Diplomacy in the Playground - Public Press/Game Thread

[The Grue]

Rules and stuff.
Other thread

• The game is Fleet Rome, which means everything as normal except Italy starts with a fleet instead of an army at Rome.
• For simplicity's sake, orders are due at 8AM 6AM GMT on the designated day. You may send orders in advance of a given phase if you wish.
• PM your orders to me, include the year, phase and name of your country in the subject line, ie "Spring 1901, Orders - Russia". If you have to amend your orders, add REVISED or something to the end of the subject line. This makes book-keeping easier on my end, so thank you.
• If you can't make a deadline for any reason, let me know any time before the cutoff so we can extend the deadline.
• Spring 1901 Orders phase will run one full week. After that, Orders phases will run for three days. Retreat and Build phases will run one day.
• Since this is a newbie-friendly game, NMR retreats will default to a randomly-chosen territory rather than a Disband. Repealed

Spoiler: Spring 1901, Orders

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As this map is a first draft, let me know if there's anything I can do to make it more readable. Like say, if you're colourblind or something.

Player	Country
reaverb	France
GAThraawn	England
Legato Endless	Turkey
Murska	Austria
Nonayer	Russia
r2excelsior	Italy
Deathslayer7	Germany

Deadline for orders:
February 19th 08:00 GMT

[Zjoot]

Ooh, England, nice! I played my first game as England. This should be fun. Initial communications incoming.

[rs2excelsior]

Good luck to all!

And to the populace of Europe: Our armies will bring with them the wonders of Italian wine and cuisine. Any province wishing to revolt against its master in exchange for culinary benefits will be welcomed with open arms

[Zjoot]

Good luck to all!

And to the populace of Europe: Our armies will bring with them the wonders of Italian wine and cuisine. Any province wishing to revolt against its master in exchange for culinary benefits will be welcomed with open arms

Open arms? You intend to welcome them at gunpoint?

[Murska]

I've never played Austria-Hungary before. But it seems like a welcome challenge.

Peace in Europe forever!

[reaverb]

rs2excelsior (Italy) and I (France) have decided to demilitarize the zone between us. Until further notice, we are agreeing that no French or Italian troops will enter the territories of The Gulf of Lyons, The Western Mediterranean, Piedmont, or North Africa. rs2excelsior will post agreement below.

[Murska]

Does this mean France is claiming an intention to invade the innocent neutral states of Spain and Portugal?

Austria-Hungary, in order to lessen tensions between us and our neighbours, is going to demilitarize Galicia, Bohemia and Tyrolia. We do stress that they are still within our borders, so any foreign military moving into our land will not be tolerated.

[Legato Endless]

I would like to note that any such negotiations seem premature when at any moment an attack from across the ocean could wreck all we cherish. My scouts have already witnessed strange activity coming from the New World. I advise fleets be dispatched immediately to settle this conundrum less the foul Americas destroy all we cherish.

[Murska]

I propose we leave it to Britain to invade the US, as they're the ones that spawned that problem.

[Legato Endless]

I think the Spanish had a hand in it too. Something about one of their navigators, or an Italian they financed, not knowing how to calculate the circumference of a sphere. I hereby volunteer to send an envoy of teachers over to educate them posthaste, before they cause anymore trouble.

[rs2excelsior]

rs2excelsior (Italy) and I (France) have decided to demilitarize the zone between us. Until further notice, we are agreeing that no French or Italian troops will enter the territories of The Gulf of Lyons, The Western Mediterranean, Piedmont, or North Africa. rs2excelsior will post agreement below.

As Prime Minister of Italy, I confirm the existence of a demilitarized zone between Italian and French forces. We hope that the Continent may be spared from the bloodshed that has so often wracked it, but we will defend our interests and our citizens with all available force if required.

[Legato Endless]

A fine accord Master Italy. The Ottoman Empire acknowledges your efforts leading us into a new era of peace.

For my part, I will be venturing south. A merchant has informed me that there are penguins in Africa, and I must confirm this obvious fiction for myself.

In unrelated news, my philosophers have come to a solution for the long held, Eastern Question.

[The Grue]

Righto, that's the cutoff. Resolving orders now.

[The Grue]

Colour-coded orders log via Google Docs. Peer-review encouraged, let me know if something's not clear or if I've made an embarrassing mistake.

Spoiler: Spring 1901, Orders RESOLVED

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Green indicates a successful Move order
Red indicates a failed Move order
Blue indicates a Support order

Spoiler: Winter 1901, Orders

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Deadline for orders:
February 22nd 08:00 GMT

[Murska]

Oops, sorry everyone. I managed to translate 'deciding upon and writing down' orders to 'having sent' orders without the in-between step of actually sending them. This happens to me pretty often.

[Nonayer]

The Tsar was sitting in a comfortable chair in his office with a copy of the Moskovskiye Vedomosti in his hand. He could only shake his head at the ignorance of the journalists that wrote the headlines. They had no idea what was truly happening in Europe.

Tsar orders fleet to invade Rumania - Eye witnesses say it was a very peaceful hostile takeover.

Turkish Fleet spotted in Black Sea - Friend or Foe?

Austria too busy to listen to Strauss concerts to care about war!

Germany fails to invade France! Who would've thought?

[Shular]

Hey folks. I know you're just starting this game, but we're looking for a rplacement player for Phoenix Rising, here.

Take a look and let me know if you're interested.

[Murska]

As a note, I'm in that game and the position in question is Italy, who has a rather good situation altogether.

[Legato Endless]

I'll be willing to act as a replacement in the future, but until I've legitimately finished a game or two, I don't think it'd work well to have an ignorant loon muddying up the match.

[The Grue]

Now resolving orders for Winter 1901.

[The Grue]

Orders log updated.

Spoiler: Winter 1901, Orders RESOLVED

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Spoiler: Winter 1901, Build

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{table]

Nation|Supply Centres|Units
Austria|4|3
England|3|3
France|6|3
Germany|5|3
Italy|4|3
Russia|5|4
Turkey|4|3

[/table]

Deadline for orders:
February 24th, 08:00 8:00 AM GMT

Running the Build phase an extra day because I might not be around at the required time tomorrow.

[Zjoot]

Can you post a 24 hour warning in the thread or something so I don't have to look up time zone conversions if I want to get orders in.

EDIT: Actually, posting that it was a.m. would have been nice. I sort of naturally assumed 8:00 pm, since posting orders in the evening fits my frame of reference better. When I look at a deadline that says 8:00 GMT, it looks like I still have about two hours to get my orders in from right now. A pm five minutes before the deadline is hardly enough to correct for that.

[The Grue]

I've been posting the deadlines in 24-hour format, but the first post at the top says:

• For simplicity's sake, orders are due at 8AM GMT on the designated day. You may send orders in advance of a given phase if you wish.

I'll give order deadlines in 12-hour instead of 24-hour format from now on if that's more convenient for you, but converting to GMT is not terribly difficult if you know what timezone you live in, which I assume you do. For example I live in western Canada which is GMT-8, so to convert from my local time to GMT I simply add 8 hours. I chose a GMT deadline for exactly this reason.

Deadline is always at the same time, so you only need to figure it out once. If you think you're likely to forget, send in your orders early and amend them later.

I'll make an effort to post a 24-hour warning if I haven't received orders from all players, but don't rely on it. Today for example I won't be able to post a 24-hour warning because I'll be unavailable at around the 24-hour mark, which is why I'm running the phase a day longer.

[Zjoot]

Oh, damn. I should have checked the op I guess. It was late and I thought I still had the next day to make a decision.

Oh well. It doesn't really matter anyways. I'll see if I can come up with some kind of plan, but at this point there's a slim chance I'll find something that makes me viable, and I don't particularly care weather I play in a game where I have little to no chance of actually winning. If it's important to anyone's plans that I act otherwise, let me know. If not, I'll assume my orders will not effect the game enough for it to be discourteous of me not to send them.

[Murska]

Well, everyone at this point has a roughly equal chance of winning the game. So yes, someone not sending actions will affect things a lot. For example, England not acting will greatly increase the chances of France and Russia and greatly decrease the chances of everyone else.

EDIT: Grue, I suggest posting notifications for people if the deadline is approaching and orders haven't been sent.

[The Grue]

Oh, damn. I should have checked the op I guess. It was late and I thought I still had the next day to make a decision.

Oh well. It doesn't really matter anyways. I'll see if I can come up with some kind of plan, but at this point there's a slim chance I'll find something that makes me viable, and I don't particularly care weather I play in a game where I have little to no chance of actually winning. If it's important to anyone's plans that I act otherwise, let me know. If not, I'll assume my orders will not effect the game enough for it to be discourteous of me not to send them.

Bro are you seriously ragequitting a Diplomacy game? You're at best one SC behind, you're hardly out of the game.

[Legato Endless]

I can send notices to people. Deadline is 2am for me, so a 12 hour pm notice is easy enough for me. (or if the group collectively prefers an 8 or 4 hour notice) Let me know what time slot you prefer.

As for GMT, you don't actually need to calculate anything. Just check the time of the first posted deadline. If you're forum settings are adjusted to your local time, whatever hour Grue posted is your personal deadline for every subsequent update.

[Zjoot]

I didn't say I was quitting, I said I was quitting if I can't find a way to make myself a viable player. Obviously there are moves available to me, but it depends entirely on the reactions I get to the proposals I am about to send weather I can make them or not. And like I said, if it's important to you that I make certain moves, then pm me and we'll discuss options.

EDIT: Regardless, I apologize for my annoying reaction. I put myself at a major disadvantage because I can't keep track of deadlines properly and crap like that totally takes all the fun out of a game for me. If I am in a bad position I want it to be because my opponents outplayed me, not because I can't even handle the format of the game.

[Murska]

While your position is worse than mine, I can't say missing the first turn was good for me, either. But really, there's a lot that happens in Diplomacy, because the politics are all about balance. If you're weaker, you'll find it easier to get allies against those who are stronger. You're angling for a long game now, to gather a powerbase from already established people, but England is good at that and difficult to assail. And right now, France has three builds so Germany or Russia are both very unlikely to agree to an alliance with them against you, so you should not be under much threat of invasion. Plus, Norway is still guaranteed yours, with the stalemate over Sweden.

[Legato Endless]

12 Hours to Build deadline