Trivial and Simple Diplomacy Bots

Before I get stuck in to building the next world Diplomacy champion, it seems like a good idea to have a think about some of the more trivial bots that can be written to play diplomacy. The following notes cover the basic bots listed on the DIADE Clients page.

From there I couldn't resist extrapolating to variants on these bots that should be easy to knock out. Probably once I start coding on this project, my first goal will be to write a bot that can copy all the behaviours in this article.

Basic Negotiation

Diplomacy is a game of negotiation; agreements, alliances, strategic plans and trade-offs. In this post I want to describe and consider the more common types of agreements made during play. Some of these will be honest offers made with the full intent of being honoured. Others will be clever lies crafted to gain some kind of advantage.

As all the players are your opponents, you might think that the game could be played going it alone. Avoiding the snakes and ladders of international politics might sound simple, the game system encourages players to work together for mutual benefit. Although Diplomacy as a whole is a zero-sum game (more on Game Theory in another post) there are many scenarios within the game where discussing a move with the opponent will allow you to ensure that both of you are better off. The negotiations below should benefit all participants - if they are adhered to.

Diplomacy Rules Summary

I want to do this thing methodically, so the logical place to start would seem to me to be the game rules. So in this post I will go over the rules of Diplomacy in my own words. I'll follow it up soon with a post covering the basic types of negotiations that occur in a typical game.

The Board

Whats Going On Here?

Hi all, and welcome to my little corner of the interweb. My name is Marcus Lund, and I live in the city of Melbourne in Australia. I'm an experienced software developer who specialises in agile management and loves refactoring. I also have two young daughters who keep me very busy outside of work.

I have always had a strong amateur interest in artificial intelligence and game theory, which I guess started in earnest after studying a Cognitive Science unit at university and spending lots of my time playing MUDs (multi-player online virtual worlds). I peruse the occasional academic article online, and have read a book or three on the subject too. My particular interests tend towards intelligent agents, emergent behaviour and generic algorithms.