My Fellow Game Theorists...

[axiomOfChoice]

Salutations to all!

I have recently joined up and started playing diplomacy, on the advice of a friend. Over a game of risk, he informed me that diplomacy is perhaps one of the only truly pure war games he has ever played. I am happy to say that I have not been disappointed. I am a mathematics and economics student, and am particularly interested in game theory. If anybody is interested in discussing and analysing a situation that arises in a game, I am always up for it.

Long live the strategists!

[ZenDragon]

If you are an econ. student you should really look into Supremacy. It's like Diplomacy in the Cold War. Each superpower builds an infrastructure; trades goods; decides whether to build nukes, strategic defense initiative etc. Even the armies and navies move by expending grain and oil units. It's an awesome game if you can find it.

As for game theory, I have used Diplomacy in my world history classroom. I hyped the kids up for a week beforehand covering as much of WWI as I could. Then we took one week and played. I got paid for playing; the boss came in and watched and ended up patting me on the back for being creative. I had kids coming up to me talking excitedly about Sevastopol and Serbia without a map in front of them, and they knew exactly where everything in Europe was located Sometimes I love being a teacher.

[revans]

That sounds awesome! Did you have multiple games of 7 people playing or did you have each country played by groups?

[infinity8ball]

Supremcy is a great game indeed... just not sure if it's being made anymore. You NEED it's expansion as well, Boomers, to really make it tricky fun!

[ZenDragon]

I never played with boomers or tack nukes. I stopped playing right after Pirates and Warlords on the neutral zones came out. That was fun though, we started having incredible economic wars where we never left our home country.

I played Supremacy with a class as well, but it doesn't lend itself to classroom use as much. I had a great class and they all enjoyed it and learned a lot I think, but it's a hassle to keep everything straight. Diplomacy is much simpler to pack up and set out again the next day.


Hi revans,

I was teaching at a small alternative school so I just had one game going with each player as one country. I never had to worry about kids missing a day (they didn't). I would do one game with groups if I had a big class though. Even as many as thirty five kids would have a leader and four ambassadors. It would work out fine, I think. Keeping a rigid time schedule is the key. Bring in a stop watch and if orders are not in their units hold. It will only take once and they'll get them in on time.

[moskatoe]

Hello Axiom!

I would be interested in analyzing the game theory dynamics of Diplomacy as well. I suppose it has to vary from game to game due to victory parameters. For instance on this site, there is a point system, so there is a clear heirarchy of big win, little win, little lose, and big lose situations. On the other hand, I've seen games where draws are not valued higher than a loss, so players would "rather go down fighting than draw". Those kinds of games are really annoying because when there is either a Solo or loss, people tend to get irrational when their Solo is out of reach.