at 10:42 AM, Publius Scribonius Scholasticus via agora-business
wrote:
{
Enact a Rule with the following text:
England is eliminated as a contestant. Austria, Italy, and Russia
hereby win the game.
}
When I first saw this I thought England itself had proposed it as a sort of
troll. But no, it wasn’t a troll by England or anyone else. How long have
you had it planned?
I must say, as a recently minted spectator, I’m disappointed by the
anticlimax. To be fair, I too had the idea of taking advantage of
Diplonomic’s unique nature to achieve a dramatic last-minute tie, like a
certain YA novel. (Though apparently normal games of Diplomacy also often
end in ties. I don’t have any experience with them.) Still, I wasn’t
envisioning a three-way tie. A two-way fight is a grind of game mechanics
devoid of Diplomacy’s characteristic negotiations; a three-way fight can be
a drama of which two will team up against the other. On the other hand,
who am I kidding; my imagined ending would have disappointed spectators too.
As a former contestant, it’s a good lesson for me. I’m not great at this
stuff, but I thought I was in a decent position with just one extra-strong
alliance. I didn’t even imagine there would be an extra-strong three-way
alliance.
I wonder if I’m the only one to have noticed a rather powerful scam.
According to the Diplonomic rules, the entities eligible to vote on
Diplonomic proposals are not Contestants, but “players”. The threshold to
pass is still "greater than half the number of Contestants", so this
doesn’t mean any proposals unexpectedly failed. Rather, a sufficiently
large group of players could force a proposal through (but not forcibly
block a proposal) regardless of the votes of others. You do still need to
be a Contestant to submit a proposal in the first place.
There was a time window where I could have pulled this off with Aris and
Trigon (at least if they agreed to it), but I didn’t try. The reason is
that the scam was too powerful for its own good. Using it to win would
destroy the Diplomacy gameplay, but using it for any lesser advantage would
feel arbitrary. If I’d known the game was about to end by proposal anyway…
oh well.
By the way, the proposal to let teammates submit orders was written by me.
It pained me to propose such a non-general rule only allowing teammates to
perform one type of action, rather than anything the country could do. But
I didn’t want to call attention to the fact that a certain type of action –
voting on proposals – was not limited to countries in the first place!
The point of the proposal, however, was to enable a completely different
scam. You see, both contestants and teammates are prohibited from
“engag[ing] in any behaviors outside of the tournament intended to
influence its course”, by two different clauses: one in the Diplonomic
Rules for teammates, and one in the Birthday Tournament Regulations
themselves for contestants. Now, a contestant is permanently a contestant
until they’re eliminated. But a teammate can cease to be a teammate,
engage in behavior outside of the tournament intended to influence its
course, then become a teammate again. What kind of behavior? Well, the
teammate could create an Agoran contract requiring eir country to do
something. The problem is that originally, the contract couldn’t have
teeth. It could say the teammate SHALL ensure the country takes Diplonomic
actions as specified, and even punish em in some way (e.g. losing assets)
if the country didn’t, but the actions are ultimately up to the Contestant,
not the teammate. Even if the Contestant was sympathetic, for em to pay
attention to the contract would itself arguably count as a “behavior
outside of the tournament”. Plus, the teammate would be similarly bound
after becoming a teammate again.
But with teammates having the ability to submit orders themselves, a
temporarily-non-teammate could create a contract allowing someone else to
submit orders on eir behalf. After e rejoined as a teammate, e would at
least arguably not be actively engaging in any “behavior outside of the
tournament”. E would still be submitting orders (via someone else acting
on eir behalf to do it) while a teammate, but submitting orders is not
*itself* an action “outside of the tournament”. Only the formation of the
contract would be.
All of this would just be an overly convoluted way to make agreements with
other powers that were enforceable. In reality, neither I nor the game
lasted long enough to conduct any such scam, and it seems that regular old
unenforceable agreements were good enough. :)
