It depends very much on what kind of player you want to be. Some players will frown upon you for taking such solos. Others will frown upon you for not taking them. You can't please everyone, so beat just to be true to yourself.

Some people believe you should win at all costs, others that a CD goes against the sportsmanship of the game. Personally I don't like benefiting from a CD unless I am sure that my beating that nation was inevitable (my having already surrounded that nation for example, and the CD only saving me a turn or 2) but it all changes player to player.

If people were voting to cancel or draw a live game after a CD, you could just add your vote in if yours was the only one missing. Otherwise the players haven't indicated that they care you are getting the win from a CD.

Best*

i don't think it's bad form. it happens frequently enough that i view it as part of the game. if you cancelled everytime that happened, you would never finish any games.

My policy is to vote draw/cancel when the CD happens, but if other players don't put up their draw/cancel votes, I have no problem attacking them or taking the solo.

In general I would say yes, especially if cd's happen mid-game. If you are already very close to a solo and someone cd's simply because they don't see a potential draw I would understand though.

I guess key if how much the CD changes the balance of the game and if other players have any chance to anticipate / prevent you from a solo. If the other players can't anticipate it / don't have a reasonable time to adjust to, I wouldn't consider it very sportmanship like..

Interesting question, Sir Denis, one which we thank you for bringing to our attention.

In effect the converse is true, that it is bad form *NOT* to take advantage of CDs. Only weaklings and simpletons attempt to play "honorable" matches, and the first sign of mental infirmity in one of your fellow players will usually be that they waste breath attempting to make things fair.

If that is your playing style Swearengen, I'm surprised you haven't won more than 5 % of your games.

IMO, you should put the vote up, and then play as you like. If you feel that the game became total imbalanced from the CD you can only act thereafter and hope everyone those the same. Afterwards you can then royally scold anyone who hesitated drawing.

But - and there is a but. The new RR possibility means if you wanted a game with no CD's and such you could have set the RR bar higher or joined a game with one that ensured honorable players.
I've tried for some nights making games with a high RR, but haven't been lucky in actually getting them running. I think there just isn't enough players with high RR on an average night.

I'm a total hypocrite when it comes to this--

But that's part of the game. If Turkey has 8 centers and then CDs, and I'm England, I'm going to preach and rant about how the quality of the game is "tainted" or I don't have time for "pointless" games. If I can convince a few people, others tend to jump on the bandwagon, and the game is drawn/canceled.

On the other hand, if I were Russia in that last scenario, I would absolutely snap up the lions share of those SCs. Horribly dishonorable, but hey, it's Diplomacy!

This is war; win at all costs.

Abge, you surprise me (I was just wondering what your take would be).

abge has always had this opinion when it comes to CDs and NMRs and such in Diplomacy.

What makes it even more curious is that he has opinions on winning a game of Diplomacy.

Theres a live gunboat starting an hour if anyone is up for the task of not CDing, gameID=168407

CD/NMR are a part of the game; how they are handled is clearly stated in the rules. If there is a CD that gives a player a chance to solo, the remaining players should recognize the danger and change their plans accordingly. If they don't, the failure is on them.

There's nothing in the rulebook about metagaming or multis either
This is war; win at all costs.

Frankly if someone is actively holding a stalemate line goes CD, it's up to the others to log on to their account and put in support holds. If they don't they were just begging to lose.

Thats a good point abgemacht, CD's are figured into the game's rules.

I guess the real problem lies in people that continue to fight for small shares of the final SC count instead of setting up a stalemate line. In live gunboat this can be the most infuriating, especially when you see the danger early and cannot shift units when your neighbor fails to recognize the impending result and continues attacking you making any shift of units impossible.

First, Gunboat is not Diplomacy, so you shouldn't apply the same rules to two different games. As you say, it's very hard to compensate for a CD in a gunboat game. I honestly don't have a strong opinion an anything regarding gunboat games.

In Diplomacy, though, there is almost always something you can do to prevent a solo if there is a CD. The exception, as Valis mentions, is if you're on/about to be on a stalemate line. In this case, though, the blame lies solely with the player that went into CD. Mods will force-draw games that have no action, so it's not like anyone is spending weeks logging into a game that should have ended. Shame on the player that CD'd for not sticking around one year longer.

This, of course, is all subject to house rules. If 7 people agree to end a game when a CD occurs, great for them. I'm a strong believer that people should be able to create rules to suite their style of play. It certainly shouldn't be expected of anyone though. It needs to be agreed upon beforehand.

My apologies, Abge. I went back to the game "A Midsummer's' Eve", gameID=164933, in which the French player was banned, and we worked around finding a new player and letting him "catch up" for missed '01 moves. You voiced opposition to these accomodations in the Global press on a couple of occasions. I had forgotten.

It depends on if you were in a good position before or because of the cd. If i am ina position that i think i could have won anyway, i will go for the solo. Otherwise, i will draw.

I pretty much play on with CDs, gunboat, full press, whatever, whether I'm benefiting or losing out as a result. They're part of the game.

I'd think about clicking Cancel if about 2/3rds of the other players had a Cancel flag up, but I'm not gonna click it myself until then.

Also, agree with @abgemacht - the rules are actually quite explicit that players should decide *in advance* of the game what they're going to do with replacement player policy. It suggests that it's better to have replacements if a player "leaves the game", but it's a suggestion, not a rule.

I've offered to cancel before, but typically there isn't consensus . . . after that, there is no reason to feel guilty for soloing.

Any game with a CD (or even an NMR) should result in a draw between the not CD players that are still relatively important powers, imo.

I offered a draw/cancel and the others rejected it, so now I will crush them. :)

Kill all the men, enslave the children and take to women..

Pretty simple . ( sometimes you win sometimes you lose )