Because the game is balanced at 7 players. When someone doesn't show, it gives an unfair advantage both short term (you don't have to worry about an attack from.the CD) and long term (easier to pick up extra SCs) to the CDs immediate neighbors.

In the World Cup, they have a structure that determines who goes in if a team pulls out. I know India pulled out one year because they weren't allowed to play barefoot, and they got replaced. Same with the Olympics. Sadly, with live games, typically if someone wanted to be in it, they're probably in it.

The view I take in live games is that they can be such a bugger to get started these days that you might as well play on as the chance of getting a new one started is pretty slim. An imperfect game is far superior to no game at all. Besides, one missing player can make life interesting. Two missing players and you start to get into "not worth playing" territory.

But the game becomes inherently unbalanced as it progresses anyway, as some players get more SC's than others.

I just played a game where two players failed to show: France and Turkey (i was Russia). Why not just in that case consider it to be an alternate reality in which Europe only has 5 powers?

It's true that the game becomes unbalanced as it progresses, but the difference between unbalance cause by pure luck and unbalance caused by player's skills at diplomacy is rather important for obvious reasons.

If you happen to be with a group of people willing to continue with two missing, that's great. Go for it and enjoy. But bare in mind that people signed up for a 7 player game and have every right not to want to dedicate 3 or 4 hours of their lives to playing something rather different. By all means try and talk them into continuing, but to refuse to draw/cancel seems a tad unfair.

well those players that want a perfect game have the right to leave at any time, but that does not mean they have the right to pressure those who wish to continue to play. that is also unfair.

I think what nudge is missing is the fact that Diplomacy is a board game designed to be as balanced as possible. Otherwise why not play a version where England and Germany start with vastly more SCs than the other 'powers', since that's 'more realistic'. Starting with seven players give everybody the same shot at victory. If you want luck to play its part, go play Risk.

A game obviously becomes imbalanced as it progresses because some players are better than others. The point that EVERYONE is making is that starting with seven gives all players the same theoretical chance of winning. If Austria doesn't show up, then it basically gives Turkey three easy centers in Ser, Gre, and Bul, and immediately puts pressure on Russia and Italy with this unfairly large Turkey as their neighbor. This means that England and Germany are probably more likely to attack Russia as well, seeing as he's disproportionately weaker.

Players who don't vote "cancel" if someone doesn't show up are the real assholes on this site.

They have every right to pressure you nudge. Just as they have every right to pressure you into doing certain moves in game. But the community takes a dim view of someone who won't cancel when two CDs occur from the start.

"But the community takes a dim view of someone who won't cancel when two CDs occur from the start."

I rank them somewhere between stepping on a hypodermic needle and spending ten hours in a car with krellin.

Worse than the hypodermic needle then :-)

I guess it depends largely on the car. The Peel P50, for example, would be unpleasent.

A stretch limo would be unpleasant.

Imagine what his family went through on their recent tript o Orlando...

'Because the game is balanced at 7 players.' - That's a lie and you know it! The game is unbalanced with 7 players, and you know well when you draw austria or italy your chances of a solo are significantly lower.

'I think what nudge is missing is the fact that Diplomacy is a board game designed to be as balanced as possible. ' - The balance comes from the fact that players can react to a weak position, if one player is far more powerful the others can counter him by making deals. That is the beauty of diplomacy, it is self-balancing.

Not that it starts out balanced (when thousands of games have shown that it is clearly not)

I once played a live game where two players decided they did not want to show up as well. Once they CD, we drew and took the points that the CD countries bet and then created a live ancient med. I think we were all pretty happy with the results. I think we would have rather played a standard game, but it seemed like it was not happening.

I like how people take a board game and compare it to something in real life. World Cup? WTF.

People just want to play a good game and that usually doesnt happen if one person CD's cause it gives certain countries advantages and others disadvantages.

@ 2WL: GR doesn't kick in until '03. A draw before that does nothing but give you the quitters points, which I consider payment for time wasted.

nudge we have put forward loads of ideas on how to deal with or resolve this issue. These are my favourites:-
1) As soon as a player CDs in a game a message is sent to the forum asking for a replacement, first come, first served.
2) It is free for the new player to enter the game as the stake has already been paid by the player that CD'ed
3) We have a reliability rating so that when you set up new games you can exclude players that have a high CD percentage

Not sure why no action has been taken on these issues ..... probably because it's not easy to get everyone to agree, these things make sense to me though

No action has been taken because there are far too many request/changes/ideas than there is PHP developers with time to devote to the changes.

Nigee, I think the issue with your solutions is that its tough to implement in live games, especially if a player misses two full phases before he CDs, there often isn't much left for anybody to take over.

There may not be much left to take over, that is why the incoming player should not have to pay anything

look, my point is that the game is not balanced, and those purists who wish to CD should allow the others to just get on with it. If a player or two NMR's, move on.

'People just want to play a good game and that usually doesnt happen if one person CD's cause it gives
certain countries advantages and others disadvantages.'

Yes a CD does give some neighbours an advantage, and it forces others to react. Just like any other possible moves.

It is particularily tough in a live game, but equally happens in face-to-face games; players sometimes have to dropout... A reliability rating might make me refuse to play live games (because i know something could come up, and i know my reliability will be taken into account in non-live games) that is a meta-game which could harm the actual game. No game is perfectly balanced, a d it may be possible to talk to a player to figure out how reliable they are - thus whether they are likely to CD and if you want them as an ally...

I still think that in-game responce is the best route to resolving this.

When I'm in a live game and people CD and the others won't draw, I slap the monitor scattering the pieces everywhere. I pick a couple up so they can't be replaced onto the board. Then the others have no choice but to draw.

Nice to see several players speaking up with an alternative point of view.

Here is my story: I used to invest a lot of my personal time organizing informal live games, recruiting people from a combination of real life friends, people I know from the Forum here, people who I know from other games I've played here and people who just kind of randomly wander in.

Too many times, some person or other forgot to log on for the game so their country CDs. To make matters worse, one or two other players start hemming and hawing to cancel the game. And then belittling people who don't want to cancel. And then bullying people who don't want to cancel.

The thing is, if we cancel, I don't receive any return on all of the time that I spent organizing a game. As one or two players have commented, since I stopped organizing live games, there have been far fewer lives games.

Why don't players accept that if you show up for an open live game, you're basically getting the dregs of the community? Of course people are going to CD. Of course people are going to NMR. Of course people are going to want to quit early if they start to loose. Of course metagaming and cheating is bound to occur in these games.

As I predicting, acting snobbish about it is acerbating the problem. If things get much worse we will loose the critical mass of players needed to even have a community here.

I also wish that most players would understand exactly how awesome all of the supposedly "low quality" games on this site actually are. The first twenty (or so) years that I played Diplomacy, I never once finished a game because I was playing with people who were (almost exclusively) casual gamers.

This site would be great if we would let it, but a large part of that in my opinion is becoming more tolerant of the various eccentricities of the nerdy people here, as well as trying to make the most out of each and every game, *especially* the ones with absences or problem players.

And if that's too much work for you, no one will really fault you for dropping out of a game early because there aren't seven people playing and because the game is "imperfect." But please let the rest of us play. Some of us are quite busy in real life and have few enough opportunities to sit down with a group of dudes and enjoy a nice Diplomacy match, even if there are only four or five players.

Thank you.

If someone doesn't show up for a live game I will put a cancel vote in. I will leave it in until 1902 starts. Then I put in a draw vote. At most it's 10 minutes lost if we cancel, after that I draw for points.

@Chaqa

...at most 10 minutes lost of if we cancel, ...except for the person who organized the game. I love it, this captures the attitude of the people who like to try to force others to cancel games.

If you organized a live game and spent any appreciable amount of time doing so, you'd have to include screening players to prevent CDs. If CDs are a frequent enough problem in games you organized that you lose an appreciable amount of time because of it, then you screwed up your management of the organizing process. Bottom line. And just like no business has the right to force investors to ride the sinking ship into corporate failure, no organizer should have the right to force players (by way of giving them no option to leave except to take a Resignation, with the relevant future negative implications) to ride their CD-ridden trainwreck into hours of wasted time, either.

What really captures the attitude of the other side here isn't the individual who sees a poorly-prepared live game about to crash and burn and wants to get out without having his record screwed up by someone else's error; it's the individual who wasted an hour or so of his time organizing a failed game and believes he is entitled to waste the time of the players he's hosting. "I'm going to lose time on this, so all of you have to as well!" is a shitty attitude for live games and it's a shitty attitude for life.

"But the community takes a dim view of someone who won't cancel when two CDs occur from the start."

I don't understand this. If a CD happens, and people start talking cancel, I resist it, basically in agreement with Al. I tell them, "I will only cancel if threatened with annihilation." They are then perfectly free to say, "OK, we'll play, but we won't stop until you are dead, as punishment for wasting our time." I'd cancel pretty quick in that situation. Why take a dim view of my attitude?

I was more thinking in the gunboat arena where you can't agree to annihilate a person cause you can't chat. In live full-press or public-press it becomes less of an issue because it can be discussed on the global tab and them say "Fine, let's crush the fucktard then draw without him".

Reminder to some players that plenty of people like playing games that don't have seven people, if the other option is not to play at all.