By Brandon Clarke
Diplomacy is a seven-player game based on the political situation in Europe at the beginning of the 1900's. Each player plays one of the seven great powers of Europe (Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Turkey). There are provinces (land) and sea spaces (sea) on the board (94 of them I think) and the fundamental rule is that there can only be one piece in each 'space' at one time. Each piece has equal strength and can move to one adjacent space each turn. Armies can move on land, Fleets on the sea or coastal land spaces.
Between each turn you have 15 minutes to negotiate with the other six players. During your negotiations nothing said is binding. At the end of the 15 minutes you have to have your moves written down on a piece of paper and put them in the orders box. When the 15 minutes is up the orders are read and the moves as written are what counts, not what you agreed to. So it's okay to lie, deceive, mislead, double cross, blackmail, extort, spread rumours etc.
34 of the land spaces have supply centres in them (black dots). At the end of every second turn (each turn represents 6 months, and they are called alternately Spring, Fall, Spring, Fall...etc.) you count up how many dots you control (control = either currently occupying, or if vacant were the last to occupy on a fall turn). For every dot (supply centre) you control at the end of each game year (2 turns) you get to have one piece on the board. So it's zero sum - there can only ever be 34 pieces on the board at once... if you have more dots than pieces you can build new pieces in your home country. If you have more pieces than dots you have to take some pieces off...
To win the game you need to control 18 dots (one more than half the board). To do this you need to be tactically adept, but also you need to be a skilled negotiator. It's all about nimble mindedness, being able to influence and convince people, being able to read people, being able to lie believably at times, and controlling your emotions when things don't go right. To be good you need a good poker face, you need to be analytical, and persuasive at the same time. You need to be able to read people. You need to be able to put people under time pressure, and pressure them to tell the truth and pressure them to reveal their plans to you. Some of the most significant gains can be made by pressuring people until they break. It can be a brutal mental experience. It's character building.
The rules are relatively straight forward, but once they are mastered (that usually takes a couple of games) then you begin gaming's longest apprenticeship as you try to master the game of all games. After 15 years I still have not even begun to see a hint of the end of the learning curve.
Games take between 3 and 10 hours to play. Long games are mentally draining... you have to concentrate really, really hard for long periods of time under constant time pressure.
It's a very social game - it's based on communication and social interaction.... it is also the game that has the highest potential to alienate people. You need to play with people who understand that it is a game, because it can appear quite personal. It never is though. Afterwards the bitterest of enemies tend to sit down and smile and share a beer and say "wow, you really had me under pressure there..."
If all of the negotiation and duplicity side of it scares you off, or the length of play scares you off (don't let it, this truly is the greatest board game ever made) then we do play no press games, which have no negotiation..., they're just tactical games where the moves are read, everyone looks at the board and writes down their next set of moves without negotiating. They are usually played at the Pub or something and take 1 - 2 hours (usually)
Last Updated 18 May 2001