When submitting the original rules of "Mercenary Diplomacy" for inclusion in the variant banks, I learned that (owing to the pre-existence of a Lew Pulsipher variant with the same name) the variant would become known as either "Mercenary Diplomacy III" or "Mercenary Diplomacy IV." Yuck. To quote The Dubliners, "I've never fancied being numbered."
So at this point, I undertook to rename the variant, and I asked for suggestions from all quarters, including the players of the test game. Some of the suggestions I received were:
I must admit that, when going over my saved mail to write these annotations, I was shocked to find that the variant was named after the first game to be played, and not vice-versa. I remembered, of course, that the variant was originally named "Mercenary" and that it was then renamed, but I had forgotten that the decision to name it "Payola" happened so late.
The most common assumption is that the bribery concept was taken from
the game Machiavelli.
For those readers unfamiliar with it, Machiavelli was Avalon
Hill's first application of the basic Diplomacy ruleset to a different
game; Machiavelli is set in feudal Italy and adds
bribery (though very much unlike that in Payola), garrisons,
assassination, and such chance events as plague, floods, and
famine. Personally, I am not a fan
of Machiavelli, as I consider the introduction of chance elements
to be a ruination of what I think we all consider to be the perfect
ruleset of Diplomacy (basically, if a game uses dice, I consider it
intellectually inferior -- this is just me). I only played Machiavelli
a few times, and this was so long ago I that no longer remember the
mechanics of the game. So -- although
I knew that Machiavelli added bribery in some form -- the
thinking behind Payola Diplomacy neither began with nor centered
around Machiavelli.
Rather, the Payola concept came from a different Diplomacy variant,
the two-player "Intimate Diplomacy." Again, for those who are unfamiliar
with this variant, two players each assume leadership of one of the seven
Great Powers, as in the standard game, and then the players bid against
each other for control of the units of each of the five other nations
for each gameyear.
The bidding is one round, and control is decided on a country by country
basis (not, as in Payola, on a unit by unit basis).
The rules for Intimate Diplomacy
were posted to the Diplomacy newsgroup in mid-to-late 1993, with the
notice that a pair of games of the variant would be started on the USEF judge
and that "dummy" players were needed to provide e-mail addresses for the
five "inactive" powers. I volunteered to become one of these "dummy" powers,
and at the same time I roped John Woolley into playing a quick game of
Intimate against me to familiarize ourselves with the variant.
Admittedly, the couple of games John and I played were a small sample, but
from them, John and I found Intimate Diplomacy unsatisfying. It seemed that
any lead was basically impossible to overcome. One other thing I remember
is that we considered the penalty for overbidding to be especially harsh and
unforgiving.
So we set out to improve the game. I came up with
the "let each of the two players offer bribes to each unit rather
than to each power" idea,
and then -- before even playtesting the two-player Intimate variant this
way -- I quickly applied
the idea to the full seven-player game. I'll just say here that although
I do think that this rule would, perhaps minimally, improve Intimate
Diplomacy, much of the beauty of Diplomacy -- the whole alliance and "chase
the leader" concepts -- are lost on a two-player game, simply by its nature.
This is not a knock on Intimate, and again, I surely have not played Intimate
enough to pretend to pronounce judgement on it.
Another important feature that Payola provides which is not provided by
Intimate Diplomacy is secrecy of control. In Intimate Diplomacy, both players
know, when writing their orders, exactly which units will be controlled by the
other player. By keeping this information secret until orders are processed
(as Payola does), Intimate would be made more challenging. Indeed, in a
multi-player game situation, this secrecy of control is one of the most
important features of Payola.
To resume our story, though, puma was the name of the Intimate
Diplomacy game for which I volunteered to act as a "dummy" power. After
the very first "bids" for control of the five neutral powers were processed,
the winner of the game was decided (in other words, there was a forced
win
even before the units were actually ordered). Before and while all this
was taking place, I entered into a broadcast conversation about the
faults that we "dummy" powers saw with the variant, initially intending
to offer some mechanism for the five "dummies" to obtain some result from
the game themselves. It was during this discussion, which occurred
coincident with my own Intimate games with John Woolley, that the idea
for what became "Payola" first hit me. From the history of puma
comes this broadcast of 3 January 1994 which describes "Payola" at
its genesis.
Standard seven player game. All units are basically mercenaries, and if you
don't pay your units enough to keep them following your orders, they'll look
to pad their own pockets and follow someone else's....
At the beginning of the game and after each winter, each player gets $5 (or 5
pounds, 5 francs, 5 marks, 5 rubles, 5 lira, etc., whatever you want to call
them) for each controlled SC. So for Spring, 1901, each country has $15
(except Russia, of course, which has $20).
Then in each Spring and Fall, every country may issue orders for any and all
units on the board, whether owned by that power or not. With each of these
orders, the power submits how much money it is willing to pay to get that
unit to follow the order. Each unit then follows the order which would pay
it the most money, all bids considered, with bids for like orders summed
together.
If a unit receives two or more orders that would pay it the same, the owner
of the unit decides which of these orders his unit will follow.
All money offered for a followed order is spent, gone either as pay to your
own soldiers and sailors or as bribes paid to the soldiers and sailors of
other powers. All other (losing) bid money is retained in each country's
treasury.
The power whose order is followed during movement also controls that
unit during retreats, if necessary. If more than one power contributed money
to issue the order that the unit follows in the movement phase, the owner of
the unit chooses which of these powers will control the unit during the
retreat phase.
If a power "wins" control of so many units that he spends more money than he
has in his treasury, all his bids are lowered by one
dollar, and every
unit that would have accepted the order he issued it decides anew, based on
the new bids, which order they should follow. If a player is still in this
position, his bids go down another dollar, etc.
Builds and removes are entirely the business of each power, acting alone and in
its own best interest.
Players may not give money to other players. Well, I guess they could, but it
would be a pretty stupid thing to do, and just an extra headache for the
adjudicator, so, like I said, they can't.
The interesting part, though, is how John and I tested the Payola principle.
When
we gave the idea some thought, we realized what the addition of bribing for
the right to make every move -- both yours and your opponent's -- does to
normally deterministic games. It is a fascinating change! To test the
idea, we applied it to tic-tac-toe ("naughts and crosses" outside the United
States), giving both the "X player" and the
"O player" 100 units of currency each to begin with. Both the players then
secretly write down how much they will pay to place the first "X", and the
high bidder
places it, and his treasury is reduced by his bid amount. Then the players
bid for the right to place the first "O". It is absolutely amazing what an
interesting game tic-tac-toe becomes;
tie games are much more rare, both players seem to have an equal chance
to win, and a player always has no one to blame but himself if the outcome
is against him.
Oh yes, tic-tac-toe will never be the same again. From now on, every
tic-tac-toe player will have my name on their lips.
Tic-tac-toe will certainly soon become a professional sport, rivalling
soccer ("football" outside of North America) in the hearts of the world.
Next: applying Payola to Chess! Can you imagine?! The winning bidder makes
the move for whosever turn it is -- any legal move...!!!
Payola is, to pat myself on the back, a revolution in gaming, since it is a
variant that can be applied to basically any game. Diplomacy is called the
chameleon game because it is uniquely "variantizable," while other games are
not. However, Payola's "bid for the chance to make a move" idea is a
legitimate "variant" for just about any game in the world.
It was obvious from the beginning, even under the rules to Payola
Classic, that Mastering a Payola game would be
more difficult than Mastering a standard game of Diplomacy.
By the time the first playtest game had gotten underway, I had written
a computer program to resolve the bids as they came in to the Master.
This "Payola adjudicator" has been kept strictly up-to-date. Indeed,
it leads the continuing development of the variant, since new changes
to Payola have never been considered official until the adjudicator properly
handles the modification. (Or, in a couple cases, improperly, since
some bugs in the program unfortunately surfaced during play and were thereupon
fixed.)
After a while, the Payola adjudicator was given a Web page front-end, so
that it was no longer necessary for me, as the GameMaster, to copy and paste
bribe offers into an input file and manually run the adjudicator and then
manually send its output to the Ken Lowe judge or error notices to the players --
all that became automated. At that point, there was the adjudicator
(written in C) and the Web pages (written in Python) that fed input to
the adjudicator and read its output and delivered that to the Web screen for
the player.
Eventually, the bribe adjudicator itself was rewritten in Python and it became
part and parcel of the Web interface. The whole set-up now also supports a
number of different maps and subvariant rules.
The final result is The
Payola Place Website, where players can enter their
bribe offers, update their acceptance lists, transfer money from one to another,
enter retreat and adjustment orders,
and see the complete game map. As a result, Payola games are now run with
absolutely no manual intervention by the GameMaster. Hallelujiah and good
for me!
The retreat phase was another issue. We also ruled out bribery almost
immediately, this time mostly for reasons of expediency, and in the end,
of course, total control over retreating units was granted to the unit's
owner. However, the thought process
that led to this decision was much different than that for the similar
decision concerning the adjustment phase.
As can be seen in the initial ruminations on Payola, the initial plan for
the retreat phase was to reward the right to retreat a unit to whichever
power "bought" it in the preceding movement phase. This plan ran into
trouble right away when we realized that it would often be a coalition of
two or more powers that successfully bribed a unit. Our quick solution
was to grant to the owner of the unit not the right to retreat his
piece but instead the right to choose, from among the contributors to the
successful bribe, the player to be given control in the retreat phase.
One would think that this short-lived rule would have been killed by the
decision to make secret from a unit's owner the contributors to each bribe.
However, the decision for secrecy had not yet been made, and the rule on
retreat phase control was changed once and for all to allow a unit's owner
total control for quite a different reason. Simply, it was decided that
the rule should be changed out of interest in the speed of the game.
We envisioned that a game would be held up if two "orders" had to be
given to each retreating unit (first, the "order" specifying to whom the
right to retreat should be given, and second -- from what could be a different
player -- the retreat order itself).
In retrospect, it seems that we should have realized that the current rule
was the proper way to go all along, drawing parallels between uncontrolled
removal and the disbanding of a retreated unit by an enemy who wrested control
of the unit from its owner -- perhaps by as little as a single silver piece --
during the movement phase. But, as you just read, that's not how it happened.
Francs, of course, seemed a bit small -- and also too real-world -- so the
purposely vague "Swiss mega-franc" was invented.
As the players of the first few Payola games
that I Mastered know, the taxes from owned SC's were actually paid yearly in
the currency
of the various European nations. For example, the yearly reward for
controlling Bulgaria was paid in lev. (Actually, it should have
properly
been paid in mega-lev -- an oversight of mine, I suppose.)
And, as was apparent from the bank statements received by these same players,
it just so happened that -- strangely enough -- the exchange rate for every
different unit of currency with the Swiss mega-franc was permanently fixed
at one-to-one.
I suppose some of these things grew to bother me, and I decided to
rename the basic unit of Payola currency the "piece of silver."
The only thing that initially held me back
was the thought that the reference might be lost on players who may be
unfamiliar with the Christian tale of Judas Iscariot's betrayal of Jesus
in return for payment of thirty pieces of silver.
This was a minor concern, though, and so the shift from mega-francs to pieces
of silver took place. I planned on replacing the currency abbreviation "MF"
with "SP", but J. Andrew Lipscomb suggested the far better "AgP" abbreviation
instead.
Seven was chosen for a couple of reasons. Having decided that income would
be paid annually, and not before both Spring and Fall movements, it was
felt that an odd number would make decisions on how much to spend for
each of the two movement seasons that much more interesting for the player.
The initial number was five silver pieces, but this was increased to seven
in order to provide more flexibility to the player, and also since seven
seemed a nice number, given the number of Great Powers in the game.
At the beginning, a concern that I had about the variant was that the extra
income that Russia receives at the beginning of the game would constitute
an advantage that would be difficult to overcome. I had nothing to
back this up, and the first couple games got underway using this tax
scheme.
The first-ever game, "payola," saw a strong Russian emerge
immediately, and he seemed destined to win the game going away. Almost
before the other powers had time to breathe, Russia was up to something
like 15 supply centers. This confirmed in me that the tax income
scheme needed to be re-adjusted.
However, as it happened, the game benedict actually finished
(a Russian victory, though not a runaway) before payola, and
in the End Of Game statements,
I solicited from the players their opinions on the rules and their
suggestions for improvements. It was at this time that I made public the
"decreasing sequence" idea I had conjured up. The idea was well-received
by the players (a bit less enthusiastically by the solo winner, who said
jokingly that the game is hard enough to win) and so it was decided to
try this new payment plan for the next game.
The new income scheme works very well, and it addresses the issue I hoped
it would. A power with 17 SC's finds himself with less income
than all the other players combined. It seems to encourage the "catch
the leader" aspect of the game, and a large power with a chance to win
and who knows how he intends to go about doing so is offset by a stronger
coalition working against him.
Interestingly, the game "payola" is, at the time of this writing,
still in progress, with Russia having been cut down to size by an alliance
of France and Turkey, and so it seems that the "seven silver pieces per
supply center" rule used by Payola Classic is not at all the impediment
to play that I was concerned it would be. Payola Classic seems to be
just as viable a game as is the grown-up Payola.
In fact, the mature Payola is sometimes played with just the single change to
use the "seven AgP per center" tax income rule from Payola Classic.
Such games are called "flat-tax" Payola games.
[Addendum: The game "payola" ended after the gameyear 1922
in a 20-center victory for France.]
When a Swiss resident (Mick Zwahlen, who is sadly missing from the net as
of this writing, due, I understand, to sad circumstances) joined the
fourth-ever Payola game, I took the opportunity to ask him to correct my
pidgin German. Here, from a message he sent me, is his response:
The original leader of the Swiss national bank is called "Präsident des
Nationalbankrates" (president of the national bank's council) or even
"Vorsitzender des Verwaltungsrates der Schweizerischen Nationalbank" (chairman
of the governing board of the Swiss national bank which is similar to a CEO but
more delegating than executing).
I decided to stick with Swissbancmeister.
When the first Payola game was getting started,
I solicited the opinions of the players. Everyone seemed to agree that the
transfer power would be used sparingly if at all, but didn't see any harm in leaving
it. I believe that my decision at the time was that I would leave it in
for this first game and that if transferral was never used in this game, the
rule would be removed.
It seemed that in discussion, no one could list a single good reason to
transfer money from one power to another. However, under game conditions,
occasions arose that showed that it would have been a mistake to remove
this ability from the rules. Money transferral is indeed a rarely used rule
(though not as
rarely as I initially thought), but it can provide some useful tactics. At
this point, I can list five situations in which the monetary transfer rule
can be advantageous.
For a long time, there was an addendum to the transfer rule to the effect
that no player could transfer money into an account of another player who,
on the same turn, had previously transferred money into the first
player's account.
You see, I realized, when beginning to Master Payola, that the ability to transfer
money from one account to another was one more burden for the GameMaster
to bear. In fact, though I knew it was likely a light burden, this was
the reason I contemplated removing the transfer rule. When the decision
was made to keep it, I decided to regulate it with this "no returning
transferred money" restriction.
Doubting it would ever happen didn't keep me from thinking of the poor
Master who had somehow, someway, gotten on the bad side of two of his
players and for their revenge, they decided to transfer money back and forth
thousands of times on each turn. Adding the restrictive phrase would at
least give him refuge in the written rules from this headache.
This prohibition was lifted when the
Payola Place
Website was inaugurated. That site automatically handles transfers and
never gets a headache.
Note that in some Payola games,
a similar prohibition (to wit, that a player may only transfer money into
each other account once per turn) can be used as a subvariant.
For example, if used in a no-press game, this discourages players from
using transfer amounts to communicate in coded messages, but it still
allows for transfers to be used for damage reparations, offerings of
thanks, and confirmations (or, rather, promises) of peaceful intent.
When Payola and Blind came together, it was realized that the ability to
offer zero silver piece offers to faraway units would allow a player to
determine the locations of units he could not "see" without cost. By simply
offering a zero silver piece bribe to a unit in every possible location on
the board, and then waiting to see which units accepted the bribes, much
of the blindness of blind would be gone.
Knowing that the ability to discern unit locations by offering bribes was still
an important feature of Blind Payola, it was decided to simply disallow zero
silver piece offers made to foreign units. A player could still determine the
locations of units he could not "see," but it would cost him at least one
silver piece.
After implementing this restriction in the Payola automated adjudicator, I
decided that it deserved to be applied to all Payola games -- not just
Blind Payola games. I figured that in real life an army wouldn't really
sell out for nothing, and the possibility of a zero silver piece bid deciding
what a foreign unit would do was very remote anyway.
The minimum soon evolved, however, to where it is no longer a hard minimum.
This happened when
it proved too bothersome, frankly, to programmatically determine the sum total
of a player's minimums in order to see if he is still vulnerable to
overexpenditure even if
every bribe was reduced to its minimum. Accordingly, the minimum became a
"plateau" to which the bribes reduce and remain as long as possible, but
which disappears if all bribes reach their plateau without seeing the
overexpenditure remedied.
My initial plan was to convert all impossible orders to be issued into
HOLD orders when transmitted to the Ken Lowe judge.
There were some problems with this plan, though,
since a unit ordered to move, even impossibly, is unsupportable, but a
HOLDing unit is supportable.
So I quickly decided that I could only accept what the
judge accepts, and I broadcast this fact to my players. At this point, my
Payola adjudicator was dumb when it came to the legality of the orders given
it, so I relied on myself to catch these orders.
It was when the direct (colon) offer type was augmented by arrival of the
newer offer types that even this "take what the Ken Lowe judge takes" rule became
untenable.
As you are probably aware, the Ken Lowe judge does not completely validate the orders
sent to it, and some orders that are guaranteed void can indeed be issued.
For Payola games, this was not good enough, and it became necessary to restrict
the orders for which bribes could be offered to only those that are legal and
valid. As a result, I undertook a long effort to add code to the Payola
adjudicator to enable it, first, to understand what the orders being fed to
it meant, and second, to disallow any order that could only be rendered
"void." I can say with
reasonable certainty only now -- after looking hard at and updating my own
code when the subject of no-press Payola came up -- that the loopholes are all
closed and the Payola adjudicator is tight as a safe.
For the logic behind the need for this strict "only valid orders are
acceptable" rule, I include a section from
my recent correspondence with Stephen Beaulieu concerning no-press Payola and
what types of communication would be possible through Payola orders.
Now, of course, the joker on the other side of the board could still
-- even with the current strict rules -- screw up the invasion with a single
silver piece
by ordering Greece to convoy out via the fleet that is carrying the incoming
attack. The (*no convoy*) result achieves the same purpose as
(*void*) and cannot be disallowed.
Despite this, it was felt that, more often than not, an offer containing
a duplicated order is mistakenly entered,
and that it should be rejected rather than accepted for consideration.
Therefore, in order to specify quicker reduction of bribe amounts in case of
overexpenditure, players must split a bribe into two or more smaller bribes,
which will each be reduced by one.
An optional repetition count can be specified with an offer to cause it to be
repeated automatically. This convenient shorthand
provides for easy specification of this quicker reduction. For example,
the offer:
Although I initially balked at the new prohibition against repeating offers
in a chain of alternatives, the arguments made by the
members of the mailing list were convincing that it's more often than not
an error, and the rule was added. Later, I came to realize that only by
instituting this rule can negative bribes be made as consistent in their
semantics as possible with the other bribe types. Repetition of an order
in a negative bribe was and would forever remain completely superfluous.
To allow that orders could be meaningfully repeated in one type of offer,
but have no meaning if repeated in another type of offer was an inconsistency
that was easily and best avoided.
Let's say that France would like to move his Channel fleet into London
with support from the North Sea. After consulting his pocketbook, he
decides to pay both fleets the price of seven silver pieces if they
obey these orders. So he enters the following two direct bribe
offers:
The Frenchman could, of course, issue direct bribe offers to
each of these two English units, detailing what each of them
should do to assist in the French invasion of their country. However,
perhaps another bribe type is preferable. Indeed, as we shall see
below, France has other forms of bribery in mind.
It is the case that all of the different bribe offer types can be written
as direct bribe offers, but that the other types serve as
useful shorthand. For example, if the French player wishes to make
sure that the Yorkshire fleet does not support the army in London, he
may issue a series of direct bribe offers to that fleet, asking
it to issue each order other than this SUPPORT order. That is,
if the French player has decided that five silver pieces should be
sufficient incentive for the Yorkshire fleet, he could issue the following
set of direct bribe offers:
Notice here that I have chosen this situation carefully. The number
of valid order choices for a fleet in Yorkshire is much more limited
than, say, an army in Galicia (or even in Yorkshire). The usefulness
of the shorthand is much more apparent in most other situations.
The player who would rely entirely on direct bribe offers
is likely to find that when the orders go through, he has overlooked
listing one of the many possibile orders for the unit in question (to
support some adjacent unit, to support some attack originating from
a distant location, to convoy somewhere, to HOLD,
etc.), and that this order spells doom for his campaign.
The offers, as they stand, are for the English Channel fleet to
move to London with support from the North Sea, and for the English
fleet in Yorkshire to permit this supported attack to go off
without interference.
The Frenchman, however, is probably unsure that the five silver pieces
he's offering to the English fleet in Yorkshire will be sufficient
to bribe that unit, and so he could be afraid that this fleet could
act against his wishes and either support the London army or attack
the French fleet in the North Sea. To account for this possibility,
the Frenchman decides to offer some money to the London army. Consider
that if this army moves out of London, the support from the North
Sea will be unnecessary, and the Channel fleet is allowed entry (meaning
that it is no longer important that the Yorkshire fleet not attack the
North Sea).
Consider also that even if the army attempts unsuccessfully to move
out of London, any support given to London by Yorkshire would be
rendered void (meaning that it is no longer important that this
support be avoided).
Given this, the Frenchman decides to ask the London army to move, offering
it four silver pieces to do so. The following direct bribe offers are
prepared for it:
The alert reader will note that Wales and Yorkshire,
as listed above, are not the only destinations for a moving
London army. To properly expand the move bribe
offer we built ("4 > A LON - WAL"), we would need to list not only
the direct bribe offers to move to Wales and Yorkshire,
but also to convoy to each and every possible location reachable
via the North Sea and/or English Channel fleets. Thus, we can see
a bit better the usefulness of the move bribe shorthand.
We've been discussing, in the above notes, how France would go about
capturing London from England. Let's continue this discussion to
explore how England may choose to defend himself. Of paramount
importance to him could be that the London army not be moved, since
if this happens, either of the two French fleets could enter London
unopposed. So he could decide, hoping that three silver pieces are
sufficient, to offer a direct bribe offer to the London army
as follows:
Now, to contrive an example, let us say that the Turkish player,
far distant as he is, has decided to have a little fun with the
English player's units by asking them to perform useless but
otherwise harmless actions. (Perhaps the English player is
allied with the Turk, is aware of this practice, and has even
condoned or
suggested it, in order to make the English pieces look as though
they are being bought off, and thus to drum up sympathy for the
embattled island nation.) In keeping with this, Turkey has made
the following toss-off direct bribe offer:
Let's go one step further. Rather than simply defending himself,
England may see an opportunity to turn the tables on France. The
English player might choose to issue the offer as follows:
The first use for the gift bribe is in Blind games. Much about
the combination of Blind and Payola is described in other notes, but
one feature of this game is the ability to obtain (via bribes) information
about units that a player cannot "see." For instance, if the Russian
player -- confined to the eastern side of the board -- would like to know
if there is a unit in Portugal, he could offer such a unit a one silver piece
gift bribe offer, then wait to see if it is accepted. By using a
gift bribe, the Russian is almost guaranteed not to affect in any
way the order that will be issued to the unit (since his bribe amount is added
to every other bribe received by that unit).
The second use for the gift bribe applies to the standard (non-Blind)
game as well as to the variants. It involves a true apathy about what a
given unit does, combined with an ardent desire to profess interest. Let's
take an example of a player who, in true diplomatic style, is courting the
affections of two warring nations. In the course of his artful dodging,
this player finds that both sides in the conflict are interested in obtaining
his financial support for their conflicting aims. Let us say that it is
of paramount importance to one player that a certain unit is moved, and
that the other player considers it imperative that it holds in place. Our
hero, on the other hand, is only concerned with his diplomatic standing
with both of the enemy nations, and honestly could not care less (despite all
his verbage to the contrary) what actually happens to the unit in question. So
he issues the unit a gift bribe, knowing that whatever order it issues,
he will be able to claim a share of the credit. He can accurately claim to
each player that he lent his assistance, and can enjoy the celebration of a
shared triumph with one player while agonizing with the other over their shared
failure. Indeed, the owner of the unit (if he is the one whose order was
accepted) will have concrete proof -- in the form of the list of bribe amounts
accepted by each of his units -- that his own bribe was in fact augmented by the
amount claimed by our hero. Conversely, if the enemy's bribe goes through,
the owner of the unit will be certain that his own bribe, combined with the amount
claimed by our hero, was not sufficient to gain control of the unit (he simply
will not know, of course, that the same amount was contributed by our hero to
the winning bribe as well). Using the gift bribe (or some combination
of other offers
like it) can ensure that no matter what happens, the fence-sitting player can
almost certainly maintain his friendly position with both the combatants.
Bruce suggested the addition of the functionality as a variant rather
than as part of the standard game, but I felt that there was no reason
not to incorporate it into the base Payola rules. The additions to the
Payola code were relatively simple, although the changes to support this
feature
were much more widespread than were those of any previous release.
Bruce further suggested that players might be allowed to direct that
their available monies be split into multiple "accounts," from which
separate bribing campaigns could be conducted, each account able to be
given its own separate savings requests. This, however, seemed to me
to be a bit complex for the standard game, so if implemented, it would
be as a variant.
Basically, initially the problem was logistical, having to do with the fact
that Payola games were being run on Ken Lowe judges. Any press sent to
observers only
(through the Ken Lowe judge) will appear in the game history. Apart from that, there
is always the fear that a personal friend of one player could signon as an
observer and pass information to the player.
Interestingly, however, I later added a variant to the Payola
adjudicator that will cause generation of a broadcast message listing
the total bribe amounts received by each unit on each turn. So it seems
that the original set of Payola observers may yet get at least part of what
they asked for, providing that the Payola games they observe are using this
new (non-standard) variant.
The history of secrecy in Payola is much broader and deeper than the few
paragraphs above. In fact, the original concept of the game had no secrets
being kept by the Master at all. Not only would the total amounts paid to
each unit be revealed to all, but the origin of the money as well.
Support for this position eroded slowly and gradually, and credit for the
present rule goes to the players of the first game, who voted on the proper
way to handle the issue. At the time, I wasn't sure, but on reflection,
it is very obvious that they made the absolutely correct call.
My own (temporary) contribution to the acceptance list was far less impressive.
In fact, I'm not even proud of it. I gave the thing its original name.
I decided to call the list a "reference list" and immediately
began a constant search for a new and better name. I chose
"reference list" to try and keep the "bank account" theme going, intending
to draw a parallel between the list and a list of personal references kept
on file at the bank. But from the beginning, "reference list" was understandably
confused with "preference list" (a well-known term to Ken Lowe judge players), and many Payola players would submit "preference
lists" to me. Anyone familiar with the Ken Lowe Diplomacy judge knows that the
words "preference list" already hold special meaning, and to re-use this
descriptor would (did) play havoc.
I've since realized that the list is more like an "exchange or black market
currency rate." It can be looked at as the ordered list of currencies
that are practically or morally acceptable by a unit of a particular
nationality. The reason why Turkey may be second on the Russian list is
because the commanders of Russian units, whose nation enjoys an alliance with
Turkey, can
easily convert Turkish money to Russian money without suspicion (or without
appreciable loss in the exchange). This is perhaps stretching things,
but it does make sense that some currencies would be more readily
accepted by some armies and not by others, and this nicely explains the
nice, tidy tie-breaker list.
However, I was at a loss to come up with a short, proper
name to convey this concept, and so it remained "reference list" for a
very long time.
Enter Mike Connaghan,
who suggested "acceptance list." Needless to say, I found this term quite
appropriate and very fitting, so it was adopted. To quote from Mike's
suggestion: "[the list represents an ordered sequence of] the currencies that
are most acceptable to the commanders.
Another way to look at this concept is that, sure, commanders will take money
to convoy enemy armies to the homeland, but they have a
little bias for friendly countries as long as they're not
too stingy to come up with an equal bid."
Thanks, Mike!
I liked this so much that when I implemented it on 5 September 2004,
I modified Rule 4.2 to state that the initial default value of each
player's acceptance list (at the beginning of the game) is simply that
specific power followed by a question-mark. As examples, the initial
acceptance list for England is E?, for Russia is R?,
and so on.
In this case, the fleet in Brest would receive five silver pieces (from
the French player) to move to the English Channel, but six silver pieces
to move to Gascony instead. So the unit is ordered to move to Gascony.
In this case, the fleet in Brest is in a quandary, having received two
offers that total five silver pieces each. To break the tie, the French
"acceptance list" must be consulted. Let us assume that this acceptance list
is the following sequence of powers -- FRITAGE (meaning that French
offers are to be regarded as preferable to Russian offers, which are in turn
preferable to Italian offers, etc., etc.)
From this, we can easily see that the French fleet sets sail for the English
Channel, since French money (the most preferred to French units, according to
the acceptance list) is involved in this order.
Consider now, by way of contrast, the following set of offers to the same unit.
This time, we see that the fleet is given four choices: to HOLD (for
four silver pieces of English money -- this is the "hidden" order behind the
English negative bribe offer), to move to the
Mid-Atlantic Ocean (for a total of five silver pieces contributed by France
and England), to move to the English Channel (for six silver pieces, offered
by the German), and to Gascony (for six silver pieces from the English and
Italian accounts). The HOLD and the move to the Mid-Atlantic are
both outbid by the other
offers, and so they are not considered as options. Both the remaining two
orders
(to move to either the English Channel or Gascony) would pay the unit six
silver pieces, and so the acceptance list of the French player is consulted.
Assuming this acceptance list is as given above, and since none of the orders
involve French (the most preferred) currency, the order backed by Italian
money (to move to Gascony) is preferable to any order that is not. So the unit
is ordered to Gascony.
Here, we see that the French fleet would be paid five silver pieces to move to
either the English Channel or to Gascony, and that, since this money would be
paid by the same power, consultation of the acceptance list would not help to
decide which order should be issued.
The solution was to decide that the sequence of the various offers
given by each player is significant. In this case, the fact that the order
to move to the English Channel is mentioned before the order to move
to Gascony decides the matter. The unit is ordered to move to the Channel.
Note that this rule has no regard for the amount of the various bids offered
by any particular player -- only the position of the offers in the list.
Consider the example below:
Here, the tie between the two choices (both of which would pay three
silver pieces) is broken by this "position in the list" rule. The fleet
in Brest will be ordered to the English Channel despite
the fact that the first power in the unit's acceptance list would pay more
for a move to the Mid-Atlantic than it would for the move to the Channel.
All that matters is the position of the offers.
For the hand-adjudicator, it is important to note, then, exactly how each
negative bribe offer should be transcribed. Consider the negative
bribe offer "4 ! F BRE - ENG." This is converted into the following
two offers: first, an offer of zero silver pieces to
HOLD,
and second, an offer of four silver pieces to do anything
other than move to the English Channel.
Note that the reason this first offer is for zero silver pieces is that the
offer to expend four silver pieces for a HOLD is implicit in the other
part of the offer. Note also that the prohibition against zero silver piece
offers being made to foreign units does not extend to this case.
Similarly, the negative bribe offer
"4 ! F BRE H." would be expanded into (first)
a zero silver piece offer for the unit to HOLD, and (second)
a four silver piece offer to pay for anything other than a HOLD,
Despite the directive not to HOLD, the offerer also is put
on record as asking the unit to HOLD (without promise of
payment).
Because of this "expand the negative bribe offers" rule, a unit that
receives no offer except for a single negative bribe offer will
still have a direct bribe offer (the implicit HOLD)
to consider (and accept).
This third tie-breaker is not necessary in Payola Classic.
Just as the second tie-breaker
became necessary due to the addition of multiple bribes from one power to a
single unit, this third tie-breaker is required because of the addition of
the negative bribe offer type.
Basically, the situation that calls for this final tie-breaker is
exemplified by the following:
Here, France (who is positioned at the top of his own "acceptance list")
has offered five silver pieces to the Brest fleet to do anything other than
move to Gascony. This gives the unit two competing six silver piece choices:
to move to Picardy or to move to the English Channel. The fact that France
occupies the first spot in the "acceptance list" in question is of no help
here, so subsequent powers down the acceptance list must be consulted. In
this case, if we assume that the French acceptance list is FRITAGE,
the German offer is preferred over the English offer, so the unit is ordered
to move to the English Channel.
Notice that had France also submitted a one silver piece direct
bribe offer for the unit to HOLD, then this would make a three-way
tie of six silver piece offers, and the unit would be ordered to HOLD
(a decision made at the first tie-breaker).
The interesting thing is that this third tie breaker, in combination with
the method of expanding negative bribe offers, guarantees that there
will be a single order issued to every unit. No further tie-breaks are
necessary.
One of our complaints about Intimate Diplomacy was the penalty for overbidding;
I don't recall exactly what it is, but overbidding seemed to be a death knell.
We didn't want anything like this in Payola, yet we knew, of course, that there
must be some provision or procedure for cases where a power would find himself
with more money promised than he could pay out.
I don't recall any consideration of deficit spending, nor of limiting the
amount that could be offered to the amount on hand. We considered both
of these to be inferior solutions, and we knew that the ability to offer
more money than you had was an important one -- one that required that
more unconstrained thought be put into each offer. As I say, it seemed to
me like John came up with this elegant solution ("reduce all bids by
the offending player by one silver piece and repeat if necessary") in the wink
of an eye.
I can't imagine any better way to resolve this issue. To illustrate the
principle, consider the following set of offers:
Here, the Brest and Paris units initially jump at the ten and fifteen
silver piece offers. However, it becomes obvious that the French player cannot
honor both of these. One can imagine the French leader sheepishly
re-approaching the leaders of these two military units asking them to
accept less than they were promised. Instead of ten silver pieces, the
fleet in Brest is offered nine, and instead of fifteen, the army in
Paris is offered fourteen.
At this point, the French offers are still the best offers that these two units
are given, and so both would be accepted. Once again, however, the French
bank balance will not cover the planned expenditure, and so the process is
repeated and the units are re-offered eight and thirteen silver pieces
respectively.
Yet again, the French money would be accepted (the money for the fleet
via tie-breaker), but it cannot be (since this would bankrupt the French
player). As a result, the French offers are reduced once more, this time
to seven and twelve.
Now France would be happy (and finally able) to pay the money offered.
However, the fleet in Brest now finds that it can get more money from
another source, and so it takes the eight silver pieces offered by the
English player and heads for Gascony. Paris is ordered to Burgundy at a
cost of twelve silver pieces to France.
In Blind ("Tin Cup") Payola games, this proved to be too much information.
Consider the case of a French player who has no tangible information as to
the location of units in the Balkans. Before this rule was adopted, the French
player could have -- by simply making the gift bribe
offer "1 & A SER H", and at a cost of only one silver piece --
received a message not only telling him whether there is a unit in
Serbia but also what that unit did.
Obviously, this took the "blind" out of "Blind," and so the rule limiting
the information returned for offers in Tin Cup games was instituted. Note
that despite this restriction, bribery is still a powerful intelligence
weapon in a Tin Cup game. For example, for a player with no knowledge
of Balkan unit positions to determine whether there is a unit in Bulgaria, the
following three offers would suffice:
To make up for a bit of what was seen as overcompensation, the
nationality of the unit accepting a bribe is also reported to the
power paying the bribe. It just made sense that covert intelligence
operatives would be able to send back a bit more than "Well, I see an
army here, but I have no idea whose army it is." So not only does the
above set of three bids return the information about whether or not such
a unit exists, but also who owns that unit.
This rule does not make it impossible to also find out what order the
unit actually issues; it only makes it more difficult and more expensive.
This also makes real-world sense -- a spy can be paid to look through a fence
and obtain information about a unit's existence and ownership at far less
cost than it would take to pay this spy to actually
infiltrate the unit and learn its plans for the coming season. For example,
if a player having no knowledge of the Balkan situation wished to determine
not only whether there is a unit in Serbia but also -- if there is --
something about what it is ordered to do, this player could enter something
like the following hefty set of bribes.
This is still incomplete information, since without issuing a similar --
actually, an even more extensive -- set of offers to everything else in the
region, the bidder cannot know if the move succeeded or bounced, or even
if the Serbian army itself was dislodged. There is also the disadvantage
not only of cost, but that these intelligence gathering offers would actually
decide the order issued by the unit -- perhaps to the detriment of the
bidder.
However, even the ability to get (purchase) this amount of guaranteed correct
information is a unique addition to Blind games, and this rule seems to
provide the proper mix between paid intelligence services and the
work-in-the-dark atmosphere of a Blind game.
Frankly, I've found Tin Cup Diplomacy to be the most fun way I've ever played.
In it, you obviously need to use your diplomatic
skills to get information about the placement of other pieces, and you also
have a treasury at your disposal to help you do the same.
The espionage and counterespionage options available
in the game are tremendous. It seems to force a level of strategic thinking,
deliberate planning, intelligence gathering, counterintelligence dispersal,
intrepid diplomacy, calculated risk-taking, and careful execution which
(I imagine) closely mimics real-life warfare.
The Payola concept is also easily applied to other games...
The Payola Application to Game Theory
I have often been asked how the idea of Payola Diplomacy originated.
Actually, this is a very interesting story.
Okay, fellas, get a load of this. In discussing the problem of activating
the inactive players in judge Intimate Diplomacy games, he
[John Woolley]
and I ended up
aboard a train of thought that put that problem on the back burner for a
minute. But here's a variant idea that just sounds absolutely fascinating.
I hope it sparks some discussion from you guys. I would LOVE to play it.
So, as you can see, the ideas in Payola were nearly fully formed on its very
first day of existence. In fact, acceptance lists and retained control by the
unit owner in retreat phases are about the only concepts missing from the above
broadcast. Also, at this early stage, the concept of secrecy -- not knowing
exactly who is controlling each unit -- is not to be found.
The play of the game cannot be accomplished without
a GameMaster.
Help for the Payola Master
I played a few games of Payola tic-tac-toe (as discussed above) with my
father to introduce him to the concept, and he and I realized that one
necessary element of the Payola concept (one that
John Woolley and I did not use when first playtesting Payola tic-tac-toe, but
which has been used in Payola Diplomacy since almost the beginning)
is the neutral third party (GameMaster) who is required to award the right
to make each move and to privately (rather than publically) adjust the
treasuries for the players appropriately. Such a party is necessary so that
neither player knows how much money the other has, since having this
information often enables one player to simply use money management to force
a win after the first few tic-tac-toe moves.
...each player shall have complete and
solitary control of his units and their orders during retreat and
adjustment phases.
Payola's Untouchable Phases
From the beginning of the game, it was decided that there would be no bribing
for adjustment phase orders. In a discussion on this point, John Woolley and
I agreed that the ability for an allied coalition to force an enemy build
to be waived was too great an advantage to allow. Because the adjustment
orders occur at the end of the Payola fiscal year, whether a build or remove
would be controlled by an enemy could become a matter of how much money each
player had left at the end of the year and at a time when the various tax
incomes for the next year were known values. Since an uncontrolled remove or
a waived build can decide the game, John and I ruled out the possibility
of bribery during the adjustment phase. We justified this with statements
like "you can't bribe factory workers (or at least not the taskmasters who
keep them busy)" and "units may be corruptible, but the bureaucrats who
decide which units get maintained each year are not."
..."silver pieces"...
The Currency of Payola
It seemed a happy coincidence that Switzerland is both impassable in Diplomacy
and also the haven of monetary intrigue, and so Swiss currency was the first
(and a natural) choice for the currency of Payola.
...a simple decreasing sequence....
Tax Assessment in Payola
As you can see from the original rules to the
variant, the initial scheme for
calculating yearly income to each bank account involved paying the fixed
amount of seven silver pieces for each supply center owned.
...This money is disbursed to the players by the
GameMaster.
Naming the Payola Master
In many respects, the Master of a Payola game can be looked at much as a
"banker" in a game like Monopoly. For this reason, and given the initial
choice
of "Swiss mega-francs" as the currency of the game, I adopted the persona
Swissbancmeister. I knew, of course, that I was butchering the
German language with this choice, but it had a ring to it.
If you want to write it German you should say "bank" instead of "banc."
However, "Bankmeister" is a word that definitely is not German. "Zahlmeister"
would be someone who pays ("zahlt") money to other people.
Players may transfer any amount of money from their account
into the account of any other player...
Passing The Buck
The concept of transferring money from one account to another was a part of
the variant from the beginning. It was a natural extension of the "each
power manages something approaching a bank account" idea. However, the
ability to transfer money to another power was always just mentioned as an
afterthought, and I actually thought that it served little purpose and
that it should be removed. After all, if two players wished to accomplish
the same objective, both would be better served submitting their offers
separately rather than together, since if one player handed his money to
another,
saying "attack our common enemy with this as you see best," he would be
basically setting himself up to be stabbed with his own money.
It was when the blackmail threat occurred in graft that I realized the
transfer rule was here to stay. Just the fact that I myself hadn't envisioned
anything like this ploy told me that the rule was a good one.
...zero silver piece offers to foreign units are
disallowed
Something For Nothing
This rule was a later addition to the Payola rules, and
was prompted by the extensions made to the rules to adapt Payola to the
Blind variant.
...a plateau amount to be used...
You Like That, Huh? Okay, Let Me See If I Can Swing It
The bribe cost plateau rule grew quickly (though very late -- 19 April 1999),
but over a winding path.
The ability to specify a minimum amount to which a bribe would be
reduced was proposed on the Payola Mailing List. The subject of discussion was
whether to outlaw duplication of orders within the same
bribe, and the conversation had gotten around to players saying, "if
we could specify that a certain bribe would be reduced by two or three
instead of one, it would be helpful." (This is indeed possible -- see the
annotation on order duplication mentioned above.) In trying to address
this request, I proposed various things to myself, and eventually realized
that a minimum bribe amount, in combination with the capability to list
duplicate orders separately, would add much flexibility. For example:
5 : A MUN - RUH
will reduce (on player overexpenditure) from an initial offering of 10 AgP
to eight (rather than nine), and then to six, four, two, and zero. However,
5 : A MUN - RUH
5 : A MUN - RUH
will reduce (if need be) from ten to eight, then six, then four, then three,
then two, and no further.
5#2 : A MUN - RUH
...valid, legal order...
Doing the Possible
This rule has a tortured history. Initially, in what became known as
Payola Classic, the rule did not exist. I figured that if someone successfully
bribed an army to walk into the sea, so be it. However, I had neglected to
consider that the automated Ken Lowe judge program (which runs e-mail games, and to
which the output of my initial Payola adjudicator was sent) makes some checks on
the validity of all orders issued. So I found out the hard way (when someone
tried to have an enemy unit do something impossible) that this was an issue
to be resolved.
Say someone wants to convoy into Greece, but the Turk has an army there.
The best way to do it, the invader figures, is to pay the Turkish army to
move. He doesn't care where the army moves, though, because Bul, Alb, and
Ser are all vacant and will probably (or better yet assuredly) stay that way.
So he puts in an
offer like 10 > A GRE - ALB ("ten to move to Albania or anywhere else
for that matter"). All is well and good, and this ten silver piece bid is the
best the Turkish army gets. That is, until some joker on the other side of
the board decides to spend one silver piece trying to play some malicious
joke on Turkey, say by putting in the offer 1 : A GRE - PAR. Now
all of
a sudden, the Grecian army gets eleven silver pieces to move to Paris,
a bribe that bests all others. Of course, the end result is that
"A GRE - PAR" is (*void*), so the army will end up staying in
Greece -- not moving at all! The would-be attacker is out ten
silver pieces (which he promised to pay only if Greece moved) for a
HOLD order and has only a bounce to show for the expense.
This seems like the germination of an article on Payola tactics....
...no two of these orders may be identical...
If I've Told You Once...
The question as to whether to make this a rule was put to the members of
the Payola Mailing List on 16 April 1999, and (surprisingly to me, I suppose),
the sentiment
in favor of enforcing this rule was not just in the majority, but was held
unanimously. Without this rule, bribe offers such as
8 : F TYS - WES
4 : F TYS - TUN
4 : F TYS - WES
....A direct bribe offer...
Laying Out the Battleplan
To illustrate the various types of bribes, we will set up a hypothetical
situation. Let's say that France has launched an attack on England,
and has surrounded the English army in London with two fleets -- in the
English Channel and the North Sea. Let's also say that an English
fleet sits in Yorkshire and an English army occupies Edinburgh.
At this point, France would like
to capture London. This can obviously be done in a number of ways; we
will choose only one.
7 : F ENG - LON
7 : F NTH S F ENG - LON
....A negative bribe offer...
Listing the Unacceptable
Continuing the discussion begun above regarding the planned French
attack on an occupied London, we recall that France has issued two
direct bribe offers to his own fleets which, if accepted,
will result in a supported attack on London. To ensure that this
attack is sufficient, France would need to make sure that the English
army in London is not supported in place by the Yorkshire fleet.
5 : F YOR H
5 : F YOR - EDI
5 : F YOR S A EDI
5 : F YOR - LON
5 : F YOR - NTH
5 : F YOR S F NTH
5 : F YOR H | - EDI | S A EDI | - LON | S F NTH
5 ! F YOR S A LON | - NTH
5 ! F YOR S A LON
5 ! F YOR - NTH
....A move bribe offer...
Have Gun, Will Travel
We have been, in the notes above, planning a French attack on occupied
London. We've come up with three bribes that the Frenchman will
be offering to assure the capture of London. Indeed, these three
bribes make the attack foolproof, but only if all three of the bribes
are accepted by the units to which they are offered.
The Frenchman would be wise, however, to bulletproof his attack by
offering a few more bribes in case one or more of the three we've
written for him so far are not accepted.
4 : A LON - WAL
4 : A LON - YOR
4 > A LON - WAL
....A hold bribe offer...
Pay For Stay
Just as the move bribe offer type provides a useful shorthand
to indicate that any movement order at all is acceptable to the offerer,
the hold bribe offer type provides the same shorthand for orders
that leave the unit in place.
3 : A LON H
1 : A LON S F YOR
3 @ A LON H
3 @ A LON - ENG - BRE
3 : A LON - ENG - BRE
3 @ A LON H
....A gift bribe offer...
The Kitchen Sink
"Why in the world would I want to just give my money away?" is a common
reaction to the gift bribe offer type. Indeed, the usefulness of
this bribe type is specialized, to say the least. However, I can think
of two reasons why this bribe type would come in handy.
..."held back" in savings...
Planning For the Proverbial Rainy Day
The savings request was added very late in the game's development
(on 9 July 1998), on suggestion from the acknowledged Payola champion
player, Bruce Duewer.
...the GameMaster shall not reveal any data...
Keeping Secrets
When the first Payola game started, the observers indicated that their
positions were a bit disappointing. They wanted to see the bribes that
were given, or at least the amounts paid out. I submitted this request
to the players, but it was vetoed, and so Payola observers shall forever
remain in the dark until the end of the game.
..."acceptance list"...
The Tie-Breakers
John Woolley is the brain behind the acceptance list. The need for some
tie-breaking mechanism became obvious when we decided it would be too
inconvenient to ask a unit's owner to choose between tied orders everytime
such a situation occurred. John's solution, the acceptance list, is an
elegant, simple, no-bother list that could even be submitted once and
forgotten, and yet which guarantees that the orders for all units can be
resolved from any set of offers. And it maintains the feature I like
best in Diplomacy -- "if things go wrong, you've got no one to blame but
yourself."
..."if the acceptance list contains a question-mark"...
A Time-Saver for the Apathetic
Mario Huys created the
Void variant,
a variant with a whopping 36 powers.
The acceptance list for Payola play of this variant would be ugly to look
at and potentially heck for a player to maintain. Mario suggested that players
should be able to provide an acceptance list which does not include all the
powers, and that those powers not listed be placed automatically at the end
of the list in random order. I decided to expand upon this idea to allow
the player to use a single question-mark, not just at the end of the list,
but anywhere, to represent a random sequencing of all omitted powers.
If...the total bribe for one of these is higher than the
total bribe for any and every single one of the others....
Outspending The Competition
The first and by far the most common method of determining which order will
be issued to a unit is to simply discover that more money would be paid by
the player(s) for one order than for any other. In other words, there is no
tie-break involved. To illustrate this situation, consider the following
offers:
French Offers 5 : F BRE - ENG English Offers 4 ! F BRE - ENG German Offers 2 : F BRE - GAS
The bribe offered by the power that, among all those powers which
submitted offers for the competing orders, is listed earliest in this
acceptance list, will be accepted....
The First Tie-Breaker
Occasions obviously arise when the bribes for more than one order to the same
unit sum to the same total, and these outbid any other offers. In this case,
the "acceptance list" must be consulted to determine which order should be
issued. Consider the following example:
French Offers 5 : F BRE - ENG English Offers 4 ! F BRE - ENG German Offers 1 : F BRE - GAS
French Offers 1 : F BRE - MAO English Offers 4 ! F BRE - ENG German Offers 6 : F BRE - ENG Italian Offers 2 : F BRE - GAS
...the order that will be issued is the order that,
among these, appeared earliest in this power's offer sheet...
The Second Tie Breaker
In Payola Classic, in which only one offer may be given to each unit by
each power, the need to resort to any tie-breaker but the first is obviated.
However, when this restriction was lifted, the single tie-breaker became
insufficient. Consider the following simple example.
French Offers 5 : F BRE - ENG | - GAS
French Offers 1 : F BRE - ENG
3 : F BRE - MAOGerman Offers 2 : F BRE - ENG
...each negative bribe offer is considered to appear
immediately below the direct bribe offer to HOLD that is "built" from
this offer...
Expanding Negative Offers
The second tie-breaker can be a confusing one when negative bribe offers are
involved. To assist, each negative offer should be considered to be two
offers, the first being the instruction to HOLD if no other offer is
given,
and the second being the instruction not to perform the specified
action(s).
The sequencing of these two orders (one of which is implied) can be
important.
...the next power down the unit's acceptance list which
has offered to contribute to any of the orders under consideration is
consulted....
The Last Resort
The third and final tie-breaker kind of annoys me, but there is no other
way to resolve certain cases.
To date, the occasion to invoke this tie-breaker
has yet to arise, and so this makes it a bit easier for me to condone this
rule.
French Offers 5 ! F BRE - GAS English Offers 1 : F BRE - PIC German Offers 1 : F BRE - ENG
...all the units which were subjects of these offers
"re-decide"...
Bounced Check Protection
I can't take credit for this gem of a rule. John Woolley came up with this
mechanism for preventing overexpenditures. To me, it seemed like he tossed
it off as a whim; likely he thought about it first -- maybe even quite a bit.
Either way, I consider it a stroke of genius.
French Offers
(Bank Balance: 20)
10 ! F BRE - GAS
15 : A PAR - BUREnglish Offers
(Bank Balance: 20)
8 : F BRE - GAS
...the Blind variant...
Putting the Blinders On
Blind is a Diplomacy variant in and of itself. In Blind Diplomacy,
the players are not told where all the units on the board are -- only where
their own units are, what is in the adjacent spaces, and what is in their
own home country and the spaces adjacent to it. That's simplified a bit,
but it covers it.
...players...are not told the order that the unit
will issue in return for this compensation...
Keeping the Blinders On
In standard Payola, the message sent to each player upon payment of bribes
from that player's account includes an itemized list of payments. Each
outgoing bribe is detailed down to what order the accepting unit will issue.
1 & A BUL H
1 & F BUL/sc H
1 & F BUL/ec H
With these three bids, the offering player will spend only a
maximum of one silver piece, and will be guaranteed to learn whether
or not there is a unit in Bulgaria, and what type of unit and on which
coast it began the turn if a fleet. By this rule, though, the offering
player is not told exactly what order was issued by a unit that
accepts this single silver piece bribe.
1 @ A SER H
2 : A SER - TRI
3 : A SER - GRE
4 : A SER - ALB
5 : A SER - RUM
6 : A SER - BUL
7 : A SER - BUD
With this set of offers, the bidder will know whether there was an army in
Serbia, and, if there is, he will also know (by cross-referencing the offers
he made with the amount of his money accepted by the unit) whether the army
was ordered to stay in place or, if not, the location to where it moved (or
attempted to move).