GPT-4 & Diplomacy

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Hope I haven't been breaking the rules, but for fun and in a very non-systematic way I chat with GPT about some Diplomacy games.

GPT-4 in particular seems quite familiar with the game (though I'm not an expert myself) and appears to give fairly solid gunboat-relevant advice if you feed it the turn logs.

Of course, you can also feed it press and ask it questions. GPT-3 was pretty bad at this, but 4 comes back with some interesting (though understandably tentative and inconclusive) ideas about other players' motivations, trustworthiness, etc.

Should this be considered cheating? In some ways it's like having a mentored game and consulting with forums and books on strategy, only in a very rapid way.

If it's cheating, how could it be stopped? I anticipate this software will be extremely widely adopted in the near future.

Below is GPT's own assessment of how it might help a player improve at Diplomacy:

Strategic Analysis: GPT-4 can help you analyze the game board, taking into account the positions of all players, your own resources and strategic possibilities. It could suggest moves, analyze your potential responses to the moves of other players, and predict likely future scenarios based on historical data from the game.

Simulation: GPT-4 can help you simulate possible game scenarios. This can be particularly useful when considering your strategic options or when trying to anticipate the moves of other players. By running through a range of scenarios, you can prepare yourself for a variety of possible developments in the game.

Chat Negotiation: Diplomacy is as much about negotiating and forming alliances as it is about strategic moves on the game board. GPT-4 can help you refine your negotiation skills by analyzing previous chat logs and suggesting improved ways to communicate with other players. It can help you understand the styles and habits of your opponents, suggesting ways to approach them based on their past actions.

Psychological Insights: By analyzing your opponents' chat logs, GPT-4 can help you understand their emotional states, attitudes, and likely reactions to different situations. This could be useful for figuring out the best way to approach them, whether to form an alliance or make a move against them.

Content Generation: If the game allows for any form of content creation (such as in-game press, announcements, or role-playing dialogue), GPT-4 can help you craft persuasive, clever, or engaging content that could help shape the narrative of the game.

[learnedSloth]

Concerning pasting press to it:
https://www.makeuseof.com/chatgpt-privacy-issues/

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Agree that privacy is a concern in general with GPT, but does that really matter in this case? I've never thought of press sent to strangers using this site as being private or privileged in any sense.

[echidna]

How do I win at the game Diplomacy without ever getting more than 17 centers?

ChatGPT
Winning the game Diplomacy without ever getting more than 17 centers requires a combination of strategic diplomacy, negotiation skills, and careful planning. Here are some strategies that can help you achieve this goal:
[remainder omitted from this post]

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

How do I win at the game Diplomacy without ever getting more than 17 centers?

ChatGPT
Winning the game Diplomacy without ever getting more than 17 centers requires a combination of strategic diplomacy, negotiation skills, and careful planning. Here are some strategies that can help you achieve this goal:
[remainder omitted from this post]

GPT isn't God lol, if you give it bad input it will hallucinate something plausible but wrong. Doesn't mean that it isn't a super powerful tool if you prompt it intelligently and remain vigilant about reading its output critically.

[echidna]

I put in the query "describe how diplomacy "zines" used to work to run games of diplomacy by post" and the answer was a nice summary (no "hallucinations" that these LLMs sometimes exhibit).