I'm on VB's side here. The game you posted Alderian had no players in it for the last 10 years except for anlari, and the 5 years before that he was convoying around a French army. In this gunboat game though, anlari was trying to position himself similarly as with the other game to take the last 17 centers in one fell swoop, and consequently wastes the time and effort of two other players unnecessarily just for his own amusement. Fuck that.

This proves it impossible to take 34 centers while not having won previously =)

I'm something of an anlari fan, but this site simply isn't designed to allow that sort of play. The other players are caught between either actively supporting anlari's humiliation of them, playing for an indefinite amount of time with no hope of reward, or clocking up a resign on their record. Well done kestas for intervening on behalf of sportsmanship and stopping this nonsense.

Doing the impossible is totally worth it... And we all play 'for our own amusement' - people who raise the 'bored' flag are usually ridiculed and told not to CD with justifications like 'you signed up form a whole game, you should play it out'. There are often situation where an individual player feel like they can no longer influence a game, and this is another example...

Sympathy for VBob, perhaps, but rule breaking; Gunboat game specifically are about no communication, and using the forum to talk about a gunboat is a clear violation (whereas not talking about anon games is also frowned upon, i don't think that is as serious, i suspect the creation of the anon option was to prevent pm-ing in gunboat game, and just happened to allow 'fun' for others)

Analari needs to see that his reputation could be harmed by being a dick, but i don't think that is a serious concern for most diplomacy players...

This game was a potential masterpiece. No rules were broken by anlari, as far as I can tell. As such, it's all "in the game."

VirtualBob should have just taken his lumps and played out the defeat at the level of humiliation that has been earned. Did anyone let the Detroit Lions "just win one" in 2008? Nope. It is in the spirit of true competition that one "smucks" the opponent to the greatest extent possible.

VirtualBob, you should be seeking ways to inflict this type of defeat on others! Learn from this lesson and become the victor, not the victim! You can do it man!

In addition to the points in the previous post, generally speaking, when a "next-level" humiliation is available, it is actually damaging to not proceed with the humiliation. If anlari had relented and *not* gone for the 34 centers, it would have dulled his edge. It would have made him a poorer player in subsequent games.

@tendmote

You know that there are people who will read this and think you mean it? Any professional player (lets pretend for a moment such things exist) would have taken the win as soon as it became available. Anything else is just for personal amusement. If we didn't have the resign obsession that we do on this website it wouldn't be a problem. The lesser power could have just said sod it and buggered off with his tail between his legs. Sadly, however, we do, and as such there was no way for the losing player to lose. With these conditions the choice anlari made is selfish in the extreme and a detriment to the site, being the sort of play that would discourage players from bothering to come here.

A few points:
1. I did get docked points for posting late in the game. It served to get mod attention though.
2. I did NOT get points in the draw - I was gone by then.
3. This is not like the Lions running up the score. The Lions played within the normal game length and rules. This is like deciding at the end of the 4th quarter after winning a close game that it would be more fun to humiliate the opponent in unnecessary overtime.
4. Thanks to kestas & the mod team for working out a solution.
5. Anlari is a jerk.

@octavius - well said.

@ VB - In what way did Anlari not "play within the rules"? Which rule did he violate?

The "rule" that sets the winning conditions ... people have a right to expect that games will not be artificially extended. After 4 quarters, the football game is over. The winning team does not get to call infinite "time outs" while running up the score.

Consider this. Suppose I simply like Germany and make it my goal in EVERY game to do whatever I can to allow Germany to win, regardless of who the players are or which country I have. This is not against the rules, but it certainly changes the game for everyone else, and those other players have a right to expect that there is a more or less common goal in the game. If someone wants to set up a "SC Challenge" game to see who can get the most SC's, that is a variant.

@VirtualBob Actually in gunboat there is often a "get Austria" policy that is not in the rules, roughly ("morally") equivalent to "like Germany." What is to be done?

I agree Anlari undertook a dickmove, but maybe he's just a dick? It's not a violation of rules, and the remedy is to call the player out for being a dick *after* the game.

From a rules perspective, VB is at fault for publicly bringing the issue to the forum during the game. From a sportsmanship perspective, Anlari was a dick, and I don't think anyone is doubting either point. Kestas dealt with it pretty perfectly. Case closed?

"You know that there are people who will read this and think you mean it? Any professional player (lets pretend for a moment such things exist) would have taken the win as soon as it became available. Anything else is just for personal amusement."

Er, no. The relevant analogy here is a losing baseball team complaining because the other team left their star pitcher in to try for a perfect game instead of following the conventional (*and even optimal, in the long term) strategy of pulling him for middle relief / a closer.

There's nothing dickish about this move. 34-center wins are ridiculously rare -- I think we've had one in site history, spanning over a hundred thousand games. Especially considering that, again, it could actually be stopped (hell, WAS stopped), what in the world is the problem? If you don't like it, stop it.

To think that I amost joined this game as a Russian replacement.I would have ended up getting free points, but how much time would i have wasted? I think I dodged a bullet.

If it had worked, he would be hailed as a genius. If it had failed, he would be reviled as a prick. That's the game Anlari chose.

Nah, they aren't mutually exclusive. There's plenty of genius pricks, which is what he would have been had it succeeded.

I'm with Bob on this one. He shouldn't have posted it on the forums while it was in progress, but I agree with his sentiments. A player should be expected to stick around for the entire game, but a player should also not artificially extend the game. You should play to your won condition, which is to reach 18 centers.

What about those players who refuse to draw for many years, even when faced with a 100% stalemate. They aren't breaking the rules, either, but that doesn't mean they don't lack class. The same principle applies when you have the win guaranteed and refuse to take it.

Other players should not be forced to stick around for another hour (or longer) after the game is clearly over, just for the sake of amusing the victor.

I'm not sure what I would have done if I were in this situation, to be honest. I aways stick around until I'm defeated, draw, or someone wins. However, if I'm in a live game (It would only be a minor annoyance in non-live games since it requires less than 10 seconds of effort per day), and my opponent is refusing a win, I very well may just have walked away. I guess it depends what else I had going on.

If you don't like to be part of a 34 center victory, then stop it before it starts. If a baseball team gets a perfect game thrown against them, they don't complain that the pitcher was too good, they are mad at themselves for not putting the ball into play. If there is any complaint here, it should be about the level of poor play that resulted in such a situation where 34 centers was even remotely attainable.

But what if once a perfect game is attained after 9 innings, that team had the option of playing inning after inning until a hit was made by the opposing team to see how many innings in a row they could extend the perfect game? That would generate poor sportsmanship in general and isn't necessary to determine the winner. It's just bolstering the ego of the winner.

That's not a great analogy, 2WL. The issue is not in the manner in which ones gets beat; it's an issue of artificially extending the same.

A perfect game in baseball can happen in the natural progression of a game. Indeed, as one can infer from the name, a perfect game is the most desirable outcome one can hope for. And, let's not forget, a perfect game has the effect of shortening a game, in terms of length. A perfect game means that one team only faced the minimum 27 batters, and the more batters you face, the more time it takes, of course.

The game should take as long as it takes to reach an ending, and no longer. If a stalemate is reached, and nobody is willing to change alliance structures, then the game should be drawn and concluded. If a person is able to reach 18 centers, they should take the win and conclude the game.

Anything else is going against the spirit of the game and the win conditions. It makes the game take an unexpectedly long time, and a person should be made aware ahead of time that this is a situation they are getting themselves into, just like any other special-condition game people have.

The main problem is that the losers have no recourse here. The game is over, everybody knows it, but they are all forced to sit there submitting blank moves every 5 minutes until the victor gets bored and decides to finally end the game. Whether that be 5 minutes or 5 hours depends on one person alone.

Perhaps a resign feature would be useful. It could be a vote button just like Draw and Cancel. In this case, when all but one remaining player has pressed the button, it awards a solo to the person who hasn't pressed it. This will allow players to end a game they know they lost, and it will prevent abuse from players (regardless of whether or not this particular situation was abuse, it's undeniable that this situation could be abused).

A perfect game in baseball is 9 innings. A "perfect game" in Diplomacy is 34 centers. Anlari wasn't interested in how long he could go before his opponents fought back, he was interested to see if he could attain a definite goal. He gave up a hit in the bottom of the 8th.

In the eyes of the mods, we recognized the unique circumstances of this game but agreed that it was not abuse. As has been mentioned already, this may be bad sportsmanship, but there is no rule against it. The bottom line is that there does exist a very specific set of circumstances in which a player can capture all 34 centers on the board, and if the other 6 players put themselves in such a compromised situation that allows the 7th to try to attain that goal, then there is no rule that prevents that action.

A perfect game in Diplomacy is 18 centers. Getting more than that serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever (in WTA) and only serves as a fun little personal challenge to beat the system that would end the game when you hit 18 centers. Just because there's no way to really make a rule that forbids attaining that rather pointless goal doesn't mean it should be condoned. I would hope the mods' continued position on this would be to intervene similarly if it happens again and the affected players take issue with it.

I would say there *was* a rule broken by Anlari. That oft quoted and shoved in some of ours face "use common sense" and "keep the site fun" rules were both broken by Anlari. Can one mod tell me how he was doing either.

Also, Kestas altered the payout I'm PPSC to prevent just this kind of bullshit play so that clearly proves that common sense wasn't being used.

Draug, neither the mods nor Kestas felt that Anlari was violating that rule. There are many things that are bad sportsmanship on this site that you could claim violate that rule. For example, refusing to pause, refusing to enter orders when you are losing, cussing out other players, etc. All of those can be considered poor sportsmanship but they do not violate a site rule. Trying to moderate them all would be 100% impossible and they are all generally acceptable within the game rules.

"A perfect game in Diplomacy is 18 centers." No, if you are going with the baseball analogy a win is 18 centers, a perfect game is 34 centers.

No, if you really want to use the perfect game scenario, a perfect game in diplomacy would be a 1904 Solo.

The analogy is bad, because you have to go out of your way to get 34 centers, whereas you achieve a perfect game in baseball over the normal progression of the game. You want to win, you try really hard, you put out every batter that steps to the plate. Congratulations on your perfect game.

That same process doesn't apply in a 34-center win. You have to use a different strategy, and that strategy may alter your ability to get the normal win. To put that in baseball terms, that would be like a batter hitting a ball into the gap, but not not taking second because the single gave him the cycle, a worthless stat.

What I don't get is why they drew after CD Germany was put in place. Anlari had the win with ease regardless of the CD.

Another failure of the perfect game analogy: solid defense against 34 centers is different than last ditch risky attempt to prevent 18.

The baseball analogy would be a team tied in the bottom of the ninth with 1 out and bases loaded playing 6 infielders hoping for a doubleplay. Then after a base-clearing single, the batting team decides not to count the runs and keep on playing. Except the field g team is now required to play with 6 infielders.

It is bullshit.