Also, I notice Eagle hasn't joined a game yet. Will you be sticking around?

And she is an expert on a game older than she is why? It was always part of the game and not an addition. Only Allan Calhammer can say why he put the "no diplomacy furing retreats and builds" in the game.

*during

Hopefully he will, but who knows.
I was interested to hear that he didn't even know this existed until now: shows how good their SEO is compared to this place

figlesquidge: A rout can be a retreat or a disband, you know. But the way I see it, the 'retreats' (retreat and disbanding) phase is happening in the chaos of the order resolution phase. That is why you can't retreat into standoffs, because the battle is there as well, and routing units want to run for safety, not into the middle of another battle. If they have nowhere to go, they desert.

djbent: But that is the issue here! How many times do you see someone not finalize during the retreats phase or during the unit-placing phase? Its infuriating, and it happens fairly often. I don't think it would slow down play either. Not much serious diplomacy of the upcoming movement phases occurs during these phases. Often people just comment on the last order resolution and/or want to wait 'til retreats and builds are concluded to make final decisions. If messages could be stored and sent only when the unit-placing phase ended, that would speed up the game a lot, with minimal loss to convenience!

figlesquidge: Are you talking about PLAYdiplomacy members not knowing this place existed? SEO?

Draug,

It would be nice if you spent as much time reading what was actually written as you do misinterpreting things.

At no point did I claim bent was an expert; I was merely expressing my opinion and pointing out that bent had already mentioned what I was saying.

Nor did I say it was added after the game was published. It was added during the creation of the game in one of the beta stages.

OK abgemacht, then I'll restate it in regards to you. What makes you an expert on why Allan Calhammer decided to put a rule of "no negotiation during retreats and builds" in the rulebook?

And you know it was added then how? Are you sure it wasn't there all along?

Nothing. That is why I said, "It is my understanding..."

Notice how I did not say, "Based on my extensive research and personal relation with Calhamer..."

What I would like to know is who made you the Diplomacy Rulebook Nazi?

No, I'm not. That was a conjecture. But, notice how easy it is to just question my actual statement rather than putting a bunch of words in my mouth?

It would be hard to enforce a non-negotiations during retreats rule here.
What is the rule on play by email games?

I'm just harrasing you, abgemacht. It probably was made a rule to speed the game along.

@spyman - I honestly don't recall if the retreat/build phases stopped press while in play in PBeM games. Enforcing it wouldn't be hard if it was programmed in to block the communications during those phases as long as everyone was on their honor to not use PMs, parallel running games, or outside of the site methods to communicate at those times (i.e. any form of metagaming to get around the rule). But those would be hard to enforce outside of anonymous games.

Retreats can be crucial and no diplomacy during them is an added challenge to the game.

SEO = search engine optimisation. If a site is well optimised then it appears high in search engine listings, so will be found first. Thus people there will have found it but might not have looked on down to see this place in the list.

Rout: But thats my point: I don't think the units are routed. I know they loose control of the area, but it's an organised retreat.

It doesn't really matter too much if it is organized or not. The point is that it is in the hand of the army or its commanding officer and it's too fast and spontaneous to notify anyone about.

With anon. games, enforcement isn't hard.