Well, first off, we at the The Diplomatic Pouch would like to say thanks for the interview. We were thrilled to hear that a developer had taken in interest in making Diplomacy into retail computer game. Since this is an email interview, I have decided that the best format is to ask questions in more of a F.A.Q style then an interview style.

The intention of this article is not to give an opinion. It is to try and answer questions that a lot of hobbyists in our community have been asking. We will not be giving judgement of the game as I don't believe that it can be done based upon words alone. The other point that I am going to make is that these questions are from the point of view of people who play Diplomacy and not from a video game community. The reason I want to say that is that we will not be asking things like how much ram you need, and will it run on this or that. We are more concerned with how it matches up with wants of the Diplomacy community.

Now I don’t expect you to be saying, “Yes, we will be doing everything you ask.” with these questions. I know getting all that is asked here included would be a large undertaking indeed. But we are a curious type, us Dippers. We really like to know who people we negotiate with are, and what they are thinking...

(These question's were answered by the development team, so you know that the answers are coming from the people right in the thick of things.)

"General Questions"

Question #1
I guess my first question is, who are you as a company? Our readers would like to know a bit about the company that’s taking on this endeavour.

Answer #1
We are a fairly small sized company with a global audience within our niche of Grand Strategy Games. Those who work here all have a long history of playing board games and computer games. One thing that characterizes Paradox is that we all put a lot of effort and commitment into what we do and that in its turn has translated into a very loyal and continuously growing fan base. But perhaps the most important thing is that we love what we do for a living!

Question #2
Does Paradox know the history of past endeavours with this game? Do you believe you know what they missed that you can correct, change, or differentiate enough to succeed?

Answer #2
Yes, we believe we do. Earlier commercial attempts at computer adaptations of the board game showed us the many challenges we knew we would have to face if we decided to make this game. The fact that we knew we were about to tackle a hard problem when we wrote our design has helped us immensely throughout the project. We also knew there had been several important advances made in AI research and other applicable computer game technologies and wanted to make use of state of the art technology to make a strategy game. We are convinced Diplomacy is a game that is fundamentally well suited for a computer adaptation, but up until now the right tools to do so have been lacking.

Question #3
This game has a very active hobby community with a long history, which I know you know of. You have mentioned that you want to work with the hobby community with your product. This interview is an indication that you are sincere in that regard.

(My question I guess is how well do you know the game or us? Did anybody on this project ever play postal Diplomacy? How active are people on this project in the Diplomacy community? If you could give us a sense of how connected you are to the hobby, it would help to calm fears that this is just some project by some computer company that has no idea what Diplomacy is. I guess we want to feel a sense that you know your audience, or at least one of your audiences.)

Answer #3
All those involved in the project have played the board game. I guess you can say we have two extremes where a few have played it for the first time in the office when the project started all the way to the other extreme with a Paradox executive who managed to acquire this license and has been playing Diplomacy since before some of us were even born.

Personally, I first played it in high school over ten years ago and have since enjoyed face-to-face games with friends. To close the gap further we have also invited a group of initiated Diplomacy players to take part in our Advisory Board and they have been giving valuable input along the way.

Question #4
What is the target audience you are trying for? Is it to create more mainstream games that 12-16 years will want to play? How about more mature players? Or is it a combination of both? I am realistic enough to know that our community is not the only audience you want if you want to make money, but if the game matches our needs and you build it, we will come.

Answer #4
Historically, our core target audience for our games have been males in the age of 18-45 but of course we often find that younger and older gamers alike enjoy playing our games. For Diplomacy we believe the target group will be fairly similar, i.e around this age bracket but stretch a bit in both directions to 16-55. Our aim is to make the game easy to learn but hard to master, which will attract those who are sometimes scared away from strategy games on PC (due to the sometimes steep learning curves). Our ambition is mainly to bring Diplomacy to a larger audience but we also believe that Diplomacy players can use it as a complement to their current ways of playing Diplomacy.

Question #5
Will a portion of this game at least be a direct port of the game?

Or as one reader asked --- “It has been stated that while not a direct port, the game will "Remain true to the spirit of the board game." Could you elaborate on this? Exactly how will it remain faithful, while what elements do you plan to add, besides the presumably real-time system?”

Most people in our community think that this is a fundamental question. It drives a lot of other questions. If it has lots of other bells and whistles then great, but being able to play a standard Diplomacy game like the board game, but electronically is something we would like.

If it is a direct port portion, will the official board game rule set be used?

Answer #5:
We are doing a direct port in the sense that we are keeping all the fundamental rules of the game intact, in particular we will keep the phases of the game, the simultaneous movement, the turn resolution rules, the units, the map and the standard scenario.
What we will change are things that aren't as fundamental, but rather incorporated in the rules to work in a board game environment, such as civil disorder (we will allow an AI to take over), incorrectly written orders (won't happen through our GUI), spatial constraints (i.e., no room metaphor, instead you can negotiate with any player or any group of players at any time).

Question #6 (Assumes a “yes” for answer #5)
Will the game have an AI? The AI I am referring to is one that can play a standard Diplomacy game. Our community’s interest is that the AI engine is something that was found lacking in other past systems. You might be aware that there is an AI project that has for the last couple of years tried to create a rudimentary AI. We in the Diplomacy community think that a real AI is beyond the scope of most video games because of the interaction with humans. Humans are hard to match, especially in a game that calls for lying.

If you are going to have an AI, will it automatic take over for other players if they leave the game (assuming multiplayer but more on that later)? How will the AI handle the existing paradoxes (no pun intended) that exist in the current rules?

Will it use existing Diplomacy Adjudicator Test Cases (DATC) like the following?
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/L.B.Kruijswijk/

Answer #6:
Making a Diplomacy AI is really difficult. Not only because it is always hard to make a good AI (basically no grand strategy games out there has a good AI in the sense that it can stand up to a good human player in a fair fight), but also because the AI makes or breaks Diplomacy as a single player experience. Knowing this, we are doing what we can to make this an achievable task for us, in particular we are introducing a graphical negotiation language where the AI’s can communicate with each other and with the human player.

Often when Diplomacy and AI are mentioned in the same sentence, people tend to think about chess AI's, however once they do a bit of studying they find that it is computationally unfeasible to solve Diplomacy with a similar approach. When they do additional studying they find that it is not only unfeasible, it’s the totally wrong approach. Diplomacy is a game with imperfect information, without this characteristic there could be no lying. There is no lying in chess or in any other game with perfect information for that matter. So the first thing you need to do when making a Diplomacy AI is to look beyond the traditional approaches made for perfect information games.

One game with imperfect information which involves a lot of lying besides Diplomacy is Poker, and recent progress in this area have produced AI's with near perfect play. I find that very inspiring! Those papers, together with what has been published on Diplomacy AI’s from the community, have been a tremendous asset in the development. With all this said though, we would not want your readers to harvest expectations that the first AI we make will beat them in a fair fight. To guarantee that any player can get a challenge out of playing versus our AI we will allow the player to subtly tilt the table in the computers favour. One way to do this is to change the initial bias against the human player, however any such tricks will be clearly stated and it will be possible to turn it off.

Yes, the AI will be able to act as a stand-in.

Yes, DATC was a tremendous asset when we wrote our turn resolution engine. We have made each of the tests there into a unit test for it, have followed the recommendations there and apply the Szykmans rule to resolve convoy paradoxes.

Question #7 (Assumes a “yes” for answer #5)
Will the game support any variants? If so, will they be of your own creation, or will ones that others have created?

Assuming that there will be variants, will there be things like:

• Different Rule Sets
• Variable Strength Units
• Different Unit Types
• Advancing Technology
• Different Map Sets
• Economic Rules (example the Payola Variant)
• Different Forms of Press
• The ability to mix and match the above

Answer #7:
I'd prefer to wait with this question; we are still deciding exactly which variants and what will be supported. Priority for us in the development is to get the standard game as good as possible before touching the variants.

"Game Play/Player Matching/Community"

Question #8
Will the game support single player, multiplayer (MP), or both? Is the game focus on one more then the other? What I mean by that is that will most players get more enjoyment out the game in multiplayer (MP) mode or single player?

Answer #8
It will support both. In its essence Diplomacy is always multiplayer, but sometimes all the other players are AI’s. What a player prefers depends on what they are looking for. I think many will use it to play a relaxing game versus AI’s that they can play any time they want and while the AI’s do get upset when you stab them in the back they cannot quite cause the professional dilemma you get when you know you must stab your boss in the back to win the game ;-).

I also think many people new to Diplomacy will start by enjoying the game in single player and then move on to the multiplayer arena.

Question #9
If there are multi-player modes what are they?

• One computer, probably to be used by a GM?
• Multiple computers connecting to a MP service?
• Is there GM role needed or available if wanted? (related to question #10 and maybe better suited there).

Answer #9
We will support LAN play and Internet play through a matchmaking service we are developing. We will not support "hot-seat" as we are not very partial to this way of playing Diplomacy, however you will be able to use the program as an adjudicator support tool through our sandbox-mode.

Question #10
Assuming an MP service in the prior question, will the service provide support for:

• Tournament play
• Ladders
• Stratified game "advertisements" like 'rookies only,' 'no rookies,' etc.?
• Rating systems

Answer #10
Yes, we plan to have support for all the things mentioned above. Finding the right opponents at the right time is one thing where Internet shines and as community software has shown, is reason enough in itself to bring the board game to the computer.

Question #11
Can there be "observers" to MP games? Meaning, can others watch a game being played?

Answer #11
Again, I'd prefer to wait with this question. At this stage I can say that you will be able to have a complete log of everything said and done in a game after it is finished, whether or not we will allow observers during real time is still undecided.

Question #12
Will Paradox establish some form of community (other than its forum) that provides "advice" for players?

• Articles on strategy and tactics
• Opening moves libraries
• Chat rooms

Answer #12
Actually we will not establish one but THREE different channels for the player community.
We will have a Diplomacy home page where official information about the game and its development will be published, then we will have the multiplayer match-making service and finally we have the Paradox forums where we hope to see as much activity and community cooperation as we have for our other games. Naturally these will all be closely linked to each other and we will also continue to refer the players to the existing Diplomacy communities.

Question #13
Will there be a “God” mode? This would allow a player to set and study “what if” game situations.

Answer #13
Yes, we call this mode "sandbox-mode" and it allows the advanced player to play out various what-ifs as well as changing the set-up by adding or removing units.

Question #14
Will it have the ability to save a game in progress, and resume it at a later time? Will this just be available for both single player and multiplayer? Perhaps even allowing replacement players?

Answer #14
Besides a simple YES on the question if we will support save/reload, we are looking into ways to arrange designated backup human replacement players (in addition to your AI standing), especially for long-term games.

Question #15
Will the game support Play By Email (PBEM), so that players who want to play with your game, but not have to sit down for hours at a time, can play?

If it does support PBEM, will it support the Njudge and DPjudge format?
If it does support PBEM, will it allow storage of game turns with map history and correspondence?

Answer #15
Yes. We call this "long term games" as they are played over several weeks rather than over a few hours. We will not be using any existing protocol for the communication as we want to allow the player to communicate using our graphical negotiation language. Instead of sending each other e-mails, players will connect to our meta-server and download negotiation messages and upload new suggestions and their orders any time they want to.

If the game was set up that way all this communication will be stored and once the game is finished you will have a complete log of the game.

Question #16
What type of graphical modes will be there to show the map?

Answer #16
We will show the map in 3D. This actually give the players a better overview than a simple top-down (we do allow the camera to be moved into a strict top-down view for those who insist on this) and it will also allow us to use the height dimension to draw the arrows regarding negotiation in a way that allows for several simultaneous negotiations to be shown at once without cluttering each other.

Question #17
Will there be multiple "windows" for communication with other players? ( I.E. one window per opponent + perhaps a broadcast window + perhaps a "diary" window)

Answer #17
All communication will take place on the same map, but you will be able to toggle on and off what you are currently seeing. Think of it as a map with several transparent plastic sheets, each one where you draw suggestions directed to a particular player or a particular group of players, you then select which ones you want to show at the same time. The negotiation language will be graphical with textual communication optional for human players.

Question #18
Will there be the ability to print maps?

Answer #18
No, we are currently not planning for such a feature, other than through screen capture.

Question #19
Will communication be written, graphical, or a combination of both? I am assuming that for an AI to work that you will either have pull downs for phrases or graphic pictures to represent deals or communication. This would also allow players of different languages to play against each other.

Answer #19
Mostly graphical. We will support flexible textual communication for human players but using that feature will severely handicap any AI playing in that game. Just as people today sometimes choose to play limited press games we think many will play our game with only graphical communication, it puts focus on strategy, eliminate language barriers and makes for a quicker game.

“Modifications”

Question #20
Paradox has historically made their games very modifiable by their community while the Diplomacy community has extensively modified Diplomacy. Will the game be modifiable, and to what extent?

• Ability to create maps
• If there is an AI, control files to allow modification
• Special Rules

Answer #20
Yes, we strive to make the game as modifiable as possible. This means we are using accessible formats for our map and data-files. AI's will be modifiable both though parameters and in a more fundamental way through an API. Regarding changing the rules I don't see us supporting that.

Well that's it! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did putting this together. I believe this is a very exciting project and am looking forward to it's release. I have to say that when I first heard of the project and was reading the information that was available in the forums, I was worried and had my doubts. I lot of those doubts have gone away. But more importantly, I hope this article helped to answer a lot of questions you all had.