Windows

Diplomacy

The AI provides a solid challenge against players, and online battles could possibly take weeks at a time thanks to the ability to save multiplayer games and come back to them later. The armchair strategist in all of us can always use a challenge, and Diplomacy more than fits that bill.

Diplomacy is a fun game that has finally been made into a fun PC game. Fans of the board game will love it, strategy fans will love it, and casual strategy gamers will enjoy it.

I have to say that I really enjoyed playing Diplomacy, and that this game can only get better if I was playing against humans rather then the computer-controlled AI. If you are a big strategy buff then this is a game you should check out.

Paradox Interactive has made an extremely faithful recreation of the board game and its rules. Every rule, every detail is folowed to letter.

Diplomacy is a classic board game making a largely successful transition to the digital age. Was the game perfect, no, but it did do a reasonable good job of transferring the material to a different medium. I enjoyed myself playing it and if you like the original board game, and have a somewhat decent rig, I’d suggest you check it out.

As a game, Diplomacy has been around since the 1950s (as my brief research reveals) in tabletop format, though the concept of diplomacy -- working out potentially violent situations with treatise and talk rather than bombs and bullets -- has been around much, much longer. Of course a good chunk of Diplomacy is knowing when to knife a (former) friend to gain the upper hand against foes, which may or may not be treated as a friend until the tactical moment. And in some cases, the knife is buried into your own back.

This game was originally designed to be played by seven people at a sitting, and works best in that mode. The AI is competent enough, but should be easy to beat once the game basics are understood. Veteran Dippy players will be pleased with the game as it is a good simulation of the board game, but most people that play single player would probably be disappointed, as the AI provides a limited challenge at best.

Fans of the boardgame, especially those unable to easily find opponents, will have a lot to like here. And while the single-player game lacks the punch of facing off against real people, it does allow players to hone their Diplomacy skills and take their game to the next level.

Het klassieke bordspel Diplomacy kan nu ook op de computer voor ettelijke uren vertier zorgen. Voer voor de fans.

Ultimately, Diplomacy is no fun at all when you are playing by yourself, but a bit better when playing with others over a network. The AI isn’t very entertaining to interact with and many other PC games offer a much deeper and stronger sense of strategy and diplomatic relations while the added secrecy of multiplayer interactions makes the world of Diplomacy much better when playing with other humans. The dull visuals and sounds don’t do much to help in the matter either, especially when trying to reach a broader audience. Diplomacy is a good game for those who are not able to find a ready supply of opponents for the tabletop game or those who are looking for a strategy game and are intimidated by the deeper offerings like Hearts of Iron. The game was built for highly social gamers, but has nothing to offer graphics hogs or strategy nuts.

For boardgame lovers it's a great pretext to spend several hours in front of the computer. However, for people expecting entertaining multiplayer and not especially interested in tabletop games, Diplomacy may turn out overwhelming & tiresome.

Es heißt, Diplomacy wäre einfach zu erlernen und schwer zu meistern. Ich finde, Diplomacy ist schwer zu erlernen und noch schwerer zu meistern. Das Tutorial hilft zwar, aber nach dem x-ten Textfenster artet das in Arbeit aus. Wer es hingegen beherrscht, kommt trotz Spargrafik kaum von den spannenden Eroberungszügen weg. Dafür sorgt vor allem die schlaue KI. Missionen wären allerdings schön gewesen.

Diplomacy kan een leuk spel maken, maar deze versie van Paradox faalt jammerlijk. Dit spel is gewoon een pijnlijke ervaring die op geen enkele manier de fun van het bordspel naar pc brengt. We kunnen dus enkel wat misnoegde geluiden voortbrengen, en hopen dat iemand het begrijpt.

The entire point of Diplomacy is human interaction and figuring out how far you can trust another human being with your life. When you're reduced to mainly drawing arrows on a map, the sense of wheeling and dealing is largely gone. Diplomacy also suffers from some annoyingly long load times, which is surprising for a game that takes up a fraction of the disk space of other, modern games. When it's all said and done, this can be a painful experience at times. When diplomacy is reduced to grunting, you can imagine just how successful it can ultimately be.

Ultimately, it's very hard to recommend Diplomacy. If you are looking for a multiplayer version of the classic board-game you're almost certainly better-off going to community sites like www.diplom.org and exploring some of the free Play-By-EMail options (bewilderingly Paradox have chosen not to include a PBEM or a hot-seat mode). Not only do these offer superior negotiating possibilities, they are also a lot more variant-friendly (Dip like Chess has been adapted into many different forms). Of course, by far the best way to experience Diplomacy remains the old face-to-face option.

The designers seem to have tried nothing to improve this game over the original. An electronic version would have been an ideal place to present variants and scenarios, like new maps, new countries, or other modifications of the old design. Unfortunately, all you get is one variant where Italy gets a naval unit in place of an army.

It's a miracle Diplomacy ever made its way to stores. How a respected strategy developer like Paradox could've produced a game so broken, cryptic, and unfaithful to the franchise is a mystery. And why Hasbro, who owns the Avalon Hill properties, approved it is beyond explanation. This is the first half-star review that GameSpy has ever given: For it to be associated with a franchise so beloved by myself and other gamers worldwide pains me deeply. Words fail me. Go out and buy the board game instead.