PF, your choices for winning this year's special prize are as follow: 1. Join the mod team And this is how they get you... Make it seem like a reward... 😉 But jokes aside, thank you for your generosity, Zultar. It's always a fun thing to look forward to in the winter. Anyways, given the good democr...

From his tweet, he seems to be saying, "if we fight them we can win. But if we negotiate, I big brained Donald, author of the art of the deal, will get screwed over..." Not a declaration, but an admission that he thinks war is the better option. Not my read of it at all. To me the tweet is saying t...

It doesn't matter if a particular tweet is a declaration of war. Murdering a senior officer of a foreign power (on the soil of a third country and without that country's approval, for good measure) is most certainly a warlike act. It matters rather a lot, in fact. Warlike acts very rarely lead to w...

This game has become gross

God, but I hate mummers. You're trying to drink a quiet pint of ale by the fire when the atmosphere is trashed by a bunch of lunatics in ribbons and masks hamming it up with the most amateur dramatics ever seen, singing awful songs, and butting people with comedy horns. You've been doing the same bl...

Trump's latest tweet, claiming 'Iran has never won a war. Never lost a negotiation' seems like an effective declaration of war. In what sense? And distraction of from his impeachment I've not noticed Trump trying to distract from his impeachment before. If anything he's using it as a tool to hit De...

Lies of omission should be used constantly from the beginning. For example, if you are England, you want to ally with either France or Germany. The problem is in 1901, you don't have enough information to make a good claim. So Germany asks you if you want to form an alliance against France. You agr...

It is not happening. There have been private elements to the NHS since its founding. GPs and dentists have always been private companies within the system, and private companies have run various other parts of the NHS throughout my lifetime. Labour even tried to privatise a hospital, but that was br...

Let me tell you a fun story about the railways. These days safety critical staff have to take a series of pretty strenuous tests to prove that they know their job, and they have to repeat the tests every 3 years. Back in the British Rail days there was no requirement to repeat the tests after initia...

That's a very left wing centric view of Conservative gay policy. There has always been a strong pro-gay movement within the Tories, powered from the natural Tory instinct for promoting individual freedoms over state interference, and the sheer number of gay people who are Tories. I think there's a s...

SoS is an abomination that only has any redeeming qualities in a face to face events where people don't have enough time to finish a game properly. Why it was ever introduced to online Diplomacy I have no idea. As for there being a small point incentive for mopping up small players, I quite like thi...

No, I would not. Diplomacy is not a game that should give you a pat on the head and a well done sticker for trying hard. Yet that is what we do regardless by awarding players points if they get in a draw. The question is how we should distribute the points. A small sized nation that secures a draw ...

I'd say the intent is to not disincentivice players to try to solo. If you try to get a solo, but ultimately fail, wouldn't you say that you don't deserve a lower score than if you hadn't tried anything, but just whittled down the draw? No, I would not. Diplomacy is not a game that should give you ...

So the intent of this is to reward people for failed solo attempts? Surely the only reward required for attempting a solo is the possibility of a solo? That's reward enough for any red blooded Diplomacy player. The only real benefit of this seems to be to those people who persistently fail at their ...

Dear Dipbro Octavious, you are criticising a book based on my "crude summary" of one part of that book which I would diplomatically suggest is singularly unfair to it's author. Criticise me for my inability in a thread post to provide an accurate and complete representation of it's contents, or bet...

It still means economic liberalism, but as the UK is economic liberal already that doesn't feature much in their campaigning these days. Socially it is in favour of equality (as are everyone, to be fair) and for the Lib Dems practically speaking this manifests itself primarily as support for LGBT+ r...

The best way to remove Trump may be in an election rather than an impeachment process that relies upon a score of Republican senators turning against their own party? Gosh... with deep insights like that the book must be a best seller. Trump is not a good president, but there's no terminal decline a...

Ultimately it's about finding a balance, and key to that balance is how comfortable you are with lying. As profound today as when they were carved on the Temple of Delphi are the words "know thyself". If you are bad at lying, or if you simply find it highly disagreeable, then you will want to keep i...

As for the Lib Dems, I actually don't know what they stand for, though I suspect they are Tories-lite. The clue is in the name. They stand for liberal democracy, and see themselves as centrist progressives. From the outside they tend to resemble the party you're not. For hard lefties they do seem t...

I jist took the green party as an example because I think it is simple to understand their core beliefs, and uncontroversial (I guess the SNP could be the other simple example, with their belief that Scotland is better off independent). But my point is merely that no matter the honest or not (and I...