Diplomacy Games

In this episode we check out the Fog of War variant of Classic, talk about the role of Mods and what to bring to their attention and conclude with new development server talk that may get variants up and running again for the Dip community!  Apologies up front on how the ambiance gets louder and louder as more people arrive in the pub! If this pisses you off too much a) go have a drink or two yourself or b) let us know to go somewhere quieter! How do Moderators (Mods) work? Both Kaner and Amby have been Mods in the past for vDip, they discuss their prior experience and how it varies between vDip and webDip: vDiplomacy - link is in the top right. You can only see posts you have raised with the Mods It's the place to bring up concerns about multi-accounting with fake accounts or suspected meta-gaming. Amby discusses how he suspected this occurred in a game and how he raised this with the Mods Kaner discusses contacting the Mods where there are technical problems, where a player feels another player has crossed the line with their language The guys also digress blocking players, and why you'd do this - if they were obnoxious, or a player seems to CD too often, doesn't communicate well. You can block players by going into their profile page and clicking the smiley face, turning it into an unhappy face (the same functionality doesn't exist in webDip, only vDip) webDiplomacy - you contact the Mods differently.  Go to Help and then email the mods. With a larger number of members on webDip, the moderators there tend to respond faster Kaner talks about how webDip is starting to add new variants before Amby shoots him down. webDiplomacy focuses far more on Classic games with around 80-90% of all games played on the server being the standard classic game. Variant focus - Fog of War We then turn our attention to the Fog of War variant on vDiplomacy: In this variant you can only see the territories immediately adjacent to your supply centres and your units. The show notes include an animated GIF showing how things would look as a game evolves as Turkey As you can't see where all the other players are, and what they're doing (only the ones immediately around you) it presents a significant challenge. This can be complicated further with a Gunboat game (no-press). Kaner talks about the subtle ways you can still send out subtle messages about working together and highlights the importance of checking the large map rather the standard small map. The supports don't render 100% correctly on the small map, but they do on the large map. The guys also talk about how in standard press games how you can lie and manipulate players with information - right or wrong - about areas of the map others can't see. Kaner talks about two recent Fog-of-War games he's recently played in - Cold Blooded Fog and Pompey . Kaner talks about how his loss as Germany was more a result of absolutely terrible game play rather than the map's fog-of-war element. But as Russia he had greater success getting a draw despite challenges of:subtle overtures to Germany being ignored (no checking of the large map again!) "partnering" with Turkey by sacrificing his southern front... whilst Turkey ignored this and kept eating him up efforts to make this message stronger by attacking Italy... only for Turkey to keep ignoring it! eventually getting French support with a Barents fleet support of St Petersburg to create a stalemate line, forcing Turkey to draw despite only being one supply centre short of a win - and Kaner only having 4 SC's himself In addition to playing Fog of War in classic, we talk about how it can also be played in the variants 1066 and Rat Wars (and why the technology behind coding Fog maps tends to limit the number of variants that use it) New development server talk Finally we talk about variant development and news from CaptainMeme (vDip mod and regular on webDip) that while the vDip Lab is pretty much dead, a new test server for development is being slowly created in the background. This is some really cool news that could see new variants created again that won't crash vDip. The guys talk about how this could impact on new variants, including suggestions on webDip on air support, Classic with neutral armies, Kaner's Mongolian variant and Amby's ideas on making a massive Cold War variant. In conclusion we tempt you again about having some of the main players from the webDiplomacy 2012 championship game being in episode 3. If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below. Venue: The Gresham Hotel, Brisbane Drinks of choice: Kaner - Four Pines Stout from Four Pines Brewing, Australia (although Kaner did call it "Ten Pints" in the podcast) Amby - Massolino Barbera d'Alba from Piedmont, Italy and The Gresham Shiraz from Western Australia Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.

Welcome to Diplomacy Games! In episode 1 we introduce the podcast and hosts Kaner and Amby and why we play Diplomacy online. Then we jump into discussing in detail the Diplomacy variant Known World 901. But for starters, a little about ourselves - Kaner and Amby. We discuss our background and experience with playing Diplomacy. We get into the early days of playing, from face-to-face to rather embarrassing first ever opening moves when playing online. We also explain why the podcast is recorded over a few drinks in a bar. Next up we give a bit of a high level overview of the type of things each of our episodes may cover, including: A "deep dive" into a variant Features/how stuff works on webDiplomacy and vDiplomacy Anything new that's happened on the  websites Any threads of contention in the threads Interviews We go deep into the variant Known World 901 by David E. Cohen, and on-boarded to vDiplomacy by Kaner. We cover: How at a 15 player variant it fills the gap between large 10 player games and massive 34+ player games How Amby loves its historical nature and learns some history, all while continuously mispronounces players' country names The really cool transform option for changing armies to fleets and vice versa. Kaner talks about why he did this to improve gameplay We then look at an example of the map in the game Vae Victis . Here Amby made it into a 6 player draw despite only having 4 supply centres. What strategies and tactics did he use to make it to the end? Kaner discusses how you can use variant statistics to better understand how to play the country you draw Finally we discuss the WebDiplomacy 2012 World Cup championship, a game that took three and a half years to complete. We're lining up a number of the key players to discuss this mammoth Diplomacy gaming effort in an upcoming interview. Visit our website for the show notes for this episode. Venue: Grand Central Hotel, Brisbane Drinks of choice: Kaner - Fat Yak original pale ale from Matilda Bay Brewing, Australia Amby - Rymill "The Yearling" Cabernet Sauvignon from the Coonawarra And a big thanks to Dan Philip for our rockin' intro music! If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us.

This is a pre-intro episode recorded 3.5 years after the Diplomacy Games podcast began, giving an updated context of what the show is all about. We discuss face-to-face, online, drinking, interviews, episodes and much more. Listen to it first to get an idea of what the podcast has become. DiplomacyGames is released usually about every two weeks. It is brought to you by two drunk Australians - Kaner and Amby - in various pubs.  Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, DiplomacyGames.com or practically anywhere.