I'm taking part in Media Wars II along with a load of other Diplomacy content creators. Details here: ruclips.net/video/ls2q3d7k_Cc/видео.html EDIT: Media Wars II is done! See my post-game analysis here: ruclips.net/video/hmUTpjDUbRA/видео.html
God I hate this game because it's so brilliant and too accurate. It's like prisoners dilemma meets prison shanks. And you play with your friends! Well, your soon to be FORMER friends!
Lol DM: “So everyone, it’s been a minute, what’s goin on in the campaign? Anyone wanna give a recap?” Players: “uhhhh... I think we climbed a tree for something.. right?”
Regarding the last unofficial rule about "cheating": My friends and I once played a legendary game with the homebrew additional rule that there was a "player" (I'm using this term lightly as they didn't have win conditions and acted perfectly neutral, so maybe "umpire" is the better word) acting as "the league of nations" with the sole power of removing units off the board. Any nation could at any point (except *during* turn resolution) claim that a unit had been cheated on the board and the league of nations would then take a secret poll among all remaining players weather this was true (if the voted ended 50/50 the "league of nations" went with the "correct" option as they traced all units independently). Oh boy, the friendships we destroyed with this rule... "Dave! You clearly saw Peter put a fleet in the baltic!" - "Hmmm... did I, Peter? Or will you promise to not support Berlin?"
This is brilliant madness... And not a bad way to get a small power back into the game. If those far from them would find it amusing to prop them up and annoy their immediate neighbors.
Pretty sure that I have played it with a mathematician, but not with Boardman, he cheated. "Press releases, too, were already a standard feature of the postal diplomacy scene. Indeed, several issues contain what might be thought of as a subzine, called REUTERS REPORTS, edited written and apparently printed by John Boardman, who was playing England in this game. (And Turkey, under the pseudonym Eric Blake though this didn't come out till after he'd won -- probably the first example of the use of underhand tactics in a postal dippy game)."
A few years ago, clubs were mandatory at my school so me and my conveniently sized group of six other friends played diplomacy, one game a week for months. I remember the arguments over the English Channel and the Black Sea, everyone banding together against the 16 supply centre Russia, and a naval invasion from Greece to St Petersburg. We actually got together on a google doc a few weeks ago to play diplomacy (which I can NEVER recommend, as the board was a .png which was incredibly easy to move accidentally) and had a good time.
The best thing about Diplomacy club was that I could put it under my extra-curricular activities as "Diplomacy club" and play it off as some kind of model UN club lol
I feel the Vicky 2 soundtrack fits perfectly with this game. Though I thought buggy Victoria multiplayer was cool, this game sounds like utter madness.
I once played a game of diplomacy in which, playing Britain I managed to get myself in an alliance United against Russia (played by the most experienced player). An afternoon full of backstabbing later I somehow managed to end the game as a member of the winning alliance... on Russia’s team. 10/10
For me the most fascinating part about this is that it's an American board game, set during the World Wars, that doesn't centre on or even include America.
@@thesenate5770 Ah fair, including America as a military world power would be pretty ahistorical then. Nonetheless I'm still surprised they didn't do it anyway
@@Tomartyr The US debuted as a world military power in the Spanish-American War in 1898, when it knocked the Spanish Empire out of the world power club and took its place. The problem is that the US is the only power outside Europe that could be considered a world, rather than regional, power, and it would be hard to justify the board's expansion for just the US. Does _Diplomacy_ often end in under 28 turns? Because if not, it can reasonably be considered set during the First World War.
@@boobah5643 I said world military power. The USA's military was insignificant compared to any of the European powers. Spain hadn't been a world power since Napoleon.
"I know this because the only thing I've ever read about Paradox Interactive's PC version of _Diplomacy_ is that the A.I. sucks balls" To be fair, Paradox couldn't program a chess AI to beat a human player
in my opinion paradox is one of the best ai creators of all gaming companys because the ai mostly dont cheat but instead follows the exact same rules as the human player not only makes it that great for ai adjustment at modding but also it makes the overall gamepla beter not like civilisation where ai ressources and gold apear out of nothing
My dad played it with his friends, and lost them in the process. He then taught it to me, and I played it with my friends and followed in his footsteps.
If it makes you feel better, "Fall" seems to have been a poetic counterpoint to "Spring," as in, Spring is when life 'springs up' after the winter, and fall is when it 'falls back' again. If it doesn't make you feel better, it's called "Fall" cuz the leafs start fallin'
The algorithm works in mysterious ways. Never had it show me a small youtuber like this before, but it's nice to get recommended middling youtubers putting out high end content. Good luck king.
Wait what? There is a Game of Life that plays an even bigger version of Game of Life? I have never seen that before. Whoever worked that out, fills my heart with fear.
If you had a powerful enough computer, and enough patience, you could create a Game of Life running a Game of Life in Minecraft. Making Minecraft in Game of Life would require figuring out some way to handle player inputs, and an even more powerful computer, but it is, in principle, possible...
@@rmsgrey Technically you could write an AI to speedrun minecraft in GoL as well, then plug its inputs in via the USB 3.0 and DisplayPort interfaces over GoL wires to display them on a GoL screen
People are trying to implement minecraft in minecraft too. And someone made a programming language entirely on one assembly function because it is Turing complete. Turing completeness does that to an mf.
30:30 "What if you based the impotent order for your last remaining fleet on a native Danes advice to attack their mortal enemies, the Swedes." - That had me, a native Dane, cracking up
Great video! I've always been kind of obsessed with video essays and it's fantastic to see one done so well on Diplomacy. The game theory segment is giving me ideas :D And stand up against the American oppressors! If enough youtubers call it Autumn eventually everyone will :P
Diplomacy is like a combination of Risk, Chess, and Pokemon, with it being a map based strategy game like Risk, not luck based like Chess, and a little bit prediction based with the whole both players making the turn at the same time like Pokemon.
Was MAD even codified then? I thought people started talking about it after the crisis. Side note: A version of MAD was widely understood to be true in Europe around 1900 onwards. The idea was that modern war was so deadly and destructive that no great power would ever think to start one.
Forgetting that Castro had a stiffy for nuclear war with the US and the Soviets time and time again had to tell him to stfu. I'd be pretty jumpy too if I knew there were nuclear weapons in Cuba and its dictator really wanted to use them. It's understandable then why putting nukes in Turkey was absolutely necessary. If he didn't understand "mutual" then he wouldn't have bothered doing that. Upholding MAD was kinda the point. And it worked.
@@MintyLime703 your point would be correct if nukes weren’t placed in Turkey by the US before the Soviets placed them in Cuba If anything it was the Soviets upholding MAD
Diplomacy is a game that breaks friendships... It is very hard to win solo as AustroHungary, but if you are willing to be a sociopath and social engineer your friends and classmates, you can pull it off.
I played this game in the 80s. I literally always spoke the truth hoping that would earn me some trust, but I was frequently the least trusted person in the game.
Makes sense. In a naturally "pragmatic" setting like a game, if you spend your time very obviously building up social capital, people naturally assume you plan to spend it at some point. At least, that's how I work, I've been reverse bluffed by truthtellers many times.
@@64UPAllGOD The truth is, that was my plan. However, I never found a situation where spending the big lie was worth it. It eventually spilled over into my real life. This game literally transformed me into the truth speaking adult I am today.
Diplomacy is to game design what Lord of the Rings is to literature. It manages to capture lightning in a bottle and make something really good despite breaking all the rules of its field. Let me expand on what I mean. Diplomacy breaks a lot of game design principles. For instance, there's a design principle that a game should always move towards its conclusion. This prevents games from having hugely variable game lengths. An example of this is the victory points in Catan. Since they can't be removed from the game once gained, the game always moves closer to the conclusion. (Munchkin breaks this rule, and that makes it an awful game.) Diplomacy can theoretically go on for ever, and the game mechanics actually encourage coalitions to form to prevent the game from ending when a clear leader emerges.
Pacing. If LOTR didn't exist and you brought it to a publisher, they'd probably tell you to cut out all the long descriptions of scenery and Elvish languages to keep the story moving. Yet LOTR works.
Also it invalidates any diplomacy youre doing if it can go south that easily aka why invest an hour mulling over grievances if it can still go to shit even without anyone involved wanting it to fail :D just curious, what games with diplomacy you played that formed your opininon?
@@noahbirthisel3285 The worst part of Risk isn't the dice imo, it's that 15 minutes into the game everyone knows who will win, and nobody can do anything to stop it. The next hour is just the game playing out to its inevitable conclusion.
I love how the 'nefarious' action is just to put the word 'breast' in there. Also, did not expect to see the Goedal Incompleteness Theorem applied to a board game. Fun. Also like many games, the best long-term strategy is probably to behave randomly. After all, if you don't know what you'll do, neither can your opponent. The problem with that is you seldom win, but the game gets interesting fast.
Me and my friends tried to create our own "board" game, similar to this (we even called it Diplomacy), but we never finished creating it, and we graduated before we ever got the club off the ground. I wish I could go back in time and tell past me about this game...
I'm from the US and I've literally never heard somebody say the word autumn out loud before. Are you sure you Brits didn't make it up. Also good thing that creator didn't put in America to this game as a player character cause we'd win every time BACK TO BACK WORLD WAR CHAMPS BAAAABY
16:49 Oliver: "oh yeah I can programme in java now" Also Oliver: "wait JDIP is programmed in java . . ." *(Realisation sets in)* Oliver armed with forbidden knowledge: *prepares to commit a digital crime of the most heinous kind* (maniacal laughing gets louder) Me: YOU MADMAN!
17:45 Valefisk just did a game where he told chat GPT his situation and what other players had said and it told him what to do and who to ally with, when and where to backstab, and other such things. All in all he labeled ChatGPT a “half decent diplomacy player” as he only lost because Turkey got very big, very fast and he was England and didn’t have many options for stopping them. Great video I highly suggest watching (even if it is 2hrs long)
There is nothing wrong with Russia’s votes until the end when they decided to vote for a draw even though that was surrender when they had not yet lost. They drew breath, they could win, and they decided to lose. The proper ply at this point is to negotiate an Italian surrender, after enough years anyone sane will accept rigging the game so that Russia will win just so they can be free of it and thereby have their victory as well. That way you win by willpower.
Hey, could you do one on axis and allies, perhaps? I would love one on that game. Especially when variant rules with diplomacy or alternate dates come in.
The Halo Effect applies to me and my family playing cards against humanity I am, by far, the most innocent and non-perverted person playing, but I absolutely destroy everyone, simply because no one could possibly fathom that my sweet, innocent, child-like brain could come up with some of these ideas
I once had a game of uno that lasted from 10pm to 4am because every time someone came close to winning, everyone else dogpiled them and they ended up with most of the deck in their hand. The game only ended when someone threw the game and let someone else win because we wanted to sleep.
What an excellent video. The JFK Illuminati part had me laughing out loud. You explained everything perfectly and teached me so much in this half hour. Oh, and as a diplomacy and dungeons and dragons lover (I came to know these two gems at the same time around 2-3 years ago) I really appreciated the reference to Matthew Colville's video, which is the way I discovered diplomacy.
So let me see if I understand this. In diplomacy Italy succeeds in world domination and completes the world empire? Even more ironically I found this as a link after I clicked on a video on Mussolini and this was one of the recommended videos.
I won the 1988 International Gamers Association World Diplomacy Tournament with ITALY (the single hardest country to play according to statistics) by backstabbing BOTH of the alliances in the game that were set up at the start. I joined both of them, backstabbed both of them, convinced both of them that I REALLY was STILL on their sides, and then backstabbed them BOTH AGAIN. At that point, I was too far ahead that I could just offer to pay off one alliance (yes, there was money on the line for all of this) and blow off the other one. No one dared to double cross me and I cruised to victory. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I'm sure someone has mentioned it, but the dominions series of video games is a fantasy clone of diplomacy. Also that has had multi year long competitive games.
I was introduced to this game by my history teacher, and it was either the best or worst thing to happen to me. Also I’m American and I still approve of WebDiplomacy’s choice to call it Autumn instead of Fall.
Disclaimer: this isn’t one of those spam junk comments begging for likes and a heart. This video is sooo well done! How does it have less than 30k views. This guy deserves better.
I really hoped I would never have to relive the horrors of discrete math, but here I am starting at ∃0 ∈ ℝ, a + 0 = a, ∀a ∈ ℝ ⇒ a ∙ 0 = a ∙ (0 + 0) in a RUclips video about a board game. Damn you! Memes aside, this was a very good watch, and your Paradox music choice was on point.
Kinda off, the ai (named cicero) only really wins in blitz, in a longer format with more complex negotiations and tactics it just makes up random stuff
Brought a complete Gibsons copy from a charity shop yesterday for £3. Never heard of the game and given what I read and the videos I have watched since; its either going to be the best or worst £3 I have ever spent 😁
"You will meet a dark portly man. He will offer you the moon. You will get Scandinavia. He will take Germany, Austira and Turkey. He will offer you a draw. You will accept. Then he will offer you second place. You will accept. Then he will offer to help you in some other game instead. You will accept. Then he will eliminate you. Tough luck stupid!" - Quoted from The Gamers Guide to Diplomacy
As a 1st year Theoretical Phys student and total board game nerd in the land of autumns and memorise instead of memorize, I both highly approve of this video and am completely disgusted by the physics slander.
For time context, at the start of this game, I had a major car crash that destroyed my legs, and they were still playing when I finally finished my physiotherapy and moved on with my life. It sounds like a long time, 2012 to 2016, but even then it's hard to wrap one's head around that. It's long enough to completely change your life AND completely settle into your new life. It's long enough to reach the lowest low of depression, and manually surface again without medication. It's also about long enough to start and finish a bachelor's degree. It's a HUGE amount of time.
My mum bought me the game for my 13th birthday (1961). Never found enough players for a full game. Didn’t play again till late 1990’s and discovering a PBEM Diplomacy group on Yahoo Groups. It is quite simply the best board game ever invented and a good tool for learning something of the sausage making part of diplomacy and politics regardless of your background. My first solo was Austria-Hungary. It was due to France falling out with Germany then most everyone except me. I’d have been happier with the solo if I’d engineered their fallout, but it was something associated with previous games.
Clarification: Godel's theorem has nothing to do with convoy paradoxes in Diplomacy. If Diplomacy is represented as a mathematical system, that system is not expressive enough for Godel's theorem to apply. The authors just made some oversights in the rules. I just have to nitpick about this because people *constantly* misunderstand what Godel's theorem actually means.
My dad got diplomacy when he was in college and the furthest he got into was reading the rules. So last christmas me and some of my siblings gave it a play and we managed to finish in about 8 hours of play time.
Never hears about this game, but it looks interesting. Isn't it outshadowed by strategies on computers? Something like Civilization can break friendships too Oh and Oliver: complains how GB called England Also oliver: rolls USSR's anthem while pointing on Russia
not really. dip has easy mechanics and lessons about negotiation conflict and diplomacy as well as geography. it's not a simulation and it's abstraction of war is hilariously wrong, but the mechanics entirely support it as a tool for studying conflict, negotiation, trust, betrayal, cooperation, i.e. DIPLOMACY.
Diplomacy is much less about just clever strategies and much more about, well, diplomacy and clever backstabs. For example, if you play France, don't communicate and just focus on fighting Germany, then almost certainly you will lose, even with perfect tactics / micro. Or if you're Germany and don't communicate and just focus on fighting France, then you will lose too, even with perfect tactics / micro. If it's just a straight-up fair 1 vs 1 fight where no one gets surprised, then if both sides are roughly equally strong then no one can make progress, even if one side is good at micro. So how do you win this game? Well, either you surprise-backstab someone, or you agree with someone to 2 vs 1 someone. Or you do both. For example, if you're France, make a deal with Germany to invade Britain together and divide up the British isles. Then during the "give secret orders" phase, backstab Germany. That way Germany will be out of position (because they're invading Britain) and be unable to defend well. Not sure if AI is quite machiavellian enough to be great at diplomacy. Though it'll get there someday.
In my mid-20s, I was obsessed with Diplomacy, but after a few years, I had to give it up. I didn't like who I was turning into, and how the game affected how I thought of, and felt about my friends. Interestingly, while I was still in the thick of it, there were older people around me who told me about having had that very experience, but I just thought they took it too seriously, or weren't "cut out" for the cutthroat nature of the game. As if I were, or should have aspired to be. I suppose I had to live it myself to understand it, since it is a tragic, yet fundamental truth of human life, that XP are not transferrable.
Yeah, agreed. I think it's good to briefly study diplomacy, just to understand a psychopath's mindset (because that's basically how you have to act to be successful). But let loose your inner psychopath for too long and maybe that's not good for you or your friendships. Diplomacy is Kissinger's favorite game. Need I say more?
just wanna say, as an american, fall and autumn are used interchangably and absolutely no one would be confused over it (also the joke was over the top and kind of annoying in the patronizing kind of way)
This video is twice as long as it should. The whole Eurovision part is useless. The subject sounds super interesting but I just couldn't finish the video. Sorry.
this is honestly astonishing for a 1959 game. I had always assumed it was a product of the 80s as its design sensibilities fit very much into that era of tabletop gaming. despite its age it's still a fun game, not my favorite, but i wouldn't turn it down.
my personal favorite game that i think does diplomacy better than any other game is Twilight imperium as you aren't constantly at war. the border tension is incredibly strong
I'm taking part in Media Wars II along with a load of other Diplomacy content creators. Details here: ruclips.net/video/ls2q3d7k_Cc/видео.html
EDIT: Media Wars II is done! See my post-game analysis here: ruclips.net/video/hmUTpjDUbRA/видео.html
"To yeet a fleet across St. Pete is a cheat, but to beat a retreat is a bittersweet defeat" should be on a shirt or something
Dude we know what autumn is... just say autumn
@@jameslourenco8404 It's a joke. Also the game calls it Fall.
25:20 oh no
God I hate this game because it's so brilliant and too accurate. It's like prisoners dilemma meets prison shanks. And you play with your friends!
Well, your soon to be FORMER friends!
I looooove diplomacy. I remember all the friends I used to have before we played.
Hahaha. Ah, the mark of a great game.
OMG! I spit my coffee laughing so hard. 😂
So true...
"A game that takes 3 years to play" dnd with bad schedules
Lol
DM: “So everyone, it’s been a minute, what’s goin on in the campaign? Anyone wanna give a recap?”
Players: “uhhhh... I think we climbed a tree for something.. right?”
@@Zman44444 It would be funny if it didn't hurt so bad.
D&D? Try 10 years.
We're lv 4 still and 2 years in.
@@Tommuli_Haudankaivaja you're grand children will need to fight the BBEG
Regarding the last unofficial rule about "cheating":
My friends and I once played a legendary game with the homebrew additional rule that there was a "player" (I'm using this term lightly as they didn't have win conditions and acted perfectly neutral, so maybe "umpire" is the better word) acting as "the league of nations" with the sole power of removing units off the board. Any nation could at any point (except *during* turn resolution) claim that a unit had been cheated on the board and the league of nations would then take a secret poll among all remaining players weather this was true (if the voted ended 50/50 the "league of nations" went with the "correct" option as they traced all units independently). Oh boy, the friendships we destroyed with this rule... "Dave! You clearly saw Peter put a fleet in the baltic!" - "Hmmm... did I, Peter? Or will you promise to not support Berlin?"
This is hysterical and I will steal this idea
This is brilliant madness...
And not a bad way to get a small power back into the game. If those far from them would find it amusing to prop them up and annoy their immediate neighbors.
"Diplomacy meanwhile is all about communication which is why mathematicians don't actually like playing it" +1
Report for: I'm in this picture and I don't like it.
+1? Sounds like something a mathematician would say.
Pretty sure that I have played it with a mathematician, but not with Boardman, he cheated.
"Press releases, too, were already a standard feature of the postal diplomacy scene. Indeed, several issues contain what might be thought of as a subzine, called REUTERS REPORTS, edited written and apparently printed by John Boardman, who was playing England in this game. (And Turkey, under the pseudonym Eric Blake though this didn't come out till after he'd won -- probably the first example of the use of underhand tactics in a postal dippy game)."
A few years ago, clubs were mandatory at my school so me and my conveniently sized group of six other friends played diplomacy, one game a week for months. I remember the arguments over the English Channel and the Black Sea, everyone banding together against the 16 supply centre Russia, and a naval invasion from Greece to St Petersburg. We actually got together on a google doc a few weeks ago to play diplomacy (which I can NEVER recommend, as the board was a .png which was incredibly easy to move accidentally) and had a good time.
Try playing online, I use playdiplomacy.com, its free unless you want some features and pretty good
@@billymanners9629 backstabbr is better but yea
Just get TTS and play it there.
The best thing about Diplomacy club was that I could put it under my extra-curricular activities as "Diplomacy club" and play it off as some kind of model UN club lol
@@goalid9714You were not that far off to be fair.
I feel the Vicky 2 soundtrack fits perfectly with this game. Though I thought buggy Victoria multiplayer was cool, this game sounds like utter madness.
I once played a game of diplomacy in which, playing Britain I managed to get myself in an alliance United against Russia (played by the most experienced player). An afternoon full of backstabbing later I somehow managed to end the game as a member of the winning alliance... on Russia’s team. 10/10
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.
so you were just roleplaying britan IRL then
🇮🇹
Went from intervention during the revolution to ww2
napolianic wars in a nutshell
For me the most fascinating part about this is that it's an American board game, set during the World Wars, that doesn't centre on or even include America.
its technically set just after the turn of the century, so slightly before WW1
@@thesenate5770 Ah fair, including America as a military world power would be pretty ahistorical then.
Nonetheless I'm still surprised they didn't do it anyway
@@Tomartyr The US debuted as a world military power in the Spanish-American War in 1898, when it knocked the Spanish Empire out of the world power club and took its place. The problem is that the US is the only power outside Europe that could be considered a world, rather than regional, power, and it would be hard to justify the board's expansion for just the US.
Does _Diplomacy_ often end in under 28 turns? Because if not, it can reasonably be considered set during the First World War.
@@boobah5643 I said world military power. The USA's military was insignificant compared to any of the European powers. Spain hadn't been a world power since Napoleon.
@@Tomartyr You're not familiar with anything south of the equator, are you.
Changing Brest to Breast. Such a man of culture.
Better than interfering with the adjudication code in order to help him win.
@@skyclaw but in a greater sense, in changing it to breast, he has already won
So essentially what happens in the case of a paradox is that all of the troops involved think about it for a bit and are so confused they can’t do it.
"I know all the openings, but am otherwise terrible at it"
*Uses a queenside Bongcloud as background footage*
A man of culture, I see
New reply just dropped
Actual zombie
Pretty sure thats the queens gambit
"I know this because the only thing I've ever read about Paradox Interactive's PC version of _Diplomacy_ is that the A.I. sucks balls"
To be fair, Paradox couldn't program a chess AI to beat a human player
Paradox AI wins by making the game lag so much that the save is corrupted.
@@hedgehog3180 too true...
@@hedgehog3180 El Salvador moment
@@hedgehog3180 thats why I always use the ai division limeter for hoi4, game is fucking unplayable without it (and spot optimization mod ofc)
in my opinion paradox is one of the best ai creators of all gaming companys because the ai mostly dont cheat but instead follows the exact same rules as the human player not only makes it that great for ai adjustment at modding but also it makes the overall gamepla beter not like civilisation where ai ressources and gold apear out of nothing
My dad played it with his friends, and lost them in the process. He then taught it to me, and I played it with my friends and followed in his footsteps.
If it makes you feel better, "Fall" seems to have been a poetic counterpoint to "Spring," as in, Spring is when life 'springs up' after the winter, and fall is when it 'falls back' again. If it doesn't make you feel better, it's called "Fall" cuz the leafs start fallin'
The algorithm works in mysterious ways. Never had it show me a small youtuber like this before, but it's nice to get recommended middling youtubers putting out high end content. Good luck king.
Wait what? There is a Game of Life that plays an even bigger version of Game of Life? I have never seen that before. Whoever worked that out, fills my heart with fear.
The game of life is Turing Complete.
If you had a powerful enough computer, and enough patience, you could create a Game of Life running a Game of Life in Minecraft. Making Minecraft in Game of Life would require figuring out some way to handle player inputs, and an even more powerful computer, but it is, in principle, possible...
@@rmsgrey Technically you could write an AI to speedrun minecraft in GoL as well, then plug its inputs in via the USB 3.0 and DisplayPort interfaces over GoL wires to display them on a GoL screen
yeah people were larping LIFE before larp existed. i'm serious, it happened back in the o god i'm old 1970s
People are trying to implement minecraft in minecraft too. And someone made a programming language entirely on one assembly function because it is Turing complete.
Turing completeness does that to an mf.
Brilliant. Play. This. Game.
30:30 "What if you based the impotent order for your last remaining fleet on a native Danes advice to attack their mortal enemies, the Swedes."
- That had me, a native Dane, cracking up
No matter the medium or time we will always be ready to get those damn swedes.
*Always.*
Too bad they can just cross the ice
Det var vi som tågade över Bält, inte ni. Vill bara påpeka det.
We used this game to study paradigms in my game theory in international relations class. It was a semester-long sweaty fever dream
Great video! I've always been kind of obsessed with video essays and it's fantastic to see one done so well on Diplomacy. The game theory segment is giving me ideas :D
And stand up against the American oppressors! If enough youtubers call it Autumn eventually everyone will :P
There are five seasons in Diplomacy - Spring Summer (Retreats) Fall Autumn (Retreats) Winter (Builds).
An aeroplane is made of aluminium
Diplomacy is like a combination of Risk, Chess, and Pokemon, with it being a map based strategy game like Risk, not luck based like Chess, and a little bit prediction based with the whole both players making the turn at the same time like Pokemon.
JFK "defused the crisis", the one he caused when he temporarily forgot what the M in MAD stood for
@@patrickhenry1249 yup and for giving the invasion force in the bay of pigs the middle finger and NOT give them air support.
Was MAD even codified then? I thought people started talking about it after the crisis.
Side note: A version of MAD was widely understood to be true in Europe around 1900 onwards. The idea was that modern war was so deadly and destructive that no great power would ever think to start one.
Forgetting that Castro had a stiffy for nuclear war with the US and the Soviets time and time again had to tell him to stfu. I'd be pretty jumpy too if I knew there were nuclear weapons in Cuba and its dictator really wanted to use them. It's understandable then why putting nukes in Turkey was absolutely necessary. If he didn't understand "mutual" then he wouldn't have bothered doing that. Upholding MAD was kinda the point. And it worked.
@@MintyLime703 your point would be correct if nukes weren’t placed in Turkey by the US before the Soviets placed them in Cuba
If anything it was the Soviets upholding MAD
Diplomacy is a game that breaks friendships...
It is very hard to win solo as AustroHungary, but if you are willing to be a sociopath and social engineer your friends and classmates, you can pull it off.
Alright, when is this channel hosting a game of diplomacy
I played this game in the 80s. I literally always spoke the truth hoping that would earn me some trust, but I was frequently the least trusted person in the game.
Makes sense. In a naturally "pragmatic" setting like a game, if you spend your time very obviously building up social capital, people naturally assume you plan to spend it at some point. At least, that's how I work, I've been reverse bluffed by truthtellers many times.
@@64UPAllGOD The truth is, that was my plan. However, I never found a situation where spending the big lie was worth it. It eventually spilled over into my real life. This game literally transformed me into the truth speaking adult I am today.
Dude, this is absolutely amazing. :D
Weird how the entire video was upside down except for a moment at 0:10
As a Java developer know that I will always rename England to Ireland
This video deserves way more views.
Mathematicians: Math is logically consistent
Gödel: Have I got numbers for you kiddo
Godel does not show that math is logically inconsistent, it shows that if maths is consistent it must be incomplete
I heard about Diplomacy by watching Valefisk’s video playing it and I think it seems like a cool game.
16:58 was actually hilarious
Never heard of this channel, Diplomacy, and I’m not a mathematician
But I’m so damn glad this was recommended to me
Nice video :)
That's one of the best thing I found on RUclips ragarding Diplomacy. Thank you for your time and will.
Diplomacy is to game design what Lord of the Rings is to literature. It manages to capture lightning in a bottle and make something really good despite breaking all the rules of its field.
Let me expand on what I mean. Diplomacy breaks a lot of game design principles. For instance, there's a design principle that a game should always move towards its conclusion. This prevents games from having hugely variable game lengths. An example of this is the victory points in Catan. Since they can't be removed from the game once gained, the game always moves closer to the conclusion. (Munchkin breaks this rule, and that makes it an awful game.) Diplomacy can theoretically go on for ever, and the game mechanics actually encourage coalitions to form to prevent the game from ending when a clear leader emerges.
can you tell me what rules of literature lord of the rings breaks?
Pacing. If LOTR didn't exist and you brought it to a publisher, they'd probably tell you to cut out all the long descriptions of scenery and Elvish languages to keep the story moving. Yet LOTR works.
Randomness works in games like this IMHO since how many political empires got screwed by "this didn't go how I thought it was gonna go."
If you've seen the dramatically unfun potential endgames of risk you would know that rolling dice ten times a fight is boring.
Also it invalidates any diplomacy youre doing if it can go south that easily
aka why invest an hour mulling over grievances if it can still go to shit even without anyone involved wanting it to fail :D
just curious, what games with diplomacy you played that formed your opininon?
@@noahbirthisel3285 The worst part of Risk isn't the dice imo, it's that 15 minutes into the game everyone knows who will win, and nobody can do anything to stop it. The next hour is just the game playing out to its inevitable conclusion.
@@noahbirthisel3285 I have played risk, and I never felt negative about that.
@@noahbirthisel3285 The problem there is the time it takes though not the randomness.
I love how the 'nefarious' action is just to put the word 'breast' in there.
Also, did not expect to see the Goedal Incompleteness Theorem applied to a board game. Fun.
Also like many games, the best long-term strategy is probably to behave randomly. After all, if you don't know what you'll do, neither can your opponent. The problem with that is you seldom win, but the game gets interesting fast.
Eurovision, the international competition I am only aware of due to that one episode of Father Ted
Me and my friends tried to create our own "board" game, similar to this (we even called it Diplomacy), but we never finished creating it, and we graduated before we ever got the club off the ground. I wish I could go back in time and tell past me about this game...
I'm from the US and I've literally never heard somebody say the word autumn out loud before. Are you sure you Brits didn't make it up. Also good thing that creator didn't put in America to this game as a player character cause we'd win every time BACK TO BACK WORLD WAR CHAMPS BAAAABY
Sorry shouldn't have saif Brits I meant Englds
American here, no. I've heard it called autumn before.
@@casual_ice_consumer4148 in Canada its either or. Fall makes more sense because spring, but autumn is used to.
Leaves fall, so we call it Fall - Americans, probably
I just got this recomended to me, going to convince my friends to play a game!
Thank you for your joke of American “fall” I feel recognized and insulted! Cheers!
vernum is spring, autunm is fall.
16:49
Oliver: "oh yeah I can programme in java now"
Also Oliver: "wait JDIP is programmed in java . . ."
*(Realisation sets in)*
Oliver armed with forbidden knowledge: *prepares to commit a digital crime of the most heinous kind* (maniacal laughing gets louder)
Me: YOU MADMAN!
Ah, a fellow bongcloud enthusiast
This video is so underrated and I am surprised it has low views
Leaving a Comment in 2023. AI has beaten the top players.
17:45 Valefisk just did a game where he told chat GPT his situation and what other players had said and it told him what to do and who to ally with, when and where to backstab, and other such things. All in all he labeled ChatGPT a “half decent diplomacy player” as he only lost because Turkey got very big, very fast and he was England and didn’t have many options for stopping them. Great video I highly suggest watching (even if it is 2hrs long)
There is nothing wrong with Russia’s votes until the end when they decided to vote for a draw even though that was surrender when they had not yet lost. They drew breath, they could win, and they decided to lose. The proper ply at this point is to negotiate an Italian surrender, after enough years anyone sane will accept rigging the game so that Russia will win just so they can be free of it and thereby have their victory as well. That way you win by willpower.
Hey, could you do one on axis and allies, perhaps? I would love one on that game. Especially when variant rules with diplomacy or alternate dates come in.
The Halo Effect applies to me and my family playing cards against humanity
I am, by far, the most innocent and non-perverted person playing, but I absolutely destroy everyone, simply because no one could possibly fathom that my sweet, innocent, child-like brain could come up with some of these ideas
I once had a game of uno that lasted from 10pm to 4am because every time someone came close to winning, everyone else dogpiled them and they ended up with most of the deck in their hand. The game only ended when someone threw the game and let someone else win because we wanted to sleep.
What an excellent video. The JFK Illuminati part had me laughing out loud. You explained everything perfectly and teached me so much in this half hour. Oh, and as a diplomacy and dungeons and dragons lover (I came to know these two gems at the same time around 2-3 years ago) I really appreciated the reference to Matthew Colville's video, which is the way I discovered diplomacy.
Wow. I feel so dumb now. Me move piece. Me win.
Didn’t expect this kind of video from Oliveriver, but I’m not complaining!
And that's why we have Hearts of Iron so we can have game like risk, but with less randomness, but with actuall content.
So let me see if I understand this. In diplomacy Italy succeeds in world domination and completes the world empire? Even more ironically I found this as a link after I clicked on a video on Mussolini and this was one of the recommended videos.
Both the "WW1 = Eurovision" joke and the "JFK = F(Lon)->ENG" joke made me piss myself. Great video :D
17:43 LOL AI always develops faster than people think huh?
I won the 1988 International Gamers Association World Diplomacy Tournament with ITALY (the single hardest country to play according to statistics) by backstabbing BOTH of the alliances in the game that were set up at the start. I joined both of them, backstabbed both of them, convinced both of them that I REALLY was STILL on their sides, and then backstabbed them BOTH AGAIN. At that point, I was too far ahead that I could just offer to pay off one alliance (yes, there was money on the line for all of this) and blow off the other one. No one dared to double cross me and I cruised to victory. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Just say autumn, you know no one actually cares over here
I'm sure someone has mentioned it, but the dominions series of video games is a fantasy clone of diplomacy. Also that has had multi year long competitive games.
32:57 gg for that "Russians HATE Him! This Italian Defended Europe For 100 YEARS With This ONE WEIRD TRICK!" title! 👍
On behalf of Americans. Autumn is fine no one here cares
I was introduced to this game by my history teacher, and it was either the best or worst thing to happen to me.
Also I’m American and I still approve of WebDiplomacy’s choice to call it Autumn instead of Fall.
Disclaimer: this isn’t one of those spam junk comments begging for likes and a heart.
This video is sooo well done! How does it have less than 30k views. This guy deserves better.
Spam junk comments help the algorithm though, so it can't hurt too much, can it?
I really hoped I would never have to relive the horrors of discrete math, but here I am starting at ∃0 ∈ ℝ, a + 0 = a, ∀a ∈ ℝ ⇒ a ∙ 0 = a ∙ (0 + 0) in a RUclips video about a board game. Damn you!
Memes aside, this was a very good watch, and your Paradox music choice was on point.
"For the foreseeable future, AI has little hope of defeating Diplomacy veterans"
Well that aged very well, didn't it :)
It happened already?
Kinda off, the ai (named cicero) only really wins in blitz, in a longer format with more complex negotiations and tactics it just makes up random stuff
@@Ruiseal oh, not solved yet then! ;)
I just realized, watching this, I have a bit of a pavlovian response to the soviet anthem.
Brought a complete Gibsons copy from a charity shop yesterday for £3.
Never heard of the game and given what I read and the videos I have watched since; its either going to be the best or worst £3 I have ever spent 😁
Russia throwing a Tantum for 3 years? No... no...
I remember our 8th grade science teacher introducing this to my friend group, we played it a lot all through high school, great times.
"You will meet a dark portly man. He will offer you the moon. You will get Scandinavia. He will take Germany, Austira and Turkey. He will offer you a draw. You will accept. Then he will offer you second place. You will accept. Then he will offer to help you in some other game instead. You will accept. Then he will eliminate you. Tough luck stupid!" - Quoted from The Gamers Guide to Diplomacy
I really like "call of war"
It is simple enough, i would recommend
genuinely annoying to watch too much rambling and unfunny joking around
.... Gotta say, I did not expect Colville to pop up out of nowhere in this three year old video :D
As a 1st year Theoretical Phys student and total board game nerd in the land of autumns and memorise instead of memorize, I both highly approve of this video and am completely disgusted by the physics slander.
For time context, at the start of this game, I had a major car crash that destroyed my legs, and they were still playing when I finally finished my physiotherapy and moved on with my life.
It sounds like a long time, 2012 to 2016, but even then it's hard to wrap one's head around that.
It's long enough to completely change your life AND completely settle into your new life. It's long enough to reach the lowest low of depression, and manually surface again without medication.
It's also about long enough to start and finish a bachelor's degree.
It's a HUGE amount of time.
I hope you realize that americans do say Autumn as well lmao.
I played the mobile version of this for years and for some reason never bothered looking into its history, so great video!
My mum bought me the game for my 13th birthday (1961). Never found enough players for a full game. Didn’t play again till late 1990’s and discovering a PBEM Diplomacy group on Yahoo Groups. It is quite simply the best board game ever invented and a good tool for learning something of the sausage making part of diplomacy and politics regardless of your background.
My first solo was Austria-Hungary. It was due to France falling out with Germany then most everyone except me. I’d have been happier with the solo if I’d engineered their fallout, but it was something associated with previous games.
Clarification: Godel's theorem has nothing to do with convoy paradoxes in Diplomacy. If Diplomacy is represented as a mathematical system, that system is not expressive enough for Godel's theorem to apply. The authors just made some oversights in the rules.
I just have to nitpick about this because people *constantly* misunderstand what Godel's theorem actually means.
My dad got diplomacy when he was in college and the furthest he got into was reading the rules. So last christmas me and some of my siblings gave it a play and we managed to finish in about 8 hours of play time.
It would appear that you have been selected the algorithm roulette for me today. Cool video.
Never hears about this game, but it looks interesting.
Isn't it outshadowed by strategies on computers? Something like Civilization can break friendships too
Oh and
Oliver: complains how GB called England
Also oliver: rolls USSR's anthem while pointing on Russia
not really. dip has easy mechanics and lessons about negotiation conflict and diplomacy as well as geography. it's not a simulation and it's abstraction of war is hilariously wrong, but the mechanics entirely support it as a tool for studying conflict, negotiation, trust, betrayal, cooperation, i.e. DIPLOMACY.
Diplomacy is much less about just clever strategies and much more about, well, diplomacy and clever backstabs.
For example, if you play France, don't communicate and just focus on fighting Germany, then almost certainly you will lose, even with perfect tactics / micro. Or if you're Germany and don't communicate and just focus on fighting France, then you will lose too, even with perfect tactics / micro. If it's just a straight-up fair 1 vs 1 fight where no one gets surprised, then if both sides are roughly equally strong then no one can make progress, even if one side is good at micro.
So how do you win this game? Well, either you surprise-backstab someone, or you agree with someone to 2 vs 1 someone. Or you do both. For example, if you're France, make a deal with Germany to invade Britain together and divide up the British isles. Then during the "give secret orders" phase, backstab Germany. That way Germany will be out of position (because they're invading Britain) and be unable to defend well.
Not sure if AI is quite machiavellian enough to be great at diplomacy. Though it'll get there someday.
In my mid-20s, I was obsessed with Diplomacy, but after a few years, I had to give it up. I didn't like who I was turning into, and how the game affected how I thought of, and felt about my friends. Interestingly, while I was still in the thick of it, there were older people around me who told me about having had that very experience, but I just thought they took it too seriously, or weren't "cut out" for the cutthroat nature of the game. As if I were, or should have aspired to be. I suppose I had to live it myself to understand it, since it is a tragic, yet fundamental truth of human life, that XP are not transferrable.
Yeah, agreed. I think it's good to briefly study diplomacy, just to understand a psychopath's mindset (because that's basically how you have to act to be successful). But let loose your inner psychopath for too long and maybe that's not good for you or your friendships.
Diplomacy is Kissinger's favorite game. Need I say more?
Holy fuck I nearly spit my drink at 0:57
the way you pronounced Kiel made me want to tear my german spine out
just wanna say, as an american, fall and autumn are used interchangably and absolutely no one would be confused over it
(also the joke was over the top and kind of annoying in the patronizing kind of way)
This video is twice as long as it should. The whole Eurovision part is useless. The subject sounds super interesting but I just couldn't finish the video. Sorry.
I like the addition of Victoria 2 music.
21:10 no, it doesnt matter wether they get to communicate in the prisoners dillema. Why would it matter, they could say anything.
Can we all agree that Oliver Legg is in fact the guitarist behind the KDH guitar channel?
If you have six friends, this the game to play if you want to lower that number.
great video but why did you pronounce Kiel like "Kiäll"
Newsflash, AI is now competent at playing blitz Diplomacy against people
this is honestly astonishing for a 1959 game. I had always assumed it was a product of the 80s as its design sensibilities fit very much into that era of tabletop gaming. despite its age it's still a fun game, not my favorite, but i wouldn't turn it down.
almost every game from that early is just bad. toy makers made games instead of game designers
my personal favorite game that i think does diplomacy better than any other game is Twilight imperium as you aren't constantly at war. the border tension is incredibly strong
It always makes me pay closer attention when I start hearing the Vicky 2 sound track
Game of thrones Board game looks a lot like this game but it takes 3 hours