Peregrine Falcon wrote: ↑Thu Jan 31, 2019 4:18 am
I agree with you on drawing. I think playing for the draw from the start is boring. Yet, as a quote on my profile has said for a long time,
"It is silly to insist that there is any single "best" goal in Diplomacy. Everyone has his own priorities and trying to fit them all into one's own mold is small-minded."
— Rod Walker. A Gamer's Guide to Diplomacy. March, 1979.
I was writing up a response to your entire post, but this bit intrigued me enough for me to go read the first section of the book in question, and as such it probably deserves to be in its own post - this one isn't really arguing with you so much as it is arguing with the author of the book.
I think the section sentence of the quote is on-point - Diplomacy is all about figuring out the objectives and priorities the other players have and playing on them, and simply assuming everyone is playing as you would is a good way to completely misread every situation. However, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many high-level players who agree with the first sentence. The 'best' goals of Diplomacy adapt depending on which scoring system you're in, but the traditional 'best' goal of Diplomacy is the solo win, and the second best is the draw in some manner. The rulebook outright states that the goal is to win.
I actually went and looked up this book to see if there was any context that the quote was missing, because it feels like it could maybe be justified if the first sentence was meant from a strategy perspective (as in, acting like there's one 'best goal' that everyone will necessarily be going for is a mistake because players may not all be going for it regardless of whether it's the goal of the game). I couldn't find the quote in context, because the site I found the PDF on was covered in banners asking to sign up blocking out parts of pages, but I did find the 'Objectives' section which sheds a lot of light on how Rod Walker was thinking about the game.
I'll just write out the relevant parts of this section here:
Rod Walker wrote:Everyone plays games to have fun. There are some people who need to win to be amused, and DIPLOMACY is not a game for such persons. With seven players, any one of them has a chance of winning of about 14%. Not good odds for a victorioholic.
There are other objectives... and related playing styles. These more realistically reflect the potentials of the game.
1. Win or Draw. A player can seek to either win or, at least, deny victory to another player.
[...]
This is a powerful playing style when used by a very good and ruthless player. One who has the reputation of playing this way will, however, find allies hard to get; he frequently becomes the target of his neighbours.
The cut out section is talking about how the strategy of this approach works, talking about alliances being temporary, and is generally correct. That last bit shows that it's somewhat outdated though since the concept of playing anonymously didn't really exist at the time, and I would argue that even in non-anonymous games, having a reputation for playing for a win or a draw would not make it difficult to find allies, because that's the default playstyle at a mid-to-high level of play.
In my mind, this one encapsulates every playstyle incentivised on the site (since it covers both playing to win and playing to draw) so seeing what others he has in mind will be interesting.
Rod Walker wrote:2. Strong Second. A player can seek either to win, or finish no worse than second place. His philosophical commitment is slightly different than that of #1. He is willing to see someone else win and is not usually in favor of a drawn game. He is usually steadfast in alliance - at least one of them.
[...]
This is an effective style. Players who favor it usually seek each other as allies. Unfortunately, this style also makes for dull games when two or three such alliances appear at the same time.
Again, the cut-out section is giving advice on how best to play to this objective.
I think the author would have been very much a fan of PPSC had he been playing on webDiplomacy. It's generally accepted here that playing for second place and trying to make another player win ruins the game, just because it's like two countries are under the control of one country from the start and there's not much you can do about that other than unite everyone against them - in standard Diplomacy, at least the allied players will be playing for their own result and so will have some incentive to stab one another at some point. webDip goes out of its way to disincentivise this playstyle for this reason.
I'll also leave this here, from Calhamer on Diplomacy:
https://i.imgur.com/xR3ca6V.jpg
(Apologies for the blurriness)
The game's creator is very condemning of players who play for second place, as you can read for yourself, and considers this playstyle to ruin the game. I should note that the bit that's cut off at the bottom states that the 'true draw' is one where players have united against the leader to prevent a win from occurring.
People definitely do still play for second, so you need to keep in mind that it could be a factor when formulating your strategy, but it is definitely not a valid goal of the base game - and is especially not one under the scoring systems we have here.
Rod Walker wrote:3. Balance of Power. A player can seek to prevent from winning (victory for himself would only be the secondary goal). The philosophy of this kind of player is neither the "grow fast" of #1 nor the "strong alliance" of #2. He is concerned that no power, no alliance, will become strong enough to eliminate any of the others... particularly himself, of course.
His style of play is to preserve the game's balance... The balance of power. He will ally with the weaker side in every struggle.
[...]
This is the ideal playing style of DIPLOMACY. Concentrating on the game as a whole, rather than merely on winning it, will produce this result. The game will be full of endless variety, of twists and turns, and no victory. On the other hand, it may also go on forever.
This playstyle fits into #1 - keeping the board as divided as possible while growing as much as possible yourself - in my mind, since this is a good way to lead up to a win. The reason Walker puts it in its own category is that from his point of view it's being done simply for the sake of doing it rather than as part of any larger strategy or goal - I think in actuality you'd be hard-pressed to find someone playing this way who isn't doing it as part of a strategy to reach the solo (or make it into a draw, if the position doesn't permit going for the solo).
The use of ideal here is weird, since it heavily conflicts with the initial quote, but my assumption is that he's assuming the readers will know that this is his own opinion and not necessarily the playstyle they need to stick with.
Rod Walker wrote:What the Heck? This is the ultimate approach to DIPLOMACY as a game. Simply fail to take it seriously. It's only a game, so why not try strange new strategies, weird new alliances, kinky tactics? This adds a wonderful element of pure unpredictability, and hence pure fun, to the game. The objective is to be absolutely unpredictable. The players of the other three types will hate you for it.
(In one fascinating game, three players of this type drew England, France, and Germany. They formed a triple alliance... The FEG alliance is the jargon term for it.)[...]The resulting tangle was hysterical... and a seven-way draw!
To some extent I actually agree with this. I play weird strategies all the time, because I like varying up the gameplay of particular nations and experimenting with what works - but the objective is still to win or draw. If you say that the objective of playing a weird opening or an unusual alliance is just having played that weird opening or unusual alliance, you can call it quits the moment you play one or two moves - the objective is always to
make it work, and you judge that by how well it does within the context of the actual objective of the game.
I think the fact he uses the Western Triple as his example of this, which is now considered something of a meta alliance, shows that this playstyle is about making unusual strategies work in the context of the larger goal - that unusual strategy turned out to work well enough that it's no longer unusual.
So... on the whole, it seems like most of the alternatives he suggests aren't really goals in and of themselves and are usually done in the context of goal #1. The only one that goes against it is #2, which as a goal is terrible and it's absolutely fine to treat the win as the best goal in this respect. This author has a good strategic grasp of the game (as is evident from his section on stalemates later) but I'd take his opinions on the game's objectives with a grain of salt.