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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbF4dZZxY4c
As the British, your job is to react to the insurgents.
You pretty much never want to do a limited op if you’re first eligible.
The “sabotage” action is one of the major ways that the insurgents are going to accrue victory points (subtract from political will).
The “propagandize” action didn’t come up much in their game at all.
You’re going to go through ~16-18 cards total.
There is a strategy guide in the rulebook that gives general advice for how to play well:
General advice:
“you should begin each campaign with a plan for what you want to achieve, and only divert from it if there is something more important you need to respond to”
“in the long-term the Propaganda Round effects are likely to have a greater impact [on political will / who wins], and you should make sure that you are always working towards achieving these.”
“you can use a Limited Operation on one turn to set yourself up for a powerful action on the next”
MCP (insurgent) advice:
“it is important to expand early and often into areas that [the British] are seeking to control. Rally is ideal for this, but don’t be afraid to use March to re-enter otherwise inaccessible areas if necessary, especially if they are only protected by a New Village.”
“make sure to [March into Economic Centers and place Sabotage] at every opportunity you get”
“make sure to secure your own income, with a Base in Thailand being virtually untouchable and worth 4 Resources over the whole game if placed down early.”
“Once Active your Guerrillas are easily removed by the British, especially outside of Mountains”
British advice:
Diplomacy
Misc. Thoughts:
- In casual games it seems important to keep your eye out for players who are likely to remain in alliances for longer than they should. The same thing happens a lot in casual games of Risk.
Questions to Answer:
What is the smallest functional game that you can make? In other words, if I wanted to have as few players as possible and as few territories as possible, but I also wanted to not violate any of the original rules, how many territories / players would I have?
Analysis of Simple Situations:
2-player games
2-square game:
If each player starts with one square and there are only 2 squares, the game will be a stalemate. [Is there any way to generalize this observation?]
3-square game
If the winning condition is to get 2 squares, this game should be a stalemate with perfect play (the pieces should bounce every time they try to move into the middle territory). However, with an imperfect opponent one player could win by convincing the other player to not
Misc Links
The Diplomatic Pouch Zine
PlayDiplomacy.com Forum Discussion - Diplomacy Game, Scoring and Game Theory
LessWrong.com - Diplomacy as a Game Theory Laboratory
David Rosen - Diplomacy and International Relations Theory (Part 1)
David Rosen - Diplomacy and Game Theory (Part 2)
Wikipedia - Edi Birsan (apparently one of the best Diplomacy players)
Demis Hassabis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demis_Hassabis
http://www.mobygames.com/developer/shee ... erId,2659/
YouTube videos about him: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... sabis&sm=3
YouTube - Systems Neuroscience and AGI - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjG_Fx3D0o0
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Risk
What is fun about Risk?
The game is relatively simple to learn, unlike Monopoly.
The simplicity of the game makes it easy to come up with rule variations and have a good idea of how they'll change the game.
The game is relatively simple to reason about. You can This is probably the best description I’ve ever come across of why Risk is my favorite game of all time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2maN0uUlyk&t=46m20s
Talking about SBF going to prison: “Listen, he’s never gonna have been through anything this horrible in his entire life. But he’ll have a new appreciation for--I have have a story I’ll tell ya, and then I’ll letcha go. The story is, when I was locked up in basically like a county jail, I was waiting to be sentenced, and I was talking to this guy who’d just done…god, it was like ten or twelve years in federal prison, and I think he still had a few more years in the state. And I was just like, man this is so…I was just like, I can’t believe this is happening. And he said, “Cox, I understand you’re freakin' out. Listen, there is gonna be a time, and it’s gonna be a few years from now, but there will be a time, you’re gonna go to prison, and there will be a time when you will be sitting around…”--and he was telling me a story that somebody had told him--”You will be sitting around and you will be laughing and joking and doing something, and you’re gonna stop and there will be a moment when you will realize, like, wow, this is great. These are great guys. I’m having a good time. This is great, what a great moment. And you’ve had those on the outside, you have those sometimes with your friends. But when you’re locked up and you have that moment, you’re gonna think ‘there’s no place I’d rather be’.” And I went, you’re outta your fuckin' mind, bro. That’s never gonna happen. Probably three years later, I was playing Risk with a bunch of guys, probably four or five guys, this guy’s invading this country, this guy had an agreement not to invade that country, he rolls the dice, he invades it, “Ahhh! I can’t believe you, we had an agreement, you--” he’s like, “bro, what am I supposed to do? I gotta take Czechoslovakia!” There are people bringing us sodas, like they have guys that will walk around and sell sodas, and they’re bringing us food, and somebody says “yeah, gimme a Pepsi!” And it’s ice cold, and you’re laughing--I remember I was laughing so hard, and I remember looking around at these guys--this is great, like, this is great. These are great guys. And it hit me, I was like, “Oh my god”…because that guy told me about his moment. His moment was, they were standing around a burn barrel, talking and shootin' the shit one day, and he said “I had that moment”. And you’ll realize, it’s gonna be ok, I can do this. And it was.”
The game is relatively simple to learn, unlike Monopoly. This makes it easy to get inexperienced gamers involved.
The simplicity of the game makes it easy to come up with rule variations and have a good idea of how they'll change the game.
The game is relatively simple to reason about. You can usually have a reasonable idea of the effect of your actions, and what your odds of success are.
This is in contrast to Axis and Allies (and arguably chess), where the decision tree is totally clouded by the complexity of the game.
The game isn't too simple, like "Sorry!" or Clue. You can often make somewhat complicated plans.
You get to feel powerful / important: you're taking over the entire world.
You get to make important decisions: whether to back-stab your ally, when to attack, etc.
There's a lot of tension. The game can really get emotional.
If the game has willing players, you can get a lot of fun back-and-forth debate to try to persuade people.
It can be a lot like playing Diplomacy, except with the added fun (IMO) feature of people being able to go it alone and just rely on staying out of the way of warring factions. In Diplomacy you can't do that; you have to ally until the very endand backstab.
It has a similarity with poker in that even if you're not playing at the moment, you can be planning your future moves, or watching the other players to try to guess their intentions, or trying to persuade people to do things.
I found the realism of the setting (as opposed to fantasy variants) to make it more fun for me; I felt like I was Caesar or Napoleon. Fantasy games have never been able to do that for me. I had the same issue with GoldenEye vs. Perfect Dark; when I was confronted with aliens in Perfect Dark it ruined the immersion for me.
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