As I mentioned in my Gen Con report, since their much-feared acquisition of Avalon Hill, Hasbro has made it clear that they want to support the wargaming market.  One of the first signs of this is their re-issuance and re-release of classic Avalon Hill titles.  Diplomacy, possibly the greatest screw-thy-neighbor game ever, is one if the first to make its appearance out of the now-Hasbro stable of classic strategy games.

If you just fell off the turnip truck, the Diplomacy boardgame has been one of the longest-lived and most popular of all Avalon Hill boardgames (and that's saying something in both respects).  It's an abundantly simple game set in 1901, during the run-up to WWI.  Up to seven players can play at once, each representing one of the Great (Russia, Germany, England, France) or near-great (Austria-Hungary, Italy, or Turkey) powers. 

It's a cliche, but Diplomacy is one of those "ten minutes to learn, a lifetime to master" games.  The setting is a map of Europe, divided into about 20 sea zones and 60-odd land zones.  There are 34 "supply centers”, representing major cities.  The premise of the game is very simple: for each supply center you control during the "Fall" turns (there are two turns per game year), you get a single unit.  This can either represent an army (capable of moving in any land space) or a fleet (able to move in any sea space OR any coastal land space) decided at the time of construction.  Each unit can move a single zone per turn.  This may sound ludicrously simplistic, but wait - even the combat system is simple.

The critical fact is that there is no random factor in Diplomacy.   Combat is resolved simultaneously, with a very basic set of rules (for example: if two units move into the same space, they both "bounce" and neither moves from their origin.  If one side has support - meaning two units are attacking - and the other doesn't, the majority wins.  And so forth.)

It takes a bit for this to sink in.  Everything - every permutation and move possibility is reasonably calculable by a human brain in the space of the time-limited turns.  This means that the activity on the board is chesslike, limited in options and formulaic in execution.  Which in turn places the critical player activity into the INTER player negotiations - ergo the name, Diplomacy.

My favorite part about Diplomacy is that is where the rules end.  There's no "Empires in Arms"-style enforced peaces, or rules-enforced treaty terms.  Nope.  You make an agreement; it's up to you on a minute-to-minute basis if it's worth sticking to.  Violate a treaty, and the consequences are entirely up to the aggrieved party (or, more frequently, what the aggrieved is CAPABLE of doing to you - bluster and fulmination is worth its weight in hot air...). 

This is actually why I haven't played a lot of Diplomacy lately.  Amongst my local gaming circle, I've developed a reputation as rather, ahem, opportunistic in my interpretation of agreements.  Meaning that few will make any sort of arrangements with me without chiseling it in stone or as near as may be possible.   Of course, I am rather wary about committing to such relationships, and therefore usually have few allies - and in Diplomacy, without allies, you will lose.

The diplomacy board game and its elegantly simple system cried out for computer implementation from the very beginning.  Unfortunately, Avalon Hill's ability to bring even a simple game to the computer has been outstandingly bad.   Never fear, however, the Internet community quickly realized the ‘Net was the vehicle through which they could get their Diplomacy fix, and people quickly wrote their own software "judges" to moderate Diplomacy games by email.

Using a standardized notation system, text-based emails, and these electronic arbiters of turn execution, eDiplomacy flourished.  But unless you were a serious, intent player, there were some big hurdles.  First, the technology is based on volunteer work, and is typically primitive - there was no GUI, no easy management system of keeping/viewing the game on your computer (at least until very recently).  For example, a command that ordered the army in the Munich zone to support an army in the Bohemia zone in it's attack on the Vienna zone would be parsed as something like "A MUN S A BOH > VIE" - intuitive?  Not too bad.  Simple?  Once you 'get it', yes.  User friendly and attractive to new players?  No way.

What the Internet judges and technology allowed was for hardcore Diplomacy fans to play their games.  What they didn't do was to offer something to novice players looking for fun - the fan base flourished, but didn't grow. 

But now with Hasbro's dollars and Microprose's publishing muscle, Meyer/Glass has finally appeared to implement Diplomacy on the computer.  I had the opportunity to look at a late mostly functional beta, and I was impressed.

In my opinion as someone that has waited for a long time for this: they've given us Diplomacy exactly as we've hoped.  No rules changes, no modification of the system to make it more "fun".  It's Diplomacy, plain and simple in all of its glory.  This is perhaps the cleanest port of a boardgame I've ever seen, which was the perfect choice.  The game system is exactly as outlined above, making the reams and reams of strategic and tactical essays in print and on the web still completely valid.  The only things they added were that which you'd expect from a computer game:

• competent AI opponents

• auto-calculation of support

• graphical indication of possible moves, build locations, support avenues, etc.

Everything else is in there.  For example, a lot of people forget that in Diplomacy, there are time limits set for each of the turn phases, and a strict ruling against "diplomatizing" out of the proper phase.  This dovetails nicely with the ability of a computer to time each event and auto-advance the turn when time is up. 

Of course, the hardest thing to implement with such an intensely face-to-face game as Diplomacy is the negotiation.  The solution is neat and functional: during the negotiation phase, the players can each open private chat rooms, complete with a map of the current game state as a reference tool.  Like a private chat channel in IRC, this player can invite anyone they want (who is of course free to decline) and the discussion is entirely private and secure.  Since nothing’s really set in stone, the negotiation takes place almost entirely with text (although there are handy buttons for indicating areas as “neutral”, etc.).   But one of the neatest features Meyer/Glass built in was the ability to see who is speaking with whom - a vital piece of intelligence that can speak volumes about a player's intent.  This is one of the things that - minus this clever solution - would have left Diplomacy feeling sterile and the players out of touch compared to an in-person game.  But the result works well in the games I played.

There is also a fairly flexible editor, allowing you to bring in board games in progress, or set up situations.  The control of supply centers, placement and number of armies and navies are all totally changeable by the user.  It is also clear from the readme and interface that they are going to be supporting some of the innumerable variants out-of-the-box, although this feature was not yet implemented in my version.

Of course simply porting a board game was entirely too straightforward for programmers - they had to add some eye candy in the form of a variety of map looks and fancy scrolling windows, etc.  (All of which, happily, can be turned off to allow this to run on a relatively low-end system, probably a P120 with minimal Win95 configuration.) They've done a good job sustaining the atmosphere with attractive, functional graphics and a good choice of background musical scores. 

Full network, PbEM and even hotseat support should insure that you always have some human to play against.  Even if you don't, the AI seemed competent.  There are three levels of computer player, and I beat the lowest one as Russia. (IMO the easiest power to play).  I struggled but finally beat a bank of "medium" skill level AI opponents with me as England. Finally, I got my keester handed to me by a bunch of highest AI enemies while I played Austria, probably the worst power to play in the game (remember, I've probably been playing Diplomacy off and on for nearly 20 years).  That alone - an AI that is a challenge without cheating - is rare enough to be worth buying the game by itself.  

Previewed by Steve Lieb