Video: Diplomacy Fatigue18 min read

A fan of this blog, BBQSauce123321, sent in a question:

I was curious if you could write an article on Diplomacy fatigue. I think it’s something that all players go through and I’m certainly feeling it a bit right now, but I obviously don’t want to abandon games that are going to be lasting much longer. I’m curious as to what you think causes it and how to alleviate it. Thanks!

I see two types of fatigue both of which are important.

There’s the mid-game fatigue where things are perhaps not going as well (or even going very well) and you feel the urge to give up on the game. I find this to be the lesser of the two fatigues though.

The one I’m more interested in you commenting upon is an overall fatigue of Diplomacy, either from playing too many games or continuously playing for too long. You’ve mentioned that you’ve played on and off for 10 years and I’m curious about what’s inspired you (and others) to take breaks from the game, how you took that break, and what inspired you to come back to the game. Thanks!

This is a fascinating question. The usual Diplomacy questions I get are about gameplay and technique; this is a much more personal topic. And unlike most questions I get, I don’t immediately have an answer. I must do some introspection.

I think this is a worthy topic. Thank you for asking! I’ll take your two-part question in the order you asked.

Part 1: Dealing with In-Game Fatigue

Years ago, earlier in my Diplomacy career, I did occasionally give up on matches that were not going my way. Even after I knew better than to flat-out abandon ongoing matches,^[1]Missed turns and game abandonment is recorded on webDiplomacy (and on some other sites, I believe). Abandoning games is bad for one’s reputation and can make it harder to get invited to matches with good players. I still sometimes did a “soft” abandonment of just entering lazy orders (and in Press games, without responding to press).

I wrote about the phenomenon of players succumbing to nihliism in one of my articles from last year.

I no longer experience this, or at least I can say I have not experienced this recently. What changed? What wisdom did I discover that gave me the gumption to try with all my might, no matter the state of the match?

Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Draw

I’ve written a lot on this blog about striving for solo wins…and not so much about playing for draws (despite my promise to do so). Well, there’s no time like the present. Let me tell you about about how I think about playing for draws.

At the start of each turn in a Diplomacy match I ask myself “Am I playing for a win or a draw?”

For me, that question is usually not difficult to answer: if no other player is threatening to solo win, and I still have the possibility of further growth, then I am playing for my own win. However, if either of those conditions is not true—if there is a player who is going to win unless I cooperate with others to stop them, or if it is not realistic for me to get any further growth (e.g., I am down to 1 center and that center is Portugal)—then I affirmatively resign myself to playing for a draw and work towards that draw with my moves, press, signals, etc.^[2]Even after I have started playing for a draw, I continue to assess every turn whether that is still my best course of action. Sometimes, after playing for a draw for a while, a solo win becomes possible again for me. If so, then I restart playing for a solo win. In a really well-played game of … Continue reading

So there are two attitudes underpinning that analysis I do at the start of each turn:

1. I prefer drawing over my rival’s win
2. I prefer drawing over my elimination.

Playing for a draw involves very different strategy and tactics than playing for a solo win:

• Playing for a win requires keeping the other players in the match divided against each other, and looking for (or creating) rivals’ mistakes that can be exploited to achieve ultimate victory.
• Playing for a draw requires keeping all the other players united together, and preventing that coalition from making exploitable mistakes in order to achieve a stalemate (or voluntary draw).

Attaining a solo win is difficult to be sure, but attaining a draw—especially when you control three or fewer centers and could quickly get eliminated—is not exactly trivial. I enjoy the challenge of compelling the players to draw, and in particular I enjoy the challenge of “sneaking into the draw” with just one or two supply centers!

Sneaking into the Draw is a Lot of Fun!

I personally enjoy trying to sneak into a draw as much or more than attempting a solo win! On this blog, I have been calling a player who tries to do this a “Desperado.”

What’s so great about playing as a Desperado?

1. To prevent yourself from being eliminated, you probably need to make another player as big as possible—but not so big that they actually win! Walking this line is mentally stimulating, and is no easy feat.
2. You can be strategically advantaged by harassing other players tactically (you are probably trying to weaken them relative to the board leader so as to force a draw). It can be fun to be a little gremlin!
3. You should probably threaten to throw the match. To make this threat seem credible, you might put on an elaborate act of being an upset, volatile, deranged or otherwise desperate player!
4. Sometimes you can actually just be so annoying or persistent with your tactics and/or press that your rivals will grow tired of the match (or your company!) and vote draw. I find it very satisfying to achieve this.

For example, I am particularly proud of this draw I got back in a 2017 gunboat match where I played as England:

Part 2: Dealing with Long-Term Fatigue

I have been a life-long board game and video game hobbyist. My family taught me to play board games as a toddler, and I was playing video games by age 5. I cannot really recall a phase in my life when I was not playing board games, video games, or both. I do not expect that to change for so long as I live.

I am also quite good at most of the games I play, and since I was a teenager I have played in online ladders, tournaments, and so on. I enjoy competition, and I have engaged in many other competitive activities (such as debate tournaments).

So for me personally, I know I am going to be playing games every week, sometimes every day, sometimes several games per day. It’s just a question of “what game do I want to play right now?”

In other words, I believe myself to be indefatigable. The only reason I wouldn’t be playing Diplomacy is that I might want to focus on some other game that I found more interesting at the time.

My History with Diplomacy

I started playing face-to-face Diplomacy around my last year of undergraduate school, so around 2009 or 2010. I played at a friend’s home, and later bought my own copy of the game to play with my friends and family. We played a few times and never took the game that seriously.

In the summer of 2011, I started playing Diplomacy online at webDiplomacy.net. I found online play to be much easier (easier to find matches and to follow the rules) and far more competitive (in terms of the quality of play and the players’ efforts).

I later went to law school, and the demands of schooling became a bit much for me. I reduced how much time I put into my hobbies, and I stopped playing Diplomacy for a while—I think it might have been a few years actually.

To answer your question of what inspired me to take a break from Diplomacy: I vividly remember a moment in my first year of law school where I found myself checking in on a Diplomacy game in the middle of a class. I thought to myself, “this is ridiculous…I am paying to be here” and closed the game. I stopped joining new games, and wrapped up my matches over a couple of weeks.

I never stopped playing games while I attended law school, but I played games that could begin and end in a single evening. I played a lot of Magic: the Gathering—specifically, by going to “Friday Night Magic” games at my local game store.

During that long break from Diplomacy (>1 year), I never lost interest in the game. I continued to read articles here and there, and I sometimes daydreamed about strategies I could try in matches.

One day, after I was settled into my career as a lawyer, I joined two gunboat Diplomacy matches on a whim. I couldn’t tell you exactly what was motivating me. But, if I recall correctly, I got solo wins in both of those games. I was hooked, and haven’t really stopped playing since. Over the last 4 years or so, I believe I have only not been playing in a Diplomacy game for a grand total of a couple of weeks.^[3]I specifically took a break between the Semi-Finals and Finals of the ODC. I felt like I needed a restorative break between matches. However, it wasn’t long until I felt recovered and started a gunboat game to pass the time until the finals started! Diplomacy has become, without any doubt, my favorite game. Maybe it won’t be my favorite game forever, but it surely is right now.

Side Note: Take Care of Yourself

You only asked me about Diplomacy, but if you’re losing interest in things you’ve always liked, that could be a sign of depression. In other words, if your fatigue is limited to Diplomacy specifically, then I do recommend taking a break as I did. A break for months, or even years, is reasonable. The game will still be there when you come back.

But is there more to it? The question to ask yourself is “is there something I’d rather be doing other than Diplomacy?” and if the answer is “yes”…then do that! You only have one life to live. Do what makes you happy!

But if your feeling of fatigue is not coupled with “there’s something I’d rather be doing,” and if your fatigue is not just limited to Diplomacy, your problem might not actually be related to Diplomacy.

Depression runs in my family, and is common among the people I know (such as other lawyers). When another person talks to me about feeling burned out, I am cognizant that they might not just be overworked; they might also be depressed. I am quick to encourage a visit to a therapist. And indeed, one of my best Diplomacy friends encouraged me to do the same when life got hard for me (and I went! and I’m still going!).

Diplomacy is Your Bored Brother’s Favorite Game…

Now let’s lighten the mood. Here are a couple of reasons online Diplomacy is presently my favorite game:

1. I can play Diplomacy online at whatever time is convenient to me. I don’t have to show up at specific times or places, and I don’t have to play for multi-hour stretches.
2. Playing a match over the course of weeks or months gives me something interesting to think about any time my day gets boring, and the depth of these matches takes my mind off of life’s harder aspects.
3. I am good at online Diplomacy, and it is fun to play a game I am good at.
4. I enjoy the community of Diplomacy players, who tend to be highly intelligent, interesting to talk to, and quite sporting.
5. To call Diplomacy “competitive” is an understatement. Opponents fight tooth and nail to stop me from winning. I love a challenge, and I am always seeking to test my limits and better my ability. Plus Ultra!
6. Diplomacy is a game of staggering depth. Getting good at Diplomacy involves, by degrees, improving at almost every aspect of human thought. I think I could play Diplomacy for 100 years and get 100 years’ worth of improvement at the game. Studying to be better at Diplomacy helps me with other games I enjoy, and even my everyday life. (The reverse is also true!)
7. For these reasons, Diplomacy is very demanding…but never boring! I have only grown more interested with time (hence my mentoring, blogging, and other community contributions).

That said, there are many other games that I like (or could like) as much as Diplomacy. Indeed, I have played and enjoyed hundreds of games across my lifetime! But with my current needs, in my current mindset, I think Diplomacy is touching me in all the right places.

…But Maybe Not Forever!

I simply take it as given that I will be playing games. But what I enjoy about Diplomacy can be satisfied by other games as well, and I can imagine my interest in Diplomacy waning as I became interested in some other game (and allocated my time accordingly). For example:

• Dungeons and Dragons—I never played this in my youth, but was introduced as an adult. This game is a riot. I am in one campaign right now (which we are playing over video conference due to quarantine conditions), and I am about to start a second one any day now. My fascination with understanding the minds of other people, my interest in storytelling, and my enjoyment of others’ company is all well-satisfied by this game. Some of my experiences playing Dungeons and Dragons are probably among my most fun experiences ever playing a game!
• Magic: the Gathering—I have been playing magic for almost 20 years now. There have been a few years when I didn’t play at all, and a few years where I played almost every weekend. I even played the horrible Magic Online for a while. Now with Magic: the Gathering Arena available as a waaaaaay fun way to play the game online, I can see myself getting back into Magic; online play is easy to fit into a schedule. I have more than five Magic Cubes^[4]If you play Magic, you’ll know what that means. and they are an absolute blast to bust out and play with my friends and family. Magic is fun in a group or with just two players. The game tests all sorts of skills, and is really fun just to look at and think about!^[5]Shortly before I drafted this section of this post, I saw the Godzilla Magic cards…I love Godzilla with all my heart, and this promotional concept may be enough for me to make an appearance at a prerelease or Friday Night Magic.
• David Sirlin’s new games—Game Designer David Sirlin produces a new game every year or so, and each of them is one of the best games I have ever played. I get his update emails, and I recently learned he has two new games under development, each respectively inspired by two of my favorite games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike. I can hardly contain my excitement! I wonder if I will make the time to support the development of these new games as one of his Patreon patrons or game testers. The chance to play Yomi or Puzzle Strike with a friend is something I rarely pass up (the online games are not popular enough anymore that I can find a pick-up game). I learned a lot of skills from those two games that I now apply to Diplomacy. By the way, roughly seven years ago I was the #1 ranked player for online Puzzle Strike.
• Games of my own design!—I haven’t found the time to write much about the games of my own design, but I have designed several games in the past, and I’m developing one for commercial release right now. I tend to like my own ideas (who doesn’t?) and if I design a really great game…maybe I’ll find myself wanting to play that game most of all!

BrotherBored Taking a Break?

I am in a tiny number of Diplomacy games right now, and I don’t expect to be joining new ones anytime soon. I get invited to play in exhibition matches and tournaments very often, but I usually turn down these invitations. I have been exhausted at times with my work, and for that matter with the high level of attention I have given to the Online Diplomacy Championship 2019 (which, by the way, has carried on well into 2020 at this point). I am ready to take a break from playing fairly soon.

I have recently been winning some gunboat matches, and I made it into the finals of the ODC 2019—so I think I will be taking a break at a high point!

But worry not BBQSauce123321 and every other reader of this blog: I will continue to be a part of the Diplomacy community whether I have any active games or not. I thoroughly enjoy coaching and teaching, and writing for this blog has become one of my favorite things in my life. Really—I mean it! So even if I take a break from playing for a couple of months, I won’t be taking any leave of absence from the community.

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By the way, I have started a weekly “Diplomacy Dojo” that meets every Saturday from 4pm until about 5pm Eastern time.

The Diplomacy Dojo is a video conference where we chat about how to get better at Diplomacy! The first three meetings have been very fun and educational. I will continue the Dojo for as long as other players show up!

The Diplomacy Dojo requires an email invite—contact me if interested!

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Anyways, I hope that answers your questions BBQSauce. I understand that you will be taking a break from Diplomacy yourself soon, and I (of course) can relate to that! Shoot me an email or something when you get back in the game why dontcha? And you can continue to follow my blog whether you are playing or not! Take care, my friend.

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