Diplomacy Briefing - The Global Diplomat

A Weekly Threat Assessment of the Diplomacy Community

Happy Birthday Mr. Calhamer!

December 7th is the birthday of the late Allan B. Calhamer (1931-2013), the inventor of the board game Diplomacy. Learn more about the creator of our great hobby with these links: a recorded interview and Diplomacy articles from the man himself.

Around the World

The Around the World tournament on vDip is over - congratulations to ubercacher16 who came out on the top of the heap! This variant-based event saw competitors play six games in truly international style, battling across Africa, Australia, Asia, South America, Europe and North America. Thanks to Macca573 for organising the event; check out how it unfolded here.

The Champions Corner is where recent tournament winners share a specific move or strategy that helped them emerge victorious.

For this issue we welcome Eber Condrell - winner of the Around the World Tournament on vDiplomacy. Under the username ubercacher16 he cemented his victory on the South American Supremacy variant board.

The Value of Vassals
& other Important Lessons

Three essential qualities were key to helping me win Macca573’s Around the World Tournament: an understanding of the priorities the scoring system has, an ability to put oneself in the position to do well in every game, and the capability to make vassals of one’s opponents.

Carnage Fibonacci, the scoring system used in the Around the World Tournament, works much like Carnage scoring, except that soloing is rewarded even more than it already is in Vanilla Carnage. Because of this my singular solo in the tournament gave me the win by a large margin, had I not gotten that solo I would not have emerged victorious. The solo itself, as many solos are, was the result of a poorly timed misorder on the part of one of the defenders. Of course I would not have been able to take advantage of said misorder if I had not been in the position to take advantage in the first place. Getting there was the difficult part.

Here is the fatal mistake made by my former ally Paraguay (orange). Santa Cruz should have supported Goias to Pantanal, but supported Mato Grosso instead. This allowed me to force my way into the last two centers I needed to win.

I could talk about many things, not giving up on someone after they stab you for example, but making vassals is the one thing that I will focus on in this article. I define a vassal as a weaker power who agrees to make the orders you desire in exchange for some small consolation. This principle helped me in almost every game in the tournament. Since the scoring system rewards players for being eliminated later than other players it is often quite easy to get a player to essentially through position to you in exchange for not being eliminated first. Carnage and other rank based systems result in a lot of vassalage because of this. This is great for you if you are able to get into a favorable position in the early game. Ultimately it was a fatal misorder in one game that gave me the win in this tournament, and that perhaps should be the most important lesson all of us dippers should take away from this, always check your orders!

You can find further coverage of the game here.