Games - Diplomacy

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	Games - Diplomacy

Diplomacy is a board game, war game, and strategy game set in Europe in the era before the beginning of World War I. Diplomacy was the first commercially published game to be played by mail; only chess, which is in the public domain, saw significant postal play earlier. Diplomacy was also the first commercially published game to generate an active hobby with fanzines; only science-fiction/fantasy fandom saw fanzines earlier.

Created by Allan B. Calhamer in 1954 and released commercially in 1959, Diplomacy is played by seven players, each of whom controls the armed forces of a European power: England, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, or Turkey, in an effort to win possession of a majority of strategic cities and provinces marked as "supply centers" on the map.

Diplomacy differs from most war games in several ways: All units move simultaneously, with players writing down their moves during a negotiation period, and all moves are revealed and put into effect simultaneously. All units are of equal strength, and combat resolution contains no element of randomness -- no dice are rolled and no cards are shuffled. The result of a move depends on the support or opposition of the units in neighboring spaces, making social interaction and interpersonal skills, the formation and violation of alliances, and calculated lying and backstabbing, crucial parts of the game play.

The game ends when one player gains control of more than half of the continent, or by agreement among all surviving players.

Diplomacy has been published in the United States by Games Research, and Avalon Hill, and Hasbro, and is currently a registered trademark of Hasbro's Avalon Hill division. Diplomacy has also been licensed to various companies for publication in other countries. Since the 1960s, Diplomacy has been played by mail through fanzines, and more recently, through e-mail and on the world wide web, adjudicated by computer or by a human gamesmaster.

Diplomacy was John F. Kennedy's and, supposedly, Henry Kissinger's favorite game.

Basic setting and overview

The board is a map of Europe showing political boundaries as they existed at the beginning of the 20th century, divided into fifty-six land regions and nineteen sea regions.

Each player other than Russia begins the game with three units (armies and fleets); Russia has four units (two armies and two fleets) to compensate for its larger area and number of neighbours.

Only one unit at a time may occupy a given map region. Thirty-four of the land regions contain supply centers, corresponding to major centers of industry or commerce (e.g., "London," "Rome,"). The number of supply centers a player controls determines the total number of armies and fleets a player may have on the board, and as players gain and lose control of different centers, they may build and remove units accordingly. At the beginning of the game, there are twelve "neutral" (unoccupied) supply centers; these are all typically captured within the first few moves, allowing all the powers to ramp up their military strength. Thereafter the game becomes zero sum, with any gains in a player's strength coming at the expense of a rival.

Players who control no supply centers are eliminated from the game, and victory is achieved if a player controls eighteen of the thirty-four supply centers.

For the most part, the regions on the board are named after the general regions (e.g. "Bohemia") or countries (e.g. "Finland"); however, home supply centers (i.e. supply centers that are occupied at the beginning of the game) are named after the relevant cities (e.g. "Rome," "Vienna"). The exception is that of "Tunis," which despite not being a home supply center is still named after a city. If the convention was correctly followed, it would be labelled "Tunisia", and indeed is on some variant maps.

Even more oddly, England includes regions named "Edinburgh" and "Wales".

Game play

Diplomacy is turn-based - movement turns, alternately designated "Spring" and "Fall" moves, by convention begin in the year 1901. Prior to each movement phase, there is a negotiation period in which players entice, wheedle, bluff, cajole, and threaten each other in an attempt to form favorable partnerships. Secret negotiations and secret agreements are explicitly allowed, but no agreements of any kind are enforceable.

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