A talented diplomacy player can make Germany a winning position, so no. There are no weak positions in classic, only weak diplomats.

The statistics for Classic bear out that Germany is quite a decent nation to play. I personally love it for full press classic.

Results by country:
Country Solos Draws Survivals Eliminated SCs Ø Performance*
England 32 125 93 198 5.14 2.67
France 32 154 116 146 5.62 3.05
Italy 18 113 85 232 3.57 2.05
Germany 41 117 77 213 4.9 2.85
Austria 17 106 55 270 3.32 1.88
Turkey 47 136 97 168 6.55 3.31
Russia 44 100 72 232 4.44 2.75

*Performance = (15 x Solos + 5 x Draws + 1 x Survivals) / Games

Yea that isncorrect, however I am comparing Germanys power in diplomacy to that in the real world. I'm looking for a variant that gives germany enough power to at least stalemate with both englabd and france simultaneously. 5 starting scs for example. Sure it might seem unbalanced but I'm looking for historical accuracy. Besides, Germanys military might could convince others to join france and England against it.

As Devonian points out, 2 on 1 is a powerful combination. And when you can get a central triple going, if it doesn't look like a central triple, Germany, Austria, and Italy make one hell of a team.

Germany and Austria take on Russia, Italy and Austria roll over Turkey, France goes after England with a bit of Germany help, then suddenly when Russia and Turkey are about gone, Italy and Germany turn on France and what is left of England to wipe the board.

Isncorrect should be: is correct

Not a valid comparison as WWI Germany is not Nazi Germany *and* both wars had more a surprise element where as this game has everyone ramped up and headed to war. Diplomacy is not, nor was it ever intended to be, a simulation of WWI. If you want an unbalanced simulation, play another game.

And remember, in WWI, Germany had the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary on it's side. It wasn't fighting alone, so there were other armies to keep Russia busy and plenty of neutral nations between Germany and England so that they really only had two fronts in that war and only one of those was theirs to fight alone - France.

The power of Germany is exactly like real life. Once you get Germany rolling, it's very difficult to stop. I'll take Germany anytime.

But the variant you're looking for is Europe 1939: http://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=72

Europe in 1939 is very different from Europe in 1901. Remember, the time for Diplomacy is pre-WWI and WWI. If you get a game that makes it 39 years in and are still fighting, well DAMN!

Yes that is true as well. Thank you both

I'm not sure if historically Germany was stronger.

I'm not a real history buff, but I think that in world war I they had Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey on their side. In World War II they had Italy and Japan on their side.

And, I thought that in WWII the other sides entered the war in a staggered manner, giving Germany an advantage until all allied forces were against them. Russia had a non-agression pact with them, so they invaded Poland. England and France didn't react quickly enough, so they took the lowlands, and then France.

And eventually they did lose both world wars.

HMMMM..maybe I should just cut and paste the exact same question and responses from WEBDIP.forum and .save everyone a lot of time ..

Maybe it is good to get other perspectives from thos on the web dip forum. Don't be a jerk, Smokey. Not everyone here is over there.

Yes @devonian, but in ww2 they had built up their military immensely. France and england were fighting germany simultaneously for a while before germanys mismanagement eventually helped make the nation cave in.

Even the Americans had to intervene to stop them. Although I'm not saying the war was won solely because of them since that would discredit the superspy Garbo and many other factors in the war.

But Mitimon, this game is set in WWI, not WWII. Spring 1901 is not Spring 1939. Your original question was about the strength of Germany in the game compared to real life. It must include the time period else you could argue that with no US involved, the game is flawed (which the US was in WWI as well, so technically it is).

Yes Yacht, but i was responding to devos note about WWII. I have ackowledged that I was wrong with my original questions premise.

Allied manpower and production greatly outnumbered Germany's in both world wars. In the end the Allies could starve Germany out. It's not mismanagement, so much as just not having the extra economic capacity to outlast the Allies.

"are there any variants that address this?"

Yes, actually. You should check out "1900", a variant by Baron VonPowell. It's not currently supported on vDiplomacy, but I'm hoping to port it over.

Rules:
http://www.diplomatic-pouch.org/Online/variants/1900.html

Example Starting Map:
http://imgur.com/9oHqbUK

^ That is a cool map! I wouldn't want to play as italy but it looks like a cool map to play on :)

Having played Italy in 1900... yeah, wouldn't be my first pick. I think overall compared to Standard, Italy has a little more of a shot at victory in 1900, but also more of a risk of early catastrophe.

Note that vDip has Abstraction III, which I think expands slightly on 1900:

Abstraction III
http://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=67

And Europe 1939 looks like it adapts and expands on 1900 for the different time period as well.

Italy is perfectly fine in Standard Diplomacy. The problem with Italy is that most players are either unreasonably intimidated by the difficulty of playing Italy, or simply just do not understand how to play it. Much of this comes from the mistaken concept that the Lepanto/Key Kepanto are particularly good openings. Italy is extremely versatile, and far too many opportunities are pissed away by players determined to kill Turkey at all costs. Many others are ruined by stab happy fools who think punking Austria for one dot is a clever move. Italy more so than any other nation requires players who can thin beyond the present turn, and put aside the constant worry of where their next build comes from.

Italy and Austria on the linked 1900 map look pretty hard done by, not only because they remain on three starting centers, but also because the perks provided the other surrounding nations.

Yeah, on webdip I just won a game as Italy - in standard dip it is so powerful once it hits 8/9 SCs - it's just getting there that is the problem

Was Germany not the backbone of the central powers in WW1? I wasn't aware there were people who disagreed with this. It took British and Russian support to stop France from folding in the initial stages of the war. The idea that more centers would more accurately reflect German power isn't flawed.

WWI was a united German/Austria-Hungary offensive. After all, it was the Austrian Archduke who was assassinated.That is already reflected in the game.

Of course, but I think Mitomon's point was that Germany was probably individually the most powerful country in at the outbreak of WWI and that it might be fun to play a variant where Germany has extra centers to reflect that

Then everyone would gang up on Germany and, as he doesn't have an edge to protect himself like Russia, he would end up being eaten alive.

Remember, there is no technological advantage in Diplomacy like there was in both WWI and WWII for Germany. More centers makes you a target without the individual boost each unit would get from better technology.

"Having played Italy in 1900... yeah, wouldn't be my first pick. I think overall compared to Standard, Italy has a little more of a shot at victory in 1900, but also more of a risk of early catastrophe."

I just pulled down PlayDiplomacy's stats for classic-style games of 1900, and Italy is actually one of the best in terms of overall performance. It ranks 2nd in solos (behind Germany) and 1st in not-losing (where Germany is ranked 2nd).

Correction to prior comment:
Italy is solidly the 2nd place in both categories mentioned. Germany is the leader-of-the-pack in both draws and solos for 1900.

That wasn't what I saw from Powell's (the designer) roundup of 1900 stats, but that was admittedly from a while ago. Do you have a quick link to the PlayDip stats, or is that a pay only thing?

Powell's stats for 1900 are mostly from Play-by-Email games, which definitely impacts the data. It's not as reflective of the web-style of Diplomacy play. PD's stats are more likely to resemble what you'd hypothetically see on sites like vDip.

PD maintains an archive of all of its finished games, and you can get the statistics if you have a web scraper and are handy with Excel.

The following are a quick summary of stats for samples from 1900 and Classic, only looking at full-press games run without extra variants. GPR is calculated on a 180-point basis (180 for solo, 90 for 2-way, 60 for 3-way, 45 for 4-way, 36 for 5-way, 30 for 6-way, 0 for 7-way or loss).

There were 232 completed games of 1900.

F: 17 solos, 170 losses, 24.69 avg GPR
R: 13 solos, 170 losses, 22.27 avg GPR
I: 20 solos, 163 losses, 28.19 avg GPR
G: 29 solos, 61 losses, 38.04 avg GPR
A: 15 solos, 169 losses, 23.72 avg GPR
T: 10 solos, 180 losses, 18.22 avg GPR
E: 16 solos, 171 losses, 24.10 avg GPR

For comparison, I took a sample of 178 recent classic games from PD before my scraper allowance ran out:

F: 18 solos, 121 losses, 32.19 avg GPR
R: 24 solos, 123 losses, 35.39 avg GPR
I: 5 solos, 146 losses, 14.66 avg GPR
G: 10 solos, 125 losses, 25.20 avg GPR
A: 8 solos, 141 losses, 17.70 avg GPR
T: 11 solos, 126 losses, 25.37 avg GPR
E: 14 solos, 125 losses, 28.48 avg GPR

Expressed as +/- % as compared to the overall average:

1900 stats:

F: -0.8% solos, +2.1% losses, -3.6% GPR
R: -24.2% solos, +2.1% losses, -13.0% GPR
I: +16.7% solos, -2.1% losses, +10.1% GPR
G: +69.2% solos, -14.7% losses, +48.6% GPR
A: -12.5% solos, +1.5% losses, -7.4% GPR
T: -41.7% solos, +8.2% losses, -28.8% GPR
E: -6.7% solos, +2.7% losses, -5.9% GPR

Classic sample:

F: +40.0% solos, -6.6% losses, +25.9% GPR
R: +86.7% solos, -5.1% losses, +38.4% GPR
I: -61.1% solos, +12.7% losses, -42.7% GPR
G: -22.2% solos, -3.5% losses, +1.5% GPR
A: -37.8% solos, +8.8% losses, -30.8% GPR
T: -14.4% solos, -2.8% losses, -0.8% GPR
E: +8.9% solos, -3.5% losses, +11.4% GPR

These are the stats I mentioned, looks like they're from the DPJudge:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160207110707/http://diplom.org/Zine/F2014R/Powell/france2.htm

Bad cut and paste:

GREAT POWER GAMES POINTS GPR SOLO 2-WAY 3-WAY 4-WAY 5-WAY 6-WAY LOSS
GERMANY 206 7335 35.61 25 3 27 13 10 0 128
RUSSIA 206 5520 26.80 19 3 18 12 5 1 148
BRITAIN 206 5505 26.72 16 4 20 15 10 1 140
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 206 5049 24.51 15 6 19 7 9 1 149
TURKEY 206 4710 22.86 15 3 18 10 5 1 154
ITALY 206 4635 22.50 13 4 22 9 5 1 152
FRANCE 206 4326 21.00 14 1 20 6 6 1 158

Yep. Combined, those two samples paint a pretty rosy picture for 1900's balance. Even considering how strongly Germany leads the pack, it still tends to be a more even contest than Classic.

DPJudge was used primarily to adjudicate email-based games, however, so I do think that some consideration should take into account the difference in email v. web playerbases.

It's probably about as balanced as Standard. Germany definitely sticks out more in the lead in 1900, but everyone else is a little more even. Being about as balanced as Classic is pretty good, most variants fall well short of this, at least going by vdip stats.

Interesting that among the two sets of 1900 results, each of about 200 games, you get a decently different ordering of nations: GIFEART vs GREATIF.

I've seen quite a difference in the stats for Classic when comparing no-press to full press games. I wonder if varying levels of communication and game speed play a big part in the difference between communities. Also, Powell suggests in the article that 200 games is too small a sample... but it's better than nothing.

I think that, were there a whole lot more 1900 games on record to go by, the pattern would match pretty closely to what we see here. Germany would be in a solid lead, and the other 6 would be fairly close to equal.

That's a pretty stark difference from Classic games, where you have 3 approximate tiers of powers, even at high sample sizes:

-Russia & France
-England, Germany, & Turkey
-Austria & Italy

With an asymmetric setup, there's always going to be some unevenness, and the hope is that players will do some self-balancing as clear frontrunners appear.

If one is to compare the balance across variants, though, it's probably best to do so using the standard deviation of the seven powers for whatever you're measuring (solos, GPR, or some other holistic score) as a percentage of the mean.

In that manner, using similarly sized samples, 1900 does frequently edge out Classic for better balance overall.

I said this in the sister thread over on the webDiplomacy site, but it bears repeating.

Those of you bemoaning the fact that Diplomacy does not reflect the tactical situation in Europe as of World War One are missing the point. No, Germany does not start with five armies. No, England does not start with five fleets. There are many war games which do a much better job of reflecting the tactics of World War One. But Diplomacy is not meant to be historically accurate in that way.

Diplomacy is meant to evoke the Great Power interactions of the era, on a grand-strategic level. It does this incredibly well, far better than any other game out there, using elegantly simple mechanics.

Thank you, Mr. Calhamer.

Amen, Dave. Its also set in 1901, not 1914. While both strategy and tactics are factors int he game, it's called "Diplomacy" for a reason. Creating a variant that seeks to accurately reflect WWI may as well be a two player experience, which is not really Diplomacy, only the movement mechanics.

"Its also set in 1901, not 1914."

To be fair, it's not terribly historically accurate to either date. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as historical accuracy isn't as high a priority for Diplomacy as it is for other games.

Dip has the European borders that approximately reflect 1914 and is nominally set in 1901, but it represents the relative military strengths of the great powers for neither period.

Again, that's not automatically a bad thing, but the "it's set in 1901" argument doesn't really hold water.

It's a game, not a history book or an order of battle. There's no artillery, aircraft, or mustard gas either. The game is not seeking to be an accurate reflection of military strength, but an exercise in diplomacy, of which military power is a factor. The game is not meant to establish or prevent the WWI alliances the need to provide equally playable starting positions was created. The map takes a great many liberties for playability purposes as well. The game refers to England rather than Great Britain as a major power. You can nitpick till the cows come home if you want to. This thread started up on the premise that Germany is too weak, which is false. The intention has never been to capture absolute historical accuracy, but to present seven nominally equal playable positions.

The argument holds water in that the point is the entire conversation is silly.