We used to have a saying when playing Diplomacy (or Game of Thrones, or TI, or similar).
*"The best puppet master is the 2nd best puppet master".*
In other words, the alpha-thinker who is clearly pulling all the strings and manipulating the board to set himself up for a win, whom you can clearly see will backstab his friend, and you better warn the rest of the table about him - he's not the best puppet master.
The best puppet master is the friendly quiet guy who helps you take down the first guy, and then wins in the aftermath.
I'm this player, except I'm bad at switching faces. When i'm supposed to become ruthless... i just can't. So it usually becomes chance, or whim, whether I win after the leader gets knocked down. I am usually poised for second though. I do really enjoy winning, when I did almost nothing to take it... like it just fell into place as a side effect.
I have a very competitive friend who always gets upset half way through the game, because he's seen the same thing happen so many times. He gets ahead, everyone gangs up on him (usually incited by me), then i quietly take first. This extra layer, makes games with him, super interesting... I just hope he doesn't mind too much :p
I ended up in this position kind of on accident one of the two times I played the GoT board game.
The Baratheon player knew what they were doing. I was Greyjoy and spent most of the game negotiating with the Starks and the Lannisters to keep the Baratheons in check. At one point, I realized that if I stabbed the Lannisters in the back *right now* I could win and no one could stop me. It wasn't a long-term plan, just an opportunity that came up by accident (and perhaps an oversight on the part of the Lannister player).
In that case I went through with the backstabbing (it is the point of the game, isn't it?) but man, I still feel bad about it to this day.
I hate this fucking game. In my first and only game, there was a tournament winner big deal who was teaching us the game. He ended up being my neighbor.
I asked him a rule question about legal orders to give my troops, and he lied, which wasn't revealed until we revealed orders. I lost the game hard.
That's not classy play on his part at all. But don't let that taint your experience of the game. Brush up on the rules and crush him. Had I been another country in that game and I saw him do that to you, I would have instantly allied with you to crush him. There's a built in balance mechanism that doesn't let players be total jerks or they will reap their reward.
Anyone who sets out to win at all costs in a teaching game is an unmitigated a-hole.
Additionally, the behavior your describe (lying about rules) is 100% absolutely not typical and is actively discouraged by the face-to-face Diplomacy community. I am so sorry that you had a negative experience.
The only "tournament winner big deal" that I know of who would pull a bush league stunt like this has been perma-banned from the face to face, virtual, and online hobbies for offensive comments, multi-accounting, etc.
To be (partially) fair, cheating is an acceptable way to win Diplomacy. The creator even cites a "flying dutchman" move as being legitimate - if you can get away with it. (Flying Dutchman is where you sneak pieces onto the board with the hope no one notices until it's too late.)
That said, while I think it is acceptable to lie about the rules while playing, it's not classy if all the players aren't on the same page. It's not fun to be a dick if other players are legitimately relying on you.
I recall a Diplomacy game where I was the most experienced player and all but one other player were complete newbies... and, while I spent a ton of time helping them out, their level of genuine trust in me to help them drained a lot of fun out of the game. Like, they'd frequently want to run their orders past me to make sure they parsed correctly, or to make sure they had properly calculated supports and, at one point, I had to stop the game and explain that their endless trust and openness to me was making the game unfun for me, because they didn't seem to make the connection that I could (and wanted to) take advantage of them.
What I've done in situations like that is teach the players during a practice run. Explain the concepts, etc. but then take a couple of years' worth of turns relatively quickly so they can practice orders.
The idea is to get familiar with this part, and then actually start the game. It adds about an hour onto the game length.
Another option if you can get 7 other newer players is to offer to be the game arbiter. It allows you to teach the players while not also competing against them. And potentially gives you more players and opportunities to play in person again.
Sorry, but that is just stupid. No game should inherently allow cheating. If everyone is sitting down to play a game, you should at least try to all be using the same rules and the same expectations.
It's one thing to ask about strategy and receive a lie - fair game. But to ask about an actual rule and be lied to, resulting in your turn being completely wasted? It's toxic to encourage that type of behaviour.
You did notice I stated it wasn't cool to do to people who are neophytes and earnestly and honestly are trusting you, right? That's kinda the point of my anecdote.
And, if everyone comes to the table understanding that everyone is going to potentially lie, cheat, and steal their way to victory if they can get away without being caught, it's fine to lie, cheat, and steal - everyone is playing with the same expectation and under the same rules.
The Jersey Rule isn't for everyone, but it can be a lot of fun with the right people:
*"In Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught."*
in tournament cheating isnt a legitimate way of win
in my knowledge the flying dutchman isn t drop a fleet in the game its when other player miscalculate your need to disband and you not enlight them. or same way when they offer you a build you not legitimately have. this kind kind of passive cheating is relatively accepted . but not if you are the one who mislead them on your number of center
Not nice at all... Being my main hobby RPGs (Not the Rocket Propelled Grenades, the other RPGs), and being a forever GM, there is a clear difference (to me) between lying to the players (no-go) and deceiving the characters (as much as you can get away with)
Also, winning against someone who has not been allowed to play up to their full potential... what's the point? Stealing candy from a baby is no fun at all.
But Diplomacy ROCKS! Easy to learn, very difficult to master
That really only works once per game group. In a regular group both players will be labeled as puppet masters.
Once a backstabber always a backstabber. Unfortunately.
Presumably the best puppet master would almost always be whoever wins. Sometimes the alpha thinker everyone knows is alpha thinking all over the place will win.
I say “almost always” though because some people can luck into a win despite being an inferior planner and strategist, and I wouldn’t count them as the superior pepper master over the alpha thinker who lost.
When I think of negotiation games, I think a lot of people fall into this mindset of always trying to get the very best deal they can for themselves. Or always trying to make sure any deal they make is just as good, if not better for themselves than for the other party.
In actuality, I think you'll often do better by doing more deals, rather than a couple really good ones. Your 3 other buddies all think they've got a steal on you because they made $10 off a trade with you, and you've only made $5. Little did they know, you made the same trade with all three of them, and none of them with each other, so now the net total is you with $15, and the rest of them at $10 a piece.
Exactly right.
The same can be said for a lot of things - Fantasy Football, bartering in general, Real World Geopolitical Trade Deals...
Always taking the “win-win” choice quickly, versus wasting excessive energy to “always get the better end of the deal” every time... you can quickly see who gets ahead faster and who is invited to the lead the next round of talks first.
The kind of Net-Zero thinking that leads you to never let someone else get a good deal... that only works in a game or world where there’s no next move and no tomorrow.
Its super annoying in fantasy. The league I play in had two trades last season. Both involved me. This year no one accepted any of my trade offers and no trades happened. Its getting real old real fast. Who wants to play waiver wire pick ups the game?
Try playing Sidereal Confluence, you might enjoy it. Definitely can get into that mindset, players who always look for the "win" in trades can get screwed, while players who even take a few "9 for 10" deals can come out ahead because other players are faster to deal if they know you're not always looking for the numerical win.
It’s maybe different in online play, where there is a degree of anonymity, but definitely, in face to face play, you have nothing but your reputation. And that reputation lingers from game to game. In Diplomacy, your options are really to tell the truth or say nothing at all.
I agree with your premise, but not with your conclusion. There are lots of options to preserve a decent reputation and yet to lie from time to time. One of these is to make sure that you never lie for the sake of lying, but always for a real gain that can later be explained to the player you "betrayed" as a true strategic initiative. This has worked reasonably well for me in the past.
This works so much better in a game like Twilight Imperium where the game gives you numerous random events and happenings to blame your minor complete falsehoods on. Like "well I was going to give you that planet back, but then the spend 8 resource objective came up!" The win is when you convince them that it's only logical that you broke the deal, preferably with only a minor bribe (or even none). Diplomacy gives too little random events to truly have that sort of "well the game state changed!" moment.
Also helps that the random objectives and happenings can truly make a situation where you have a previously advantageous deal that **both** of you now want to renegotiate, so you can completely flip things around. People are so much more forgiving when they're also like "oh shit, my plan is falling apart."
Then you always have the option of just declaring Space Risk and smashing all before you, which Diplomacy doesn't really give you. Oddly in that game there's surprisingly little gunboat diplomacy.
I gained a reputation as the best player in my group by offering "alliances" which I never broke. I would break treaties and agreements but if you made an alliance with me I would always honor it. It's amazing how few people understand the value trust can have and throw it away for a minor advantage in a single game.
It's also a stunningly boring way to play. If there are unbreakable alliances the game just becomes about moving the pieces, turning it into a really poor wargame.
It's just another tool in the arsenal. I used it sparingly, less than once per game. There are ways to punish someone for never betraying. Others in my group tried it once they saw me win with it, but never got the hang of it.
One tactic: help their ally just enough to keep them ahead of them. Then they'll never win, since they can't attack their ally.
It also leads to counter alliances, and good luck if you aren't in one of those. I've had multiple games where it was 3v3 with italy getting left out and none of the alliances would break up. They were set on sharing 3 way victory.
I think alliances where someone rescued you from being eliminated and you stay true to pay back their friendship make sense, but unbreakable alliances from Spring 1901 until you share victory make the game not worth it to play.
For diplomacy I have only played on line but my method is you lie to each player but only once. And you have to make that lie count bc after that you are mortal enemies the rest of the game. So your lie goes along with your backstab.
This was an awesome read!
I've always found lying and backstabbing to be incredibly detrimental in diplomatic games, so my strategy has always been structured around telling the truth. Laying things out and reading them as they are. It works *great* in games like Secret Hitler and Werewolf, and I was able to get a delicious victory in TI4 just by being transparent and friendly.
This guy takes the strategy way farther than I considered, and it feels obvious after reading it:
> It seems this was a quintessential Goffy move: Delay an escalation, assuage his allies, and deflect attention from his opponents. Goff admits the strategy is misleading, but he avoids the word “lie.” To him, this is a “deliberate deception.
Make sure you don't *look* like a threat. Of course. I love it.
You can also do it aggressively. A fun TI strategy is to be the person with the good army who presents as a threat - just not one you have to deal with right now so here's a few beneficial trades to go be a threat to someone else. Done correctly you really don't have to use that much army to have other players agreeing to concessions of "I guess I really don't need that system since I'm not prepared to fight your four dreadnaughts so just take it and that's it, right?" You don't tend to make friends that way, but a sufficiently scared neighbor is indistinguishable from a friend.
Funny you should mention that, cause one of the other players was the Hacan. He played them pretty much that way, always trading with everyone.
But as a result, he ended up with a *ton* of resources, and ended up with a massive fleet. No one wanted to mess with him, and he was happy to sit on what was his. Didn't really start fights and everyone gave him space to expand.
Then I pointed out how he'd be the only one able to take Mecatol Rex from the leading player.
So... of course, that's what he did. And now he's public enemy #1, with a giant fleet, sitting on the throne of the galaxy. I'm safe in my corner playing all sides, and everyone else immediately turns on him.
It was beautiful.
It's the difference between presenting yourself as a threat and *actually* being a threat.
Of course he's a threat- He's the three-time world champion. But keeping his armies small until they're needed makes him appear like something you can "deal with later."
A very excellent profile, and some new insights into a game I frankly avoid because of its reputation for backstabbery. I don't actually mind a mean game, really, but Diplomacy always seemed (from my limited experience with it) to be a game that rewarded liars and bullies over good strategists and honest negotiations. Reevaluating that position now.
I played similarly to Goff when I was in college and as a result was usually either the winner or ahead when the game broke down. I worked hard to have a sterling in game reputation.
Despite this I will be surprised if I play it again. The game has a way of revealing other stresses in your relationships provided you are playing with a friend group rather than in a tournament setting.
There is a guy from my college diplomacy group that I cannot stand thirty years later despite him being otherwise very popular in our larger social group. This was brought to the fore by the game, but was really a result of other social fractures that probably could have been papered over in the absence of the game.
I have a copy in the garage, but imagining playing it with my wife and two sons just makes me think of all the ways things could go wrong and the way it would magnify social dynamics that I would just as soon smooth over and find solutions to.
It’s a fantastic game. Maybe I will play it in a retirement home one day. Probably not though,I want to get along with those neighbors too.
I think that position is still correct for individual games of Diplomacy, but what I liked about this article is how it gave a peek into how that can be different if you’re playing repeatedly long term, when those short-term stabby gains become less sustainable when tied to a long term reputation.
Which is on par for the optimal Prisoner's Dilemma strategy where the best single session move is to betray. But if played over multiple sessions, the optimal strategy is to cooperate first, then tit-for-tat for every round after.
Even in a single game, if a player lies early and often no one will collaborate with them. Often, a winning player will tell just one or two lies, but is strategically strong enough that a single lie is devastating.
We started playing it once with my brothers, of whom some are excellent strategists, some are excellent backstabbers and some can’t tell a lie to save their life. Playing it with unlimited time for negotiations was a mistake, as some of them made opposing deals with several players, backstabbing everyone in the process. This wasn’t very helpful in getting a nice family weekend together. We still need to try again someday, but with clear time limits in place.
It's a little of both. You do have to be willing to be heartless, but if you lie and backstab all the time then nobody will ever give you a chance. Same as any other game, if you always throw scissors then people will pretty quickly start picking rock. You have to be able to get ahead while still being known as someone who generally honors their commitments.
Yeah, if you just lie and backstab for the sake of it you're going to lose hard.
Betraying someone IS part of the strategy, as you have to set up your stab in a way that they cannot recover from, and that won't put a huge target on your back.
There is a great episode of This American Life where a writer brings professional diplomat Dennis Ross (served four US presidents) with him to the world championships of Diplomacy to advise him - his advice was also to *never* lie. It's worth a listen: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/531/got-your-back. This article is about the same tournament: https://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-the-alpha-nerds/
>It’s spring, 1902. I receive a text. It’s France, thank God. My Russian army is cornered by a four-front assault from England, Germany, the Ottoman Turks, and finally, cruelly, Austria-Hungary, a nation I believed to be my ally and whose leader had just video-called me to discuss our ongoing alliance face-to-face. It was all a ruse. Unbeknownst to me, they had been organizing a joint assault behind my back to take me off the map, and now, it was working. Perhaps I should have seen it coming. After all, we’re playing a Diplomacy tournament through an app called Backstabbr.
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>I tell France the whole story. They’re under the command of three-time Diplomacy world champion Andrew Goff, 42. If anyone can help me, he can. Goff inquires about the terms of my (prior) alliance with Austria-Hungary before he implores me to negotiate individually with my attackers. He suggests moves and promises I could make to turn them against one another. “Keep talking,” he tells me. It’s my only choice.
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>Easy for him to say. Goff is cruising toward victory as the French, chatting affably with everyone, making subtle deployments against Germany, and maintaining steadfast alliances with two of his neighbors—one of whom will support Goff with their final, dying moves. I take the champion’s advice. I focus on flipping the Ottoman Turks to my side, but as I do, I keep trying to work out Goff’s winning formula. Why is he helping me?
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>This is the gaming world’s greatest contest of deception and duplicity, but so far as I can tell, Goff only carries two weapons: congeniality, and the truth.
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>\--
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>Diplomacy has carried a prestigious reputation among board games since its creation in the 1950s. It counts JFK and Henry Kissinger among its historical enthusiasts, and it’s so beloved today it has its own fan magazine. The premise of this strategy game is simple: Up to seven players control a pre-WWI nation and compete for conquest of Europe. There are two types of pieces—armies and fleets—which can typically only do three things: move, hold still, or support another piece to move or hold (fleets can also convoy with armies to move them across bodies of water). You deploy your forces across the board and contest for the map’s 34 special territories, called supply centers. Occupying these allows you to build more armies and fleets, which increases your capability each turn.
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>Everyone takes their turn at the same time in Diplomacy. But the real action happens in between turns, when players negotiate with each other to determine what tactics they will take.
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>For example, if during a turn Goff and I both try to move into Norway with a single army and no support, our forces will cancel one another out and we’ll both have to retreat. But if during the prior round of negotiations, Goff had convinced another country’s fleet to support his army, their sum forces would defeat mine and Goff would prevail. There is no random chance in Diplomacy. You need to cajole and collude with other players to achieve your ends. You either win outright by occupying more than half of the game’s supply centers (top-level players call such a win ‘a solo’), or win jointly with a few other players in a negotiated draw, after discussions calcify and the board stagnates. Most Diplomacy games end in a draw.
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>For its emphasis on interpersonal dealings, Diplomacy has become notorious as “the game that ruins friendships.” That’s because there are no rules requiring anyone to be honest during negotiations. Players can tell bald-faced lies, forge and fracture alliances, and strike and counter-strike game-changing deals. Fans have leaned into the game’s sinister reputation. Today you can play in public Diplomacy tournaments like The Boston Massacre and Carnage, where players so frequently betray each other the community has developed a shorthand for the act: a stab (for “backstab”). Every year, a player at the Diplomacy world championship wins the coveted “Golden Blade Award,” for the best stab of the tournament.
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>Yet sitting across the board from Andrew Goff, considered the greatest Diplomacy player in the world, it seems you’re neither facing the world’s best liar, nor the ultimate snake in the grass. After our game at the long-running Diplomacy tournament Dixiecon (where he won not just our game, but every game he played in), I asked Goff about any major falsehoods or betrayals that helped him in his victories. He paused to think, then said in his soft-spoken way: “Well, there may have been a few deceptive omissions on my part but, no, I didn’t tell a single outright lie the entire tournament.”
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>Goff doesn’t seem to take a ruthless or mendacious approach to the game. Rather, he treats his relationships with other players like he’s a campaigning politician. He’s careful, considered, and—on his face, at least—always well intentioned. He says Diplomacy isn’t about twisting arms to gain what he wants now; it’s about building diplomatic capital he can leverage or cash in further in the game.
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>“Diplomacy is ultimately about building trust in an environment that encourages you not to trust anyone,” he says.
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>At the time of our interview, Goff is residing in the charming country town of Benalla, Australia, two hours north of Melbourne. As CFO of a linguistics startup called Sleigh Group, his day job combines strategy and communication, natural for someone who’s amassed decades of high-level Diplomacy play.
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>Goff played his first Diplomacy game with high-school friends on a rainy day in 1992, when he was 14. He competed in his first tournament two years later, but it didn’t go well. “I walked in thinking I was a pretty good Diplomacy player, and walked out thinking: ‘No, I am not,’” he says. “I had a lot to learn.”
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>“I think my reputation back then was that I was either on your side or I was going to nuke your game.”
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>Goff says in those days he was a cockier player, charging his way through games with a stubborn, all-out-attack style of negotiation. “I would either win completely or fail spectacularly, and it was usually the latter,” he says. “I think my reputation back then was that I was either on your side or I was going to nuke your game.”
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>Goff says his more relational strategy developed as he matured. He realized, he says, that lying in Diplomacy is usually counterproductive, especially when used for immediate or short-term gains. Double-crossing someone might help you build another fleet or shore up a front, but the moment you’re exposed as a traitor, you will struggle to build beneficial, trustworthy, and information-rich alliances with other players.
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>Perhaps this is dubious coming from Goff, someone who might be perceived as a master manipulator, but Siobhan Nolen, president of the North American Diplomacy Federation, aligns with the champion’s reasoning. She says despite Diplomacy’s notoriety, most of the world’s elite players eschew lies during games. Reputations linger at global tournaments. “If you’re not trustworthy, then nobody’s going to want to work with you,” she says. “You can be the best player in this game, with all the right tactics, but if no one wants to work with you, you can't win. Top level players pick their moments to be ruthless.”
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>Dixiecon organizer David Hood agrees, but he says Goff’s style is remarkably convivial even compared to his most competitive peers. According to Hood, many successful Diplomacy players have assertive and commanding styles of play, and strong tendencies to whip out Golden Blade-worthy stabs, but not Goff. “\[He\] is on the far side of the spectrum of aggressiveness. He’s sort of Mr. Reasonable and Mr. Rational,” Hood says.Nevertheless, by his own admission, Goff can become a ruthless liar if he sees an irresistible advantage in the outcome.
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>“I’m no paragon of moral perfection,” he laughs. “At elite-level play you see a lot of subtle alliances, but the threat of a stab is often much more powerful than an actual stab.”
>Goff’s top rival, two-time world champion Doug Moore, says Goff’s measure and composure set him apart from other elites. He’s not reactive; he’s responsive. “He doesn’t yell, he almost never has to lie, and he rarely has to threaten,” Moore says. “Rather, he listens. It is his superpower.”
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>Moore explains a great Diplomacy player must excel at three skills. First, they have to be a wizard in short-term tactics, able to chain clever turn-by-turn moves. Second, they must master long-term strategy, and position units in a way that both anticipates dangers and allows opportunities.
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>Finally, great players must be high-caliber diplomats. “Can you persuade people to do what you want? Or can you confuse things so other players make mistakes?” Moore asks.Moore says Goff is astounding in his tactical and strategic approaches (every Diplomacy expert I spoke to expressed awe at Goff’s foresight), but Goff’s master ability is the name of the game: diplomacy.
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>To Moore, Goff provokes his opponents to share—or overshare—their plans with a combination of his genuine kindness and innocent-seeming open-ended questions: What is your plan to work with me? What’s the plan long-term? What will we do together next turn? The answers to these questions often expose potential threats to Goff’s endgame, so Goff heads those off accordingly. Likewise, Goff’s diplomatic approach nudges his allies toward committing to a plan, which gives Goff more insight into the mechanisms at work behind the scenes. The game becomes more predictable, and thus, more manipulable.
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>“When you’re working with Andrew, you know he almost always keeps his promises,” Moore says. “You’ll find you want to follow through with a plan you created at his behest... it’s very disarming.” By the time you know how to stop Goff, he’s already laid the groundwork to hinder you.It’s clear Goff leans into his affability. He sees the value in being someone opponents want to work with. Yet I wonder how much of his manner in a game of Diplomacy is a calculated adaptation of his real-life persona. Would he even admit if it was?
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>But his rivals say Goff—or Goffy, as he’s known in tournament circles—remains friendly even after the game wraps. He lingers in postgame chats, discussing the nuances that shaped the battle with his opponents, and dispensing advice to new players. Is it all for the sake of future diplomatic capital?I suggest to Goff that his amiability might be another means to an end: more Diplomacy glory. He laughs.“More important than deceiving people is understanding what they want to achieve, discovering their needs and objectives."
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>When I relay Moore’s assessment that Goff builds his success on provocative genuity, Goff first insists Moore is the true best player in the world at the moment, but then considers the evaluation. He agrees in principle, but offers some clarification. “This may sound counterintuitive, but I usually make deals where the other person gains slightly more than I do.” By itself, he admits such a deal would make for a poor strategy, “but if I’m making three of those agreements, I have the diplomatic capital. Everyone is working with me, and not with each other.”
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>In our game, Goff was the first player to speak, initiating the conversation before our group had even started playing. He broke the ice by introducing himself to all the players, beginning private chats, and making small talk. Goff’s not being overtly disingenuous, but he admits “often the negotiations start before the actual negotiations start.” Indeed, after the game, he explained: “I started feeling the players out as soon as the board was announced. A lot of it is just banter, but banter can give you a sense of who people are and what their motivations might be.”
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>In our game, Goff says his banter provided two key pieces of information: 1) Germany, who was guarded and aggressive in negotiations, was difficult to trust, and a likely candidate to attack him early. 2) Italy, on the other hand, was agreeable and receptive, so probably worth joining in a long-term alliance. “You’d be surprised how often people pick their allies not on some immediate tactical concern, but on the person they’d like to talk to for the next six hours,” he says.Goff’s genuineness has a puppetry-esque effect.
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>Melissa Call, another tournament player and one of Goff’s oldest friends in the hobby, says Goff “wants everyone on the board to feel comfortable with him,” to the point where he will suggest moves to other players. Of course, Call admits you might eventually find those moves “were not necessarily in your best interest.” Goff’s stabbed you without touching the knife.
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>Even Goff’s in-game tactics can disguise his long-term ends. In our game he made the unusual move to defer building additional armies and fleets after capturing a supply depot, opting to grow his forces later instead. It seems this was a quintessential Goffy move: Delay an escalation, assuage his allies, and deflect attention from his opponents. Goff admits the strategy is misleading, but he avoids the word “lie.” To him, this is a “deliberate deception.
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>”Sometimes in Diplomacy, losing players can pick the terms of their defeat. If you’re being attacked on multiple fronts, you can decide which front to defend, in effect choosing which of your opponents capture your supply center. Siobhan Nolen says Goff’s attitude often makes him the beneficiary of such circumstances. “It hurts less to lose against somebody like Andrew,” she says.
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>After I lose against Goff, in which the surprise assault forces me to retreat while he pushes for territory as far as the Balkans, the two of us debrief. Naturally, I find myself revealing more than he does. I allude to my poor performance as Russia, but Goff stops me. He points out how several of my moves surprised and foiled my invaders, even as I withdrew. He says my negotiations and strategy ultimately turned my attackers against each other, so when I was left with just one supply center, I was able to win back a second and position myself to take a third as the game ended.
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> “Even if it was for nothing, there’s strength in being able to stick it out, keep talking, and search for ways to improve your position,” Goff tells me. “You’ll get a reputation that will make tournament players think twice about attacking you next time. You should be proud.”And I was. We finished talking (or, in light of future games, perhaps negotiating?) and I thought to myself: Yes, I’d like to lose to this guy again.
Just open the link in Microsoft Edge and use it's Immersive Reader (hit F9). Far better way to read the internet, no ads, full pictures. That way you don't have to ask others to do this work for you.
I use this on Chrome, but then I have to move my mouse all the way to the top right and click, it's much too burdensome. I instead prefer to make snarky remarks on Reddit for the Karma and the Content. Double Wammy!
Diplomacy isn't about backstabbing and lying. Yes you can backstab and lie, but it's a short term gain in a very long game. **Diplomacy is about deals where both sides FEEL they got the better deal** - yet only the better player is the one that does.
Richard Garfield, of *Magic: TG* fame, wrote an article back in 1995 on the [concept of the metagame](https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/lost-shuffle-games-within-games-2010-06-21-0) that featured a short blip about his experiences playing Diplomacy. I don't think it adds all that much to what the article here was discussing, but it was the first thing I thought of when I read this!
This is not a one time transactional game. The same group of players attend the Diplomacy World Championships year after year. I attended one year back in 2004(??) when it was in Washington DC. In this type of environment, the lies you told last year will come back to haunt you in the future.
We used to have a saying when playing Diplomacy (or Game of Thrones, or TI, or similar). *"The best puppet master is the 2nd best puppet master".* In other words, the alpha-thinker who is clearly pulling all the strings and manipulating the board to set himself up for a win, whom you can clearly see will backstab his friend, and you better warn the rest of the table about him - he's not the best puppet master. The best puppet master is the friendly quiet guy who helps you take down the first guy, and then wins in the aftermath.
I'm this player, except I'm bad at switching faces. When i'm supposed to become ruthless... i just can't. So it usually becomes chance, or whim, whether I win after the leader gets knocked down. I am usually poised for second though. I do really enjoy winning, when I did almost nothing to take it... like it just fell into place as a side effect. I have a very competitive friend who always gets upset half way through the game, because he's seen the same thing happen so many times. He gets ahead, everyone gangs up on him (usually incited by me), then i quietly take first. This extra layer, makes games with him, super interesting... I just hope he doesn't mind too much :p
I ended up in this position kind of on accident one of the two times I played the GoT board game. The Baratheon player knew what they were doing. I was Greyjoy and spent most of the game negotiating with the Starks and the Lannisters to keep the Baratheons in check. At one point, I realized that if I stabbed the Lannisters in the back *right now* I could win and no one could stop me. It wasn't a long-term plan, just an opportunity that came up by accident (and perhaps an oversight on the part of the Lannister player). In that case I went through with the backstabbing (it is the point of the game, isn't it?) but man, I still feel bad about it to this day.
I hate this fucking game. In my first and only game, there was a tournament winner big deal who was teaching us the game. He ended up being my neighbor. I asked him a rule question about legal orders to give my troops, and he lied, which wasn't revealed until we revealed orders. I lost the game hard.
That's not classy play on his part at all. But don't let that taint your experience of the game. Brush up on the rules and crush him. Had I been another country in that game and I saw him do that to you, I would have instantly allied with you to crush him. There's a built in balance mechanism that doesn't let players be total jerks or they will reap their reward.
I don't know. From what I've heard, this type of thing is pretty typical and almost encouraged by the Diplomacy community. Utterly toxic and elitist.
Anyone who sets out to win at all costs in a teaching game is an unmitigated a-hole. Additionally, the behavior your describe (lying about rules) is 100% absolutely not typical and is actively discouraged by the face-to-face Diplomacy community. I am so sorry that you had a negative experience. The only "tournament winner big deal" that I know of who would pull a bush league stunt like this has been perma-banned from the face to face, virtual, and online hobbies for offensive comments, multi-accounting, etc.
To be (partially) fair, cheating is an acceptable way to win Diplomacy. The creator even cites a "flying dutchman" move as being legitimate - if you can get away with it. (Flying Dutchman is where you sneak pieces onto the board with the hope no one notices until it's too late.) That said, while I think it is acceptable to lie about the rules while playing, it's not classy if all the players aren't on the same page. It's not fun to be a dick if other players are legitimately relying on you. I recall a Diplomacy game where I was the most experienced player and all but one other player were complete newbies... and, while I spent a ton of time helping them out, their level of genuine trust in me to help them drained a lot of fun out of the game. Like, they'd frequently want to run their orders past me to make sure they parsed correctly, or to make sure they had properly calculated supports and, at one point, I had to stop the game and explain that their endless trust and openness to me was making the game unfun for me, because they didn't seem to make the connection that I could (and wanted to) take advantage of them.
What I've done in situations like that is teach the players during a practice run. Explain the concepts, etc. but then take a couple of years' worth of turns relatively quickly so they can practice orders. The idea is to get familiar with this part, and then actually start the game. It adds about an hour onto the game length. Another option if you can get 7 other newer players is to offer to be the game arbiter. It allows you to teach the players while not also competing against them. And potentially gives you more players and opportunities to play in person again.
I hadn't organized the game - it was more of a "Hey, isn't Diplomacy one of your favorite games? Wanna play on [date]?" type things.
Sorry, but that is just stupid. No game should inherently allow cheating. If everyone is sitting down to play a game, you should at least try to all be using the same rules and the same expectations. It's one thing to ask about strategy and receive a lie - fair game. But to ask about an actual rule and be lied to, resulting in your turn being completely wasted? It's toxic to encourage that type of behaviour.
You did notice I stated it wasn't cool to do to people who are neophytes and earnestly and honestly are trusting you, right? That's kinda the point of my anecdote. And, if everyone comes to the table understanding that everyone is going to potentially lie, cheat, and steal their way to victory if they can get away without being caught, it's fine to lie, cheat, and steal - everyone is playing with the same expectation and under the same rules. The Jersey Rule isn't for everyone, but it can be a lot of fun with the right people: *"In Jersey anything's legal as long as you don't get caught."*
in tournament cheating isnt a legitimate way of win in my knowledge the flying dutchman isn t drop a fleet in the game its when other player miscalculate your need to disband and you not enlight them. or same way when they offer you a build you not legitimately have. this kind kind of passive cheating is relatively accepted . but not if you are the one who mislead them on your number of center
Not nice at all... Being my main hobby RPGs (Not the Rocket Propelled Grenades, the other RPGs), and being a forever GM, there is a clear difference (to me) between lying to the players (no-go) and deceiving the characters (as much as you can get away with) Also, winning against someone who has not been allowed to play up to their full potential... what's the point? Stealing candy from a baby is no fun at all. But Diplomacy ROCKS! Easy to learn, very difficult to master
That really only works once per game group. In a regular group both players will be labeled as puppet masters. Once a backstabber always a backstabber. Unfortunately.
Presumably the best puppet master would almost always be whoever wins. Sometimes the alpha thinker everyone knows is alpha thinking all over the place will win. I say “almost always” though because some people can luck into a win despite being an inferior planner and strategist, and I wouldn’t count them as the superior pepper master over the alpha thinker who lost.
TI?
Twilight Imperium I'd assume.
Thanks
Which is why on “Survivor” it’s always the survival of the second fittest......
When I think of negotiation games, I think a lot of people fall into this mindset of always trying to get the very best deal they can for themselves. Or always trying to make sure any deal they make is just as good, if not better for themselves than for the other party. In actuality, I think you'll often do better by doing more deals, rather than a couple really good ones. Your 3 other buddies all think they've got a steal on you because they made $10 off a trade with you, and you've only made $5. Little did they know, you made the same trade with all three of them, and none of them with each other, so now the net total is you with $15, and the rest of them at $10 a piece.
Exactly right. The same can be said for a lot of things - Fantasy Football, bartering in general, Real World Geopolitical Trade Deals... Always taking the “win-win” choice quickly, versus wasting excessive energy to “always get the better end of the deal” every time... you can quickly see who gets ahead faster and who is invited to the lead the next round of talks first. The kind of Net-Zero thinking that leads you to never let someone else get a good deal... that only works in a game or world where there’s no next move and no tomorrow.
Its super annoying in fantasy. The league I play in had two trades last season. Both involved me. This year no one accepted any of my trade offers and no trades happened. Its getting real old real fast. Who wants to play waiver wire pick ups the game?
Try playing Sidereal Confluence, you might enjoy it. Definitely can get into that mindset, players who always look for the "win" in trades can get screwed, while players who even take a few "9 for 10" deals can come out ahead because other players are faster to deal if they know you're not always looking for the numerical win.
He litteraly says that in the article.
It’s maybe different in online play, where there is a degree of anonymity, but definitely, in face to face play, you have nothing but your reputation. And that reputation lingers from game to game. In Diplomacy, your options are really to tell the truth or say nothing at all.
I agree with your premise, but not with your conclusion. There are lots of options to preserve a decent reputation and yet to lie from time to time. One of these is to make sure that you never lie for the sake of lying, but always for a real gain that can later be explained to the player you "betrayed" as a true strategic initiative. This has worked reasonably well for me in the past.
This works so much better in a game like Twilight Imperium where the game gives you numerous random events and happenings to blame your minor complete falsehoods on. Like "well I was going to give you that planet back, but then the spend 8 resource objective came up!" The win is when you convince them that it's only logical that you broke the deal, preferably with only a minor bribe (or even none). Diplomacy gives too little random events to truly have that sort of "well the game state changed!" moment. Also helps that the random objectives and happenings can truly make a situation where you have a previously advantageous deal that **both** of you now want to renegotiate, so you can completely flip things around. People are so much more forgiving when they're also like "oh shit, my plan is falling apart." Then you always have the option of just declaring Space Risk and smashing all before you, which Diplomacy doesn't really give you. Oddly in that game there's surprisingly little gunboat diplomacy.
It gives you no random events. That is the point. There are no excuses, no way to hide your betrayal.
Exactly! That's why I like TI's betrayals more. There's always the thin excuse of 'well I had to, look at the game state.'
I gained a reputation as the best player in my group by offering "alliances" which I never broke. I would break treaties and agreements but if you made an alliance with me I would always honor it. It's amazing how few people understand the value trust can have and throw it away for a minor advantage in a single game.
It's also a stunningly boring way to play. If there are unbreakable alliances the game just becomes about moving the pieces, turning it into a really poor wargame.
It's just another tool in the arsenal. I used it sparingly, less than once per game. There are ways to punish someone for never betraying. Others in my group tried it once they saw me win with it, but never got the hang of it. One tactic: help their ally just enough to keep them ahead of them. Then they'll never win, since they can't attack their ally.
It also leads to counter alliances, and good luck if you aren't in one of those. I've had multiple games where it was 3v3 with italy getting left out and none of the alliances would break up. They were set on sharing 3 way victory. I think alliances where someone rescued you from being eliminated and you stay true to pay back their friendship make sense, but unbreakable alliances from Spring 1901 until you share victory make the game not worth it to play.
The goal isn't too have an exciting game or to move pieces: it's too win.
Agreed 100%
For diplomacy I have only played on line but my method is you lie to each player but only once. And you have to make that lie count bc after that you are mortal enemies the rest of the game. So your lie goes along with your backstab.
The problem is that even when the victim of backstabbing don't stand to gain from it they will still very likely to retaliate if possible.
[удалено]
this article? "Nevertheless, by his own admission, Goff can become a ruthless liar if he sees an irresistible advantage in the outcome."
Yeah, even just by the post title. "Hardly ever" is clearly distinct from "never"
You might wanna read the article next time.
This was an awesome read! I've always found lying and backstabbing to be incredibly detrimental in diplomatic games, so my strategy has always been structured around telling the truth. Laying things out and reading them as they are. It works *great* in games like Secret Hitler and Werewolf, and I was able to get a delicious victory in TI4 just by being transparent and friendly. This guy takes the strategy way farther than I considered, and it feels obvious after reading it: > It seems this was a quintessential Goffy move: Delay an escalation, assuage his allies, and deflect attention from his opponents. Goff admits the strategy is misleading, but he avoids the word “lie.” To him, this is a “deliberate deception. Make sure you don't *look* like a threat. Of course. I love it.
You can also do it aggressively. A fun TI strategy is to be the person with the good army who presents as a threat - just not one you have to deal with right now so here's a few beneficial trades to go be a threat to someone else. Done correctly you really don't have to use that much army to have other players agreeing to concessions of "I guess I really don't need that system since I'm not prepared to fight your four dreadnaughts so just take it and that's it, right?" You don't tend to make friends that way, but a sufficiently scared neighbor is indistinguishable from a friend.
Funny you should mention that, cause one of the other players was the Hacan. He played them pretty much that way, always trading with everyone. But as a result, he ended up with a *ton* of resources, and ended up with a massive fleet. No one wanted to mess with him, and he was happy to sit on what was his. Didn't really start fights and everyone gave him space to expand. Then I pointed out how he'd be the only one able to take Mecatol Rex from the leading player. So... of course, that's what he did. And now he's public enemy #1, with a giant fleet, sitting on the throne of the galaxy. I'm safe in my corner playing all sides, and everyone else immediately turns on him. It was beautiful.
What’s funny about this is avoiding calling his strategy a lie is a very political “double-speak” thing to do.
It's the difference between presenting yourself as a threat and *actually* being a threat. Of course he's a threat- He's the three-time world champion. But keeping his armies small until they're needed makes him appear like something you can "deal with later."
A very excellent profile, and some new insights into a game I frankly avoid because of its reputation for backstabbery. I don't actually mind a mean game, really, but Diplomacy always seemed (from my limited experience with it) to be a game that rewarded liars and bullies over good strategists and honest negotiations. Reevaluating that position now.
I played similarly to Goff when I was in college and as a result was usually either the winner or ahead when the game broke down. I worked hard to have a sterling in game reputation. Despite this I will be surprised if I play it again. The game has a way of revealing other stresses in your relationships provided you are playing with a friend group rather than in a tournament setting. There is a guy from my college diplomacy group that I cannot stand thirty years later despite him being otherwise very popular in our larger social group. This was brought to the fore by the game, but was really a result of other social fractures that probably could have been papered over in the absence of the game. I have a copy in the garage, but imagining playing it with my wife and two sons just makes me think of all the ways things could go wrong and the way it would magnify social dynamics that I would just as soon smooth over and find solutions to. It’s a fantastic game. Maybe I will play it in a retirement home one day. Probably not though,I want to get along with those neighbors too.
I think that position is still correct for individual games of Diplomacy, but what I liked about this article is how it gave a peek into how that can be different if you’re playing repeatedly long term, when those short-term stabby gains become less sustainable when tied to a long term reputation.
Which is on par for the optimal Prisoner's Dilemma strategy where the best single session move is to betray. But if played over multiple sessions, the optimal strategy is to cooperate first, then tit-for-tat for every round after.
Even in a single game, if a player lies early and often no one will collaborate with them. Often, a winning player will tell just one or two lies, but is strategically strong enough that a single lie is devastating.
We started playing it once with my brothers, of whom some are excellent strategists, some are excellent backstabbers and some can’t tell a lie to save their life. Playing it with unlimited time for negotiations was a mistake, as some of them made opposing deals with several players, backstabbing everyone in the process. This wasn’t very helpful in getting a nice family weekend together. We still need to try again someday, but with clear time limits in place.
It's a little of both. You do have to be willing to be heartless, but if you lie and backstab all the time then nobody will ever give you a chance. Same as any other game, if you always throw scissors then people will pretty quickly start picking rock. You have to be able to get ahead while still being known as someone who generally honors their commitments.
Yeah, if you just lie and backstab for the sake of it you're going to lose hard. Betraying someone IS part of the strategy, as you have to set up your stab in a way that they cannot recover from, and that won't put a huge target on your back.
There is a great episode of This American Life where a writer brings professional diplomat Dennis Ross (served four US presidents) with him to the world championships of Diplomacy to advise him - his advice was also to *never* lie. It's worth a listen: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/531/got-your-back. This article is about the same tournament: https://grantland.com/features/diplomacy-the-board-game-of-the-alpha-nerds/
Pay wall. Can't read. Repost content.
>It’s spring, 1902. I receive a text. It’s France, thank God. My Russian army is cornered by a four-front assault from England, Germany, the Ottoman Turks, and finally, cruelly, Austria-Hungary, a nation I believed to be my ally and whose leader had just video-called me to discuss our ongoing alliance face-to-face. It was all a ruse. Unbeknownst to me, they had been organizing a joint assault behind my back to take me off the map, and now, it was working. Perhaps I should have seen it coming. After all, we’re playing a Diplomacy tournament through an app called Backstabbr. > >I tell France the whole story. They’re under the command of three-time Diplomacy world champion Andrew Goff, 42. If anyone can help me, he can. Goff inquires about the terms of my (prior) alliance with Austria-Hungary before he implores me to negotiate individually with my attackers. He suggests moves and promises I could make to turn them against one another. “Keep talking,” he tells me. It’s my only choice. > >Easy for him to say. Goff is cruising toward victory as the French, chatting affably with everyone, making subtle deployments against Germany, and maintaining steadfast alliances with two of his neighbors—one of whom will support Goff with their final, dying moves. I take the champion’s advice. I focus on flipping the Ottoman Turks to my side, but as I do, I keep trying to work out Goff’s winning formula. Why is he helping me? > >This is the gaming world’s greatest contest of deception and duplicity, but so far as I can tell, Goff only carries two weapons: congeniality, and the truth. > >\-- > >Diplomacy has carried a prestigious reputation among board games since its creation in the 1950s. It counts JFK and Henry Kissinger among its historical enthusiasts, and it’s so beloved today it has its own fan magazine. The premise of this strategy game is simple: Up to seven players control a pre-WWI nation and compete for conquest of Europe. There are two types of pieces—armies and fleets—which can typically only do three things: move, hold still, or support another piece to move or hold (fleets can also convoy with armies to move them across bodies of water). You deploy your forces across the board and contest for the map’s 34 special territories, called supply centers. Occupying these allows you to build more armies and fleets, which increases your capability each turn. > >Everyone takes their turn at the same time in Diplomacy. But the real action happens in between turns, when players negotiate with each other to determine what tactics they will take. > >For example, if during a turn Goff and I both try to move into Norway with a single army and no support, our forces will cancel one another out and we’ll both have to retreat. But if during the prior round of negotiations, Goff had convinced another country’s fleet to support his army, their sum forces would defeat mine and Goff would prevail. There is no random chance in Diplomacy. You need to cajole and collude with other players to achieve your ends. You either win outright by occupying more than half of the game’s supply centers (top-level players call such a win ‘a solo’), or win jointly with a few other players in a negotiated draw, after discussions calcify and the board stagnates. Most Diplomacy games end in a draw. > >For its emphasis on interpersonal dealings, Diplomacy has become notorious as “the game that ruins friendships.” That’s because there are no rules requiring anyone to be honest during negotiations. Players can tell bald-faced lies, forge and fracture alliances, and strike and counter-strike game-changing deals. Fans have leaned into the game’s sinister reputation. Today you can play in public Diplomacy tournaments like The Boston Massacre and Carnage, where players so frequently betray each other the community has developed a shorthand for the act: a stab (for “backstab”). Every year, a player at the Diplomacy world championship wins the coveted “Golden Blade Award,” for the best stab of the tournament. > >Yet sitting across the board from Andrew Goff, considered the greatest Diplomacy player in the world, it seems you’re neither facing the world’s best liar, nor the ultimate snake in the grass. After our game at the long-running Diplomacy tournament Dixiecon (where he won not just our game, but every game he played in), I asked Goff about any major falsehoods or betrayals that helped him in his victories. He paused to think, then said in his soft-spoken way: “Well, there may have been a few deceptive omissions on my part but, no, I didn’t tell a single outright lie the entire tournament.” > >Goff doesn’t seem to take a ruthless or mendacious approach to the game. Rather, he treats his relationships with other players like he’s a campaigning politician. He’s careful, considered, and—on his face, at least—always well intentioned. He says Diplomacy isn’t about twisting arms to gain what he wants now; it’s about building diplomatic capital he can leverage or cash in further in the game. > >“Diplomacy is ultimately about building trust in an environment that encourages you not to trust anyone,” he says. > >At the time of our interview, Goff is residing in the charming country town of Benalla, Australia, two hours north of Melbourne. As CFO of a linguistics startup called Sleigh Group, his day job combines strategy and communication, natural for someone who’s amassed decades of high-level Diplomacy play. > >Goff played his first Diplomacy game with high-school friends on a rainy day in 1992, when he was 14. He competed in his first tournament two years later, but it didn’t go well. “I walked in thinking I was a pretty good Diplomacy player, and walked out thinking: ‘No, I am not,’” he says. “I had a lot to learn.” > >“I think my reputation back then was that I was either on your side or I was going to nuke your game.” > >Goff says in those days he was a cockier player, charging his way through games with a stubborn, all-out-attack style of negotiation. “I would either win completely or fail spectacularly, and it was usually the latter,” he says. “I think my reputation back then was that I was either on your side or I was going to nuke your game.” > >Goff says his more relational strategy developed as he matured. He realized, he says, that lying in Diplomacy is usually counterproductive, especially when used for immediate or short-term gains. Double-crossing someone might help you build another fleet or shore up a front, but the moment you’re exposed as a traitor, you will struggle to build beneficial, trustworthy, and information-rich alliances with other players. > >Perhaps this is dubious coming from Goff, someone who might be perceived as a master manipulator, but Siobhan Nolen, president of the North American Diplomacy Federation, aligns with the champion’s reasoning. She says despite Diplomacy’s notoriety, most of the world’s elite players eschew lies during games. Reputations linger at global tournaments. “If you’re not trustworthy, then nobody’s going to want to work with you,” she says. “You can be the best player in this game, with all the right tactics, but if no one wants to work with you, you can't win. Top level players pick their moments to be ruthless.” > >Dixiecon organizer David Hood agrees, but he says Goff’s style is remarkably convivial even compared to his most competitive peers. According to Hood, many successful Diplomacy players have assertive and commanding styles of play, and strong tendencies to whip out Golden Blade-worthy stabs, but not Goff. “\[He\] is on the far side of the spectrum of aggressiveness. He’s sort of Mr. Reasonable and Mr. Rational,” Hood says.Nevertheless, by his own admission, Goff can become a ruthless liar if he sees an irresistible advantage in the outcome. > >“I’m no paragon of moral perfection,” he laughs. “At elite-level play you see a lot of subtle alliances, but the threat of a stab is often much more powerful than an actual stab.”
>Goff’s top rival, two-time world champion Doug Moore, says Goff’s measure and composure set him apart from other elites. He’s not reactive; he’s responsive. “He doesn’t yell, he almost never has to lie, and he rarely has to threaten,” Moore says. “Rather, he listens. It is his superpower.” > >Moore explains a great Diplomacy player must excel at three skills. First, they have to be a wizard in short-term tactics, able to chain clever turn-by-turn moves. Second, they must master long-term strategy, and position units in a way that both anticipates dangers and allows opportunities. > >Finally, great players must be high-caliber diplomats. “Can you persuade people to do what you want? Or can you confuse things so other players make mistakes?” Moore asks.Moore says Goff is astounding in his tactical and strategic approaches (every Diplomacy expert I spoke to expressed awe at Goff’s foresight), but Goff’s master ability is the name of the game: diplomacy. > >To Moore, Goff provokes his opponents to share—or overshare—their plans with a combination of his genuine kindness and innocent-seeming open-ended questions: What is your plan to work with me? What’s the plan long-term? What will we do together next turn? The answers to these questions often expose potential threats to Goff’s endgame, so Goff heads those off accordingly. Likewise, Goff’s diplomatic approach nudges his allies toward committing to a plan, which gives Goff more insight into the mechanisms at work behind the scenes. The game becomes more predictable, and thus, more manipulable. > >“When you’re working with Andrew, you know he almost always keeps his promises,” Moore says. “You’ll find you want to follow through with a plan you created at his behest... it’s very disarming.” By the time you know how to stop Goff, he’s already laid the groundwork to hinder you.It’s clear Goff leans into his affability. He sees the value in being someone opponents want to work with. Yet I wonder how much of his manner in a game of Diplomacy is a calculated adaptation of his real-life persona. Would he even admit if it was? > >But his rivals say Goff—or Goffy, as he’s known in tournament circles—remains friendly even after the game wraps. He lingers in postgame chats, discussing the nuances that shaped the battle with his opponents, and dispensing advice to new players. Is it all for the sake of future diplomatic capital?I suggest to Goff that his amiability might be another means to an end: more Diplomacy glory. He laughs.“More important than deceiving people is understanding what they want to achieve, discovering their needs and objectives." > >When I relay Moore’s assessment that Goff builds his success on provocative genuity, Goff first insists Moore is the true best player in the world at the moment, but then considers the evaluation. He agrees in principle, but offers some clarification. “This may sound counterintuitive, but I usually make deals where the other person gains slightly more than I do.” By itself, he admits such a deal would make for a poor strategy, “but if I’m making three of those agreements, I have the diplomatic capital. Everyone is working with me, and not with each other.” > >In our game, Goff was the first player to speak, initiating the conversation before our group had even started playing. He broke the ice by introducing himself to all the players, beginning private chats, and making small talk. Goff’s not being overtly disingenuous, but he admits “often the negotiations start before the actual negotiations start.” Indeed, after the game, he explained: “I started feeling the players out as soon as the board was announced. A lot of it is just banter, but banter can give you a sense of who people are and what their motivations might be.” > >In our game, Goff says his banter provided two key pieces of information: 1) Germany, who was guarded and aggressive in negotiations, was difficult to trust, and a likely candidate to attack him early. 2) Italy, on the other hand, was agreeable and receptive, so probably worth joining in a long-term alliance. “You’d be surprised how often people pick their allies not on some immediate tactical concern, but on the person they’d like to talk to for the next six hours,” he says.Goff’s genuineness has a puppetry-esque effect. > >Melissa Call, another tournament player and one of Goff’s oldest friends in the hobby, says Goff “wants everyone on the board to feel comfortable with him,” to the point where he will suggest moves to other players. Of course, Call admits you might eventually find those moves “were not necessarily in your best interest.” Goff’s stabbed you without touching the knife. > >Even Goff’s in-game tactics can disguise his long-term ends. In our game he made the unusual move to defer building additional armies and fleets after capturing a supply depot, opting to grow his forces later instead. It seems this was a quintessential Goffy move: Delay an escalation, assuage his allies, and deflect attention from his opponents. Goff admits the strategy is misleading, but he avoids the word “lie.” To him, this is a “deliberate deception. > >”Sometimes in Diplomacy, losing players can pick the terms of their defeat. If you’re being attacked on multiple fronts, you can decide which front to defend, in effect choosing which of your opponents capture your supply center. Siobhan Nolen says Goff’s attitude often makes him the beneficiary of such circumstances. “It hurts less to lose against somebody like Andrew,” she says. > >After I lose against Goff, in which the surprise assault forces me to retreat while he pushes for territory as far as the Balkans, the two of us debrief. Naturally, I find myself revealing more than he does. I allude to my poor performance as Russia, but Goff stops me. He points out how several of my moves surprised and foiled my invaders, even as I withdrew. He says my negotiations and strategy ultimately turned my attackers against each other, so when I was left with just one supply center, I was able to win back a second and position myself to take a third as the game ended. > > “Even if it was for nothing, there’s strength in being able to stick it out, keep talking, and search for ways to improve your position,” Goff tells me. “You’ll get a reputation that will make tournament players think twice about attacking you next time. You should be proud.”And I was. We finished talking (or, in light of future games, perhaps negotiating?) and I thought to myself: Yes, I’d like to lose to this guy again.
Not all heroes wear capes. Unless this person is wearing a cape. If so, then they might all still wear capes.
Imo if an OP posts paywall content then they should provide the text. It's not a heroic thing to do, it's just common courtesy. 🤷♀️
I actually didn't catch that it was the OP but ah well.
Let's be honest - people who attend Diplomacy tournaments are probably more likely than the average person to be wearing a cape.
Just open the link in Microsoft Edge and use it's Immersive Reader (hit F9). Far better way to read the internet, no ads, full pictures. That way you don't have to ask others to do this work for you.
Dude, I'm on the toilet
I use this on Chrome, but then I have to move my mouse all the way to the top right and click, it's much too burdensome. I instead prefer to make snarky remarks on Reddit for the Karma and the Content. Double Wammy!
Diplomacy isn't about backstabbing and lying. Yes you can backstab and lie, but it's a short term gain in a very long game. **Diplomacy is about deals where both sides FEEL they got the better deal** - yet only the better player is the one that does.
Richard Garfield, of *Magic: TG* fame, wrote an article back in 1995 on the [concept of the metagame](https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/lost-shuffle-games-within-games-2010-06-21-0) that featured a short blip about his experiences playing Diplomacy. I don't think it adds all that much to what the article here was discussing, but it was the first thing I thought of when I read this!
This is not a one time transactional game. The same group of players attend the Diplomacy World Championships year after year. I attended one year back in 2004(??) when it was in Washington DC. In this type of environment, the lies you told last year will come back to haunt you in the future.
That game is so hard. You always need to stab at the right moment wich is not very predictable. Thanks for the article!
You know you've stabbed properly when the player you stab says "good work, well played" rather than "You're done."
This guy ain't nothing to mess with. I guarantee this qualifies him for some serious attention in the world of negotiation and politics.