What do you all think.

New suggestions usually fail but this looks promising.

Agreed.
Listen Kestas!

For some reason I am not at all surprised by the fact Draugner is suggest this. He must come in a lot of ties. =p

I would only be for it if it still required everyone to vote for it. If it only required the members of the team to declare it, then it would be very unfair and easily exploited.

I play for team draws all the time, yes. I would rather be part of a winning team then "survive", and I work towards long term alliances regularly.

Why, if the team has over 18 and is dedicated enough to delare the vistory, then the remaining members could not stop them anyhow.

Of course, you could limit alliance size to no more than 3 nations so that less than half of the nations had to own more than half of the board.

I think this is a lousy idea. The point of this game is solo victory. Too many games would be decided this way.

In fact, this has the added advantage that you could survive on a team victory game, instead of being eliminated before the team calls the draw. The survivors would actually get a little something out of it in a PPSC game.

No, the point of the game is victory at all costs. WWI didn't have a single victor as there were nations working together against other nations also working together.

Hey Dingleberry, what evidence do you hve that shows too many games would be decided this way? Some of the current draws would wrap up sooner, allowing more play for the players as I know some of them are cooperative draws, but others would continue until the point where everyone said "it's taking too long" and those would probably still play out unless two of the three or four remaining nations decided to join forces and end it early.

Absolutely not

How about if the requirement were less than half the starting nations (must declare alliance together) have to hold at least 23 SCs (2/3rds) or, if the alliance only holds 18-22 SCs, all of the remaining nations must also issue a concede.

Team Victory implies Team Loss. The object of the game in the rule book is for an INDIVIDUAL country to secure 18 supply centers. Failing that, Draws Include All Survivors ((Also called DIAS in dippy slang)).
It would be a terrible shift in the spirit of the game to allow for a group of people to exclude someone without their consent. For example I could form a 14 center stalemate position rather easily in some games with the idea that the other powers who own 20 would have to agree to include me in a draw or they would have to toss the game to one of their own.
I do know that as soon as you start to deprive small powers of their value in the PBeM world you will see a massive up take in their drop outs and a general degrading of the play.
In face to face tournament for many years there was an experiment on this in Baltimore and a few years in Ohio with what was called the 29 or 30 center rule that allowed draw votes to be forced to be passed if they had 29 or 30 votes in them where each center gave you one vote.
The idea was to speed things up and to avoid the 'kill' concept towards smaller powers. It did not work as planned. Instead what happened is that 5 center powers were excluded and the number of broken games increased with acrimony towards the end. Additionally the number of 2 way draws skyrocketed since in a three way power struggle two players could safely pound on the third who could not throw the game in defense because as soon as they got him down to 5 centers the major powers would then vote a two way without having to face the most challenging of tactical solutions to truly build a 17-17 stalemate line where no one has a chance to win in the fall of the last 5 centers. (in face to face tournament play I did this ONCE in 43 years, all the other 2 way draws were simply give-me's where one player could have gotten the win but declined to take it for all sorts of different reasons.

So Team Victory within a single game is not something that I would encourage.

Team Play over many games in a Team Tournament is a different idea.
And there are many different structures of such a tournament but that would be another tread..

None of this. I would support the ability to have draws which exclude players as long as the excluded players also agree to the draw and to being excluded. This would effectively save you time from inevitably eliminating them.

18 centres does not guarantee victory at all, neither does 19 or even 20... it depends on the tactical placement of such units. You haven't discussed how the points would be split... what, besides boredom, would stop people from ending the game in Spring 1901 with a quick alliance victory to snap up the rest of the points?

I think the incentives created by this proposal would be detrimental to Diplomacy play. It sounds sort of nice in concept, but you have to think about the feedback effects on the way people will play.

what??

I think if we do this it'll discourage people from trying to seize the eighteenth center, and dealing with the 18th-center worries is part of what's so fun about Diplomacy.

OK, if Edi says it's bad. It's bad. And I'm not being sarcastic. When it comnes to DIP, Magnus Hand and Edi are the two men I would follow.

But I like the idea of team Diplomacy tourneys...

Yeah. But a team tournament is already a departure from Diplomacy's basic ideas. It's understandable if they have a different win mechanism.

But in normal games...?

Team Diplomacy can be fun, but that is a team generally spread out over various games. I have been involved with many team events with different structures
1. a player for each country
2, as above with a captain and second to back players up
3, as above with private listservers to jointly discuss games

Also I have been in team tournaments where there is a group of players playing a single country the most fun of which was a series run by Claudio Misca where each country had
1. Prime Minister in charge of Fleets and overall negotiations
2, Defense/War minister in charge of armies
3, Opposition leader who would put in sets of orders for both above and would take over if there was a vote of no confidence in one of the positions or there was a NMR.

There is another way to run a Team Event which I may start on another thread to see if there is interest.

-- The object of the game in the rule book is for an INDIVIDUAL country to secure 18 supply centers. --

I had an interesting conversation about this on new years.

In real diplomacy you can come to a mutual compromise which benifits both people, whereas in the game Diplomacy what one player gains another losses, it is a zero sum game. Thus there can be no compromise, unless you allow allied victories.

I think it is a valid varient.

"Team Victory implies Team Loss. The object of the game in the rule book is for an INDIVIDUAL country to secure 18 supply centers. Failing that, Draws Include All Survivors ((Also called DIAS in dippy slang)).
It would be a terrible shift in the spirit of the game to allow for a group of people to exclude someone without their consent. For example I could form a 14 center stalemate position rather easily in some games with the idea that the other powers who own 20 would have to agree to include me in a draw or they would have to toss the game to one of their own."

I agree completely. When I play face to face my friends never have the endurance to finish solo and they really don't seem to understand the value in finishing the game the way it was meant to be finished... it becomes very predictable and dull... and hardly anyone gets eliminated. People would take this option all the time and no one would have any experience in late-game stabbing. My vote is a resounding no for this feature.

How about a 'feature' in chess allowing the knight (for example) to move anywhere it wants on the board?

I mean - this is a pretty old game already - with some defined rules - how complicated is to learn those, play some games maybe, to understand how it works, and then start making revolutionary suggestions.

People constantly throw in 'feature' requests that would change the nature of the game - and classify them as if we're talking about the interface or some enhancement to the site forum?

Sorry, but Team Victory cannot be qualified as a feature - if someone fails to understand why then he/she is not qualified to make such suggestions in the first place.

It would be good for people who make suggestions and write here to be so kind to check the sanity and validity of what they are about to spill out, before posting :)

As a variant, it might be valid - but only as a variant, such as in a game where teams already exist.

The chess analogy is bogus. There are variants in chess. I play nightmare chess nd four way chess and 3D (i.e Star Trek) chess all the time. If the team play were a variant, it could be combined with a more global WWII variant (think Axis and Allies without the dice) where Russia (and only Russia), starting as an Axis power, could switch sides at his choosing, making the diplomacy with Russia very important. So less a feature and more a variant capability.

I only mention this because the point system is also not part of the classic game. In the clasic game, it's winner take all unless you declare a draw, but here we have points (D) that go to victors and survivors and are split evenly in a draw. This aspect of the game alone means it is no longer classic Diplomacy. Calhamer's rules never mention anything about winning points or D or whatever you want to call them. So, if we are adding this dimension to the game, we can add others.

So, Ivo, before you insult me again, you should re-examine your statement about the "pretty old game" and the "defined rules". The game we play on here is not that old, only as old as the site, as a whole new dimension was added. And those "feature requests" that change the nature of the game? Don't you agree that having the (D) changes the nature of the game? If you fail to understand why, then you are not qualified to make such a judgement of me in the first place.

The Dip points are simply a way of managing the people playing on the site, and more specifically, are really there to stop CD. There is a practical necessity for them or something of their kind.

@ Draugnar - I didn't want to insult you - let me explain:
1. From time to time I check the forum and there're some request to make some changes that would affect the nature of the game. In most cases it is clear that the person suggesting this does not really understand what he's suggesting (in your case - you defined a Game Rules change as a feature request). What is worse, there's always a group of some other people who think this is an excellent idea.

2. Hopefully, some of the 'old' guys will also drop a line or two to say this is nonsense. Good that we have people like Edi to explain calmly and in details why somehting makes no sense. But there're also people like me who think "hey, if these guys did not take the least effort to make some basic research and think before suggesting, and then they keep pushing their idea as if it was the greatest thing after hot water, I certainly have the right to tell them directly what I think about such suggestions" :)

2. Diplomacy is definitely a much older game than this site? :). And, if you want me re-examine my position then maybe you should stop making such statements as "the game is as old as this website". What do you expect me to respond to this? :)

3. The chess example is quite a valid one. If you joined a chess website today and made a suggestion there that changes the logic of the game you won't get much praise :)

4. Points, as Ghost said, are a necessary tool. They do not really change the nature of the game that much (e.g. individual win).

5. Did you notice that it is pimarily rookies who supported your idea - and most experienced players simply said NO. What do you think is the reason for this? :)

6. Sorry for being so direct - but from my perspective you also show no respect to the other people here with such suggestion. I mean - the response is as good as the question :).

Anyway, no harm done I hope - I usually ignore such threads exactly because I would otherwise say something not so nice - I guess I do not have other people's patience :)

The points may change the nature of the game, as people play for something other than the win. Some play just for points. But I suppose in a game without points, people sometimes DO play for 2nd and ARE satisfied with a survival as opposed to an elimination, so its possible that the points just reinforce those issues.

Either way, they are a necessary evil, and also a way to keep the more talented members coming to the site. If an A+ player kept having to play rookies who didn't really know the game, it might get pretty boring, and they might find some other way to satisfy their Diplomacy Jones.

I agree that there are feature requests and variant requests. Feature requests (auto elimination of units that can't retreat), auto kill of zero SC players doesn't change the nature of the game. Variant phase length too. It doesn't change the fundamentals of the game, just speeds it up.

A feature to make team draws changes how we play the game. I know if I am losing 8 units and someone with 14 will cruise to easy victory, I can cobble together enough losing players to force a draw.

Honestly, I would be happy if the draw feature were drastially changed. There would NO draws, unless reviewed by a panel of experts to say that stalemate lines have been reached. I believe allowing non-stalemated draws drastically changes the game from how it was written.

Ivo: The points change the nature to such a degree that I believe they have altered the game. I know they alter the way I play so that I jump into CDs mid game in the hopes of picking up a few more for the right position. Whether they want to admit it or not, points play in people's mind set when they join the game or make alliances.

My statement that the game is only as old as the website, meant the game as we play it WITH POINTS is only as old as the website. I've been playing diplomacy since my early teens and I'm in my 40s now, so I know Diplomacy has been around longer.

I tried offering up ways to make this more useable. I'm in a game now with an intentional three way draw (that's what we played for) and we have been slowly working the last player out of the game. We have him donw to his last SC and it is oging to fall this phase (Spring '08). If we had a mechanism for declaring an alliance victory, we wouldn't have had to humiliate him completely. In fact, we could have let him conceded, take a few points for his being the last non-alliance survivor, and even let him have a "survived" tick instead of a "loss" on his record. Instead, we have to play this out until he is completely gone (3 phases I think, this one to take it, Fall '08 to convert it, and Spring '09 to make certain he has lost, not survived with 0 SCs). It's wholy a waste of time.

My mechanism may not have been perfect, but the idea is to conclude more games so we can play more games. In a home game, this guy would have conceeded defeat and we would all be eating pizza and beer and discussing who made what mistakes and why the game went how it did.

Oh, and for your hess analogy, there is a concede in chess. When one player knows they've been beat and it's only a matter of time, they can lay their king down and accept the loss.

My idea of not allowing unstalemated draws would also eliminate the need to humiliate that player. Everyone would keep him alive to try to use him to their own ends.

Sounds like at interesting question to ask Allan Clahamer at Origins this year. I wonder what his take would be on Alliance Victories, Draws, and the like.

Draugnar, I understand where you're coming from... but did you see my post above? There is an unfairness to your rule in that it's far to easy for an alliance to force a victory upon a player that would rather continue fighting. It's all great to spare a player the end "humiliation", but only if they want to be spared. Some players would much rather play to the death.

I think the feature you're looking for is simply the ability to draw while exempting certain players from the draw as long as they agree to be exempted. That way everyone in the game would agree to it. Your analogy to chess concessions don't apply to your team victory because the other player didn't concede, you just got to a certain amount of SC's.

Dingleberry, I used to support that case and I might still do, but to play the devil's advocate here... In face to face games if the players wanted to draw they wouldn't need a panel of experts to determine that there is a stalemate, all they would need is the consent of all players. I do wish people wouldn't settle for draws so readily, but if everyone wants to draw then that should be the result.

Also, you hardly need a "panel of experts" to check for stalemate lines.

Calhamer is a big believer in the concept that Draws include All Survivors and is not a fan of the supply center lead concept of achievement recognition.
Though he does concede that for tournament play with real world time limits the need to scale and rank large numbers has driven people to create tie breaking mechanism. But the game as designed was not designed with the concept of tournament play or the idea of ranking thousands of players.