The Longest Game Ever - A Commentary

[captainmeme]

Ezio and I finally got around to covering the 2012 WebDiplomacy World Cup Final - the longest game of Diplomacy ever played! It's going to be a series because, well, it's long :D So I'll keep posting updates in this thread.

Part 1 is here.

[TBroadley]

Haha, I played in this game! IIRC Lando Calrissian took over my position at some point, though.

[goldfinger0303]

Listening now! It would seem you guys weren't reading through chat at all. Does 600+ pages not intrigue you? lol

Also of note, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named was Turkey at the beginning, not ibadibam. And remember Mujus was replaced by TheHangedMan later on!

[Ezio]

We'll make a note of that and be sure to mention you all in later parts.

If there's any chat messages you particularly would like us to know about, feel free to post it here or in the youtube comments.

[captainmeme]

Part 2 is up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uGy_SBZwaI

[captainmeme]

Part 3 (1921-1930) is up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR2CdRmTHdU

[Fluminator]

https://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=166960
This game is longer though

[Ezio]

https://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=166960
This game is longer though

I don't care how many youtube comments we get. We're not commentating that.

[BobMcBob]

https://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=166960
This game is longer though

I don't care how many youtube comments we get. We're not commentating that.

Exactly. That game isn't the longest game or the longest interesting game. It's not special anymore. It's got no talent. It's flat. They should do https://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=242215 instead.

[Strauss]

Awesome battle, I think Germany could solo it in two years.

[captainmeme]

Part 4 is up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKsFSsDGq3M

[captainmeme]

Aaaand Part 5!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXdxy5ffFbU

We're officially halfway :D

[captainmeme]

Part 6!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f70eZFdwIo

[captainmeme]

Also, the first part of this series just hit 15,000 views, which is insanely high compared to what we usually get. Turns out this part of webDip history is pretty damn interesting!

[captainmeme]

Part 7 is up. Not going to spoil anything here but things get really interesting this decade!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opFqfCc3cHQ

[JECE]

I hadn't logged into webDip or vDip since late August 2019, but then I happened upon this YouTube playlist on Friday and was shocked to see such an insanely long commentary on our game. It's crazy to think that you're only analyzing our orders and not even reading the press archive, yet still manage to have so much to say!

Let's see if you guys figure out my strategy by the end of the game. Who knows? Maybe Ezio will hate me even more!

But you didn't notice how close I was to winning in Fall 1964! I didn't need to change the order of two units. I would have‎ won the game in the Retreat and Disbanding Phase had I changed the orders of a single unit (use A Gal to support hold Bud). This should have been obvious. If I had been a little less busy in the real world and been able to review my orders with more time, I probably would have caught that.

By coincidence, the previous record-holder game that we know of ended in a draw in Fall 1964, but without a Retreat and Disbanding Phase since no unit got dislodged that turn. So if I wouldn't have just won the game and the tournament, but also the longest game on record, and all this would have happened if I had changed the order of just one unit in one phase.

Anyway, you'll find this interesting. Before kaner406 and The Ambassador interviewed Leif_Syverson, goldfinger0303 and myself back in October 2016, we exchanged e-mails for literally months. Back in April 2016 I shared this privately with the five of us:

Did some research and math for you in case you want it:
1901–2005 (104 full years): JECE, goldfinger0303, Leif_Syverson
1901–1974 (73 full years): Mujus
1901–c.1938 (≈ 38 years): TBroadley
1908–1943 (35.5 years): ibadibam
1974–2005 (31 full years): The Hanged Man
c.1939–1948 (≈ 10 years): unknown teammate sitting for TBroadley (likely Lando Calrissian or KyleFC)
1901–1908 (7.5 years): Sandgoose (now SandgooseXXI)
1901–1905 (5 full years): Kompole

And here is a timeline:

• Fall 1905: Kompole got eliminated.
• Fall 1908: Sandgoose was banned for cheating in other games and replaced by his team's official substitute, ibadibam. Sandgoose has since been allowed to rejoin webDiplomacy as SandgooseXXI.
• It seems that it was not announced at the time, but TBroadley was replaced by a sitter at some point. The mod G-mail must have a note of who was sitting for TBroadley and when this started, but my guess is that the replacement took over in Spring 1938 or Spring 1939 based on (1) the 7 Oct 2013 in-game message, "I joined this game as a replacement in July, sitting the account of my teammate.", (2) an abrupt change in the consistent spelling of 'center' to 'centre' and (3) a month-long French silence. I suspect that the sitter was either likely Lando Calrissian or KyleFC.
• Fall 1943: ibadibam got eliminated.
• Fall 1948: The sitter to TBroadley got eliminated.
• Spring 1974: Mujus was replaced by his teammate, The Hanged Man (against tournament rules, but we allowed it).

​​

You should consider updating the Power Rankings accordingly! I think that you can edit videos that have already been uploaded.

Another tidbit: Team Iberia exchanged 451 e-mails just in the Finals of the 2012 World Cup. And that doesn't even count one-on-one conversations like Google Talk/Chat/Hangouts messages! The constant communication with teammates was one of many distinguishing features of this game.

Between 617 pages of public press that cannot be easily searched, hundreds of e-mails or chats of correspondence with teammates and the use of the in-game Notes feature after this was introduced, we'd need to hire a team of archivists and historians to go through all of that.

Yes, the press archive used to be easy to search through. Before this game came along it all used to sit on one long page. It was just a matter of [CTRL] + [F]. All of the past messages for a game used to be at your fingertips. Then we broke it. You're welcome!

Finally, I want to say that Calhamer passed away while this game was in the 1920's. I wish that he could have lived long enough to know about it! It would have been an honor to get to know him.

[JECE]

Another thing to maybe note is that the phase lengths were very variable. The game started with 36-hour phases, late in the game changed to 48-hour phases, and the game was paused many times, sometimes for weeks. Also, something called "wait-for-orders mode" was enaabled for stretches of the game, during which NMR's were impossible.

By the way, I'm new to having my own YouTube channel and am not entirely sure how commenting on videos works. It looks like a few of my replies aren't posting, but maybe they're just waiting for your moderation?

[Lukas Podolski]

Can we get a link to the game?

[jasnah]

Can we get a link to the game?

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameI ... #gamePanel

[captainmeme]

Another thing to maybe note is that the phase lengths were very variable. The game started with 36-hour phases, late in the game changed to 48-hour phases, and the game was paused many times, sometimes for weeks. Also, something called "wait-for-orders mode" was enaabled for stretches of the game, during which NMR's were impossible.

By the way, I'm new to having my own YouTube channel and am not entirely sure how commenting on videos works. It looks like a few of my replies aren't posting, but maybe they're just waiting for your moderation?

Really glad you came back and watched! Still getting through the comment backlog on the channel at the moment, but from what I can see your comments have all gone through - there's nothing I can see that's been withheld.

Should be noted though that if you post links to external sites (like webdip) youtube will automatically remove them, nothing I can do on that end.