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  • I've never played but I was under the impression that you generally want to "do what you said you would do" given that the game has multiple rounds and decisions are iterative.

    e.g. if you stab your allies in the back early, you fall into a "trust hole" that is probably hard to climb out of.

    Then again, "slow playing" your alliance until you stab them in the back at the very end is probably a good strategy. It may only work once though.

    That also sets up the "bigger game/meta level" of having a reputation across multiple games where people get to know your style and how trustworthy you are.

    Reminds me of quotes from old business books "They were very much a 'handshake seals the deal' kind of operator".

    (although there are also stories of nefarious folks abusing the hand shake folks)

    by alexpotato
  • I have really enjoyed Arcs by Cole Wehrle as my modern Diplomacy-like asymmetrical war game - cutthroat, negotiating, area control, but also more randomness, variety and theme. And the campaign totally changes the vibe into a space opera!

    Root was also very good but I think is harder to master as the factions are so different and so runaway games are common IMO.

    by parasubvert
  • > [diplomacy] was inducted into Games Magazine’s hall of fame alongside Monopoly, Clue, and Scrabble.

    It takes a diplomacy player to deliver such a backhanded accolade.

    by pyrale
  • We used to play it in junior high and high school. My neighborhood was all boys (except some weekends when daughters of divorced parents were visiting). We were pretty nerdy and in summers would play DnD, axis and allies, risk, just about everything. And diplomacy! Diplomacy was a perfect multi-tasking game. At the beginning you could have several moves a day but as the game goes on and negotiations get more complex we would often just have one move a day. We had games that lasted all summer and when school started again we'd flip the board. :)
    by comrade1234
  • We were an 80 person software engineering team in 2013. Our board game group played after work sometimes, and had an appetite for increasingly complex games. Someone’s bright idea was to play a slow game of Diplomacy: there would be one move a day, that we met to execute after the workday. I can’t count how many work hours were lost to furiously typing on DM backchannels. On the plus side, I got to know my co-workers better, or at least got to know how well they could deceive me.
    by xanath0n
  • I've never played Diplomacy, but I've had a very similar experience playing the Game of Thrones board game in person with 6 people. There was a lot of scheming, with people going off in groups of two to different rooms to make plans and boldly lie to each other. I really loved it. The person who organized it (and won) was active in model UN stuff and I think he went on to become a lawyer.

    I've also played a similar type of game on a forum once, with the unique mechanic that you had to spend your resources to set up direct communications to other players. Which meant that there was a lot of hearsay happening, with a lot of lies being spread.

    by Pifanjr
  • I clicked and hoped it was Diplomacy. I'm so glad to be right. I've only played it once 20 years ago in high school, and it was a remarkable experience that I'm not sure I'll be able to repeat. You and a few folks have to really dedicate the entire day to it to get the most out of it, something that is very hard to do now as a parent and with many possible distractions within reach.
    by DannyPage
  • Related:

    Diplomacy: The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26215764 - Feb 2021 (87 comments)

    The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18159770 - Oct 2018 (71 comments)

    The Board Game of the Alpha Nerds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7913183 - June 2014 (153 comments)

    See also (are there others?):

    Human-level play in the game of Diplomacy by combining language models - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33706997 - Nov 2022 (2 comments)

    Backstabbr: A modern web interface for the classic board game Diplomacy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8468378 - Oct 2014 (63 comments)

    (Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)

    by dang

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