Today's Exam is for Indian Institute of Space and Technology where I wanted to pursue Aerospace Engineering or Avionics(Aerospace + Computer Science)

This exam would be given by 4,00,000 students and 160 are selected..:D

Alright I have to go to Dress up for that so Bye for Now.

Mercy is for the weak Chanakya! - kick that exam in the nuts and then drop a car on it.

GL :)

Nice, my cousins are trying for IIT next year.

thanks .

And largeham, Are you fromm India?

May your betters experience great misfortune and the exam results paint a misleading positive impression of your abilities!

Yeah, I'm from Bombay, but my family moved in '96. I could guess you are, from the name, where are you from?

Remember, you can't push on a rope.

An ironic request, OP, since there is no luck in Diplomacy :P

@abge: Sound advice that. "Ropes Are Not Rods™"

Good luck, Chanakya. I don't know too much about IIST. But the IITs, IIT-B atleast, I can vouch for, they're awesome. I have never had more fun than over the last four years here. Brilliantly gifted and special people everywhere, you feel overwhelmed at first, until you realize you're one of them ;-)

But there is, YJ.

It's luck when you play Russia in gunboat, and England, Austria, Germany and Turkey go after you S 1901.

Santosh you are from IIT B? I gave IIT Jee and Hopes Are alive..
And You know Gaush Alam?

like I said, no luck in DIPLOMACY. Just because gunboat uses the same board does not make it diplomacy.

Still, I take your point though.

"But there is, YJ.

It's luck when you play Russia in gunboat, and England, Austria, Germany and Turkey go after you S 1901."

That's not luck unless the other players took their actions randomly.

From the Russian players perspective in Gunboat, PE, that's pure luck. Russia had no influence on this S 1901 opening, so if there is a variable you have no control over, you just hope for good luck.

Right?

PE, you could extend your logic to argue that there's no luck in the roll of a die or the shuffling in a deck of cards, yet we consider those things entirely dependent on "luck."

I mean PE is technically correct that the individual choice for each player to invade Russia is highly deterministic, but for all of them to decide that at once? That's just bad luck :)

The same is true of full press. One can influence how things start to some extent (how much this is depends largely on what players you are up against, which is very much down to luck) but the initial prejudices that would have decided everything in the gunboat still exist. Diplomacy is jam packed with luck, and it is impossible to win without being lucky, but it hides it well.

If Chanakya's about it'd be good to know how it went :)

I suppose the argument does extend to Full Press

Consider the Perfect Diplomacy Player. This gent, by merely suggesting an idea, and by the force of his very likable character, successfully manages to get everyone to move as per his wishes throughout the game. When they are in danger, he manages to talk them into looking the other way, and wins. PDP is so highly skilled that he is perfectly in control, and requires no luck whatsoever. Similarly for the Perfect Chess Player. Such levels of skill may be extremely rare, but that is beside the point.

Consider, on the other hand, the Perfect Coin Toss Player. Try as hard as he may, he, on an average, beats his opponent no more or no less than half of the time, which in a two-player game, is what you'd expect, purely by luck. So, while luck plays a big role in the coin toss game, if it plays a comparable role in my diplomacy games, it is only because I'm not good enough, and I need to improve!

Can the perfect diplomacy player magically make his neighbour stop having a bad day at work leaving him more inclined to sleep than spend time looking at his messages? No. Can the perfect diplomacy player prevent an ally making a miss order? No. Luck rules supreme

Circumstance =/= luck.

PDP's press is read by one and all because it is just what they want to read. You wouldn't feel more inclined to sleep than to read PDPs messages because you really like reading them and incentivize that over sleep. You wouldn't miss a turn if you were with PDP in a game, because that would make you feel like a weasel. You would drive home carefully because dying in an accident on that way would let PDP down :-D

"Luck rules supreme." No offense, Octavious, but that sounds like the hallmark of a person who is looking to justify his losses. It's like the old capitalist adage, "If you work hard, you'll find you get lucky quite often."

@ Yellowjacket

It may well sound like that, but it isn't. It's based on playing over 80 games, a win/draw percentage of over 70%, and an all time ghost rating in the top 100. Out of the 40 odd thousand people who have played a game on this site I like to think of myself as at least more experienced, if not better than most. from what I have seen I can state with 100% certainty that luck plays a huge part.

@ draugnar: Yes it does.

@Oct - Luck cannot be circumvented but circumstances like you mention can be altered. Therefore luck does not equal circumstance.

I still disagree Octavious. Though I'm not as experienced as you are - I can honestly say I've never found myself in a bad position in game due to anything I'd call "luck." In fact, I immediately ask myself what I could have done to avoid that situation, and so far the answer has never eluded me.

If it were just "bad luck," then there would have been nothing I could have done differently.

Now if you look at my most recent completed game (gameID=78959), you could argue that Russia had "bad luck" in the way that's already been mentioned, and I'd tentatively agree (not knowing how much effort he put into his S01 diplomacy). But I think you overestimate the prevalence of situations like that. (and also undervalue your own performance, I might add!)

Seriously however, I do agree with Yellowjacket, in that the games I've lost have very rarely been because my hands were tied. In most cases, efforts to persuade people to not attack me failed, and I think somebody better than me might have managed to. So, from my point of view, I would almost never blame my situation on luck, and I've never had it play a big part in any of my games.

I'm not so sure circumstances that drastically affect people's responses occur often enough to play a 'big part' in a game. Sure, they happen, but I think they're few and far between, and so any non-game factors affecting the game are low-probability.

@ santosh

A huge part of doing well in this game is down to our ability to build relationships. In the game, as in life, there will be certain people you will click with and certain people you will take an instant dislike to. There is a lot you can do to get on with all sorts of people, but it is impossible to know for sure whether your chosen style will endear or alienate you to your neighbour, especially when the game is in the initial stages.

If you are Austria and Turkey and Russia both happen to be players who have a natural fondness for the Jugg, and have personalities that compliment each other very well, then you are going to be in an extremely difficult situation. If, on the other hand, they have a natural dislike of russia/turkey alliances and they rub each other up the wrong way you're going to be laughing all the way to Moscow.

The best players of this game have the ability to spot when the wind is blowing in their direction quicker than most, and can manage to talk their way out of some unbelievibly unpromising situations, but the player doesn't exist who can pull off a win when the Fates are against him. When the Fates are on your side, on the other hand, it can be laughably easy.