I agree with Whee. The player who is going under can be the greatest wildcard in the entire game, whether it's the player who started the game or someone who joined later on.

Agreed also. The "winning player" has to convert that to a win by either keeping players unwilling to contest his win (for many reasons in a PPSC game) or being unable to prevent the win (the only valid win in a WTA game).

If you could not win with everyone actively trying to prevent it, you were not winning, you were just leading.

What is wrong with you people here?
The game is suppose to be played with players not Civil Disorder countries.
It is a great tradition of the hobby from the 1960's that the better players were expected to take over helpless positions that were dropped and to try to inject some life into the defense of the game so as to
1. provide mentoring advice to players
2. provide an example to all players that playing to the bitter end is the way to do things.
3. provide people examples for taking a hopeless position and making something of the position.
4. remind the players that are in the game that the purpose of the game is to play, not just beat up on empty positions
5. give people some practice kicking the ass of the better players

OK Edi, I'll try and answer this. The points-per-supply center rules make it unlikely someone will ally with someone that has just 1 or 2 centers. Unlike the winner-takes-all rules, the player in 2nd place in this game usually wants the player in 1st place to go on and win. 2nd place would rather spend their energy gobbling up the remaining little guys than taking part in a stop-the-leader alliance. There is little value to 2nd place in taking part in a stop-the-leader alliance.
I found this out the hard way in my first and so far only game on this site. To answer your question Edi, what's wrong with these people is that they think they are playing diplomacy, but unless they are playing winner-takes-all they are actually playing a quite distant variant of diplomacy with a very different strategy.
Since it is impossible for new players to start a new winner-takes-all game there are very few winner-takes-all games in progress. There is a proposal for correcting this which I regret I haven't found time to help out with. Posting a request in this forum for a player with more than 100 points to start a winner-takes-all game is the simplest option for those who think as I do.

Caviare, you are assuming that most people play for points. My limited experience is that most people play to play. It is regrettable that some drop out, but I've discovered that this is often that they have insufficient experience in the game and thus discover that Diplomacy is a lot more challenging than it appears on first glance, after having read the game rules.

Edi's comments are well taken. That said, I have no discomfort with players (new and old) being able to initiate 'Winner Takes All' games simply because I feel that in the majority of cases it makes little difference in the strategy of the majority of players.

I disagree that the PPSC mode of play is not true to Diplomacy. In fact, it is my opinion that WTA is the variant. In face to face Diplomacy, or any Diplomacy game without a point system, it is clear that a player who has taken second place has done better than a player who was defeated, yet that is not reflected at all in WTA games. Furthermore, I have not observed the behavior that Caviare describes, where a player in second place wants the player in first place to win just so that they can gain more points. I have seen several PPSC games in which the second place player stabs the leading player to take the win (and many times I was that second place player).

I agree with Yaniv; the players on this site who are truly playing Diplomacy appreciate the spirit of the game whether they are playing PPSC or WTA. I also agree with Mr. Birsan that playing to the bitter end is the more acceptable playing style. Playing small powers can be more fun than playing large powers in some cases, just because of the influence they can have on the outcome of the game without being too personally invested in it.

I am in two games at the moment. One I took over a Germany that had not moved at all in 1901 and took it over in 1902 and the other I took over a 2 center france in a late game situation where there is a Russia at 14.
In the second game one player told me that he was just about to go on a grab center policy and not attempt to stop the leader until I came and offered to see if we could stop the leader. This player was very influenced by the point system in this site.

In nearly all Face to FAce tournaments on a world scale, there are massive penalties for being in a game that is won by someone else. Typically the players in the game get -0- points in whatever scoring system is used. There are still cases where people will throw a game (I did so at the World DipCon championships in Austria last month) but these are rare cases and generally (as in my case) because people really ticked me off.

I have proposed to the TO DO list that they make a whole range of different achievement goals and point systems so that there is not just one philosophy of play encouraged.

>>Yaniv
People who play to play must also play for points. The point system is designed to keep newer, inexperienced players out of games with more seasoned players. You must play for points at first, in order to reach the real competition. These games are generally more fun for everyone, as players are not as keen to only play for points, there are less civil disorders, press is more intensive and diplomatic, there is (usually) an instilled sense of the "spirit of the game", and you can learn a lot from your fellow players (they might even learn from you). Unfortunately, not all players who join are so inexperienced (Edi, for an obvious one).

And, for the record, I will usually be more than willing to start a Winner-Takes-All game for players with under 100 points.

not to get off topic. but edi, if you are really edi birsan (which i can see no terribly compelling reason why you wouldn't be) then i would just like to say that i have played against you in a few tournaments (weasel moot in '07 and one other whos name escapes me). also, i would like to add that playing against you is like trying to arm wrestle zeus. in my first game against you, solo-ed, and in the next you topped the board...

There's not much point to all this jabbering other than i would like to officially welcome you to phpdiplomacy, and just express how happy i am that such a distinguished player as yourself found our little community here, and joined us.

let me conclude by saying that you are a low-down, dirty fox, and i look forward to stabbing you soon!

What is the formula for dividing the pot in PPSC? If you have 16 supply centers and the winner has 18 do you get 16/34 of the pot? If so, that's lame - there should be a much more significant bonus to WINNING THE FRIGGIN' GAME than just an additional ~6% of the pot.

PPSC is much less intricate a game than WTA. For instance, if two players are allied and rolling through the board there is little incentive to prepare to stab the other, since you'll get roughly half the pot either way.

As the player in Edi's game with the 14 SC Russian who had just about given up trying to stop a Russian solo I think I need to clarify it a bit. Just before Edi joined I had changed my priority from stop "Russia getting 18 SCs" to "make sure I'm not eliminated"
Check out the last 6-7 moves in the following game, it's a perfect example of how some people value points more than stopping a solo:
http://phpdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=4959
Italy and England were trying to stop me (Austria) getting a solo and had France helped then they would have succeeded, but France just used the opertunity to pick up some English SCs. In the last season when Austria was just about to get 18 SCs England then stabbed Italy so that he would end the game with more SCs and therefor more points.

I personaly rate results as follows:
winning >
drawing with few players >
drawing with a lot of players >
surviving with a lot of SCs >
surviving with hardly any SCs >
being eliminated.

A PPSC game rates it more like this:
winning >
surviving with a lot of SCs >
drawing with few players >
drawing with a lot of players >
surviving with hardly any SCs >
being eliminated.

Anyway an all out attack to stop the leader in a PPSC game is risky because someone who values points more than stopping the winner might stab you and then not only have you not stopped the leader but you might also be completely eliminated.

Perhaps if PPSC games were capped so that the most a second placed person could win was less than the points she would get if the game ended in a draw it might encourage more people to fight on.

sswang, yes that is the formula.
I have been checking out the scoring systems used by my national diplomacy organization (DAANZ) for face-to-face tournament play. There are seven systems approved for use. For a game that ends with supply center counts of 18-16-0-0-0-0-0 (in other words one player solos with 18 centers, second place gets 16, all others eliminated), three of those seven systems award no points at all to anyone except the winner, not even the player with 16 centers. Of the remaining four systems, the one that is most generous to the player with 16 centers awards the winner 34 points, and the 16 center player just 8 points. The winner receives more than 4 times as many points as the 16 center player, which is very different from the 18/16 split given here for points-per-supply-center.
This is why that I claim PPSC is the variant and WTA the real deal.
From what Edi said earlier in the thread I doubt other national organizations are much different.

There are MANY MANY different scoring systems used in Tournament Play.
They reflect different philosophies of play.
What you have here is NOT a Tournament. It is a collection of social games that are being linked by a single philosophy reflected in the point system that the site prefers.
When players elect to play the game for the points involved and they focus on those points it can effect the game very severely because someone is playing for an objective outside of the game.
The facts are that normally even in Face to Face tournaments, only about a third of the players are really into the scoring system. Another third or so are casually interested and generally have totally misunderstood the system and the style of play that it implies, and the rest could not care a bit about the scoring system. As FtF tournaments become more focused, typically at the Continental or World DipCon level the percentages change to more like Half-Quarter and Quarter.
I think that if what I understand you all are saying and the truly limited views I have, you probably have at the lower levels *(games with new people) about half not giving a damn about the ranking, 30 percent not understanding it and then twenty percent that are going to be affected by it *the future hard core +300 players.
One of the diplomacy aspects that people need to do in the early period and to keep up on is to understand what the other players consider as their goals or their achievement standards so that you can adjust your strategy to meet the needs of everyone else's idea of what they want and then to put it into context with what you want to do.
I hope that made sense....
And as for the Tetra-0 player comment... yes I am the same Edi Birsan who played at the Weasel Moot and you will get a chance to kick my butt at the next one in Nov, in Chicago. Everyone is invited and you can all go to the Weasel Moot web site at http://umbreho.dyndns.org/wcw/index.htm
However remember that Chris Martin won last year and I only came in second...so beat on him first....

Being a relatively newly experienced player,I'd like to comment that the PPSC system is more friendly to new players, as they get the chance to enjoy LEARNING the rules and strategies of Dip without fear of a discouraging 'loss' and are rewarded for doing well, even if they don't win, a rare occurence at first. Later, players are likely, and should be encouraged, to join WTA games, which I think are likely playing without 'the training wheels' and much more exciting because more is at stake. I am in my first WTA, and this has made a large, enjoyable, difference in my calculations. I think if one of the goals of this site is to foster new players of this wonderful game, PPSC is a great thing.

[...and I'm very honored to welcome Edi to the site. I look forward to perhaps playing you in our tournament. Very interesting to hear your views on this site vs. FtF]

What about players who are new to this site but are experienced Dip players? Shouldn't there be a way for someone with few points to be able to play WTA? Right now, new players have to slog through a few PPSC games (and hopefully gain points) to have any shot at joining one of the few WTA games (and risk their entire stash of points while doing so). If the goal is to transition players to WTA there should be many more low-stakes WTA games.

I would suggest the following:
*allow anyone to start a WTA game
*have the default option when a game is started be WTA
*have a statement saying that newbies are strongly encouraged to seek out PPSC games

what they should do is have the option of mixing winner takes all and ppsc so if sum1 wins they take the whole pot or else a draw means its split

Their is a proposal that anyone be allowed to start a WTA game but they only be allowed to bet 45% of their points. This rule (and the 45% figure) is designed to make points inflation no worse than with PPSC. Kestas said he'd accept a patch along these lines.

i really dont get why u cant just mix the 2 scoring systems!

How about 1/3 points WTA, 1/2 points PPSC, and the rest split evenly between everyone who doesn't go CD, even if eliminated. Man I am tired of CD's.