A communications/negotiations game

If you are anything like me and browsing around with no real purpose in mind (easy ;-) ) read on..
If you have seen and enjoyed movies like Enemy at the Gates, Schindlers List and old Bond movies you had better read on.

Oh and also required is a passing interest in European history and geography during the early 20th century i.e the period of the world wars.

Diplomacy is a game set in Europe, with 7 players representing the 7 major powers of that time i.e UK, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia and Turkey. The entire rule set is beyond the scope of this blog and can be found here, instead i am going to just give you a brief overview of the game to get you all excited about it.

Diplomacy begins with all 7 powers equally poised, i.e they all have 3 army or fleet units. And every unit is equal in strength so there is no scope for individual heroics or (hollywood like!) one man armies who can defeat everybody else.

The only way for a unit to defeat another unit and the game to progress is when 2 or more units collaboratively attack a single unit (If 3 units fight against 2 units the side with 3 units wins and so on).

The beauty of the game is that initially none of the powers have enough units to launch offensive attacks by themselves, thus begin pacts, counter-pacts horse trading and back stabbings.

The game progresses with the 7 great powers expanding there region of influence and ends when one power obtains control of 18 units out of the initial 34 units ( 3 into 7 plus 12 neutral plus R gets one extra unit).

Diplomacy can be played as a board game or online (at www.phpdiplomacy.net) with players spread all over the internet and the only way to contact the other players is via the inbuilt message system.

Do not expect any exciting animations or gut wrenching action on this site, the beauty of the game is that every move (representing 6 months of actual time) takes 24 hours. So basically you get that much time to make pacts and talk to other players and finalize your moves.

So go on! here is your chance to make history its free and fun.

Oh and before i forget the legal stuff, a company called Avalon hill holds the copyright for this. game. There are plenty of other sites offering this game, you are free to explore.