Diplomacy A-Z, Version 6.0

Unfortunately for agreeable Austrian players, most Italians allowed into Trieste refuse to move out in Autumn, with horrific consequences for beleaguered Austria. Consequently, despite the overwhelming popularity of the Lepanto as an opening, the Key Lepanto itself is rarely seen.

If we considered the moves A(Ven)-Tri and F(Nap)-ION to be the stem of the Key Lepanto then we have the following variations:
A(Rom)-Apu (Key Lepanto),
A(Rom) H, (Key Lepanto, Rome Variation),
A(Rom)-Nap (Key Lepanto, Naples Variation),
A(Rom)-Tus (Key Lepanto, Tuscany Variation).

Note that the A(Rom)-Ven move is known as the Stab Lepanto. Devised by American player Jeff Key. See Austrian Openings (KW) and Italian Openings (KW).

Games were played to a 1912 limit in the team tournament and 1909 in the individual, with individual scores from the team tournament counting towards the individual tournament. All games were DIAS.

Winners are awarded 2 Primary Points and all participants in any draw 1 Primary Point each. The winner of the team tournament was the team with most Primary Points (ties split by Secondary Points) and the winner of the individual tournament was the player with the most Primary Points, again ties being split by Secondary Points.

Secondary Points were based on what may be thought of as strength relative to a potential win. Where n = supply centre count, 100 pts were divided between the surviving players' in the ratios given by the following f(n) = 0.5*(n**2 + n) + 4. (Non-surviving players' shares were added into the divisor although their share of the 100 pts was ignored: instead they received 0.1 pt for each year survived.)

The practical upshot of the Secondary Point formula was that each gain in SC count rendered a greater gain in Secondary Points than the step before and thus a corresponding loss if any other player should make a greater gain in SC count than you did. Thus in a 17-16-1 situation, the player with 17 --- presumably stuck on a stalemate line --- would actually lose Secondary Points were he to support the 16-player into the other's last centre. Essentially, you lose out in Secondary Points unless you take the lion's share of any victim's holdings. See Rating Systems (KW).

Eric's 'revolutionary' approach to running postal diplomacy -that no NMRs are allowed - arose from his view that they unbalanced the game too much and that it was better to hold the game over and get a new player than to NMR the old player.

Publisher of Electronic Protocol and Protocol. Eric was one of the winners of Avalon Hill's Diplomacy contest that was run in 1989 in _The General_. See Personalities (KW).

The full name of the award is "The John Koning Best Player Award" but this is usually just abbreviated to The Koning Award.
1986 Dan Stafford: For leading the Dragonstooth Rating System through 1985.
1987 Randolph Smyth: For a career of excellent postal play. (Randolph is one of the few people to have won a postal game with every country.)
1988 Dave McCrumb: For winning DixieCon in 1987 and being top-ranked in the Dragonstooth Rating System.
1989 Marc Peters: For winning CanCon in 1988 and finishing 3rd at DipCon in 1988.
1990 Gary Behnen: For his overall postal play in the previous year.
1991 Gary Behnen: For his overall postal play in the previous year. (Awarded prior to winning the 1991 DipCon!)
1992 Gary Behnen.
1993 Marc Peters
1994 Jim Yerkey: 1993 DixieCon Champion.
1995 - Bruce Reiff
1996 - Mike Gonsalves
1997 - Mike Gonsalves
1998 - Sara Reichert (Harry Andruschak)
1999 - Frank Easton
2000 - Mark Fassio
2001 - Simon Bouton
2002 - Brian Dennehy and Cyrille Sevin (tied)
2003 – Yann Clouet
2004 – Yann Clouet
See Hobby Awards (KW).

David has also set-up an anonymous ftp site for large diplomacy files (including this one!), the tap mailing list and in December 1993 became joint list-owner of the dipl-l mailing list with Nick Fitzpatrick. See Personalities (KW).

Years   number    A    E    F    G    I    R    T   Draw

1936     1      ---  ---  ---  ---    1  ---  ---   ----
1926     1      ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---    1   ----
1925     2      ---  ---    1  ---    1  ---  ---   ----
1924     1      ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---    1   ----
1922     1      ---  ---  ---    1  ---  ---  ---   ----
1921     4      ---  ---  ---  ---  ---    1    2      1
1920     1      ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---      1
1919     1      ---  ---    1  ---  ---  ---  ---      1
1918     8        1    1    1  ---    2    1  ---      2
1917     7      ---  ---    2    2  ---    1  ---      2
1916    15        1    2    2    2    2  ---    1      5
1915    10      ---    1    1  ---  ---  ---    3      5
1914    18        4    3    1    2    2  ---    3      3
1913    21      ---    4    3  ---  ---    1    3     10
1912    44        3    8    4    5    2    4    7     11
1911    55        2    6    4    6    6    6    7     18
1910    63        9    6    4   14    5    7    6     12
1909    65        5    7   11    4    7   11    5     15
1908    65        5    4    5    5    4   10    7     25
1907    47        2    1   10    3    2   13    2     14
1906    22        3    1    1    2  ---    4    3      8
1905    16      ---    1    1    1  ---    9  ---      4
1904     5      ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---      5
1903     1      ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---  ---      1
average 10.4   10.2 10.9 10.3 10.1 12.5  8.9 11.6   10.5

The longest game is "Y'a plus d'saisons", in _Vortigern_ (1983FA), which ended in 1936! See also Diplomacy Statistics (KW).

GAME                          LENGTH NUMBER
NAPG Non-orphaned games*      1910.42 /pm 4.14
NAPG Orphaned games*          1910.32 /pm 2.90
COMPU Non-orphaned games*     1909.28 /pm 3.16

COMPU = Games played over Compuserve network.
NAPG = North American Postal Games
* Data from Everything 85 (May 1992) through Everything 1991 (March 1995).

In practice, however, the Lepanto is rarely pursued beyond Autumn 1901, after which Italian players usually prefer to develop a more flexible strategy. As an answer to the Juggernaut, the Lepanto may be the best Italian opening, assuming as it does no grave threat from Austria.

Alliance with Austria is essential, with a standoff in BLA in S01 very desirable. Popularized by Edi Birsan, it is probably the best known "named" opening. See also Anti-hedgehog Lepanto, Classic Lepanto, Italian Openings (KW), Key Lepanto, Illyrian Opening, Naples Lepanto, Stab Lepanto, Tuscany Lepanto and Tyrolian Lepanto.

The association of Austria to this battle was by their close relations with the Spanish monarchy, so it is not wrong to mention them. Moreover, the Spanish Admiral who lead this battle was known as Juan of Austria, half brother of the Spanish King Philip II, son of Emperor Charles I of Spain and V of Germany.

Of course the translation of this fact into the game of Diplomacy suits perfectly with an Italy-Austria alliance.

Retyped by Mark Nelson (and proofread by Harold Reynolds) for distribution in this document. A mammoth production. See also "Son of LEXICON".

Timothy Ferguson:
A: It doesn't matter how many you have to change the bulb, none will trust the others to hold the chair steady.
(taken from a rec.games.diplomacy post, 26th May 1994.)
See Humour.

1. Games finish in 1908 with the winner being the player with the most centers. If two or more players tie for equal first they draw.
2. One win is always better than any number of 2-way draws, one 2-way is always better than any number of 3-ways, and so on.
3. Players who don't win, or are included in the draw are losers. They will get losers' point, which are the number of centers the winner has.
4. If a player is eliminated, he will double his losers' points. If a player get eighteen centers, all others players at the board are considered eliminated, and will consequently get 36 losers' points.
5. To rank the players with the same wins, 2-ways etc, the losers' points are used.

To encourage play from all participants, are the losers points divided by the number of games minus one half, that is:

Losers'Points(total) = Losers'Points(sum) / (NoGames-0.5)

This rule is included to allow players to play in as few or as many games as they want. See Rating Systems (KW).

(In response to a question on how he won the GM award in 1992 after VoD folded in 1985): After I folded VD in 1984, I finished out the Dip games in Echo of Doom, which I ran for a few months as a subzine to Gary Coughlan's Europa Express. Once those ended, I didn't run Dip games any more. What I did do was start TRAX, a zine for the play of postal Empire Builder, which I ran for two or three years, and then White House Mania, in which I ran Campaign Trail by mail. At its height, WHM had nine games going, with six players in each. Meanwhile, after 1989 I turned over the Runestone Poll to Eric Brosius, who ran it for about three years. Eric allowed people to vote for zines and GMs for games other than Diplomacy, which is how I managed to stay on the list for that long.

In the northern variation, Russia opens A(War)-Lvn and A(Mos)-Stp and then A(Stp)-Fin, giving up to three units bearing on Norway in Spring 1902 - but at the expense of serious exposure on the Southern Flank. This may be acceptable if Austria can be relied on to contain Turkey, but the lack of influence on Rumania deprives Russia of the near certainty of a build. In the more cautious southern version, therefore A(Mos) moves to Ukraine.

In Richard Sharp's rationalized system for naming Russian Openings, the Livonian system refers to any Russian opening using the moves F(Stp/sc)-Fin/GoB and A(Mos)-Lvn. There are two named variations: the Galician Variation and the Silesian Variation.

At the time that Turnbull recommended this opening, the common opening move for F(Kie) was to Hol; it was unusual for Germany to move to Den. It was even more unusual for Germany to stand Russia out of Swe. Hence, Russian players expected to take Swe in Autumn 1901 as a matter of course. Hence the move to Lvn with intent to convoy to Swe is not as strange as first appears. See Russian Openings (KW).

While in Boston, I organized a diplomacy discussion list DIPL-L@MITVMA.BITNET and created a Hall of Fame introducing a scoring system [(winners-losers)/winners points per winners] which can be applied to most Diplomacy variants, and is designed to encourage competitive play. After a long halt, Nick Fitzpatrick took over the DIPL-L and Hall of Fame and is applying my game scoring system.

My current (1993! -- HR) duties include managing a list of Spring 1901 openings used in all standard games on the JUDGE. I am also the founder and director of the diplomacy programming project. As such I have had two papers published in scholarly journals regarding my research, and have written a diplomat interface which will allow humans and computer programs to play with each other automatically. My students have begun to implement many of my ideas regarding the DPP, and some initial prototypes have been tested.

See Personalities (KW).

EP#    GAME-NAME YEAR RESULT
93-080 primary   1929 I
93-069 rupert    1928 I
215    earwig    1927 F
216    fly       1925 AFR
246    gorilla   1924 I
190    pint      1923 FR

EP VARIANT GAMES

EP#    GAME-NAME VARIANT              YEAR RESULT
192    luzon     Youngstown (Gunboat) 1940 A/F/In
93-035 offboard  Youngstown (Anon)    1939 C
93-128 jurassic  Anonymous            1936 E/F/I
139    hastings  Britain              1935 E/F/T
93-121 hopeless  Pure (Gunboat)       1935 A
94-065 woogie    Gunboat (none)       1934 A
93-095 Shogun    Youngstown (anon)    1932 A/C/E/I/J
124    dien      Youngstown           1930 I
182    sumatra   Yougnstown (Gunboat) 1930 A
93-041 heron     Gunboat (white)      1930 E

One of the longest PBM games has to be 1986AM in Graustark. Begun in July 1986, when it ended in September 1993 (as a 17-17 AT draw) it was in Winter 1939. End-game statements were printed in _Graustark_ 624, 25th September 1993.

However the record belongs to Dan Shoham in the game Barney (93-059). Dan writes: "With my one unit, I almost made 20 years. I was the last to be eliminated, and have journeyed through Berlin, Munich, Marseillies, Venice, Trieste, Budapest, Serbia, and Greece. I had the chance to see (and often contribute to) the elimination of Austria, Germany, and France during my tenure.'' Dan Shoham, [shoham@edu.mit.ll]