Diplomacy Zine -- Chapter Eight EP #276 From: Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 20:53:26 +0000 Issue #276 of ELECTRONIC PROTOCOL: ************************************************************************* Mommy, Mommy... I hate my aunt! Shut up and eat! ************************************************************************* Chapter One contains: BAGHDAD, BLITZKRIEG II, KING'S GAMBIT, PASSCHENDAELE, DRAGONS, BLACK OCTOBER, OPERATION DESERT STORM, THE SOMME And is published by uunet!cti1!rlister or rlister@cti.com/Russ Lister Chapter Two contains: BATAAN, BOADICEA, CONAN, CROATIA, CUBIT, DAGGER, DIEN, DRAM, EMU, EYLAU, FONTENOY, GIGGLES, HASTINGS, IONA, KHAFJI, MARENGO, OSIJEK, PARIS, PORTNOY, QUEBEC, TIBERIUS, VEGA And is published by loeb@geocub.greco-prog.fr/Daniel E. Loeb Chapter Three contains: SQUALANE, BRUSILOV OFFENSIVE II, CULLODEN, GANDALF'S REVENGE, GOODBYE BLUE SKY, MASTERS OF DECEIT, PANDORA, NOW AND ZEN And is published by mad-2@kub.nl/Constantijn Wekx Chapter Four contains: DEADLY DAGGERS, MONTREUIL-SUR-MER, FIRE WHEN READY, THUNDERDOME, And needs a publisher. Chapter Five contains: YALTA And needs a publisher. Chapter Six contains: BERLIN WALL, HIROSHIMA, GENGHIS KHAN, SEA LION And is published by barry@brahms.udel.edu/Barry Fausnaugh. Chapter Seven contains: RIYADH'S RECKONING And needs a publisher. Chapter Eight contains: TIBERIUS, BETELGEUSE, IRON CROSS, GUERNICA, TEUNISGEK, WOLF BLITZER, THE COMMANDERS, THE SUTHERLAND CONFLICT, NOW AND ZEN, TRUST ME! ------------- Chapter Eight ------------- Table of Contents: Fleet Quiz answers Fleet Quiz winner!!! National zine polls part three: explaining the preference matrix National zine polls part four: further thoughts on the preference matrix Variants ideas from Per Westling ---- Here are the Fleet Quiz answers from pl436000@brownvm.brown.edu/Jamie Dreier: 1. Which spaces have the fewest "fleet-like" neighbors? A space has n fleet-like neighbors if it can be occupied by a fleet and that fleet has a choice of n spaces to (try to) occupy on its move. (I will count the space it occupies as one of the spaces to which it can move, since it can hold.) ANSWER: StP, Syr, and Por have three fleet-like neighbors each. 2. Define a "second order fleet-like neighbor" as a space to which a fleet can move in TWO moves. Thus, Mar is a second order fleet-like neighbor of WestMed. Which spaces have the fewest second order fleet-like neighbors? (Again, include HOLD orders in your calculations.) ANSWER: Syria has only six (Syr, Eas, Aeg, Con, Smy, Ion) 3. Which spaces share the dubious second place distinction for fewest second order fleet-like neighbors? ANSWER: Many have seven. Sev, arm, rum have the Black and all its neighbors. StP(nc) and StP(sc) Tri and Ven have Adr and its 5 neighbors, plus Nap for Ven and Gre for Tri. I think that's it. AIR LIFT 4. Suppose at the start of the game, all players cooperated to move some given army anywhere it wanted to go. Which army/destination would take the largest number of moves? (This looks like an army question, but of course it's at least as much a fleet question.) ANSWER: It takes the Turkish army in Smy 5 moves to get to Munich. Oddly enough, the German army in Munich could reach Smyrna in only three moves! Because its trek across land can be taking place while the fleets are setting up.... UNANSWERABLE FIRE 5. An army occupies space X, and a fleet occupies Y (count different coasts as different Y's). The army can attack the fleet, but for the fleet to attack the army would require n moves. For which X and Y is n largest? ANSWER: Pie and Ven, in either direction, of course. ----------------------------------------------------------------- c85perwe@und.ida.liu.se/Per Westling is a... __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _____ _____ __ | || || || \| || \| || ___|| _ \ | | **** | || || || || ___|| < |__| **** |__/\__||__||__|\__||__|\__||_____||__|\__||__| ----------------------------------------------------------------- Here are our Fleet Quiz winner's answers: A reply to the ***FLEET QUIZ*** of Chapter Eight EP #274 Without looking at the map 1. Portugal: Portugal, Spain and Mid Atlantic. Spain should be regarded as one space for this purpose even though it has a sc and a nc as a fleet in Portugal can't swith place with another fleet in Spain (costal crawl disallowed) as two adjacent provinces can't swith units. Syria: Syria, Smyrna and Eastern Med. StP nc: StP nc, Barents and Norway. No more. ((He is exactly right here.)) 2. Syria: Syria, Eastern Med, Ionian Sea, Aegan Sea, Smyrna, Constaninople giving 6 spaces. No more. ((He is exactly right here.)) 3. Sevastopol: Sevastopol, Armenia, Ankara, Constantinople, Bulgaria ec, Black Sea, Rumania; 7 spaces. Rumania: See Sevastopol. Armenia: See Sevastopol. Ankara: See Sevastopol. StP nc: StP nc, Barents, Norway, Skagerak, Sweden, North Sea, Norwegain Sea; 7 spaces as well. No more. ((Jamie agrees with him on Sev, Arm, Rum, and Stp. They disagree over Ank. I think Jamie is right here.)) 4. I would guess that it would be to move Army Liverpool to Syria. This is done by the following: SPRING 01 England F Lon->ENG, A Lpl->Wal, F Edi->NTH France F Bre->MID Italy F Nap->TYRS Austria F Tri->Alb/ADR Turkey F Ank->Con, A Con->Bul Russia F Sev->BLA FALL 01 England F ENG->MID, F NTH->ENG France F MID->WES Austria F ADR/Alb->ION Turkey F Con->AEG, A Smy->Con SPRING 02 England A Wal->Smy Convoyed by lots of fleets FALL 02 England A Smy->Syria So it isn't hard for English armies to reach coastal spaces (from Smy you can reach Armenia, so Sev is 5 steps away). How about an area in the inner part of Europe? Budapest? Well, convoy to Albania instead of Smyrna and Budapest is reachable by land (Alb->Serbia->Budapest). Other inner parts may be reached by A Lpl->Yor->Den (C Nth)->Lva (C BAL)->War->Ukr or Lva->Mos->Sev or Den->Pru->Sil->Gal. So the farthest is A Lpl->Sevastopol, 5 steps. ((Both Jamie and Per have given 5 step answers. Perhaps they're both right?)) 5. X = Livonia, Y = StP nc, n = 4 If I win I wouldn't mind a subscription to Diplomacy World. ((Both Jamie and Per have given 5 step answers. Perhaps they're both right?)) Per Westling should confirm that his address is "c/o Lindh, Drabantg 11 S-583 46 LINKOPING, SWEDEN" and let me know if the one year subscription to Diplomacy World will be a renewal or a new subscription. Congratulations, Per! I received the following from pl436000@brownvm.brown.edu/Jamie Dreier, the winner will get a one year free subscription to the Diplomacy magazine of their choice: DEEPLY TROUBLING QUIZ ****** Call a given space with a given type of unit (on a given coast, if relevant) "Potentially Deadly" to a unit in some other space IFF there is some configuration of pieces on the board and some set of orders such that the dislodgement of the second unit depends on the orders given to the first. E.g., a fleet on the north coast of Spain is Potentially Deadly to an army in Gascony, because there is a configuration and set of orders (namely, f MAO - Gascony) in which Gascony will be dislodged if and only if Spain orders support for MAO-Gas. Ok? Now, call a given unit in a given region (and coast) "Deeply Troubling" IFF it is Potentially Deadly to EVERY space on the board. That's the set up. Here's the question. How many unit/space pairs are Deeply Troubling? (You needn't give the actual number if you can describe in some other illuminating way which unit/space pairs are Deeply Troubling. Or for that matter, if you can describe in some illuminating way which one's are NOT.) And, more difficult, can you prove it?? ***** I received the following from amt5man@sun.leeds.ac.uk/Mark Nelson: NATIONAL ZINE POLLS PART THREE: EXPLAINING THE PREFERENCE MATRIX BY MARK NELSON SECTION ONE: What is A Preference Matrix? In Part One of this series we presented a history of the UK Zine Poll and examined how the idea of a National Zine Poll had spread into other diplomacy hobbys. In Part Two we surveyed some of the different methodologys that have been used over the years. In this part we explain in more detail the hows and whys of using the Preference Matrix. As we showed in Part Two the earlist Zine Polls were run using an average votes system. Before we can show why the Preference Matrix is a *Good Idea* we first show some of the problems that a Poll based solely on Average Votes has. Almost all of the faults with the Average Vote system stem from its subjectiveness. How good does a zine have to be to receive the top mark (normally 10), how bad does it have to be to receive the bottom mark (1 in the UK, 0 in North America). Does a vote of 5 represent an average zine, and if so what is an average zine? And what does it mean if I give one zine 2/10 and another 4/10? Does it imply that I consider the higher ranking zine to be two-times better than the lower ranking one? Does the differential I use between zines indicate anything? How should you vote? If 5 represents an average zine should you try and make sure that the average of all the votes that you cast is 5? If you see only one or two zines then it's likely that you think that these are going to be great zines and vote them high marks. What happens if you see more zines? In fact several Zine Poll Custodians have released figures which show two interesting things:The more zines you vote for the lower the average of the votes that you cast and that zine-editors cast lower votes than non-zine editors. These phenomena are relatively easy to explain. The more zines you see the more likely it is that you see zines which do not particularly enjoy/which you do not rate as being outstanding. Hence you will cast low votes for these zines. Traditionally zine-editors undertake wide-spread trading and see more zines than non-publishing voters. Additionally zine-editors are more critical of rival publishers and pay more attention to content/lay-out and the such like and mark zines down. One think that was discussed in the First Part of this article was "what is the purpose of a Zine Poll?" If the purpose is to find which zines the hobby prefers then one serious problem with a methodology based upon average voting is that a zine with a small number of enthusiastic subscribers could easily win the Poll. Hence the average voting method is not method to guarantee that that the ranking of zines in the Poll corresponds to how the hobby as a whole views them. Combining all this information we see that whilst the Average Vote method has some merit, it is not perfect. Can we get another angle onto which zines people prefer? Earlier I asked if I voted twice as much for zine A as for zine B does it imply that I consider it to be twice as worthy as the lower ranking one? One thing which it does show is that I prefer zine A to zine B. And because there is so much flucturation in what voters mean by the numbers which they attach to the zines that they vote for perhaps we can gain something useful by just considering their *preferences*. The preference matrix does this. When a voter lists 5 zines on their ballot paper they are telling you their preferences. They are saying that the they prefer the zine at the top of their ballot to all other zines, that they prefer all other zines to the one at the bottom. It doesn't matter that the votes may be 10-9-8-7-6 or 10-7-5-3-1 or 10-7-7-6-6-2, whatever the value of the vote the voter is given us a indication of whether he prefers Zine A or Zine B. How do we calculate a Preference Matrix? Suppose there are N zines in the Poll. Let us chose two particular zines, A and B. Then on every ballot paper that contains zines A and B there are three different outcomes: Either Zine A will appear before Zine B, Zine B will appear before Zine A or the two zines will appear at the same place on the ballot in which case they draw. So by going through all ballots which contain both zines we can arrive at a Win-Draw-Loss table which will tell us how many times Zine A beat Zine B, how many times Zine A and Zine B drew and how many times Zine B beat Zine A. At it's simplist level we can say that if Zine A has more `wins' against Zine B then it has `loses' then Zine A has beaten Zine B, in the sense that more people Prefer Zine A to Zine B. We can do these comparisons for each zine in the Poll, that is to say that we can compare every zine in the Poll to every other zine in the Poll and to see if voters express a preference for one zine against another. If there are N zines in the Poll then there are (N- 1) + (N-2) + (N-3) .... + 1 distinct preferences that can exist. If there are N zines in the Zine Poll then the Preference Matrix is an nxn matrix. Along each column or row, there will be (N-1) entries (obviously you can't compare zine A to zine A!). We may label each entry in the matrix with the unique reference (i-j) where for entry (i-j) we are comparing zine i to zine j. Each entry (i-j) will contain three numbers (k-l-m) as described above. We refer to the label (i-j) as an Index Pair. At it's most simplest implementation the Preference Matrix will tell us that for any of these N zines it won A Index-Pairs in the Preference Matrix, lost B Index Pairs in the Preference Matrix and drew (N-A-B) Index Pairs in the preference matrix. What now? We can award a simple mark scheme. Perhaps for every Index Pair thata zine wins it scores 3 points and for every Index Pair that it draws it scores 1 point. Then we can total up all the points that a zine has scored and arrive at a listing of zines which is independent of the actual numbers voters accorded each zine. SECTION TWO: The Preference Matrix and The Zine Poll There are obviously many different ways in which you score a Preference Matrix. For instance you could score 2 pts for winning an Index Pair and 1 for drawing. Or even 2 pts for winning and 0 for drawing. One disadvantage of a Zine Poll run purely on a Preference Matrix is that no indication is taken whatsoever of the actual value of the votes cast, although this is also one of its strengths. Although in the past there have been instances when the Zine Poll has been scored purely on the preference matrix nowdays the scoring of the Zine Poll (both in the UK and North America) uses a mixture of average votes and prefence matrix. But before explaining how to splice the average vote and the preference matrix together there is another question to answer: Under what circumstances should you use a Preference Matrix in a Zine Poll? The essence of the Preference Matrix is that there are "sufficient" voters who can make a comparison between zines on the list. That is to say that given any index pair (i-j) there are are "sufficient" voters who see both of these zines. To take one extreme, if there are six zines in the Poll and twenty voters but all ballots contain the name of one zine then it would be absurd to use the Preference Matrix because no-one was casting any preferences. At the other extreme, suppose all twenty voters saw all six zines, then for each of the 15 distinct comparisons there are twenty voters and so meaningful results are being extracted. The question is, how many votes are required before a comparison can be construed as being meaningful? For instance comparisons which are either 1-0-0, 0-1-0 or 0-0-1 are not particularly useful (this is to say that only one voter sees the two zines in question). How many votes are required before a comparison is meaningful? How long is a piece of string? To some extent this depends on how many votes the zines in the Poll are attracting. For instance if each zine attracts 100 votes then an Index Pair containing only 5 votes is not meaningful as it is based on only 5% of the voters. On the other hand if each zine receives only 10 votes then an Index Pair with 5 votes is not so bad (although not good). Obviously there are no hard and fast rules here. We have discussed above how many ballots are required before an index pair can be meaningful. There is the related question of how many index pairs have to be meaningful before the Preference Matrix is telling us useful information. For instance. Suppose that there are 6 zines in the Zine Poll. Then there are 15 distinct index pairs. If 14 of these contain zero or one preferences (so are telling us either nothing or not very much) and the 15th contains 10 preferences then it isn't worth running a Preference Matrix. For a decent Preference Matrix you require to have 80%+ of Index Pairs being meaningful. (This 80% value has been plucked from thin air, the true value is almost certainly higher but not lower.) This boils down to resolving an important question about your national hobby: Do people see a number of different zines or do they tend just to see one or two zines? So we have seen that a preference matrix is only reasonable if a large enough number of people are expressing a preference for most of the zines in the Poll. PART THREE: Splicing The Preference Matrix and The Average Vote Together Before covering this, we should explain in more detail why most people are not in favour of vasing their Zine Poll solely on the Preference Matrix. There are two reasons. Firstly it takes no account of the actual numbers cast, it doesn't matter if you score two zines as 10-9 or 10-3; in the end they both score up as a preference for one zine over another. Secondly people who vote for a large number of zines have a greater influence than those vote for a small number. In fact a person who only votes for one zine has *no* influence on the Zine Poll because he casts no preferences. When John Piggott ran the UK Zine Poll one of the rules was that you had to vote for a minimum of *two* zines. This means that people who are more active in the Hobby have a grater influence than those are not. The feeling is that the Zine Poll should try and include the votes of everyone who votes, and the best way to do this is to combine together scores from an Average Vote and from a Preference Matrix. Now, how do we do this? Let us suppose that that there are N zines in the Preference Matrix, and that you score A points for winning each index pair and B points for drawing an index pair. Then the maximum score that any zine can obtain is (N-1)*A. Now the maximum score that you can score in an Average vote is ten. The maximum score in the Preference Matrix is likely to be not only higher than this, but much higher than this. In the UK a typical preference matrix will contain on the order of 50 zines, with 3pts for a win. Hence the maximum score on a preference matrix will be (50-1)*3=147. Adding the average vote onto these scores is unlikely to change the result of the Poll. So the first thing to do is renormalize all scores from the Preference Matrix so that the highest score is ten. If a Zine Scores C then it's new score is C/((N-1)*A). In the past there have been different ways of combining the Average Vote (AV) and Renormalised Preference Matrix Score (RNPMS). It's perfectly possible to weight them equally, but at present this is not done. In the UK the present Custodian uses 2*(RNPMS) + AV which gives zines a total of 30. Zines are then ranked in order of their final score. In North America the current custodian (Eric Brosius) uses the formula: Final Score = ( 2*Modified Mean + Preference Score)/3. It is interesting to note that in the UK we emphasise the Preference Matrix over the Average Score whilst in North America they emphasise the Modified Mean over the Preference Matrix. We shall not attempt to explain the reasons for these fundamental differences here, a commentary on this appeared in (1). Part Four: Some Advanced Features of and Comments on The Preference Matrix Running a Poll using Average votes is straight-forward and not particularly time-consuming. Calculating a Preference Matrix for a small number of voters and a small number of zines is slightly more time consuming. Calculating a Preference Matrix for a large number of voters and a large number of zines is *very* time-consuming! If you vote for N zines how many do preferences are you making? (N-1) + (N-2) + (N-3) + ... 1 = quite a lot! You can see that if people start voting for more than 20 zines then it can take some time to store that information. In the UK Iain Bowen has recently introduced two new innovations to the Preference Matrix. Firstly he scores all indices which contain only one preference as a draw for both zines regardless of preference. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly he does not consider such pair-indices to contain meaningful information. Secondly an obscure fanzine which a low number of voters could do very well in the Poll by winning a large number of 1-0 preferences. A methodology which could allow a fringe zine to either win or do particularly well is not considered to be sound. The other innovation re-defines the concept of winning an Index Pair. Traditionally to win an Index Pair you simply had to score more wins than loses to the other zine in the Index Pair. You only drew the Index Pair if both zines had the same number of preferences. This can lead to strange results. Suppose the Index Pair contains the following preferences 1-20-0. Twenty one voters, twenty say the zines are equal but one says that he prefers zine A. Should this really count as a win for Zine A? Iain's innovation is to say that to win the Index Pair you have to have greater than 50% of the voters giving you their preference. So a 1-20-0 is a draw, as is a 10-4-6. Obviously this idea can be developed further. Is it "fair" that a 10-4-6 scores as a draw but a 11-4-6 (one extra voter!) scores as a win for one zine and a lose for the other? Using the (k-l-m) notation defined earlier we could instead do away with the concept of winning and drawing index-pairs and instead define a score for each index pair as follows. Let A be the number of points for "winning" an index-pair. Then a zine scores A*(k/(k+l+m)). This means that one vote does not dramatically swing your score from a draw to a win. Unfortunately this system means that fringe zines with fewer preferences may score better than zines with large circulations. Perhaps there is material on this topic for another article... (1) Northern Flame 34 (March 1992) NATIONAL ZINE POLLS PART FOUR: FURTHER THOUGHTS ON THE PREFERENCE MATRIX BY ERIC BROSIUS Here is how I would do preference scores if I were going to be a TurboPhreak about it: My feeling is that the Pref Score should measure how certain we are about the fact that one zine is preferred to another. This can be computed using probability theory if we make some basic assumptions. I'd start by breaking down all individual comparisons into wins, losses, and ties. For example, let's suppose we have 40% wins, 40% losses, and 20% ties. (I do not mean we break down the *matchups* into these categories, but the *comparisons*. I.e., if we pick a random pair of votes on the same ballot, there is a 20% chance they will be the same.) I'd then compute a function P(n,m) for each pair of integers (n,m) with - n <= m <= n. Loosely speaking, this would represent the chance that, given n comparisons taken from the hypothetical distribution, wins - losses would be less than (or no greater than) n . The larger P(n,m) is, the less likely it is that a zine could achieve a wins - losses score of m by pure chance alone. Thus, the more certain we are that the result of the matchup is due to more than just chance. Note that I waffled above between "less than" and "no greater than". This was deliberate. For symmetry purposes, I don't want to prefer one to the other. So in actual practice I would compute P(n,m) on a "less than" basis and *also* on a "greater than" basis, and I would add the two values. Let's do a few small examples. For larger ones, you'd need a computer or a lot of patience. If n = 1, we need to compute P(1,1), P(1,0), and P(1,-1). First P(1,1) = [P(wins - losses < 1) + P(wins - losses <= 1)]. Let's do the easy one first. P(wins - losses <= 1) = 100%, since you can't do better than 1-0 on a single comparison. The harder one is P(wins - losses < 1) = P(a 0-0 matchup) + P(a 0-1 matchup) = 20% + 40% = 60%. This means P(1,1) = 60% + 100% = 1.6 . Now let's do P(1,0) = [P(wins - losses < 0) + P(wins - losses <= 0)] = [P(wins - losses < 0) + P(wins - losses < 1)] = 40% + 60% = 1.0 . And similarly, P(1,-1) = 0.4 . How would this be used in the preference score? Simple. I'd add P(n,m) to a zine's pref score for a matchup composed of n comparisons if we had wins - losses = m. For example, on a 1-comparison matchup I'd add 1.6 for a 1-0 win, 1.0 for a 0-0 tie, and 0.4 for a 0-1 loss. These values are on the same scale as the current Runestone raw preference score (i.e., before normalizing.) I'll give further values of these numbers in the chart below. These numbers are rounded to the nearest hundredth. P(n,m) n | m = -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 ------------------------------------------------ 1 | 0.40 1.00 1.60 2 | 0.16 0.48 1.00 1.52 1.84 3 | 0.06 0.22 0.56 1.00 1.44 1.78 1.94 You can generate more of these if you want by writing a program. Note the zero-sum nature of this process: the two zines involved in a matchup always split 2 points. Would this be an improvement? Yes, if you are interested in accuracy. But I don't think it would be an improvement if you are interested in being able to explain the scoring system to those who are interested. It's just too complicated for most people to have the patience for (remember, the values of P(n,m) would have to be recomputed each year depending on the number of tied comparisons.) And furthermore, the difference is not that great. For a 1-0 matchup on on ballot, we'd award 1.60 points instead of the 2.00 I award now. The bigger effect would be on a close matchup with a lot of votes on either side---for instance, an 8-7 matchup on 19 ballots. In these cases, the result would be very close to 1.00 for each zine. Variant Ideas from Per Westling <c85perwe@und.ida.liu.se> As of this moment all variants implemented for Judge is available on all judges. But this might not be the case in the future as there are some attempts to implement other variants at other cites. I think that is a good idea, but would like to see more of it. I suggest that some kind of variants should only be available at some cites, and not all, so that the people interested to play in that variant would be attracted to just that judge. The central judge could either have all variants implemented available or maybe have them archieved and include a pointer to there that variant could be played. Here are some variants I would like to see implemented: * Captalist Dippy [buy and sell currencies, the one with most currenices after a season controls that power the next season] * Fleet Rome [like regular Dip but Italy starts with Fleet instead of Army in Rome] * Baseball Diplomacy [you collect points for each inning, the highest sum wins, an inning is a year controlling on power, the game consist of 7 years so that each player get to control one power one year] * Intimate Diplomacy [two player variant] * Stab [a blind variant, the only thing one sees (except what ones units sees) is the failed orders] All the above use the normal map. There are some other with special maps that could be implemented: * Hardbop Downfall [play Diplomacy in Middle Earth setting] * Aberation [maybe the best variant?] * India 1501 [easy variant for 5 players, no fleets] * 1885[a 9-player variant with Sweden and Spain as extra powers, uses the Army/Fleets rules] * Song of the Night [the most known of all fantasy variants (except maybe Downfall) in no special fantasy settings, uses Wizards, Kings, Heroes, Magic Items, ...] * Gilgamesh [The German extended version of "Song of the Night"] As you can see, a lot of good variants. Stay tuned for the rules of Capitalist Dippy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CAPITALIST-DIPPY by Lukas Kautzsch (1985) Capitalist-Dippy (CD) contains two games, Dippy Stock Exchange (DSE) and Diplomacy. The owner of the most shares leades units of this country in the next season. Now to the details: At the beginning each players owns of each of the 7 currencies (Kronen, Pound, Francs, Mark, Lira, Rubel, Piaster) 1000 shares and no Swiss Franks (SFr, this is the base currency). The price of all currencies is 1.00 SFr. As usual in Dippy, a year is divided in 3 seasons (Spring, Autumn and Winter), which are played in 3 or 2 rounds (Autumn and Winter together). In the first round of the game (Winter 1900) there is only action at the DSE, in each further round there are military movements and following orders at the DSE. At the DSE the players can buy and sell currencies based of the prices of the last round. Selling shares is limited up to 500 shares of each currencies. You can buy up to your cash. The cash you got by selling shares is converted to SFr and added to your cash. You can save it for the next turn, or reinvest in other currencies. I.e.: You own 1000 Shares of French Francs at 2.50 SFr, you sell 500 shares. You get 1250 SFr. If you buy 735 Lira at 1.70 SFr, you have to pay 1249.50 SFr. At the end of the turn the price of the currencies changes. For every 100 Shares of a currency which were more bought than sold, the price raises by 0.01 SFr. Vice versa it falls by 0.01 SFr for every 100 shares, which were more sold than bought. The value of currencies can never fall below 0.01 SFr (but see below). There is also no upper limit of the price. When a country runs out of supply-centers, this currency is in the next turn without value and can no longer be traded with at the DSE. The player with the most shares of a currency at the end of a turn leads the units of this country in the next season. (When two players are equal, the one who had the most in the last turn). The game is finished at the end of the dippy-game which will be after Winter 1910 unless a power owns more than 17 centers before that. The decision about victory and the places is not based on the leader of the winning country, nor the value of the currencies in SFr. Only the point value (victory points) of the existing countries, computed as follow: The number of supply centers is multiplied with every 100 shares of a country. The amount for all exisiting countries is added to the plaer amount. The player with the highes score win this game. NMR-arrangment: If a player fails to give orders for the DSE, he sells of each currency as many as possible up to 500. In the diplomacy-part all units will hold. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CAPITALIST-DIPPY II by Per Westling (Dec 91) This is a revised version of Lukas Kautzsch's _Capitalist-Dippy_ influenced by other similar variants like for example Douglas Huskins' _Speculation_. Per Westling -- constructor (Dec 91) 1. Any number of players may participate in this game, but 10--15 is recommended. It's up to the GM if the players should be anonymous or not. 2. Capitalist-Dippy (CD) contains two games, the Stock Exchange (SE) and the normal Diplomacy orders. The owner of the most shares (of the power's currency) leades units of this power in the next season. At the beginning each players owns of each of the 7 currencies (Kronen, Pound, Francs, Mark, Lira, Rubel, Piaster) 1000 shares and no ECUs (European Currency Units, this is the base currency). The price of all currencies is 1.00 ECU. ECU is used as this is just an abstract measure of worth. 3. As usual in Diplomacy, a year is divided in 3 seasons (Spring, Fall and Winter), which are played in 3 or 2 rounds (Autumn and Winter together). In the first round of the game (Winter 1900) there is only action at the SE, in each further round there are military movements and the following orders at the SE. 4. A round consist of the following actions: i ] Orders in the Diplomacy game ii ] Financial Orders are executed at the SE iii] Resignations and adding of new players iv ] Determination of new prices for the currencies v ] Determination of Leaders of each Power During Winter 1900 step *i* is skipped, and during the last round (Winter 1910 or when a power exceeds 17 centers) only step *i* and *ii* take place. 5. At the SE the players can buy and sell currencies based of the prices of the last round. Selling shares is limited up to 500 shares of each currency. You can buy up to your cash. The cash you got by selling shares is converted to ECUs and added to your cash, but you can use it the same round if you like. I.e.: You own 1000 Shares of French Francs at 2.50 ECUs, of which you sell 500 shares. You get 1250 ECUs. If you buy 735 Lira at 1.70 ECUs, you have to pay 1249.50 ECUs. The 0.50 ECUs extra you won by this transaction is lost as the fractions are dropped after transactions are finished. 6. The Financial Orders (FO) are transactions for the SE, and they should be given in a format similar to this: Crowns +500 Pounds +200 Francs -1000 Marks N/T Lira +100 Rubles +750 Piastres -500 Pluses (*+*) mean buy, and minuses (*-*) sell. "N/T" mean No Transaction. As usual a player can't sell more than 500 shares, or more than (s)he's got. If a player tries to buy more than (s)he can afford the biggest buy order in the number of shares (randomly determined if several) will be lowered until the FO is legal. 7. If a player resign all his shares and ECUs will be returned to the bank without affecting the prices. 8. The GM may allow new players to enter the game, for example to always have the prearranged number of players in the game. They will be given shares of each _remaining_ currency to the value of 1000 ECUs. Fractions will be dropped and if possible ECUs will be given instead. E.g.: A new player enters the game when the prices are 0.95 ECUs for 1 Pound, 1.10 ECUs for 1 Francs and 1.00 for the rest. This players will get 1052 Pounds (cost 999 ECUs), 909 Francs (cost 999 ECUs), 1000 of each of the remaining currencies and 2 ECUs in "cash". 9. After the Winter adjudications (either separate or togehter with the Fall orders depending on the House Rules) the GM will determine which power that have changed their numbers of supply centers since the previous adjudiaction. If a power has lost center(s) the GM will place a sell order under the title "World Events" for 1,000 shares (in that powers currency) for each center lost, and vice verse for gains and buy orders. 10. All the amounts sold in each currency are added, giving the (total) demand. All the amounts bought in each currency are added, giving the (total) supply. If the demand or supply is less than 100, it is raised to 100. The new price (used for sales and buys in the next SE) is computed by the following formula: newprice = oldprice * cube-root(demand/supply) The price are rounded to two decimals, towards 1.00, i.e.: 1.323 is rounded down to 1.32 and 0.973 is rounded up to 0.98. A price may not fall below 0.01 as long as the power remains in the game. When a power runs out of supply-center, the currency of that power is worthless and may not be traded with for the rest of the game, starting the round the Fall/Winter season the elimination takes place. 11. If there are two or more players with the most amount of shares in one currency, the one of them who had the most amount in the previous round will be the Leader of that power. If this is still undecidable, the round before that will be determine among them, and so on. If still undecidable, the most recent Leader will remain Leader, or if the first round, random choice will be used. 12. The first time a player fails to send in any transactions for the SE (N/T suffices to avoid this) the GM will sell 500 (or all if less reamins) shares of each currecny the player posses. The player will keep the ECUs from this sale. The player failing to enter any FO wont be chosen as the leader of any power, regardless of the amounts of shares held. If a players fails to make any transactions for the SE a two seasons in a row, the player will be regarded as resigning, so the GM wont sell any of the players shares, but instead treat him as a resigner. If a Leader of a power NMRs during the Diplomacy part, all the units will hold (unless the House Rules dictates any other NMR arrangement) and (s)he wont be chosen as the Leader for that power during the next round. The player may be chosen as Leader for another power though, if (s)he makes FOs during the same round as the NMR. 13. The game ends after Fall/Winter 1910 (or the year some power reach 18+ centers). Draws are not allowed. Victory is decided by the number of Victory Points (VP) each player have. VPs are computed by the multiplying the number of supply centers held by a power by the number of shares held in that currency and divide this by 100. ECUs give no VPs. E.g.: England finishes a game with 11 centers, Russia with 18 centers and Italy with 7 centers. A player has 2523 Pounds, 1002 Rubles, 302 Francs and 3201 Liras. The Francs are worthless (France has been eliminated) but the other currencies are computed into VPs in the following way: 2523*11 + 1002*18 + 3201*7 -------------------------- =681.96 100 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Per Westling | c/o Lindh, Drabantg 11 | c85perwe@und.ida.liu.se S-583 46 LINKOPING | In praise of Idleness -- Bertrand Russel SWEDEN | Fax: 105235, Home: 273054, Work: 104890 -- Add 013 or +4613 before. Stuff regarding DPP may be sent to x90perwe@ida.liu.se instead. Publisher comments: I need scribes to type in articles. I am also interested in people's experiences with scanners. I would like to know what brands of scanners and OCR software are the best. I am also very interested in finding two players for a new 1914 game. ****************************************************************************** To join in the fun, send your name, home address, home and work phone numbers, and country preferences to Eric_S_Klien@cup.portal.com. ****************************************************************************** Up