Backstab your friends for fun. (Diplomacy)

Member Name: Odinsday

Product:	Diplomacy
Date:	25/07/00 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No luck, no dice, just pure brainpower.

Disadvantages: Takes a long time to play.

Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell, and them lookng forward to the trip.

Much the same in the game. In the basic, vanilla, buy over-in-the-shops version, 7 players via for control of Europe circa 1900. Each country controls a mixture of armies and fleets, that occupy territory and try to expand, firstly into neutrals and then on into your opponents countries.

The board is simple. It's divided into regions which are either land or sea. Fleets can only move into sea or land next to sea. Armies only on land. One army or fleetcan occupy a region at a time. Some land regions are supply centres. You use these to supply your armies. lss Supply Centres than units, and you have to lose some. More and you can build extra units.

The rules are simple, the greatest force into a region wins. You can support attacks or help your units defend. There's one or two little tricky things like the cutting of support, but eas to learn after a few examples. A Unit moves one region a turn (which is a six month perod by the game clock). Armies can be convoyed by fleets across the sea (essential for England to expand into the continent).

And thats about it as an overview. The real twist isn't the pieces or the board or the rules. It's the simple fact hat in most cases one onone's between countries either stalemate, or result in slow progress for the side with the edge. As a result you must connive, convince, coerce and cooperate with your opponents to try and get the upper hand. Persuade the Ausyrian Player that helping Turkey is a good idea, while you (as the German) and Italy attack Austria, while keeping France and England at each others throats. Next turn, you might decide that the Italians have served their purposes and that the Austrians need your 'help'. Of course this could all be double bluff to help the Italians further into trouble. No worries, the real allaince is you and Russia.
And so on.

The intrigue and backstabbing make this an excellent game. It takes time, an eighthour sitting might just result in a winner. Far better to play it by email or by letter, and take 2 or 3 days over each move, allowng time to debate with all your friends and enemies. Don't play with people who don't like to be backstabbed. Also playing face to face has it's problems when someone gets knocked out early and has nothing to do.

Otherwise, buy it, play it, and join in the maassive hobby, with hundreds of internet games going on (see www.diplom.org for details and other resources) and several tens of variants on the basic theme.

Summary: