Diplomacy - The Board Game

[clooz]

Diplomacy is a board game involving seven players, set in early 1900's Europe created by an American, Allan Calhamer. It develops the skill of players to negotiate and form alliances. I have a 1976 copy of the game. It usually takes several weeks to play. If we can get enough interested players, I will host a game or three. Let me know if you are interested.

The Diplomacy Game continues to be the subject of long standing research in artificial intelligence, collaboration and negotiation theory and experiment. It has been used to train diplomats.

 

[JoeBlow]

I've just sent you a PM.

 

[Staszekfc]

Sounds interesting. You say it takes a couple of weeks to play one game?

 

[clooz]

Depending on the number of players and how long they take it is said to take 4 to 10 hours for game.

I recall playing at lunch times for an hour or two each time and it taking a couple of weeks. So I'm roughly assuming we would play an evening every week for a couple of hours, so it would then take 3 or 4 weeks. We could just take a long weekend of course ... We would be able to organize play any way that was convenient to everyone.

I didn't find it to be the kind of game that was so compelling you could not stop for a break. Instead I found it to be very interesting to have a few days break to think over a negotiation.

The game itself is as flexible as chess - it can be scheduled to run fast or with full deliberation or with some time limits. It can be played remotely using just email or mail so if a player is away on a trip no problem. What would be impractical is if if a player disappeared mid-game. To learn the game and enjoy it I think meeting for a few evenings would be best.

 

[clooz]

To give credit: I first came across the Diplomacy game when a young Sarit Kraus presented her dissertation on it around 1995.

Don't take this too seriously - its fun. But if you want to look back at the origins of the computational models you can read about her work and also about current related work by searching for Sarit Kraus Diplomacy, or here

http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~sarit

Well, looking at this online material I see we could rope in an automated remote player and perhaps have a local surrogate agent act for one, but we'd probably lose rapidly, then we'd learn fast how not to lose.

 

[El_Jameso]

I've been meaning to play this since I bought it for my brother for Christmas, years ago.

I'm in. PM me.

 

[Staszekfc]

I would like to join as well. I might need to make use of the email option now and then because of travel. One evening per week sounds good to me.

 

[clooz]

Great.

btw I plan to go to the "Palermo Meetup" scheduled for this Wed (its in the Newcomer Forum). If any of you want to join us there, I'll look for you. Its at the Post Street Bar at Thames 1885, corner of Nicaragua this Wednesday at 9pm.

 

[Staszekfc]

i will not be able to join you tomorrow as i'm going to the inxs concert.

 

[clooz]

We have 5 people interested in playing!. Let's all find a common time to meet next week.

Please email me times when you think you can make it to Palermo next week. I'm thinking between 8:30 and 9 for an hour or so one evening. Other ideas?