoriarty 4y ago

"Be warned, it is considered to be a game that will end friendships that have lasted for years" I really don't get why people take this game so personally... it's only a game!

foobiekr 4y ago

Diplomacy has nothing on the screaming matches I’ve seen and experienced with Chinatown. And you can get there in a fraction of the time required for Diplomacy

js8 4y ago

> An AI may be able to speak like a person but will never be able to hang onto that long burning simmering hatred Ever heard of Rocco's Basilisk? I am telling you, AIs can hold grudges.

kwertyoowiyop 4y ago

And the most stressful way to play Diplomacy is “one turn per day.” You’ll obsess about it all evening long, then get up and immediately focus on it again!