Fascinatingly enough there's an entire sub-forum and cult on Playdip dedicated to that.

I've wondered about that. What do they do when a game gets stalemated?

"I, username, do hereby pledge, by my free will, without any duress being applied to be, and being of sound mind, in the witness of the Mods and gamers of this forum, that I will commit myself to winning this game outright to the best of my ability. Should one of the seven prove to be an Oathbreaker in this regard, I will spurn all talks of enacting a draw and will dutifully fight until no such draw can take place. Should a stalemate occur and all players agree, I will continue to seek a solo win for as long as this is possible. If it proves impossible, and all players agree, then there will be no winner for this game and I will not ever claim to have won it. I pledge to not surrender, and continue active participation in the shoutbox if I should be defeated, as I continue to have a vote in the stalemate agreement."

ie your guess is as good as mine. Possibly. I'm good at guessing. Actually I probably have a slight edge. But we're all friends here.

"I will not ever claim to have won it"

Well, no. There was a draw.

I can only guess that this refers to people who claimed to win a game by, say. ending with the most centers. Or "a two way winning alliance", etc

Wackaloons making up rules to prevent bullshit from other wackaloons

In-game creation you can literally turn draws off, so it might be that the only way to end the game is for everyone to agree that there was a stalemate and a draw and then let someone win

We've decided to mix it up a bit. Change the dynamics of the game after having two games drawn. There were claims made by players that the draw option made smaller nations play "worse". And many other claims. So we'd like to see how this effects players strategies. Worth the try, no? Can always go back to the standard rules.

Its interesting that you want to respect the rules of the game until the END but just before that you basically throw out every rule except one that governs end of game play.

I would recommend playing more than two games before deciding to change the rules.

So, what you might not be aware of is that Diplomacy has stalemate lines - positions where a certain combination of units and orders can throw up an unbreakable wall preventing someone from winning. This is why many games end in draws - and why "crossing the stalemate line" is very important if you want to win.

I'd also add that there are no "smaller" or "weak" nations in Diplomacy. Although, I do think that Italy suffers, not because it's weak, but because most of the advice written about it is terrible.

This article is a great primer for Italy: http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/strategy/articles/why_italy.htm

wait so is this just a bad Lusthog then?

thank you ATC for the feedback. been playing on and off for over 20 years and recently the question has arisen about the validity of a draw or multi-nation victory, say between two or three nations that ally at some point in the game, don't break that alliance, knock out the enemies and call it a day. what do you think about this? is that "ethical", or should they then turn on each other for the solo-victory. also interested in what Valis thinks about this. or anybody else for that matter.

also, the "smaller" nation i referred to was in mid to late game when the nation is down to only a few scs. at that point the player can either ditch the game (hence our rule on respecting the game till the END), or joins the force they think is most likely to help them be part of the victory, or fights for solo victory in hopes of the larger nations will make mistakes and/or leave opportunities open while fighting each other.

Briefly, I think our balking was at the idea of a solo being the only allowed *result*. No sane person thinks that the *goal* should be anything but a victory (there's no such thing as a shared victory), but that's very often not the *result*. I hope that explains at least partially my stance here.