Quote from Strange Fellow on 18 December 2023, 21h37

Andnjord is playing all sides, so that no matter who wins he comes out on top. Smart.

Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 19 December 2023, 13h52

Update on the vote, with Austria and its demented conjoined twin taking the lead:

Austria: 7.3333333

elektrizikekswerk (PDX-OT)

KarbonKitty (ZG)

Andnjord/Matnjord (Codex) but multivoted

Luka_Boy (Codex)

Modron (Codex)

Herbert West (PDX-OT)

Trinitrotoluen (PDX-OT)

Cyan (PDX-OT)

France: 4.333333

Andnjord/Matnjord (PDX-OT) but multivoted

Argyraspide (ZG)

Strange Fellow (ZG)

Catacombs (Codex)

Hag (Codex)

Turkey:3

Premu (PDX-OT)

tindril (Codex)

Blade! (PDX-OT)

Italy: 2.333333

Dayyalu (PDX-OT and Codex)

Operative Lyx (PDX-OT)

Andnjord/Matnjord (ZG) but multivoted

Russia: 2

Ozmono2021 (PDX-OT)

pithorr (PDX-OT)

United Kingdom: 2

Avernite (PDX-OT)

Atlanteax (PDX-OT)

Germany: 1

Porkbelly (ZG)

I will probably close the vote tonight, French time!

Edit: Good damn formatting. I will have to write reports here first, and then copy! 

Quote from KarbonKitty on 19 December 2023, 14h18

If you will have the forums chosen, I can try writing a script to accept a single marked-up message and spit it out in other formats (assuming there's a way to get the text in a correct format both ways - I can translate from Reddit markdown into BBCode, for example, but I don't know if I can extract the markup from here? There seems to be HTML tags below this edit window if I start changing up the formatting, but can I just do tags like <em>here</em>?

EDIT: apparently not 😉

Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 20 December 2023, 1h25

Winter 1900

In the winter of 1900, at Vienna's Café Central, Marcello Rossi, an elderly Italian anarchist, was finishing his schnitzel, preparing for a peculiar act of protest. His plan? His plan: to lob a custard pie at Emperor Franz Joseph during the traditional Washing of the Feet ceremony, aiming to strike a blow to the Empire's dignity that it could never recover from.

Meanwhile, a drama unfolded at the same table immediately behind him, Serbian nationalist Luka Petrović, who had a similar, but more explosive plan, was caught off guard when three undercover policemen pounced, detaining him after a brief but fierce tussle. The policemen vanished as quickly as they had appeared, taking Petrović and his package with them. Alas, no one realized that during the struggle, his package had been switched with Rossi's.

Rossi, known affectionately as "Il Vecchio" because he did not see very well, proceeded with what he thought would be a non-lethal statement. As Emperor Franz Joseph appeared, humbly participating in the Washing of the Feet, Rossi hurled the package. The bomb exploded, killing the Emperor.

With Franz Joseph gone, his great-nephew, the four-year-old Franz Ferdinand, was immediately declared the new King & Kaiser. The government, in a state of shock and embarrassment over its failure to protect the Emperor. The young Franz Ferdinand, barely aware of his imperial duties, turned to the people around him – those whose feet had yet to be washed - and appointed them as the new government. Unsure as to whether this was part of the ceremony, the unwashed masses timidly accepted.

As news of the Emperor's demise and the bizarre succession spread, Europe gazed upon Austria with a mix of disbelief and opportunism. The balance of power had been fractured; opportunities to settle old scores had been created.

Spring 1901

Well, you know the rules. Hopefully. It is now time to vote for what we'll do.

You can discuss as much as you want, but each of you must vote for the three orders at the same time:

 

Vote for A VIE:

A VIE - BOH: 1
A VIE - GAL : 4
A VIE - BUD
A VIE - TYR : 3
A VIE - TRI : 6
A VIE S A BUD-GAL:1

And vote for A BUD:

A BUD - GAL : 1
A BUD - VIE
A BUD - TRI : 1
A BUD - SER : 11
A BUD - RUM : 1
A BUD S A VIE-GAL

And vote for F TRI

F TRI - VEN :1
F TRI - ADR : 1
F TRI - ALB : 13

You can also do stuff like A BUD S A [Russia] WAR - GAL, but well, I am not listing those.

I ll update the status (in this thread) over time, and I will probably end the vote in one day. Or sooner. Or later. CHAOS, I tell you.

Voted:

Premu (OT-PDX)
Blade! (OT-PDX)
Trinitrotoluen (OT-PDX)
LouisSteColombe (OT-PDX)
Avernite (OT-PDX)
elektrizkekswerk (OT-PDX)
Herbert West (OT-PDX)
Modron (Codex)
KarbonKitty (ZG)
Luka_Boy (Codex)
Ludumo (Codex)
Hag (Codex)
Operative Lynx (ZG)
Dayyalu (ZG)
Catacombs (Codex)

Quote from Andnjord on 20 December 2023, 12h25

Well, you know the rules. Hopefully.

Vote for A VIE:
A VIE - BOH
A VIE - GAL
A VIE - BUD
A VIE - TYR
A VIE - TRI
A VIE S A BUD-GAL

And vote for A BUD:
A BUD - GAL
A BUD - VIE
A BUD - TRI
A BUD - SER
A BUD - RUM
A BUD S A VIE-GAL

And vote for F TRI
F TRI - VEN
F TRI - ADR
F TRI - ALB

Someone call an exorcist, Vale is speaking in tongues.

 

Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 20 December 2023, 12h29

Quote from Andnjord on 20 December 2023, 12h25

Well, you know the rules. Hopefully.

Vote for A VIE:
A VIE - BOH
A VIE - GAL
A VIE - BUD
A VIE - TYR
A VIE - TRI
A VIE S A BUD-GAL

And vote for A BUD:
A BUD - GAL
A BUD - VIE
A BUD - TRI
A BUD - SER
A BUD - RUM
A BUD S A VIE-GAL

And vote for F TRI
F TRI - VEN
F TRI - ADR
F TRI - ALB

Someone call an exorcist, Vale is speaking in tongues.

 

While you were calling an exorcist, the OT-Paradox forum voted - I updated the thread. Apologies, I was convinced everyone knew the rules:

So:

Each country except Russia starts with 3 armies/fleet (the LARGE flags on the map). The objective is to take production centers (the SMALL flags on the map next to the "+"). Each production centre can maintain one army, with creation/destruction every other turn so number of armies/fleets = number of production centers.

We start with 3 control centers: VIE(nna), BUD(apest), TRI(est). VIE and BUD also have A(rmies), and TRI starts with a F(leet).

The list above is the possible command, with each 3 letters corresponding to a region. The code is:

 "-" => Movement/Attack

"S" => Support a movement/attack of an army to an adjacent region, or support defensively an army.

"C" => Convoy, for fleet in the sea to transport troops. Not possible for now.

Of course, "S" and "C" must match "-".

And... that's it for the orders. There are a few more complications here and there (S and C can be broken by attacking enemies, etc), but you don't need to bother with that now.

Quote from KarbonKitty on 20 December 2023, 13h20

A VIE - TRI

A BUD - SER

F TRI - ALB

Let's get this party started!

Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 20 December 2023, 13h52

Votes update. We have 10 votes now, with only the army of VIE who still has a chance to change direction.

Quote from Operative Lynx on 20 December 2023, 16h08

A game of Diplomacy without diplomacy. Somehow I can't shake off the feeling that this computer adaptation was born obsolete. In the end us being Austria in the middle of the map probably provides the best chance for AI to demonstrate its capabilities. A ruthless AI could surround us and wipe us out quite easily. But this being an Avalon Hill game, we'll see...

I'm whispering into the ear of little Franz: "In order to become loved by your subjects, you must avenge the death of your great-uncle". So our army marches from Budapest to Serbia to deliver "justice". It's only natural after Serbia to annex the rest of the Balkans, so our fleet moves to Albania.

For our army in Vienna, it should move to Tyrol, so that it's in vicinity in case MY bank account in Switzerland needs protection from our enemies. Priorities, after all.

Have you tested how this game handles the end-of-year calculation. Does a unit acquiring a supply center in Spring still need to be there after the Fall or can it move on?

Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 20 December 2023, 16h25

From what I have seen, it has the vanilla-est of the rules, with the only option being on retreat (randomly or not) and length of the game (200 turns? Sure!).
On the other hand, you can choose a non-standard starting position, with the armies, fleet starting wherever you want them to start. Probably useful for all those cases where you started a game at 7 and then Little Timmy left to buy cigarettes and never came back. Now, you can replace him with a computer.

Quote from Dayyalu on 20 December 2023, 16h53

First, I'm not surprised that the Paradox forums, hive of scum and villainy, supported the perfidious Austrians, the prison of peoples the lunatic asylum of peoples.

That said,

A VIE - TYR
A BUD - SER
F TRI - ALB

 

Quote from Argyraspide on 20 December 2023, 17h12

But what are we doing?

What are our objectives?

Who's a at war with whom (I get that it's WWI, but what's with the colour scheme)?

What does the "Support" command do?

I feel like I'm back at school and I missed the first day.

Quote from Dayyalu on 20 December 2023, 17h40

Quote from Argyraspide on 20 December 2023, 17h12

But what are we doing?

What are our objectives?

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 20 December 2023, 23h22

Quote from Argyraspide on 20 December 2023, 17h12

But what are we doing?

What are our objectives?

Who's a at war with whom (I get that it's WWI, but what's with the colour scheme)?

What does the "Support" command do?

I feel like I'm back at school and I missed the first day.

Well, for some reason I assumed everyone knew Diplomacy, but I was wrong and I apologise.

Diplomacy is a 1959 board game and probably the most analyzed one after Chess and, possibly, Go. It is really, really cool. And also really, really intense, I lost one childhood friend over it, and I am lucky to have lost only one.

It gives 7 countries of equal strength 14 turns to control as many "supply centres" as possible, with an immediate victory if a country controls half the centres. Here is a map of the game with all the regions & centres as dots. It has not changed (except for the names) since 1959.

The game progresses through "years", each split into two turns:  Spring and Fall. Each turn has

- a negotiation phase if you play tabletop - typically 15 to 45 minutes because that's a LONG game,

- an order writing stage. That's the weird notation I ask you to vote for,

- an order resolution stage - because it is all simultaneous and there will be backstab

- a retreat phase, for those armies that are dislodged. This is usually done without negotiation if you follow the official rules, but in a friendly setting with loose discipline, there is always the good-damn player with one fleet left who tries to negotiate with say Russia and Italy whether that one fleet retreats to Aegean or Ionian. No one cares, you are eliminated next turn mate!

At the end of the year (so after Fall), control/loss of supply centres is checked. Supply centres change hands IF and ONLY IF another army or fleet is in its province at the end of Fall. Passing through in Spring is not enough, and there is no need to "keep" an army on a supply centre to keep provided no other player occupies the region.

Once the supply centres change hands, each player counts the number of supply centres and the number of Fleet+Army they control and must adjust the difference: removing the fleets/armies of their choice if they can't maintain them, or building new ones but ONLY in their starting centres. Cue to more negotiations by the kind of people who are OK with finishing the game at 5 in the morning.

Rince & Repeat until Fall 1907 or until a player controls half the supply centres.

Finally, orders. Well, I explained a bit already - it is easy. Each army has only 4 actions possible:

- Hold. It is the default, but it is good practice to write it down anyway
- Move (aka "Attack"; no difference). Army/Fleet goes from one location to another location
- Convoy: Fleets on high seas can convoy an army moving from one coast province to another, provided the army receives the move order that matches. Convoy is instantaneous, and you can convoy several "sea spaces" in the same turn (chain of convoys),
- Support. This one is tricky and confusing for new players, because that's actually two different orders:
You support defensively an army/fleet that holds, supports or convoys if you are next to it.
You support offensively an army that moves to another province you are next to.

You CANNOT support defensively an army that moves. You can support an army that also supports you. You can support (or convoy) an army of another nationality (hence "Diplomacy").

So a typical mid-game order set could be, for a British player and using a formal notation :

A LON - BEL => The Army in London moves to Belgium
F NTH C A LON - BEL => The Fleet in the North Sea Convoys the Army in London to Belgium
A PIC S A LON - BEL => The Army in Picardy supports the Army moving from London to Belgium
F ENG S F NTH => The Fleet in the English Channel supports [defensively] the fleet in the North Sea.

Combats (Armies trying to occupy the same province, or armies trying to dislodge another army) are resolved without randomness. Each army/fleet has a value of one, add +1 by support. Whoever wins chases the other, else both forces stay where they started.

Last important note: an army/fleet supporting stops supporting if ATTACKED. A fleet convoying stops convoying if pushed away by an attack.

There are some edge rules I did not cover (eg North/South Coast in Spain, Bulgaria and St Petersburg, a few illegal moves, etc) but you don't need to know them.

And now, the turn resolution, so you understand all this better.

Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 21 December 2023, 0h05

Here is the orders that went in:

Massive majority for punishing the Serbs and, err, the Albanians. They look like the Serbs, but they are also not very far geographically from the Italians, so if we average out the responsibility of the Italians and the Serbs in the death of our meh-loved Emperor, it's their fault.
Close vote for the movement of the Landwehr in Vienna, but quelling the irredentists in Trieste is seen as the priority. No more bombs. No more pies, thank you very much.

We don't meet any opposition and our movements are unopposed.

Meanwhile, I am happy to report that the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire both tried to move in the Black Sea:

This is 1vs1, and both fleets returned to where they started (Sebastopol and Ankara).

With a fleet in Sebastopol, a movement from Moscow to Sebastopol is blocked (only one army/fleet by province):

The Russians also don't move their Saint Petersburg army (what?) and do a weird retrograde movement Warsaw-Ukraine.

 

Fall 1901 (indicating the movement of Russia, Ottoman Empire and Italy)

Time to vote. List of possible orders.

Army in Trieste:
A TRI Holds
A TRI-VIE
A TRI-TYR
A TRI-VEN
A TRI-ALB
A TRI-SER
A TRI-BUD
A TRI S A SER

Fleet in Albania
F ALB Holds
F ALB-GRE
F ALB-ION
F ALB-TRI
F ALB - ADR
F ALB S A SER-GRE

Army in Serbia:
A SER Holds
A SER - RUM
A SER - BUL
A SER - GRE
A SER - ALB
A SER - TRI
A SER S F ALB-GRE

Quote from KarbonKitty on 21 December 2023, 11h33

A SER - RUM

A TRI - SER

F ALB - GRE

Let's take revenge for the battle of Vienna and take over Istanbul!

Quote from Operative Lynx on 21 December 2023, 13h42

I wonder what kind of a lunatic is calling the shots in Moscow. Based on those movements the Russians feel threatened by Ottomans and are preparing for a war against them. On the other fronts it looks like that Germans are going for Scandinavia and Italians for Africa. So the Fall will be peaceful in Central Europe.

I think we should take advantage of the forthcoming Crimean War and let Russia and Turkey fight each other for a while and making sure that we have a strong position before avenging the battle of Vienna.

Thus our Fall operation would be securing the Greeks to our side:

A SER - GRE

F ALB S A SER - GRE

A TRI - SER

 

Quote from The Wargaming Scribe on 21 December 2023, 14h38

14 votes - I find it more interesting to say who voted what, esp. where there are forum blocks of votes:

Army in Trieste:

A TRI Holds
A TRI-VIE: 1
Premu (OT-PDX)
A TRI-TYR: 2
elektrizikekswerk (OT-PDX)
LouisStColombe (OT-PDX)
A TRI-VEN: 3
Avernite (OT-PDX)
Luka-boy (Codex)
Strange Fellow (Codex, ZG)
A TRI-ALB
A TRI-SER: 2
Operative Lynx (ZG)
KarbonKitty (ZG)
A TRI-BUD: 2
Trinitrotoluen (OT-PDX)
Flockingbird (OT-PDX)
A TRI S A SER: 4
Catacombs (Codex)
Lucumo (Codex)
Modron (Codex)
Hag (Codex)

Fleet in Albania
F ALB Holds
F ALB-GRE: 12
KarbonKitty (ZG)
Premu (OT-PDX)
Avernite (OT-PDX)
Trinitrotoluen (OT-PDX)
elektrizikekswerk (OT-PDX)
Catacombs (Codex)
Lucumo (Codex)
Modron (Codex)
Hag (Codex)
Flockingbird (OT-PDX)
LouisStColombe (OT-PDX)
Strange Fellow (Codex, ZG)
F ALB-ION
F ALB-TRI
F ALB - ADR: 1
Luka-boy (Codex)
F ALB S A SER-GRE: 1
Operative Lynx (ZG)

Army in Serbia:

A SER Holds
A SER - RUM: 1
KarbonKitty (ZG)
A SER - BUL : 1
Strange Fellow (Codex, ZG)
A SER - GRE: 2
Operative Lynx (ZG)
Luka-boy (Codex)
A SER - ALB
A SER - TRI
A SER S F ALB-GRE: 10
Premu (OT-PDX)
Avenite (OT-PDX)
Trinitrotoluen (OT-PDX)
elektrizikekswerk (OT-PDX)
Catacombs (Codex)
Lucumo (Codex)
Modron (Codex)
Hag (Codex)
Flockingbird (OT-PDX)
LouisStColombe (OT-PDX)

 

Kind reminder that some people NEVER played Diplomacy in their life, and that democracy prevails

Quote from Strange Fellow on 21 December 2023, 15h33

I have NEVER played Diplomacy in my life, and I never will. That said, go for Venice, Bulgaria and Greece.

Also, let it be known that my allegiance is split evenly between Zeitgame and Codex.