Version 3.0 of DATC published

[lkruijsw]

Dear All,

After 15 years, version 3.0 of the DATC!

The ultimate guide for adjudication and adjudicator programmers had to be updated after the new 2023 edition of the rules.The last 20 years has slowly changed things. E-mail judges has been replaced by websites that look like a command and control center (like this one). Being DATC compliant for adjudicator has become an obvious requirement, similar to the voltage of your wall outlet. There is less room for arguing and discussions like convoy path specification are something from the distant past. To avoid that the DATC started to look antiquated, it was trimmed a lot. Although all the info about the official rulebooks, back to the version of 1971 is still in and the same counts for comments of Mr. Calhamer.

Further in this new version:

• Test cases of section 6.J, for the civil disorder disbands are changed to the new 2023 rule. Distant must now be calculated to owned supply centers.
• Six test cases added, 6.B.15, 6.C.8, 6.C.9, 6.F.25, 6.G.19 and 6.G.20.
• Variants removed. There was a large section dedicated to Colonial Diplomacy discussing the Suez Canal and Trans Siberian Express rules. But this variant is not particularly popular and documentation about variants will never be complete.
• I changed my opinion about how convoying to adjacent province must be handled, leading to a different outcome for test case 6.G.8 and 6.G.11. But don’t worry, this is as relevant to actual play, as particle physics is for cooking a meal.
• Finally, the section for how to write an adjudicator has been totally rewritten. It is now more like the article in the Pouch, “The Math of Adjudication”. The algorithm for deciding on partial information has been improved and simplified.

Many thanks to David Cohen who reviewed the document and corrected my usage of the English language.

It is uploaded to the Files section of the Diplomacy page on BoardGameGeek. The old location (a nineties style homepage) was not available anymore.

Lucas Kruijswijk

[JECE]

Awesome! Looking forward to reading!

Is this it?
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/274846/datc-diplomacy-adjudicator-test-cases

Unfortunately, it looks like we need to register an account with BoardGameGeek in order to see the page.

[lkruijsw]

Yes, that is the page. I think it is correct that you need an account. I don't have a better place to put the document. I expect BGG to exist for a long time. So, it is safe there.

But you are free to copy it to others places and baybe Kestas can make a copy on this site.

Lucas

[wulfheart]

It would be nice to somehow be able to view it without Download. Maybe GitHub pages?

[kestasjk]

Thanks Lucas, much appreciated you updating this for the new ruleset. Will try and make the changes required asap. In the meantime I've added this document to our documentation as part of the webDip repo, so you can link to it here if you like, this URL for this version of the DATC will not change or be taken offline, and the file will not change (unless you request) so feel free to use this link:
https://webdiplomacy.net/doc/DATC_v3_0.html

I've updated the link to the DATC within webDip to point to this page.

I've applied a change to the adjudicator so that when a unit needs to be destroyed and no valid destroy order was given it will find the furthest unit from any owned supply center, with distance defined by territory moves without respect to unit type, and if there are multiple units of equal distance the first territory in alphabetic order is selected, so I think we should be 2023 rulebook compliant now.

[kestasjk]

Tested it and looks like it's working:

Not a super impactful change but always good to be compliant.

[JECE]

I changed my opinion about how convoying to adjacent province must be handled, leading to a different outcome for test case 6.G.8 and 6.G.11. But don’t worry, this is as relevant to actual play, as particle physics is for cooking a meal.

Well, you say that it's not relevant, but I almost always ordered via convoy if I wanted a move to succeed since I knew that the order would be valid regardless.

I disagree with your new opinion since I understood 'via convoy' from the rulebook as shorthand for 'via whatever means possible since I want the move to succeed and I don't care about preventing a foreign power from kidnapping my Army and convoying it against its will given that it actually is my will that the army get to its destination'. (As I write this I realize that if both the army ordered to an adjacent coastal province and the fleet that can be potentially ordered to convoy belong to the same Great Power, then in this situation the rules are perhaps more difficult to read as allowing for 'fallbacks', but even so I believe that it is more forgiving to allow players the option of saving partial order sets as they decide what they end up ordering their fleet to do.)

In any case, we should know whether a given implementation of the DATC follows the old interpretation or the new interpretation, since I doubt that I'm the only player who tends to order 'via convoy' just to be on the safe side.

[lkruijsw]

JECE,

Interesting, I never heard this argument. I don't think Kestas changed this, so, you can still order it. But don't expect other sites to work like this. Because people disagreed on this. Also Thomas Haver, that worked on the rules said there should be no fallback.

I am always a little bit in doubt about this issue. I would prefer no 'via convoy' at all in the rules, or make it mandatory and then only accept via convoy.

Lucas