I dunno. If you're attacking Spain from two sides, the army in Spain has to split and defend two coasts. Surely that should give an advantage to each of the fleets attacking the army?

Also, don't forget about those sea to land missiles.

Quit trying to interject reality. The game was never intended that way. The rules state, if you can move to a territory or sea zone you can support a move there, regardless of coasts.

Yea, I know. That's what annoys me. It's very unrealistic.

The value of Diplomacy is realism though. Compare Diplomacy to say a real time strategy game where there are no action points to represent the commands you can send units over a specific period of time. The turn based nature ensures that everyone's command structure is equal. There's also no micromanagement, so you're forced to treat the map on a strategic level instead of sticking yourself into the mind of the units you're playing with.

On the other hand, a fleet in Gascony shouldn't be able to help a fleet in Marseilles into Spain. Yea, you're splitting the defense force, but Diplomacy is a game of support, not multiple moves. It's not like the defenders have to defend multiple points or surrender in one point. Support is understood to help attack a certain point.

This is different from Kiel or Bulgaria though. Both of these territories have coasts connected by canals.

Diplomacy is as realistic a wargame as chess: it's not. One of the first aspects where this approach fails is that you can't put several units into one territory.

In any case, this is what I'm specifically complaining about which goes even further than Spain: http://vdiplomacy.net/variants.php?variantID=87

Lapland in the north has no continuity whatsoever between Gulf of Bothnia and Norwegian Sea. It's even worse when a fleet in Helsinki helps.

I really don't see the problem. Where is the difference between a Army Gascony support Fleet W. Med.-Spain and Fleet Gascony giving the support? The army is also "splitting the defense force". It would make far less sense, if a fleet Gascony could not give that support but a Army could. This is a core principle.

By having supporting units from different angles and/or directions I would assume tgat this would be better support into a territory as it underminnes the defender's and splits the defensive units. While two attackers from the same direction are more likely to encounter unified defence. So this could be argued both ways with equal validity.

If an army was supporting from Gascony, it could at least make the effort to cross over land instead of having to sail all the way around to support the southern coast.

I don't really agree with the unrealistic space either. If anything, it's realistic to only have so much stuff in so much space.

(For example, if you've played Civ 4, then you know a lot of people complain about "stacks of doom". People prefer Civ 5 over it since units have to actually flank.)

This is one of the reasons I've always believed the support rule should be revamped. Instead of having to be able to move into the target territory, you should have to be able to move into the supported territory. It's kind of like how artillery is behind the front line where infantry are advancing.

Find another game then. This entire conversation proves that you fail to understand what Diplomacy is all about.

Alternately, if we were going to say there's a "distraction" force, then the bounce rule would have to be revamped. If two forces are attacking from different points, then that's not really a "support move". That's just two moves into the same territory.

What I understand is that Diplomacy fails to grab the attention of many people to play it because of its convoluted nature. Things like this deter people from joining and sticking around because they see things that barely if actually make sense.

I've actually hosted the game in private, and modified the rules on purpose so people are more willing to play in a way they can understand.

The same thing goes for things like the supporting "enemy units" to prevent self-bouncing and slipping in behind. People get really pissed when they're in 2v2s and they find out you supported their unit with one unit to let another move where they used to be. They don't understand why their own units would accept the support of an enemy.

I get it, but others don't. They call the game stupid and just move onto other things. That's why the community stays so small. It won't adapt.

+1000 Ruff!!

also, the site is not about attracting many players, as it is non-profit

It's not about profit. It's about community building.

I'm not just talking about this site either. I'm saying in general, if you've tried to host Diplomacy events, people get pissed off by that sort of stuff and give up on the game very quickly. If the game doesn't represent realism, they wonder why people are supposed to find the game appealing in the first place. The very fact that it revolves around historical and strategic military scenarios suggests prioritization of realism.

Put simply, people who want to engage in social and logical flippancy don't find Diplomacy appealing. The theme of the game is too serious. On the other hand, people who find it serious get turned off from that flippancy.

In other words, the game occupies a "negative niche". Correcting that negative niche involves fixing things like what I've described here.

Geez...how about you register on chess sites and moan about how the pawns are not able to move backwards?

I actually don't like chess, and found it's easier to play chess with everyday people if you let people choose where to put their pieces in the first two rows. :-P

I mean people don't like how others memorize starting moves and become grandmasters from remembering all the combinations of what can happen. Customizing your setup mixes things up.

Also, the difference between Chess and Diplomacy here for me is I really don't like Chess. Diplomacy just has a few blemishes, but in general, it's a likable game. The fact that all the pieces can move only into one adjacent territory, move simultaneously, and don't depend on dice like Risk makes it much more realistic.

Actually, when you said that Diplomacy's unrealistic because you can't deploy multiple units into single spaces, the first comparison that came to mind was Risk. Now that's a bad game... ugh/lol

"I am upset. Diplomacy is set at the start of WWI and it doesn't have areal units. Where are my biplanes?"

That is in effect what the argument sounds like. Mr. C. used a familiar map for a game that required cooperation and concurrent moves. Nothing more. It isn't meant to mirror reality or it would start several years later.

"it's easier to play chess with everyday people if you let people choose where to put their pieces in the first two rows"...I really don't know what to say, just wow...I'm out of this.

Are the "everyday people" you are playing with maybe six-year olds? Because the everyday people around me are fully capable to understand the rules of risk, diplomacy and even chess...

Diplomacy is a simplified turn based strategy game. We're not talking about Hearts of Iron here. You don't need to take realism to that degree.

As for chess, it's not about the game being difficult. The rules are simple enough to grasp. The point is about mastery. Chess was meant to represent the tactics people used on medieval battlefields. Yea, pieces like queens and bishops aren't exactly representative, but it's about logical flexibility.

The problem is commanders didn't line their units up the same way everytime. People relate more with being able to setup pieces the way they want.

Then don't play chess, play Feudal. You set up a screen and each side arranges their castle and units where they want. It has planes, foothills, and mountains.

If I might quote drano two years ago:

"
drano019 (2056 D)
21 Oct 2013
+1 (+1)
Silence user
I think we all owe Argo a round of applause for being (so-far), the most successful troll here on vdip. Well done sir!

I mean, really, his posts are intelligent enough that he *should* be able to understand our posts, but he simply works around it! [...]"

Fleets are not intended to represent mere fleets but rather seaborne armies. Else fleets could never occupy land territories, never happened, never will. Also support should not be interpreted necessarily as actually intervening in the battle but rather auxiliary roles such as logistics and covering the flanks, allowing the main force to focus more strictly in the battle effort. It's an abstract notion and each one can imagine as he/she wants but my personal vision of support is a mix of auxiliary roles and only detachment of some units to the frontline, if at all, mostly as reserves. Dip battles in my imagination are always 1 vs 1, but an unsupported army can only deploy part of its capacity, busy as it is with other affairs such as logistics, flank defense and even policing, while a well supported one can be deployed in numbers that approach 100% of the force. So force 4 vs force 1 can represent a fully fledged army vs a an overwhelmed army that can only concentrate 25% of its forces in the battle.

So in the end F Gas S F Spa(SC) does not mean that the marines march from Bordeaux to Cartagena but rather that they are deployed in Bilbao, A Coruña and other northern areas covering the defense and the logistics and, therefore allowing the fleet (seaborne army) of Cartagena to focus on the defense of the Mediterranean coast much more efficiently, exactly twice as efficiently as it'd be with no support.

People don't becime grandmasters of chess by memorizing combinations of moves. That may be a small part of it, but it's in flexibility of the mind to grasp the big picture of strategy and position. If you could place the pieces anywhere you want, believe me, the grandmasters would still be the grandmasters.

@ Raro : Being myself a former chess tournament player, I give you +1.
To be precise, chess players do not memorize combinations of moves, they memorize openings and have knowledge of some general ideas.

To give a comparison, when you drive a car, you need to have memorized a lot of information like the geographical path to your destination, where the brake pedal is and how to use it and many other things but all that necessary memorized information is far from enough to make you a good driver.

Speaking of attraction and community etc, for me the value of Diplomacy lies in the non-existence of the luck element. You can give yourself a decent chance of success if you are willing to pay effort through negotiations etc, and every move can be predicted and calculated with certainty instead of being at the mercy of a random dice like Risk as some of us said above. I believe that this is the main attraction of the game for most players, but not the focus of the extent of realism being implemented.

I mean, it should be a consensus that realism is not made absolute in Diplomacy, or else you won't have both Albania and Finland only able to hold one unit, given the difference in landmass.

Handle, I play Go, and yea, Feudal looks similar. It's a big board with a lot of flexibility and customization. You have to focus more on general principles than becoming familiar with certain patterns.

Luis, I interpret support as logistical as well. What you've described there is a support hold, not a support move. What I'm saying is if a fleet in Gascony supported a fleet in Western Med to move into Spain, then it doesn't make sense since there's no logistical path to be traced.

Raro, I don't know if you've play serious Chess, but if you do, then you know that Chess is played with a clock. Memorization is needed to make the most of your time. It's not like in Diplomacy where people can take a day or two to make a move every turn. This actually annoys me about most Diplomacy communities where people don't sit down to play games with 5-10 minute turns that much.

Retillion, you're confusing multiple memorized techniques there. In fact, this is a common argument that takes place in competitive racing. Are veteran drivers better because they actually have more skill, or is it just because they're familiar with the race track? Experienced drivers can create a cycle of victories because their performance on tracks proves their performance to sponsors. In turn, sponsors fund their teams and they continue to do better than others.

Lukas, realism in Diplomacy is based on local comparative political strength. Finland isn't being compared to every territory on the board. It's being compared to the territories that immediately surround it.

Just a couple of asides:

a) A lot of people aren't watching Formula 1 anymore because they're sick and tired of how veterans have a cartel in the series through McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes. When Red Bull won with Weber and Vettel, it was refreshing. Williams gets a lot of support as an underdog too.

b) If you know anything about political history, you know that despite how people would like Spain to be divided into multiple territories, Spain was relatively weak in the late 19th century/early 20th century. That's why it didn't participate in WW1.

@Argo: "What I'm saying is if a fleet in Gascony supported a fleet in Western Med to move into Spain, then it doesn't make sense since there's no logistical path to be traced".

There's a logistics of the enemy to be ravaged, an enemy defending army to be distracted with secondary fronts, etc. If the Spanish army has to deal with attacks against Bilbao and Ferrol, then it can't focus on the defense of the eastern coast, so 1 vs 1/2!

Luis forget it, it's easier to make the Pope become a Buddhist than explaining 1+1=2 to this guy...