Jack007 wrote:But please consider that Secret Ballot was not part of the original Diplomacy game...
Jack, that is misleading. No version of the rules has ever specified the mechanics of voting upon a draw, open or secret. The original rules did not provide for
voting for draws at all. The 2nd edition eliminated draws altogether! It was the 3rd edition that introduced the idea of draws that have been in every version of the rules since; the players can agree to end the game in a draw, but the method of reaching such agreement is not broached. Players have always just had to figure out how to do it on their own.
Experience has resulted in secret ballots becoming the overwhelming favorite among competitive face-to-face players today. They are particularly important in noDIAS games - once you alter the DIAS rule, you need secret ballots to limit anti-competitive draw proposals.
nanooktheeskimo wrote:Secret ballot, in my experience, leads to more solos rather than fewer--so if you play DIAS in the hopes of more solos, it seems to me that secret ballot would help that cause, rather than hurt it. I don't have numbers on that though, so it could very well just be my experience combining with what seems intuitive (that if you can veto a draw anonymously, it would help solos rather than hurt them).
So it was easy enough to collect some data, so I did. Unfortunately, my data set isn't large enough to draw any conclusions, but it points in the direction I'd expect. Looking only at classic map & rules, ambassador-only games, the percentage of solos is as follow:
open, noDIAS: 85/257= 33% solo rate
secret, noDIAS: 31/86= 36%
not enough games to statistically differentiate between the two (that is, the difference might just be due to chance) but it appears open ballots may cause about 10% of solos to be draws instead.
open, DIAS: 96/282= 34%
secret, DIAS: 45/132= 34%
again not enough games to say anything confidently, but it appears there is little-to-no effect on ballot type in a DIAS game on solos.
@GPD, my apologies, we have really hijacked your thread, and I am at least partially responsible. (I hope this thread served your purpose anyway.) Good luck getting your game together.