Seconded, aoe3rules.

If Bismarck were the chancellor at the time, I'd be proud to claim german heritage.

neutrals were not neutral, at least not the balkan neutrals

Because nations have people, people need to be persuaded, lied and spun into wars and once started wars are quite difficult to stop , for example Britain would have a hard time patching things up with Germany in 1916 after thousands of British deaths and stabbing france to take paris

Also, didn't Russia have a civil war on its hands?

Yes, but it would have been so easy*...


*I presume you are familiar with the flip-flopping of the sides in 1984.

yes but 1984 was a bit different than western European nations in 1916 (i hope!)

Just saying, would have been possible.

I would say that History did not turn out like diplomacy because not every power was of equal strength. The ottomans spent more time in Arabia than in Europe, and the Alliance system was already worked out long before the war started. Also, Austria did not have reason to invade Serbia until the Archduke was assassinated.

in diplomacy, battles are decisive in quick. in the real WW1, they lasted for years or months as all participants sat in trenches shelling the other one. and the US had a major impact on WW1 and is not included whatsoever in diplomacy, so you cant expect them to be similiar. they stayed neutral in the real war because in diplomacy theres nobody to offend no foreign policy's to break no armies to defeat in conquering a neutral country. that is, unless one of your so called allies wanted it...

iMurk, actually, battles take 6 months here. But all of them actually have results.

decisive *AND* quick, and by they i mean the neutral countries in diplomacy. sorry, definitely forgot to edit that post....

yeah, forgot about that. but yeah, in WW1 you would have gained a few yards in 6 months, not an entire province.

Not necessarily true. There were no trenches on the Eastern Front, it was a pretty standard, almost Napoleonic, war.

Real life isn't like Diplomacy because real life is more complex than a board game. Plus, gaining a lot of territory mean you have LESS forces to fight your enemies due to the need for an occupation, while in Diplomacy more territory means more armies to hurl at them.

Also, after four years of defending your homeland, you aren't in the mood for attacking the ally you had in that defence to achieve world domination.

In addition: American involvement.

And don't forget the ever-crucial element of chance. Battles in Diplomacy always go according to plan, they never hinge on faulty maps, lost orders, or a lack of nails to spike enemy cannon.

There is also the issue of relative strength of the armed forces involved.

Was the stength of the Austrian armed forces identical to Germany? Turkey? France? I don't think so.

Plus, logistics affect the real world. What would happen to a stray English army that snuck in moscow? Would it possess the capacity to last indefinitely? I don't think so.

And finally, Global politics is a little more complicated than "I don't like Russia, he doesn't talk to me enough, I think I will ally with Germany and launch a massive total war with the largest nation in the world"

Good point, too. Austria-Hungary, for example, issued their WWI mobilisation orders in fifteen different languages. All Diplomacy requires is something as easy as "A Bud -> Ser".

There's no money in Diplomacy.

@ao3rules - there's one small problem with your little theory (besides being simply wrong): Bismarck was long since dead before WWI got going!

Dave: Exactly what he's saying.

Invictus: If I were to be serious about this, that's probably one of the two biggest reasons I'd name. The other is that there are no civilians in Diplomacy.

Bismarck didn't want to conquer europe, he just wanted to secure German's position. He was actually against the occupation of french territories.

The situation in history is not reflective in the game because in the game there is a clear definition of ownership of a country whereas in real life a major power may 'control' another country effectively without every having to place a piece on it.