[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Sheap:
In my small gaming group we have thus far played without any diplomacy at all (this is not popular with all the players). However I feel that playing without diplomacy improves the game considerably for the following reasons.

How do you go about ruling out diplomacy through posture, though? There are postures of force one can take which can very clearly indicate a lack of desire to attack: If the other player then reciprocates, what you have is essentially a de-facto peace. After all, it's just not feasible to attack everyone at once, and under the assumption that everyone is a potential enemy, you take what you can get.

In a group of people that know each other, I find that once everyone has met up and borders been established, I can pretty much predict the way the entire rest of the game will play out.

The above behavior is even more magnified when the players know each other. For instance, in our clan matches, there's little to no overt diplomacy. However, the fact that we know each other well, means that it is very easy for us to read postures, and players tend to keep to their tendencies on the grounds of an "implicit" reputation: A player who regularly attacks another player is viewed with suspicion by that player, whereas a player who regularly maintains a peaceful posture towards another player with consistency is thus regarded as "friendly".

2) Diplomacy is a force multiplier and exaggerates the differences between strong (or lucky) players and weak players. Without diplomacy, everyone must defend all their borders and distrust all their neighbors.

Diplomacy is also the counterbalance of weaker players against a stronger player: Even a stronger player may not wish to be drawn into a war on two fronts against two people at once, and may thus restrain his belligerence as a result. On the flipside, an alliance between two strong players more or less just brings the game to its inevitable conclusion that much faster.

With diplomacy, empires that have treaties can pull forces off their borders to go fight other enemies. Strong empires which have more troops can better afford to defend all their borders but gain more from not having to do it. Similarly this allows harder pushes into research, and generally eliminates "drag" on an empire that can further expose any hidden balance issues.

Assuming that players deal predominantly in good faith, and backstabbing is relatively rare due to the damage it inflicts upon one's reputation for future games, this still does not address the fundamental issue of implicit posturing: If a player begins to pull forces off the border, not enough so that the border is weakened to the point of indefensibility, and the other party, finding that he is in little danger of being attacked as a result, reciprocates, having better use for his troops than to station an overly large garrison at a neighbor who is clearly uninterested in conflict, may too elect to pull his forces elsewhere: Pretty soon you have a general reduction of force levels on the border, and the exact same effect implicitly.

Trading encourages specialization and specialization disrupts game balance. Allowing empires to focus on one particular thing gives them more of an opportunity to exploit any design flaws or imbalances that may be present.

You may have a point: This is clearly apparent in the fact that an explicitly declared team game players to an entirely different strategy - no longer is it optimal for both players to pursue advancement of their own nation in all fields, and instead specialization becomes optimal - one player may research and focus on forging, while the other harvests the resources, and remits these resources to the other player. However, if the idea that ultimately, there can only be one real winner, is retained, then there's a counterbalance to this tendency - if at the end, all players, regardless of any alliances, are required to either fight or concede to a single player, then this is moot.

4) Diplomacy causes hard feelings which can often spill over out of the game, or Last into future games.

Depending on how you define "hard feelings", this may or may not be a problem. If players hold personal grudges against other players for diplomacy performed in game, this is childish. If players maintain a certain level of wary distrust after a particularly sneaky backstab, this is only to be expected. Unavoidable implicit diplomacy can present the same effect: Even winning or losing a game in a particularly noteworthy manner can have this effect.

5) Some people invariably know each other better than others and have an advantage forging alliances with each other (and have an advantage in predicting how the other person will play). Even if they don't go into the game with this intent, these people have a natural advantage which has nothing to do with how well they play or even how well they conduct diplomacy.

Knowledge of another player's psychology is already a strong advantage in both making war against, and seeking peace with, that player: If anything, psychoanalysis is even more important when explicit diplomacy is forbidden, since then all that you have is the implicit posturing of the other player - failure to correctly read your opponent's posture results in being unpleasantly surprised, or wasting resources defending against an attack which will not come.

5a) Some people do not have the time, or are located in different time zones, and cannot chat in IRC all day or answer e-mails promptly. These people are disadvantaged.

This is a case for a ban on external diplomacy, certainly. Some games are played by the rule that diplomacy can only be conducted via in-game Messages, which puts everyone on an equal footing. There is, however, no guarantee that the player simply speaking to each other, does not already color relationships. Even if no attempt is made to actually diplomacize, merely talking about the game may be enough to influence one's course of action.

Frankly, other than the nagging feeling that "I ought to be able to do this," I don't feel that diplomacy adds anything to the game whatsoever. It just creates problems.

Ironically, the human desire to seek peace proves as much a problem in a game about war as the human tendency to fight is an obstacle to world peace.