I'm taking part in Media Wars II along with a load of other Diplomacy content creators. Details here: kzread.info/dash/bejne/nqdm05WdZ87Fc8Y.html EDIT: Media Wars II is done! See my post-game analysis here: kzread.info/dash/bejne/mqGJttKjdLjIgqQ.html

@nahometesfay1112

3 жыл бұрын

"To yeet a fleet across St. Pete is a cheat, but to beat a retreat is a bittersweet defeat" should be on a shirt or something

@jameslourenco8404

3 жыл бұрын

Dude we know what autumn is... just say autumn

@nahometesfay1112

3 жыл бұрын

@@jameslourenco8404 It's a joke. Also the game calls it Fall.

@jlbjlb

2 жыл бұрын

25:20 oh no

@QuizmasterLaw

2 жыл бұрын

God I hate this game because it's so brilliant and too accurate. It's like prisoners dilemma meets prison shanks. And you play with your friends! Well, your soon to be FORMER friends!

"A game that takes 3 years to play" dnd with bad schedules

@Zman44444

3 жыл бұрын

Lol DM: “So everyone, it’s been a minute, what’s goin on in the campaign? Anyone wanna give a recap?” Players: “uhhhh... I think we climbed a tree for something.. right?”

@andrewvanhorne4359

3 жыл бұрын

@@Zman44444 It would be funny if it didn't hurt so bad.

@celebrim1

3 жыл бұрын

D&D? Try 10 years.

@Tommuli_Haudankaivaja

3 жыл бұрын

We're lv 4 still and 2 years in.

@rickbergolla4055

3 жыл бұрын

@@Tommuli_Haudankaivaja you're grand children will need to fight the BBEG

"Diplomacy meanwhile is all about communication which is why mathematicians don't actually like playing it" +1

@rageleague188

3 жыл бұрын

Report for: I'm in this picture and I don't like it.

@Darlos9D

3 жыл бұрын

+1? Sounds like something a mathematician would say.

@ethelredhardrede1838

3 жыл бұрын

Pretty sure that I have played it with a mathematician, but not with Boardman, he cheated. "Press releases, too, were already a standard feature of the postal diplomacy scene. Indeed, several issues contain what might be thought of as a subzine, called REUTERS REPORTS, edited written and apparently printed by John Boardman, who was playing England in this game. (And Turkey, under the pseudonym Eric Blake though this didn't come out till after he'd won -- probably the first example of the use of underhand tactics in a postal dippy game)."

For me the most fascinating part about this is that it's an American board game, set during the World Wars, that doesn't centre on or even include America.

@thesenate5770

Жыл бұрын

its technically set just after the turn of the century, so slightly before WW1

@Tomartyr

Жыл бұрын

@@thesenate5770 Ah fair, including America as a military world power would be pretty ahistorical then. Nonetheless I'm still surprised they didn't do it anyway

@boobah5643

Жыл бұрын

@@Tomartyr The US debuted as a world military power in the Spanish-American War in 1898, when it knocked the Spanish Empire out of the world power club and took its place. The problem is that the US is the only power outside Europe that could be considered a world, rather than regional, power, and it would be hard to justify the board's expansion for just the US. Does _Diplomacy_ often end in under 28 turns? Because if not, it can reasonably be considered set during the First World War.

@Tomartyr

Жыл бұрын

@@boobah5643 I said world military power. The USA's military was insignificant compared to any of the European powers. Spain hadn't been a world power since Napoleon.

@cam4636

10 ай бұрын

@@Tomartyr You're not familiar with anything south of the equator, are you.

Regarding the last unofficial rule about "cheating": My friends and I once played a legendary game with the homebrew additional rule that there was a "player" (I'm using this term lightly as they didn't have win conditions and acted perfectly neutral, so maybe "umpire" is the better word) acting as "the league of nations" with the sole power of removing units off the board. Any nation could at any point (except *during* turn resolution) claim that a unit had been cheated on the board and the league of nations would then take a secret poll among all remaining players weather this was true (if the voted ended 50/50 the "league of nations" went with the "correct" option as they traced all units independently). Oh boy, the friendships we destroyed with this rule... "Dave! You clearly saw Peter put a fleet in the baltic!" - "Hmmm... did I, Peter? Or will you promise to not support Berlin?"

@billiamswartz2355

22 күн бұрын

This is hysterical and I will steal this idea

@BWeManX

18 күн бұрын

This is brilliant madness... And not a bad way to get a small power back into the game. If those far from them would find it amusing to prop them up and annoy their immediate neighbors.

I once played a game of diplomacy in which, playing Britain I managed to get myself in an alliance United against Russia (played by the most experienced player). An afternoon full of backstabbing later I somehow managed to end the game as a member of the winning alliance... on Russia’s team. 10/10

@starmangalaxy2001

3 жыл бұрын

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.

@thebravegallade731

2 жыл бұрын

so you were just roleplaying britan IRL then

@YataTheFifteenth

Жыл бұрын

🇮🇹

@valhalanguardsman2588

10 ай бұрын

Went from intervention during the revolution to ww2

@lordphonix0994

24 күн бұрын

napolianic wars in a nutshell

"I know this because the only thing I've ever read about Paradox Interactive's PC version of _Diplomacy_ is that the A.I. sucks balls" To be fair, Paradox couldn't program a chess AI to beat a human player

@hedgehog3180

2 жыл бұрын

Paradox AI wins by making the game lag so much that the save is corrupted.

@scyobiempire4450

2 жыл бұрын

@@hedgehog3180 too true...

@goldenrodprime226

2 жыл бұрын

@@hedgehog3180 El Salvador moment

@Daniel-yz5qj

2 жыл бұрын

@@hedgehog3180 thats why I always use the ai division limeter for hoi4, game is fucking unplayable without it (and spot optimization mod ofc)

@rexmopser7152

2 жыл бұрын

in my opinion paradox is one of the best ai creators of all gaming companys because the ai mostly dont cheat but instead follows the exact same rules as the human player not only makes it that great for ai adjustment at modding but also it makes the overall gamepla beter not like civilisation where ai ressources and gold apear out of nothing

A few years ago, clubs were mandatory at my school so me and my conveniently sized group of six other friends played diplomacy, one game a week for months. I remember the arguments over the English Channel and the Black Sea, everyone banding together against the 16 supply centre Russia, and a naval invasion from Greece to St Petersburg. We actually got together on a google doc a few weeks ago to play diplomacy (which I can NEVER recommend, as the board was a .png which was incredibly easy to move accidentally) and had a good time.

@billymanners9629

3 жыл бұрын

Try playing online, I use playdiplomacy.com, its free unless you want some features and pretty good

@abebuenodemesquita8111

3 жыл бұрын

@@billymanners9629 backstabbr is better but yea

@NareshSinghOctagon

2 жыл бұрын

Just get TTS and play it there.

@goalid9714

Жыл бұрын

The best thing about Diplomacy club was that I could put it under my extra-curricular activities as "Diplomacy club" and play it off as some kind of model UN club lol

@57thorns

9 ай бұрын

@@goalid9714You were not that far off to be fair.

I looooove diplomacy. I remember all the friends I used to have before we played.

@RandomPerson-nd2ey

3 жыл бұрын

Hahaha. Ah, the mark of a great game.

@lucrativeleadershipconvers5149

Жыл бұрын

OMG! I spit my coffee laughing so hard. 😂

@Samichski

Ай бұрын

So true...

Changing Brest to Breast. Such a man of culture.

@skyclaw

3 жыл бұрын

Better than interfering with the adjudication code in order to help him win.

@kiiwikiori7542

3 жыл бұрын

@@skyclaw but in a greater sense, in changing it to breast, he has already won

"I know all the openings, but am otherwise terrible at it" *Uses a queenside Bongcloud as background footage* A man of culture, I see

@piedpiper1172

10 ай бұрын

New reply just dropped

@stemdapple

5 ай бұрын

Actual zombie

@Sarah12471

20 күн бұрын

Pretty sure thats the queens gambit

So essentially what happens in the case of a paradox is that all of the troops involved think about it for a bit and are so confused they can’t do it.

I feel the Vicky 2 soundtrack fits perfectly with this game. Though I thought buggy Victoria multiplayer was cool, this game sounds like utter madness.

If it makes you feel better, "Fall" seems to have been a poetic counterpoint to "Spring," as in, Spring is when life 'springs up' after the winter, and fall is when it 'falls back' again. If it doesn't make you feel better, it's called "Fall" cuz the leafs start fallin'

My dad played it with his friends, and lost them in the process. He then taught it to me, and I played it with my friends and followed in his footsteps.

Wait what? There is a Game of Life that plays an even bigger version of Game of Life? I have never seen that before. Whoever worked that out, fills my heart with fear.

@jero37

3 жыл бұрын

The game of life is Turing Complete.

@rmsgrey

Жыл бұрын

If you had a powerful enough computer, and enough patience, you could create a Game of Life running a Game of Life in Minecraft. Making Minecraft in Game of Life would require figuring out some way to handle player inputs, and an even more powerful computer, but it is, in principle, possible...

@awareqwx

Жыл бұрын

@@rmsgrey Technically you could write an AI to speedrun minecraft in GoL as well, then plug its inputs in via the USB 3.0 and DisplayPort interfaces over GoL wires to display them on a GoL screen

@QuizmasterLaw

Жыл бұрын

yeah people were larping LIFE before larp existed. i'm serious, it happened back in the o god i'm old 1970s

@ekki1993

10 ай бұрын

People are trying to implement minecraft in minecraft too. And someone made a programming language entirely on one assembly function because it is Turing complete. Turing completeness does that to an mf.

30:30 "What if you based the impotent order for your last remaining fleet on a native Danes advice to attack their mortal enemies, the Swedes." - That had me, a native Dane, cracking up

@hedgehog3180

2 жыл бұрын

No matter the medium or time we will always be ready to get those damn swedes.

@hobbiefox-pastrycat4568

2 жыл бұрын

*Always.*

@potatofuryy

2 жыл бұрын

Too bad they can just cross the ice

@Gositi

Жыл бұрын

Det var vi som tågade över Bält, inte ni. Vill bara påpeka det.

The algorithm works in mysterious ways. Never had it show me a small youtuber like this before, but it's nice to get recommended middling youtubers putting out high end content. Good luck king.

Mathematicians: Math is logically consistent Gödel: Have I got numbers for you kiddo

@lightgazaret6825

10 ай бұрын

Godel does not show that math is logically inconsistent, it shows that if maths is consistent it must be incomplete

Diplomacy is like a combination of Risk, Chess, and Pokemon, with it being a map based strategy game like Risk, not luck based like Chess, and a little bit prediction based with the whole both players making the turn at the same time like Pokemon.

Diplomacy is a game that breaks friendships... It is very hard to win solo as AustroHungary, but if you are willing to be a sociopath and social engineer your friends and classmates, you can pull it off.

Brilliant. Play. This. Game.

JFK "defused the crisis", the one he caused when he temporarily forgot what the M in MAD stood for

@crocidile90

3 жыл бұрын

@@patrickhenry1249 yup and for giving the invasion force in the bay of pigs the middle finger and NOT give them air support.

@jpheitman1

2 жыл бұрын

Was MAD even codified then? I thought people started talking about it after the crisis. Side note: A version of MAD was widely understood to be true in Europe around 1900 onwards. The idea was that modern war was so deadly and destructive that no great power would ever think to start one.

@MintyLime703

2 жыл бұрын

Forgetting that Castro had a stiffy for nuclear war with the US and the Soviets time and time again had to tell him to stfu. I'd be pretty jumpy too if I knew there were nuclear weapons in Cuba and its dictator really wanted to use them. It's understandable then why putting nukes in Turkey was absolutely necessary. If he didn't understand "mutual" then he wouldn't have bothered doing that. Upholding MAD was kinda the point. And it worked.

@iamwepty8986

2 жыл бұрын

@@MintyLime703 your point would be correct if nukes weren’t placed in Turkey by the US before the Soviets placed them in Cuba If anything it was the Soviets upholding MAD

We used this game to study paradigms in my game theory in international relations class. It was a semester-long sweaty fever dream

16:58 was actually hilarious

As a Java developer know that I will always rename England to Ireland

I played this game in the 80s. I literally always spoke the truth hoping that would earn me some trust, but I was frequently the least trusted person in the game.

@64UPAllGOD

3 жыл бұрын

Makes sense. In a naturally "pragmatic" setting like a game, if you spend your time very obviously building up social capital, people naturally assume you plan to spend it at some point. At least, that's how I work, I've been reverse bluffed by truthtellers many times.

@lonjohnson5161

3 жыл бұрын

@@64UPAllGOD The truth is, that was my plan. However, I never found a situation where spending the big lie was worth it. It eventually spilled over into my real life. This game literally transformed me into the truth speaking adult I am today.

Great video! I've always been kind of obsessed with video essays and it's fantastic to see one done so well on Diplomacy. The game theory segment is giving me ideas :D And stand up against the American oppressors! If enough youtubers call it Autumn eventually everyone will :P

@andrewgoff484

4 жыл бұрын

There are five seasons in Diplomacy - Spring Summer (Retreats) Fall Autumn (Retreats) Winter (Builds).

@shreeramkumaran

2 жыл бұрын

An aeroplane is made of aluminium

Me and my friends tried to create our own "board" game, similar to this (we even called it Diplomacy), but we never finished creating it, and we graduated before we ever got the club off the ground. I wish I could go back in time and tell past me about this game...

Alright, when is this channel hosting a game of diplomacy

This video deserves way more views.

I love how the 'nefarious' action is just to put the word 'breast' in there. Also, did not expect to see the Goedal Incompleteness Theorem applied to a board game. Fun. Also like many games, the best long-term strategy is probably to behave randomly. After all, if you don't know what you'll do, neither can your opponent. The problem with that is you seldom win, but the game gets interesting fast.

Never heard of this channel, Diplomacy, and I’m not a mathematician But I’m so damn glad this was recommended to me Nice video :)

That's one of the best thing I found on KZread ragarding Diplomacy. Thank you for your time and will.

Dude, this is absolutely amazing. :D

Ah, a fellow bongcloud enthusiast

I heard about Diplomacy by watching Valefisk’s video playing it and I think it seems like a cool game.

16:49 Oliver: "oh yeah I can programme in java now" Also Oliver: "wait JDIP is programmed in java . . ." *(Realisation sets in)* Oliver armed with forbidden knowledge: *prepares to commit a digital crime of the most heinous kind* (maniacal laughing gets louder) Me: YOU MADMAN!

I once had a game of uno that lasted from 10pm to 4am because every time someone came close to winning, everyone else dogpiled them and they ended up with most of the deck in their hand. The game only ended when someone threw the game and let someone else win because we wanted to sleep.

Eurovision, the international competition I am only aware of due to that one episode of Father Ted

In my mid-20s, I was obsessed with Diplomacy, but after a few years, I had to give it up. I didn't like who I was turning into, and how the game affected how I thought of, and felt about my friends. Interestingly, while I was still in the thick of it, there were older people around me who told me about having had that very experience, but I just thought they took it too seriously, or weren't "cut out" for the cutthroat nature of the game. As if I were, or should have aspired to be. I suppose I had to live it myself to understand it, since it is a tragic, yet fundamental truth of human life, that XP are not transferrable.

@lightworker2956

8 ай бұрын

Yeah, agreed. I think it's good to briefly study diplomacy, just to understand a psychopath's mindset (because that's basically how you have to act to be successful). But let loose your inner psychopath for too long and maybe that's not good for you or your friendships. Diplomacy is Kissinger's favorite game. Need I say more?

I really hoped I would never have to relive the horrors of discrete math, but here I am starting at ∃0 ∈ ℝ, a + 0 = a, ∀a ∈ ℝ ⇒ a ∙ 0 = a ∙ (0 + 0) in a KZread video about a board game. Damn you! Memes aside, this was a very good watch, and your Paradox music choice was on point.

Randomness works in games like this IMHO since how many political empires got screwed by "this didn't go how I thought it was gonna go."

@noahbirthisel3285

3 жыл бұрын

If you've seen the dramatically unfun potential endgames of risk you would know that rolling dice ten times a fight is boring.

@TheGahta

3 жыл бұрын

Also it invalidates any diplomacy youre doing if it can go south that easily aka why invest an hour mulling over grievances if it can still go to shit even without anyone involved wanting it to fail :D just curious, what games with diplomacy you played that formed your opininon?

@oliviapg

3 жыл бұрын

@@noahbirthisel3285 The worst part of Risk isn't the dice imo, it's that 15 minutes into the game everyone knows who will win, and nobody can do anything to stop it. The next hour is just the game playing out to its inevitable conclusion.

@XX-sp3tt

3 жыл бұрын

@@noahbirthisel3285 I have played risk, and I never felt negative about that.

@hedgehog3180

2 жыл бұрын

@@noahbirthisel3285 The problem there is the time it takes though not the randomness.

Leaves fall, so we call it Fall - Americans, probably

I just got this recomended to me, going to convince my friends to play a game!

@unlockshop1786

2 жыл бұрын

Good luck

What an excellent video. The JFK Illuminati part had me laughing out loud. You explained everything perfectly and teached me so much in this half hour. Oh, and as a diplomacy and dungeons and dragons lover (I came to know these two gems at the same time around 2-3 years ago) I really appreciated the reference to Matthew Colville's video, which is the way I discovered diplomacy.

This video is so underrated and I am surprised it has low views

less awkward self deprecation, more amazing analogies. loved your video essay. Thanks!!!

It always makes me pay closer attention when I start hearing the Vicky 2 sound track

This is the first video of yours I've ever seen, it was great! I'm about to binge all your other videos now.

Didn’t expect this kind of video from Oliveriver, but I’m not complaining!

I played the mobile version of this for years and for some reason never bothered looking into its history, so great video!

17:45 Valefisk just did a game where he told chat GPT his situation and what other players had said and it told him what to do and who to ally with, when and where to backstab, and other such things. All in all he labeled ChatGPT a “half decent diplomacy player” as he only lost because Turkey got very big, very fast and he was England and didn’t have many options for stopping them. Great video I highly suggest watching (even if it is 2hrs long)

4:15 That BGM is giving me PTSD from all the times I had to go through great wars in Vic2.

I remember our 8th grade science teacher introducing this to my friend group, we played it a lot all through high school, great times.

Holy fuck I nearly spit my drink at 0:57

the way you pronounced Kiel made me want to tear my german spine out

What a video, man. You say the video is too long but I never thought 37 minutes would be enough to talk about the many aspects of Diplomacy, yet you made it look easy and made it fun. Chapeau

Thank you so much for including the Game of Life and John Conway. I only met him once, but he had a profound impact on my life (and I'm not even a mathematician!). Such a joy to see him and diplomacy brought together.

I was introduced to this game by my history teacher, and it was either the best or worst thing to happen to me. Also I’m American and I still approve of WebDiplomacy’s choice to call it Autumn instead of Fall.

This is so good! Thank you for posting this about such a timeless game. Gets me back to thinking about my spirited defense of Paris from the Italians, all thanks to a bunch of orders that Austria was feeding me. Knives can be years in the making

Weird how the entire video was upside down except for a moment at 0:10

My mum bought me the game for my 13th birthday (1961). Never found enough players for a full game. Didn’t play again till late 1990’s and discovering a PBEM Diplomacy group on Yahoo Groups. It is quite simply the best board game ever invented and a good tool for learning something of the sausage making part of diplomacy and politics regardless of your background. My first solo was Austria-Hungary. It was due to France falling out with Germany then most everyone except me. I’d have been happier with the solo if I’d engineered their fallout, but it was something associated with previous games.

For time context, at the start of this game, I had a major car crash that destroyed my legs, and they were still playing when I finally finished my physiotherapy and moved on with my life. It sounds like a long time, 2012 to 2016, but even then it's hard to wrap one's head around that. It's long enough to completely change your life AND completely settle into your new life. It's long enough to reach the lowest low of depression, and manually surface again without medication. It's also about long enough to start and finish a bachelor's degree. It's a HUGE amount of time.

This guy has better quality and production than many 300k+ subscriber content creators i've seen. Subscribing for sure.

This is a work of love! Nicely done!

26:23 Love the community clip, your honestly one of the youtubers i respect and relate to on a personal level the most

Wow, what an interesting game! Thank you for all the effort you put into this video too!

Thank you for your joke of American “fall” I feel recognized and insulted! Cheers!

@johnathanegbert9277

2 жыл бұрын

vernum is spring, autunm is fall.

I love how the Brest bit shows what a true Disney villain you are... wait. A Disney villain with understanding of multiverse time-travel... the fall of Disney from the happiest company on earth into villainy... what if... Oh your other video has a Jeb reference lol what was i talking about? Probably nothing

Thank you for this review. My friends and I, who've known each other for most of our lives, played it pretty religiously one summer and I haven't ever experienced such (friendly) drama between all of us and had a lasting effect on us and our interactions for months after we stopped playing.

Fantastic video man, I'm glad I stuck to it until at the very end.

Hey, could you do one on axis and allies, perhaps? I would love one on that game. Especially when variant rules with diplomacy or alternate dates come in.

This video is so beautiful. It really is a work of art. Like the game of diplomacy itself.

Great vid mate, you gone grow huge mate. Keep pumping out the high end, long, math vids.

It would appear that you have been selected the algorithm roulette for me today. Cool video.

Great video, really enjoyed learning more the famous ‘friendship killer’ game 😀

One of the greatest videos of all time. Such a classic for me

An absolute perfect video. Entertaining, funny, knowledgeable. Well Done.

that video was awesome and very informative! I'll stick around for hopefully more of those.Keep it up! until then I'll check out your music ;)!

Heart swelling at the sound of the Victoria II music.

Really, really well done. Captured a lot of truth about the game in this. Thanks!

Disclaimer: this isn’t one of those spam junk comments begging for likes and a heart. This video is sooo well done! How does it have less than 30k views. This guy deserves better.

@bensonfamily6302

3 жыл бұрын

Spam junk comments help the algorithm though, so it can't hurt too much, can it?

omfg, these mind games section :) I love it, reminds me so much of playing Scythe with my friends, brother and dad. It really brought up some of our games.

"To yeet a fleet across St. Peet is a cheat, but you beat a retreat in a bitter-sweat feat" 😂

I like the addition of Victoria 2 music.

Holy fuck this is such a great video. How are you not insanely popular I'm sending this to all my friends

This channel is so damn underrated!

Wow. I feel so dumb now. Me move piece. Me win.

This video is an instant classic. Have you worked on developing your writing skills for video essays like this or are you just a god?

Brilliant stuff! Oliver weaves an engaging tale. One quibble: the vid kinda implies that John F Kennedy did something to avoid nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yay! Go America! Not so much. There's a terrific documentary called The Fog of War, an extended interview with Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy & Johnson administrations through the height of the Vietnam War & - in particular - through the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Find a way to view the film but be prepared to lose sleep a lot after you've seen it). McNamara was the whiz kid from UC Berkeley then Harvard Business School, who had been hired to reform Ford Motor Co. with modern planning, organization, and management control systems. Then recruited to the Dept. of Defense where he played a major role in escalating US involvement in the Vietnam War & led implementation of systems analysis in public policy. This developed into the discipline known as policy analysis, but crucially this led to game theory being practiced by the Pentagon, and encouraged ever-greater reliance on simple models of reality that supported political requirements, including especially the Domino Theory that justified US participation in Asian wars as a way to stop the otherwise supposedly assured advance of communism. As adviser to JFK McNamara advocated the use of a blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wikipedia says "Kennedy and McNamara instituted a Cold War defense strategy of flexible response, which anticipated the need for military responses short of massive retaliation." McNamara clarifies: In The Fog of War interviews he maintains that Kennedy did little or nothing in making decisions or thinking through strategy; JFK was buzzed out of his mind throughout the Crisis. The Pentagon demanded the blockade around Cuba. McNamara explicitly states that JFK thought of little during the Crisis beyond where he'd get his next drink or drug fix and who he was going to bop once he got back to the White House (hint: it wasn't Mrs. Kennedy - a different girl every night). He was a basket case, stoned &/or drunk & completely paralyzed by indecision. Meanwhile the generals from the Pentagon were over-the-top bent on nuclear war, insisting that sure, the US would lose a few cities, but "We can win this!" He paints a picture of the military brass trying to stampede JFK into pushing the Button, insists they had nothing on Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper played by George C. Scott in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove: thoroughly insane war hounds committed to nuclear holocaust, as a winnable strategy in a War Game that would kill billions of people. McNamara claims the Russian generals were doing the same thing in the Kremlin, insisting THEY could win a nuclear war, and attempting to stampede Nikolai Kruschev into pushing the Button first. McNamara was aghast, convinced the world was about to go up in smoke. He insists it wasn't JFK who pulled back from the brink; it wasn't the US who won the standoff. It was Kruschev who realized that it wasn't worth the end of the human race to win a pissing match. It was Kruschev who stood down his own generals and agreed to pull back his fleet from attempting to deliver nuclear missiles to Cuba. Kruschev chose not to end civilization - NOT JFK. McNamara claims he quit his role with the government & sought a career in academe because he was frightened & sickened by the whole event. There's more though: he says years later he actually got a chance to meet Fidel Castro in the 1990s, and asked him about the Crisis. If the missiles HAD been installed already, would he have launched them? Castro responded emphatically that McNamara & the Pentagon were wrong: three missiles were ALREADY installed, ready to go before the US dropped the blockade, and yes, he would have launched if he had been able to. "Kruschev wouldn't give me the button!" But surely, asked McNamara, he must have known that while Washington or New York would have been vaporized, the US would have responded; Cuba would have become a hole in the sea. Castro insisted that he certainly knew that but would have launched anyhow. He would do it "now" - all those years later. The American military, McNamara insists, is run by crazed lunatics who see real world conflicts as nothing more than war games. The Russian military is no better. And he has a depressingly cynical attitude about the quality of political leadership & its intelligence in the White House. (And that's before Trump won the role). McNamara died in 2009. If he were alive today I suspect he'd be appalled by the quality of leadership displayed by both parties & presidents in the last two administrations. The last thing we should hope for is enthusiasm on the part of policy analysts or military advisors for the game Diplomacy. They already think it's a game. The idea that military leaders in the US, Russia & China are almost certainly pushing ahead with AI: that's a nightmare.

There is nothing wrong with Russia’s votes until the end when they decided to vote for a draw even though that was surrender when they had not yet lost. They drew breath, they could win, and they decided to lose. The proper ply at this point is to negotiate an Italian surrender, after enough years anyone sane will accept rigging the game so that Russia will win just so they can be free of it and thereby have their victory as well. That way you win by willpower.

The librarian at my high school set up a game that lasted most of a semester with a daily order that had to be placed by 4. I don’t remember much other than realizing I had no hope of winning, so u just became an agent of chaos, messing up everybody’s attacks and support, favoring no one

My favorite board game of all time. In order to manage time the groups I play with set a game clock that whoever has the most supply centers in a set time period (5-8 hours) wins the game.

Never seen this channel before, but great video! Long but not tiredly so.

I love this game! So glad to see someone else who knows about it.

That diplomacy paradox made my head hurt

The Dip world needs a conversation between you and Captain Meme on how mathematicians manage to engage in full press games.

I remember being at a fairly small board game convention in April 2023, where I tricked three complete strangers into playing Diplomacy. The three players+me were; Austria-France(P1) Germany-Turkey(P2) Russia-Italy(P3) Britain(Me) As the only one there who actually knew how the game was played, I was immediately ganged up on. P1 and P2 proceeded to basically blockade me, but P2 accidently had a unit on one of Frances points during the fall turn, and for some reason France hadn't bothered expanding into any other points. I saw this, and immediately told P3, who hadn't been involved in the fighting thus far, that I would not fight him until he invaded me or we were the last two people, if he moved a unit into Frances last unoccupied territory. I then moved a fleet into France's last unnocupied territory, as his fleet tried to attack mine in the channel. That fall turn, I unveiled my machinations, and France was removed from the game, seemingly out of nowhere. That game went on to have a bunch of other wacky things, but eventually P2 had to leave for another scheduled game, and P1, who only had one point left in Austria, assumed control of his lands. He had not forgotten his grudge. Britain proceeded to fight a great war alone against every other country, and lost, but only because we all had to do other things and decided to tally our points there. I had nine. That one stupid game may be amongst my favorite board gaming memories, and I got ganged up on, simply because I had a basic grasp of some strategies to play the game.

I'm surprised on your section on paradoxes you didn't include the reverse scenario where there are two different outcomes that are both internally consistent. It's been a long time since I played so I don't remember exactly how it works, and presumably the adjudicators have picked which of the two ways it resolves, but I remember there being a situation like that back when I played 20 years ago. The online judges that existed back then were really useful, and we even set up a game among local players to play on an online automated adjudicator because it was simpler to have a 3rd party who didn't care about us enforce the deadlines. We (a group of friends in high school) had played one game "in person" with turns happening every so many days, but people kept wanting more time to negotiate since they couldn't always find time to talk with someone else.