Having points makes sense. This has been discussed a lot of times. If I was to define the problem (how I see it at least) I'd say it lies with how the current system treats/rewards survivals.

1. PPSC and WTA are both bad. Players should be encouraged to finish games and play till the end, in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable reward. This is a problem with WTA games - if you're not doing very well your only choice is to directly start organizing mass draws with the other minors, and you all unite against the potential winner. Hence the many draws.

And don't pull out statistics from the last month - if you want to know what the situation will be like if we only had WTA then look at the League/GFDT games - 70% draws, and most of the wins were due to basic mistakes with the moves, someone going berserk, etc. Not to mention what happens in high-pot games - two people die and the others start considering a draw to split the huge pot...

There should be an alternative - in case you're not interested in a 6-way draw, or your only way to survive is to become a vassal. A system that makes you fight kamikadze-style or seek a draw at any cost is simply wrong. Maybe not as bad as PPSC, but not much better either.

2. We have 4 distincs outcomes - WIN, DRAW, SURVIVAL, ELIMINATION. PPSC has one major flaw - you can get more points from survival than from drawing - and you can get almost the same points for drawing as for winning.

How about the following:
1. If you win a game you get 2/3 of the pot
2. If there's a draw all participants split 2/3 of the draw (they collectively achieved a WIN, so they share the same amount)
3. If you survive (1 center or 16 makes no difference) you get 1/14 of the pot (~half of what you invested)

It's not zero-sum - but this should not be a problem?

I don't like the other suggestions above - they all incorporate the "Per Supply Center" concept to a certain extent - and I think this is the main problem - people going for the 'strong second' finish. Let's remove the motivation to side with the winner and grab a dozen centers (points) along the way.

Well I kind of like your suggestion Ivo. But did you see mine? It definately gets rid of the incentive you refer to. Although admittedly more draws would happen. Perhaps combining it with the draw disincentive is best?

Surely that will get *everyone* working with the leader.
They'd have the choice to assist him and end up giving away all but 1 SC and get their 1/14. Alternatively they could fight him, die, and get nothing?

No Figle I don't think that will happen at all. 1/14 is barely anything.

I will continue to stack my cards behind the hybrid: It

1) Offers an incentive to win rather than 2-way draw (or arranged draws, more importantly)
2) Offers an incentive to always carry on playing
3) Keeps very large draws (5 or 6 ways) unhelpful to enough players to stop them happening
4) Keeps small draws, i.e. 2, 3, and 4 ways, better than survivals.

That way the Per Supply centre centre-farming aspect goes away, but it still rewards those who hang on in there.


If we only had WTA, it wouldn't be like the leagues. In the leagues you have players very aware of tall-poppy syndrome (overly aware, in my opinion) and very aware of early leaders and stalemate lines, and so you get the draws. We cannot say that the 42 players in the leagues are a representative sample of people at large- they aren't!

Ivo_, you are mistaken if you think that a win in a WTA ever comes about without a player making a basic mistake, either by not noticing impending danger soon enough, or not having the tactical ability to stop it.

I agree with the distaste for high pot/low pot etc. If one is good, then the other must be bad, and so we should really have a pot not chosen by the player.

@Centurian - yes, I did - it had some PPSC part in it that I didn't like. It is definitely better than the current one - but I like mine better :)
@Figle - this is overly simplistic dude :)
1. I see no problem if someone has 1-3 centers and decides to become a vassal if his only other option is to die fighting. I don't like kamikadze's - they disbalance the game more than CDs. What is the point in forcing people to play like this?

2. If you are the 'strong second' (with let's say 6-8 centers) and still decide to side with the winner then you will gain nothing - so it would be better to fight and only start thinking about survival when you've lost the war and are down to 1-3 centers or something.

Centurian, if 1/14 is barely anything, why have it? The fact is that a 6 centre France against a ten centre England (remind you of anything figle?) would do best fighting for England, so that they get a survival and a bit of the pot, rather than against in the hope that they will be assisted when it comes to the end game.

Can people identify what they see as a problem?

Draws seem to be a problem to some people, but strong seconds are a problem to others. You cannot have nobody in second unless there is a draw!

So, do we want draws or solos (and the resulting strong seconds)?

Or better would be to say, do we want playing for second or playing for a draw?

I think you may be posing the question wrong. You seem to be suggesting that 'playing for second' is the same as 'coming in second'.

Guys, the 'hybrid' has the same major flaws as the current one. It reduces them, but does not eliminate them entirely.

1. A 2-way draw will still bring more points (combined) to the two players than a win would. The difference was ~5% between winning and finishing with 17 centers, you've made it ~25% - still not good enough, me thinks.
Why do you want to have an individual WIN bring less points than a DRAW (combined total of all participants). If one player wins he get's 75%, if 2 players "win" (e.g. draw) they get 100% of the points? Are we promoting DRAWs now? :)

2. Why do you want to give anything more to people for finishing as 'strong second'. If you played as a vassal to the winner and finished with 15 centers why should you get more points than the guy who was fighting your alliance to the bitter end and is ending up with just a center? If you finish with 15 centers and you let someone else win you should not get a bonus.
It's rather simple - if you are strong enough you should be encouraged to fight (for a win, or a draw) - and if you're weak you should be encouraged to fight for survival.

Ivo_ an 18-16 gives the same number of points as a 17-17. The point is to make it hard to keep a 17-17 because there is more incentive to break it for one party.

DJ: What are players who haven't any chance of soloing to do, play to come second or play to draw. That is the question I am asking, and it is very much a relevant one.

Play to draw. Without question

Ghost, this is root of the problem for me - in the moment it makes almost no difference (in terms of points) whether you end up with 18, 17 or 16 centers. It should not be like this.

Maybe I'm not explaining this properly:

1. The winner(s) of a game should always get the same return. If the game is won by more than one player (e.g. we have a draw) then this should not be rewarded by the system - as it is clearly much harder to win alone, than to get a draw. This sorts out the draws.

2. Surivals should also should be reduced in terms of return. And center-farming should not be rewarded. Players should know that survival always means losing - and it is only ok to go for a survival if your other alternative is elimination.

3. There should be some difference (in terms of points) between elimination and survival. WTA lacks this.

In summary:
Currently you can get 55% of the pot with a win, 50% with a draw, 45% with a survival. The differences are too small - so people opt for the safer approach that gives them more points.

Let's make a win 67%, a draw 33% max (67% / N) and surival 7% (1/14). This way people will only play for survival/draw when they have no better alternative.

No sorry Ghost, I guess that was our game though?
Cent - Ghost made my point. Whatever fraction you get for surviving must be enough to warrent survival, but will just make those in trouble gift a game as having 1SC scores them as well as 7.
The advantages of PPSC are actually quite numerous...

i'm not following the numbers as closely - but i dont know why we are re-inventing the wheel here... there are some great points systems already out there for Dip... check out any of the tournament sites...

first - we do need to get our Dip-values straight.

Dip is about Winning... but even more importantly, its about NOT losing... in the real-politik world of pre-WWI that dip is trying to emulate, the great powers were MOST concerned with NOT being subjegated to an overwhelming power in Europe... so they would be willing to switch sides at a whim to make sure that no single power dominated... (got to 18 SCs).

another words - the real life history that this game tries to emulate is one where every one of the seven powers tries to achieve not only survival, but also to stop any other from getting a solo.

this means that the dip-value the game in its original form (wta) was emulating (and the reason it was/is so popular) is to value solo the highest - and draws almost as high.

if you are involved in a 3-way draw, it is just about as good a result as you can hope for in dip - the 70% draw rate Ghost talks about in the tournament is the 'normal' course of a Dip game... this is NOT unnatural... this is actually IDEAL... having a 70% solo rate is a mutation o what the game is supposed to be. so anyone hoping for that kind of a aggrigate result does not understand the game or the spirit of the game at all (IMHO).


so what I'm saying is - we need to encourage Draws... and we need to make survivals equal to eliminations...

if you survive with 2 or 14 dots - it is literally the equivalent of being eliminated... why? because another power actually won...

in real world terms - this means that one of the European powers became so dominant (18 dots) that if history continued they would conquer all the others anyways...


another words - the 18 dot win threshhold is meant to show that if continued, the solo'ing power would eventually eliminate all the other players and end up with 34 dots. get it?


the key then is to make 'survivals' worth ZERO points... just as 'eliminates' they should equal the same damn thing.

thats what WTA does.

The "fig" one is what I was referring to.

It is quite a complicated issue this, and I'll get back to all of you on it.

with a highly considered view

to expand on Babak's point- no power has actually ever controlled all of Europe, throughout all history.

Although, if we did just have WTA, you would get massive CD rates, unless there was a negative involved, whereon you would get lots of games where weak powers would just "all hold".

Napoleon and Hitler got the closest - but in both cases, almost every other nation (except Switzerland) banded together to stop them from solo'ing.

I honestly dont think that the ppsc system does all that much better at reducing CD rates.

the biggest help at reducing CD and NMR rates is playing higher point games, password games, and building a 'culture' in the community about that.

I also think we need to change the CD-replacement points system - either making them free or drastically reducing the cost (and removing them from your game stats) so that vet players pick up CD positions and play them out...

if CD positions did not show up on my stats I'd pick up 4-5 at any given time just to help out make the games better for those in there... but as is, I'm not going to destroy my ranking and stats at such exorbitant prices


also - an ability to limit entry to players with no CDs or x # of NMRs or whatever would be also good as long as you allow those stats too fall off over time (ie an NMR gets off your record in 30 days, a CD in 90 days etc) so you can climb back up to respectability etc.

those are far better fixes than the current PPSC system (again IMHO)

also - i think this was discussed and agreed to before (though I dont know if it is being implemented in the new patch) - Newbie sign-ups should not be allowed to pick up CD positions until they have at lease finished a game or three...

95% of the time they have no clue what they are signing up for and just get turned off to the game as a whole or the site in particular.

@Babak - dude, sorry for this - but you always repeat the same nonsense over and over again. If you don't like PPSC then, please, stop playing it and stop preaching :)

This is a game, not real life - the fact that noone in history managed to conquer all of Europe does not mean we should try to to make the game impossible to win. What sort of a deluded argument is that?

phpDip is based on the BOARD GAME, and NOT on WWI, WWII, or any other real events.

Finally, the idea that survival and eliminatin should be treated as if they were equal is plain stupid. What would be the purpose of that???
You want to make people go CD more, or play like kamikadzes with the only goal to hurt someone else? You take away any motivation for reasonable behaviour and this is your grand plan to deal with unreasonable behaviour....

Ivo, while I think your heart is in the right place, I find your scoring system distastefully arbitrary. I'll try to defend WTA, but I won't bother with PPSC.

"This is a problem with WTA games - if you're not doing very well your only choice is to directly start organizing mass draws with the other minors, and you all unite against the potential winner. Hence the many draws."

How is this necessarily bad? As a minor country with only a few SC's, taking part in a draw is clearly a very rational decision. The system you propose, you admit will result in more of these minor players playing vassal to the winner. Why is that more desirable than a grand alliance forming? It's the potential winner that gets shafted, but that's their fault for not preventing the formation of a grand alliance or poorly timing their victory stab. I would say that losing players aiming to band together to form a stalemate line and force a draw is much more desirable than having them accept 7% of the pot...

The most satisfying game I had was one where everyone was viciously oriented toward winning and not letting anyone win, and the alliances were fluid and dynamic based on who was threatening a solo. It eventually ended up in a solo, and while I did not win, it was the best game because nobody was willing to be a vassal, even though at the time only PPSC was an available game type.

"And don't pull out statistics from the last month - if you want to know what the situation will be like if we only had WTA then look at the League/GFDT games - 70% draws, and most of the wins were due to basic mistakes with the moves, someone going berserk, etc."

Uh, I don't know why you think you can invalidate Ghost's statistics... his last month's includes many league and GFDT games, and in addition includes classic stand alone WTA games that don't involve some of the inevitable metagaming aspects of the league and GFDT. You can't wave your hands and say that it's wrong... in fact I would argue that your approach is flawed. These two tournaments will naturally have more draws than is typical in stand alone games because in the league you want to avoid tall poppy syndrome so you can snatch victory later. In the GFDT, there is an extra incentive to co-operate with another player to secure a safer passage to the next round. You're not necessarily aiming to win, you're aiming to advance. Those are the faults of these tournaments alone, and not faults of WTA, because players were not necessarily playing to win.

"Not to mention what happens in high-pot games - two people die and the others start considering a draw to split the huge pot...""

Yes, but that is not the fault of WTA... that's a fault of the point system. Besides which, your system does not necessarily change how people would behave in large pot games. The risk/reward ratio for winning vs. drawing is equal in both WTA and your proposed system.

I think you're misattributing certain faults to WTA, and your system surprisingly doesn't even solve many of the problems you pointed out... and considering you brought them up, I'd have thought you'd have come up with a system that avoided these problems. In addition, the percentages you use are shockingly arbitrary...

Chrispminis, you started by saying that my suggested scoring is distastefully arbtrary and does not solve any problems - and then missed to name even one problem - and saying that "the risk/reward ratio for winning vs. drawing is equal in both WTA and your proposed system" means you either didn't read or didn't understand my suggestion?

Could you be more specific and tell me where you see problem in my suggestion - I am not arguing it to be perfect in any case - but you simply missed to point out any negative :)
All I understood was that you like WTA a lot and think I don't like it - which is also wrong as I prefer WTA to PPSC.

And what do you mean by "distastefully arbitrary"
- It is the same for everyone?
- Where did the 'distasteful' part come from?

Well, I dislike arbitrary aspects in a rating system... when I saw your system is arbitrary, I mean, what's to differentiate say, giving 70.1% to the winner, and 9% for survival. Where did you come up with your numbers, and why would they be optimal?

I said that your scoring system didn't solve even some of the problems that you point out that exist in the current system. I did point out the problems, did you not read my post?

My point regarding risk/reward ratio is in reference to this aspect of your suggestion.
"1. If you win a game you get 2/3 of the pot
2. If there's a draw all participants split 2/3 of the draw (they collectively achieved a WIN, so they share the same amount)"

You say that players in a high stakes game start talking about a draw as soon as a couple of players are eliminated. With WTA, the win takes 100% of the pot, and a draw shares 100% of the pot. With your system, the winner takes 66.7% of the pot, and a draw shares 66.7% of the pot. A player in a high stakes game, weighing risk vs. reward for going for the win vs. playing to draw would not distinguish between WTA or the system you proposed, because the ratio of 100/100 = 66.7/66.7.

I'm sorry if my post was difficult to follow, but the essential structure of my previous post was the following.
After the 1st quote: I believe that WTA encourages more desirable behaviour than your system would because it encourages minor players to band up against the winner rather than be a vassal.
After the 2nd quote: In response to your disparagement of WTA by using League and GFDT results, I pointed out that your argument was flawed and that the disproportionate number of draws was due to the metagame aspect of the Leagues and GFDT and not because of the WTA atmosphere, it was precisely because people did NOT necessarily play for the win.
After the 3rd quote: This was outlining what I expanded upon above, regarding risk/reward ratios in high stakes games, and how while it is certainly a valid complaint, I don't think it is the fault of WTA, and at the very least, your proposed system certainly does not solve that problem.

I hope that clarifies what I was saying. I was defending WTA against what you identified as problems with it, and I was pointing out that your system is frighteningly arbitrary, and that it doesn't even solve some of the problems you attributed to WTA/PPSC. So, I hope that's clear, because I tried to deal with your argument point by point...

I am new to this site and hesitate to get into the middle of this fight as I am not sure I really understand all the uber-technical points that all of you are making. Quite frankly, I agree with almost all of you about almost everything. I think that, just as in general life, you are all right from your own perspective.
Therefore, I aim to unite you all under a common banner by means of philosophy. I just read this whole thread in one sitting, so if I use language similar to any of yours it is not intentional plagiarism, but, rather, an echoing resonance of your words.
First and foremost, it seems that the root of this argument is purpose in every aspect of the differing viewpoints.
What is the purpose of the game?
What is the purpose of playing the game?
What is the purpose of drawing?
What is the purpose of survival?
All very good questions and all subject to perspective.
Almost every game ever made has a very clear purpose. There will be a winner (or winners) and this is how you get there. Everyone who is not a winner is a loser. This is a very unique game in that the actual game instructions make possible a third provision that is not quite winning and not quite losing. From the actual rules, "However, players can end the game by agreement before a winner is determined. In this case, all players who still have pieces on the board share equally in a draw." It is clearly implied that a draw is not a win and not a loss. I agree with previous posts on the subject that assert that this is to reflect the nature of WW1. In fact, I propose to go a step further and say that this is meant to reflect the nature OF ALL MODERN WAR.
There is no such thing as a winner anymore. There are sometimes losers, but a single (solo) winner is as extinct as the Dodo and LDTV. In our global community, I assert that all "wins" are draws. WW1 was a messy draw for the U.S., France, and England, which lead directly to WW2. WW2 was a draw between the U.S., Russia, England, and their assorted vassals. I challenge you to name a war fought after 1900 in which there was one clear winner. It is important to note here that, although I attribute a draw to certain countries in the above reference, in actual game terms ALL the countries in the wars actually shared in a draw. In neither war was Germany eliminated, nor Japan or Italy in WW2.
Now, as this game setup is meant to mirror actual warfare and the inevitable realization that warfare, itself, is a mutually destructive device in which nobody comes out better than they went in, it can only be reasoned that the overall purpose of the game is to create an endless game.
Those of you who stated the importance of banding together against the leader (whoever that may be at the moment) essentially have captured the point that, I believe, the creators of this game had in mind. Although borders are very fluid, and lives (units) are expendable, a balance is preferable to any one ideology conquering all.
And that leads me right up to my next topic..
Being that total victory is near impossible (or, at least, should be), then how a person defines victory for themselves is a much murkier subject to discuss. And here is where I believe we come back to the central points of all of the previous arguments. For, it is here in this personal definition of victory, that we cannot come to terms. The reason for this is obvious and plain; because personal definitions are as unique as the people who arrive at them and no 2 will ever be the same. How could they possibly be, when even my own definition changes according to circumstances? Depending on mitigating factors such as backstabbing, faulty foretelling, and the amount that my allies trust me and follow collective planning, a one-center survival can sometimes taste sweeter to me than a 2-way draw.
So, since the point of the game is to always band together to keep anyone from winning, and what each of us personally defines as a victory can shape the way we approach an end-game scenario, I say that none of the above arguments are actually about the game.
What you are arguing about is the distribution of points (which aren't really a part of the game anyway). They are only valid in the metagame of rankings and recognition; a.k.a. ego.
I find this deliciously ironic in that all this huff and puff is about a wargame, and ego is really the cause of all warfare.
Anyway, without getting farther afield, my conclusion is that, just as in nature, the macroverse shall mirror the microverse. What I mean is that, just as the point of the game itself is that no one power should ever actually win, so no one point distribution philosophy should ever prevail.
I think that each of you should make your own variant and all should be equally "valid", with the choice of game left to the creator and those who choose to join in and play.
Aside from philosophical discussions about which distribution system or which playstyle is best, the only real mistake that could be made is to ban any of the options. Preference will take care of that without litigation.

Another way to divide the pot would be DIAS: Draws include all survivors. This would mean that any person in a draw gets an equal share, but loses the lot if someone wins. This would be a massive incentive to keep trying since you can't get points for helping the winner but can salvage a lot by helping the resistance.