D(N)WC : Final report by TD

By Jeremie Lefrancois

This is intended to be official report of the first Diplomacy by national team tournament, by the Tournament Director himself. I could not resist adding a bit of my life so that reader could now II fell into all this.

1992. I got my first job as a computer engineer, in Defence Electronics. Several young colleagues, like myself, knew of the game of Diplomacy, so I offered to master a game. I started writing a little adjudicator “just to save time”. At this time the “Minitel” was very popular in France. It was a little device with 40 column text, that served as the internet of today (text only) in France. So a server to play Diplomacy on the Internet was operational in 1994. I got a contract with a French company selling the “Diplomatie” game in French, but the project stalled after Avalon Hill never gave Jeux Descartes the authorization to start (anyway this project was more for rich people or people who had the opportunity to use the Mintel without paying, because it would have been very expensive to spend hours writing messages at a per minute cost basis.) And is it really playing Dip if not spending hours writing and exchanging messages ?

So there was a pause for Diplomacy for me.

2003. I was asked to be a replacement in a game with French tournament set up by Gabriel Lecointre named “Interzines”, for a French speaking team named “Vopaliec”, a French paper zine I was member of. As a player, I started thinking (a lot) about tournament structures and regulations. I also had some free time then (as a contract isolated me during the week alone in a city 250 miles away from home and family) to build a few more Diplomatic tools (mapping mainly).

2005. The tools got gathered in a website, the “stabbeurfou”. That site hosted the Interzines II tournament which was a gathering of 10 French speaking teams (diplomatic communities).

At that time, negotiations were not possible on the site, so one had to use the traditional emails. The only real incident in this event was the “false start”. A bug (my mistake) in the system allowed for a couple of days to see all orders of all other players. It was detected between Spring and Autumn 1901, so the decision was made to completely restart the whole event.

The funny part about the result was that the three first teams in the second edition were exactly the same as in first edition.

2006. Gabriel brought to my attention an attempt to run an adaptation of the world soccer cup so I joined the fun. It took me three months to get the site bilingual, and an additional two to have a decent bid (mainly writing and adapting rules and regulations for all aspects of this special tournament).

2007. Most of first semester was spent advertising for that D(N)WC., and a lot of spamming. (I remember getting kicked out of the DipAI mailing list for that, although being a very modest AI builder myself.) We had more than a majority of American players registered, so a great effort was made in splitting the nationals in subgroups. In September the event could start, and despite all my efforts I never managed to get teams from Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland; places I knew that had potential for at least a single team. The sad part of the experience was about Scotland, since decision at council (which I voted as well) was to have Scotland play as part of UK (and not separated) – which about half of the Scottish refused to accept and left the tournament. The funniest part of this experience was realizing there was such an antagonism between the south and north states of Australia. We have the same in France between Marseilles and Paris !

The start of the tournament was a real rush.; mainly with all the questions from the participants, with the late replacements, players not understanding the site features or forgetting their password.

But it worked.

More and more software was added to ease the work of the tournament director and to try to get the interface as clear as possible. Since the programmer and the TD were the same person, that was much easier.

You have to be patient to be a TD¹.

A tournament organizer is like a plumber, filling the leaks (players leaving) with players willing to join the fun, introducing them to their new team.

At that time all adjudications on site had to be pushed manually. The only real incident in this round came from a player from team “Ohio10” who got most of the players in his table upset against him. Since this was getting more than unhealthy, I made a decision to have him replaced (and not by his 10 years old son !)

The two major points about the results of round one were the poor performance of USA teams (the 5 of them were eliminated) and the outstanding performance of the French teams (First, Third and

Last).

In parallel of this I made an attempt to host an adaptation of famous “World Masters” on the site. The original “owners” of the WM rejected my offer for reasons the remain still unclear to me today. Yet the event did actually start with a different name (“Wonderful Mansion” as a wink) and was quite successful, even if the 500 players goal I had hoped for was not reached. This event is still ongoing, round two (semi final) will start next September.

2008. In September round two of D(N)WC started with the magnificent seven : France (three teams had mixed) , Argentina, Italy, Russia, Germany (two teams had mixed), Australia (two teams had mixed) and China. The number of N.M.R – already very low – dropped dramatically, and this was a real pleasure. My experience tells me that more than half of the drop outs occur during the first Diplomatic year.

The only real incident in D(N)WC round two was internal to French team. It seems the French captain, had very high expectations for his players. So he used his right to remove a player from a game for another which he had hoped would fare better. Needless to say, the original player was not too happy to leave the game. Life is tough sometimes ! Still France won the event, but that is another story...

Now to the results !

For those who have not figured out the acronym, D(N)WC stands for Diplomacy World Cup. The “N” for national, i.e. national teams. First successful attempt (from what I know), it took place between September 2007 and May 2008, (you can see the report of round one in DW issue #102.) The second round had the seven best, in a classical 7x7 fashion. Winner was France, led by captain Gwen Maggi. French victory was confirmed by solo from French lieutenant Fabrice Essner. This was the only solo in round two, but the second of Fabrice, because he did the same trick on first round.

Since the three sub tournaments of round one were named after three schools of the Harry Potter books and film plot, the final round was named after the fourth school “Gryffindor”. Each game received the name of the most famous (kid) characters.

Note you may get full results directly on the site there : http://www.stabbeurfou.org/Tournoi.php?nom=Gryffindor

Games end

Team rating

Comment : So why did Germany finish before Australia ? Because of tie breaker #1 : “Biggest number of victories (excluding shared victories)”. Note that Australia has more homogeneous result (fifth with no victory at all).

Best powers

Board details

The board detail : 
Points from C−Diplo system plus Survivalist syst. (NAMUR). 
then team rating 
then harder country 
then fewer centres (more ranking points) 

Draco  end 09 
1  Ruben Sanchez Garcia France_f        Italy        47.0 P 8  C (te. 1) 
2  Alex Lebedev         Russia_f        Turkey       47.0 P 8  C (te. 7) 
3  bill brown           Australia_f     England      27.0 P 7  C (te. 5) 
4  Fang Zhang           China_f         Germany      19.0 P 6  C (te. 6) 
5  Marco Noseda Pedragl Italy_f         Austria      15.0 P 4  C (te. 2) 
6  Marcelo Larroque     Argentina_f     Russia        6.0 P 1  C (te. 3) 
7  Ulrich Degwitz       Germany_f       France        1.0 P 0  C (te. 4) 

Ginny  end 09 
1  Martin Kaplan        Argentina_f     Turkey       61.0 P 10 C (te. 3) 
2  Markus Paeuser       Germany_f       Germany      36.0 P 9  C (te. 4) 
3  Jean−Pierre MAULION  France_f        Austria      27.0 P 7  C (te. 1) 
4  Filippo Lucchini     Italy_f         Russia       17.0 P 5  C (te. 2) 
5  Brian Shelden        Australia_f     France       13.0 P 3  C (te. 5) 
6  Mingfei Nie          China_f         Italy         1.0 P 0  C (te. 6) 
7  Mitya Kletka         Russia_f        England       1.0 P 0  C (te. 7) 

Harry  end 09 
1  Fabrice Essner       France_f        Russia       73.0 P 18 C (te. 1) 
2  Giovanni Cesarini    Italy_f         Turkey      −15.0 P 3  C (te. 2) 
3  Ismael Puga          Argentina_f     England     −15.0 P 0  C (te. 3) 
4  Marco Hopp           Germany_f       Italy       −15.0 P 3  C (te. 4) 
5  Mark Oakwood         Australia_f     Germany     −15.0 P 0  C (te. 5) 
6  Zhong Yuncheng       China_f         Austria     −15.0 P 6  C (te. 6) 
7  Yuri Hryniv          Russia_f        France      −15.0 P 4  C (te. 7) 

Hermione  end 09 
1  Luca Pazzaglia       Italy_f         England      65.0 P 14 C (te. 2) 
2  Leonardo Colangelo   Argentina_f     France       36.0 P 9  C (te. 3) 
3  Cyrille SEVIN        France_f        Turkey       27.0 P 7  C (te. 1) 
4  Qi Worden            China_f         Russia       15.0 P 4  C (te. 6) 
5  Arne Senftleben      Germany_f       Austria       1.0 P 0  C (te. 4) 
6  Craig Purcell        Australia_f     Italy         1.0 P 0  C (te. 5) 
7  Deep Walia           Russia_f        Germany       1.0 P 0  C (te. 7) 

Luna  end 09 
1  Bjorn Becker         Germany_f       Russia       66.0 P 15 C (te. 4) 
2  Tom Tian             Australia_f     Austria      38.0 P 11 C (te. 5) 
3  Andrea Ziffer        Italy_f         France       26.0 P 6  C (te. 2) 
4  Nicolas Sahuguet     France_f        England       6.0 P 1  C (te. 1) 
5  Hao Mi               China_f         Turkey        6.0 P 1  C (te. 6) 
6  Mike Goldfeld        Argentina_f     Germany       1.0 P 0  C (te. 3) 
7  ilya guzman          Russia_f        Italy         1.0 P 0  C (te. 7) 

Neville  end 09 
1  Londa Li             China_f         England      66.0 P 15 C (te. 6) 
2  Alan Gee             Australia_f     Russia       38.0 P 11 C (te. 5) 
3  Pablo Echevarria     Argentina_f     Italy        22.0 P 4  C (te. 3) 
4  Michael Pock         Germany_f       Turkey       13.0 P 3  C (te. 4) 
5  Emmanuel du PONTAVIC France_f        France        6.0 P 1  C (te. 1) 
6  Leonardo Quirini     Italy_f         Germany       1.0 P 0  C (te. 2) 
7  Eugene Bikkinin      Russia_f        Austria       1.0 P 0  C (te. 7) 

Ron  end 09 
1  Gwen Maggi           France_f        Germany      68.0 P 17 C (te. 1) 
2  Alessio Cei          Italy_f         Italy        38.0 P 11 C (te. 2) 
3  Victor Saburoff      Russia_f        Russia       26.0 P 6  C (te. 7) 
4  Ariel Max Sanchez Ro Argentina_f     Austria       1.0 P 0  C (te. 3) 
5  Fabian Straub        Germany_f       England       1.0 P 0  C (te. 4) 
6  Doug Melville        Australia_f     Turkey        1.0 P 0  C (te. 5) 
7  Hohn Cho             China_f         France        1.0 P 0  C (te. 6) 
Comment : system was Namur with aggravated solo. Team rank is a tie breaker.

Some miscellaneous stats

Comment : not so many changes there.

Teams that sent the most messages

Comment : France wins and sends the most messages, Russia looses and sends the fewest messages.

Players that sent the most messages

Comment : Fabrice is far ahead for results and number of messages. Zhong has the worst ratio. Still, it pays to talk : the three best individuals are amongst the 11 that sent the most messages.

Awards

Comment : The idea is to give the awards to teams by adding the votes received by the team players.

Opening stats by power

England

France

Germany

Italy

Austria

Russia

Turkey

Overall comment for openings : quite often best opening includes a hold order : Austria : A Vie H; Russia : A War H; Turkey : A Smy H.

Summary of all EOGS (“End Of Game Statements”) as published on site nave been collected and gathered in another article in DW edition # 109.

Conclusion.

What changes do I foresee for next edition ? The main change that was considered was inserting a first individual round. From this round the best individuals from every country may be determined, and then form a team in the same manner as in edition one (vote for a captain, then figure out which player plays which power).

Less important changes being considered are :

• scoring system to switch to more consensual “Manorcon” square,

• game duration extended from 1909 to 1911,

• structure of team round to be in a single tournament with interaction between teams made as small as possible³,

• list of allowed countries to be made more flexible to allow “countries” such as Scotland, instead of just ONU

• a TD to be distinct from TO, and not French.

Of course these are only suggestions that my experience allow me to make. Many details remain currently unclear for next edition although a start no sooner than September 2010 is likely, because I very much doubt another site could be fully ready for next September (and there seems to be a preference in changing the site to host the event, or at least giving any other site or whatever a chance to bid.)

Stay tuned !