Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum (Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.) Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt. (When catapults are outlawed, only outlaws will have catapults.) Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam. (I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.)
"Luck plays no part in Diplomacy. Cunning and
cleverness, honesty and perfectly-timed betrayal are the tools needed to
outwit your fellow players. The most skillful negotiator will climb to
victory over the backs of both enemies and friends.
Who do you trust?"
(Avalon Hill)
The objective of Diplomacy is to be the first nation to own half of the supply centers in the game. To accomplish this,
you can move your units around the board, fighting to claim other players' supply centers as your own. For each
supply center you occupy, you get to build a new unit at the end of the year that you can use to fight for more supply
centers and help you win the game. If you lose a supply center to another player, you have to disband a unit instead,
and are left with fewer units to fight with for more supply centers.
You can recognize supply centers by the markers placed on them that you see here.
In this instance, the owner of each of these three supply centers is France. France is blue on our classic Diplomacy map, and the other six players on the classic Diplomacy map are represented with a different color.
When you begin a game, and when you claim new supply centers, you will gain new pieces, or units. Units can be fleets or armies. An army can only move and attack other units on land. A fleet can move and attack other units on the coast or in the open sea, and it can also transport armies across sea territories by convoying.
In order to travel across the map and claim supply centers, or to defend your own supply centers, you can move your units. You can also hold, meaning your unit will not move, or support other units, meaning you are either providing defensive reinforcements if they are attacked or you are reinforcing their attack against another unit. We will get into supports a little bit more as part of our introduction to advanced tactics. For now, here are some examples of the basic moves your units can make.
As you learned above, armies can hold and move across land territories, and fleets can hold and move on coastal and sea territories, as well as convoy armies across the sea. However, the key to successfully conquering other supply centers is support. One unit cannot always conquer a supply center on its own because there are enemy units on the board that occupy those units and defend them. Below, we'll get into some more complex scenarios, including support, and how you can use it to conquer the board.
The best way to get better at Diplomacy is to play! You now understand the tactics of Diplomacy, so you are ready to
create a game or join existing games.
In addition to playing games, here are some helpful pages you should visit as you begin your experience on webDiplomacy.
While the original Diplomacy board is the classic map that you may be familiar with (and have
seen little bits of in this guide!), webDiplomacy features many variant Diplomacy boards. Check out all of our supported variants
here.
On webDiplomacy, we pride ourselves on being reliable players. Missing deadlines causes delays and makes the game less fun for everyone. To help
facilitate reliable gameplay, we implemented our Reliability Rating, better known as RR. Players with a low RR can find themselves blocked out of
games with high RR requirements to join, and players who miss phases frequently may find themselves temporarily suspended from joining or creating
new games. You can see your RR on your profile by expanding the Reliability Rating section, and read
about how our reliability rating works in detail.
In order to rank players, webDiplomacy uses the Ghost Ratings. This is a true skill rating system
that not only takes into account how well you do in your games but also the quality of your competition. As you play more games and become more skilled,
you might be able to rise up the ranks and become known as one of the best Diplomacy players.
To enter a game, you will need to bet points. The bets of all the players in the game will be combined into the pot. If you win a game, you will get
the entire pot! If you lose, you will lose your points. You can also draw before you win or lose, which means that you will split the pot with the other survivors.
More details on how points work and how you can win more can be found here.
If you have more questions that this guide or those pages have not answered, check out our FAQ!
If you're interested in learning a more comprehensive and detailed treatment of this guide, see
Avalon Hill's Official Rulebook, but this intro is all you
need to get playing! Have fun!