Robert Bracey
United Kingdom
London
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Apparently if I'm playing Germany I am twice as likely to get a solo win as I am if I play Italy, but just as likely to get a draw.
Apparently if I'm Russia 30% of players play Mos-Ukr; War-Gal; StP-GoB; Sev-BLA on their first turn - which means 30% are likely to irritate both Turkey and Austria.
Do I care about any of this?
Somebody does, Steve Doubleday and Richard Sharp spent a lot of time collating these sorts of statistics, which seems to be the main source of information that floats around unreferenced on the internet. Interestingly very few of the online diplomacy sites collate much in the way of stats even though it could be automated relatively easily. So most players seem not to care.
In a sense I wonder what I am supposed to do with this sort of information if I do have it. I read an interesting article which (based on a small sample) showed the Germany was eliminated in every single game where it managed to grab Belgium-Holland and Denmark. I had a think about it, if I had a chance of grabbing all three centres in Fall '01 would I turn it down?
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Jasper B
Netherlands
Leiden
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Each game creates it's own dynamic, so in that respect, I have not found the statistics to be very instructive. However they can help to predict certain patterns or to interpret the strategic picture. If you know that a bounce in the black sea and a northern opening by Russia in spring 1901 usually means victory by Turkish / Russian alliance, that is usefull info. The risks is internalising these statistics which can close your mind to other possibilities.
The site www.dipbounced.com has a nice statistics page, according to which Germany has about 15% change to win (meaning solo or part of the draw) from a sample of over 3800 games with various press settings (including gunboat).
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Eric
United States
Maumee
Ohio
God created Arrakis to train the faithful.
All persons are contained within a single individual, just as all time is in a moment, and the entire universe is in a grain of sand. -Fremen Saying
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RobertBr wrote:
Apparently if I'm playing Germany I am twice as likely to get a solo win as I am if I play Italy, but just as likely to get a draw.
Apparently if I'm Russia 30% of players play Mos-Ukr; War-Gal; StP-GoB; Sev-BLA on their first turn - which means 30% are likely to irritate both Turkey and Austria.
Do I care about any of this?
Somebody does, Steve Doubleday and Richard Sharp spent a lot of time collating these sorts of statistics, which seems to be the main source of information that floats around unreferenced on the internet. Interestingly very few of the online diplomacy sites collate much in the way of stats even though it could be automated relatively easily. So most players seem not to care.
In a sense I wonder what I am supposed to do with this sort of information if I do have it. I read an interesting article which (based on a small sample) showed the Germany was eliminated in every single game where it managed to grab Belgium-Holland and Denmark. I had a think about it, if I had a chance of grabbing all three centres in Fall '01 would I turn it down?
I'm not going to suggest you ignore it altogether, but you shouldn't put much stock in them. Statistics are separate incidents, collected, cataloged, and distilled down into a cold, hard, percentage.
Diplomacy is not about numbers, it's about people.
If I were one of your six opponents in a game, and you walked up to me to discuss the board position, and you started with 'you know...in 34% of games where Russia and Turkey bounce in the Black Sea x happens', I would probably just stare at you for a moment, and discuss whether you think the bounce is feigned aggression, or if Russia and Turkey are actually at war. It's not the numbers that matter, it's the reason why people did what they did that matters.
You can gain some good knowledge if you want to study some of the statistics in terms of how certain openings can affect certain countries, or how some alliances are better long-term than others. For example, you state that in one 'sample' you read, Germany was eliminated every time they took three centers in '01. Consider the situation. Let's say you're one of the countries bordering Germany and you see him pick up three builds in the first year. At a minimum that's going to give the board a moment of pause, and it's certainly going to give his allies and enemies a talking point. If you disregard the statistics here, you can see that there's a pretty simple suggestion to be learned here - Don't present yourself as a threat to too many people at once, and if you do, be ready to make some agreements with other players to make them as equally, if not more powerful than you, otherwise you find yourself the target of a combined attack.
You ask the perfect question after your statement. If you had the chance to pick up those three centers in '01 would you? Should you? Consider the implications of you picking up those centers. What will happen with your neighbors? Will they approve, or disapprove of your situation? How comfortable do you feel with France/England? What's going on in the east? Can I hold this position if attacked? Those are the questions you want to ask yourself over the course of the game, not running percentages and numbers. You don't need to look at percentages to understand that your actions will have consequences.
Do statistics have a place in the game? I'm sure there's something to be gleaned from them, but they shouldn't be guiding your decisions - you and the players around you should be doing that.
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Randall Bart
United States
Granada Hills
California
Red October
Earth is one of my favorite planets
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RobertBr wrote: Apparently ....
Do I care about any of this?
No
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Calavera Hermosa
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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As a player you really only ought to care about those stats only insofar as they communicate the groupthink or metagame you may be playing with (and potentially exploiting to your advantage). Even then it's relevant only you are in a game with players who are veterans and study this stuff. So, for example, if you know another player knows all of these stats, than why not bring them up in negotiations to give yourself leverage? "Hey, but as Italy I am less likely to win here, so what have I got to lose?" Or alternatively, why not exploit ingrained and patterned thinking to your advantage? "Hey if I am Turkey and Russia is likely to piss off both myself and Austria, why don't I explain that to Austria to encourage him to form a temporary alliance with me?" etc etc.
So in the end, it's STILL about how well you read the other players, and play THEM, rather than read the stats and strategy articles and play the game.
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Robert Bracey
United Kingdom
London
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I suppose the responses are what I expected. They reflect the general impression of searching around the internet. When I could find statistics they seemed, if it was possible to trace them at all, to go back to old records of play by mail games.
Apparently in the 1970s and 1980s Diplomacy gamers cared a huge amount about statistics. Today, when those statistics would be far easier to gather (and could encompass much more of the game) no-one seems to be interested. So I tried to think what sort of statistics I might be interested in, what might actually help you when you were playing.
Clearly the opening strategy statistics are meaningless. 41% of German players play X opening moves. Duh! Where else are they going to play.
But if I'm Turkey don't I care how often Russian players stab you in the back if they play to the Black Sea?
As France I clearly care that only a minority of Italian players go to Piedmont. While its less than 10% I'll play to Spain, if it got to 50%+ I'd have to start poking to stop the move. In fact Austrian players who use the hedgehog are already expressing a crude statistical understanding... Austria is stabbed so frequently from Galicia and Venice that its worth poking both of them at the start of each game just to make sure.
But we're back to the problem that you play against people, and what I really want statistics on are people. And really I want something more precise than statistics - I want to know in individual circumstances when that particular player will stab me, which of those two alliances will give me the most centres. Perhaps you can't really express that through statistics, perhaps it can only be done on an individual one-on-one level. But I find it interesting that no-one seems to be trying.
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Brad Restivo
United States
Carbondale
Illinois
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Too many confounding variables for such numbers to be of use, even if they existed.
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Edward Rustin
United Kingdom
London
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What would you like to know?
I've got around 5,000 games that I can prod and poke.
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