Yes, that would definitely be preferrable to having no player for yellow at all.
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Agreed!
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Ok I am sorry but I canât join yet. Too much mystery in my own near future to commit myself even if i find this go variant quite captivating.
After some thinking I am not so sure that itâs a big problem if a player donât play.
Because anyone can play âno move at allâ, because you donât have to remove his stones and because there would be still some diplomacy in the way of eating his stones. Even it could be better to not replace the player, giving maybe the opportunity to finish the game quicker and not modifying the game by a new input.
The âretirementâ should stay as an integrated part of a game of diplomacy, not as something special to correct or assist.
I found the Idea to not take someone from the kibbitz interesting and there is no need to change that rule too.
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I disagree, yellow would become more or less free real estate, putting all of the neighbours, especially le_4TC, at a great advantage.
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I m discussing because this is a situation which may happen again and again. And in a similar way, the closest may have a bit of advantage or looks like to have. You canât just plan to replace each time it happens.
You can have difficulty to find replacement too just because of the weird situation someone resigning is offering to you.
It can be more in the spirit of the game to simply let it die and let the community manage the looking unbalanced things to come.
If the arbiter can bring a new player in the arena, it can be fun (have to see if the other players agree too) but not a necessary thing in itself, I mean retirement can just be considered as a normal event in the game.
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Ideally, I would like to find a group of reliable players that avoid dropping out.
Iâve played in a lot of open diplomacy games online where people dropping out has been an issue, and it definitely distorts a game in a way that is unwelcome to most other players, except for maybe the few that may directly benefit. However, many serious players would still feel that the game gets ruined by people that quit midway, even if they are the ones that gain.
With serious group of players, like in a tournament setting, or just setting up a private game with reliable regulars, itâs quite common to avoid the issue of people dropping out, and the distorting affects of people missing turns is rarely a part of the games.
As organizer, Iâm sorry that I did not do a better job of screening participants for this first game.
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Where do I apply to play in the next game? 
This is so cool!
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It would be fun to do the next game with a lot of players on a large board. 9x9 feels so cramped 
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Larger board would be cool, but with too many players it will still feel cramped 
I think around 8 would be a good maximum on 19x19.
Maybe we could skip the âextra daysâ to keep the game somewhat quick despite the larger board? Thereâs also more room to come back from an unintentional pass on 19x19.
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My site supports up to 25x25, but that can easily be bumped up (only reason I didnât is that the coordinates only use 25 letters, with I being skipped).
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Hm yeah huge boards would be fun, I was just worried that the games would be too long for everyone to stay engaged. But since more players makes the game quicker, perhaps 25x25 would be playable.
Maybe we should first see how many players want to participate, and then fit the board size after that? In the current game we are 5 players on 9x9, thatâs about 16 intersections per player. If thatâs a reasonable measure of how âcrampedâ the game will feel, then since
19x19 / 8 â 45 â 25x25 / 14
8 players on 19x19 would be about equivalent to 14 players on 25x25, both in âcrampednessâ and game length.
Edit: this very simplistic measure doesnât take into account that space close to corners and along the side is more valuable than space in the center, normally. While the area of the board grows quadratically, the side length grows linearly, and the number of corners is constant
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@Maharani, we would be happy to have you join future games. Iâll let you know when we are recruiting for a new one.
In the meantime, would you be interested in potentially being an alternate player to take over if some players in the current game drop out?
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I like this density perspective as a rough measure for these games.
For comparison, two-player go across various board sizes have these (inverse) densities:
- 19x19 / 2 = 180.5
- 13x13 / 2 = 84.5
- 9x9 / 2 = 40.5
- 7x7 / 2 = 24.5
- 6x6 / 2 = 18
- 5x5 / 2 = 12.5
This first five-player, 9x9 game falls in the rough ballpark of 5x6 Go.
Hopefully, if there is a lot of interest for future games, maybe even having multiple games in parallel is another possibility. This could accommodate various players with differing preferences for game pace, length, density, and other tweaks.
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Sure.
I would especially love taking part in a diplomatic 13 x 13 game btw
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@yebellz Are you using any software, or are you doing all of this by hand (including graphics)?
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The board graphics are from the tool that Vsotvep made: https://vsotvep.github.io/MulticolorGo.html
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For the graphics, Iâm using the tool made by @Vsotvep, as mentioned by @le_4TC.
However, all of the game logic, like resolving collisions and captures, is just done manually, since the tool only renders the board and stones.
Before @Vsotvep made the tool, I was originally planning to manually do the graphics by just editing an SVG file (which I shared above). Actually, in those SVG files, there is already a transparent stone at every intersection, so putting down stones would just be a matter of setting the color. For originally generating these SVG files, I used software that I had wrote.
Iâm really glad that @Vsotvep made that tool, since it has made the game management process much easier.
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I really like the idea of the Diplomatic Go variant and would like to thank @yebellz for making the rules and moderating the game.
When thinking about the game today, I had an idea for a rules variation. I thought you might enjoy this idea too and would like to share it.
Currently people are seemingly forming alliances and trying to work together. But I have the feeling that, even if one opts to cooperate with another player and help them in a fight, doing so is very difficult. If I play in an area where two other players collide, my stone will decrease the liberty of my âpartnerâ as well, and probably get captured very fast as itâs squeezed between two forces, so to speak. So I thought âWhat if a player can choose to share their liberties with another player?â
Here is how I would envision that working: At any point of the game the players may tell the arbiter if they consider an opponent an âallyâ or a âfoeâ (where the default is âfoeâ). If player A has set player B as an âallyâ this means that the chains of player B are safe from capture as long as they are connected to chains of player A that are safe from capture (for example if they have liberties or if they âreceiveâ liberties from a third player). Hereâs an easy example:
If either player Green or Red has set player Blue as a friend, the blue stone is not removed.
I feel like with this rule the arbiterâs job would be even more difficult, but I imagine this would be a lot of fun 
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For visual, in that case the blue stone could be striped with red (or green).
Now what if more as one allied? May become complex
I like the idea of making cooperation stronger, however, I think tracking these ally declarations would become very complex. Further, any such declarations should be non-binding and revocable at any point.
Another idea that I had to strengthen cooperation was to implement a form of âsupportâ mechanic, rather than having to rely on orchestrated collisions for a two players to exert their will over a third.
In a hypothetical support mechanic, Alice could say âI support Bob placing a stone at X4â. Then, even if Charlie also wants to play at X4, Bob gets to play at X4 instead, since he has a combined strength of two (from Bob wanting to play there + Alice supporting him) vs Charlieâs strength of one. However, if there was a fourth player (Dave) supporting Charlie to play at X4, then it would be strength two vs strength two, which would lead to a collision.
Thatâs the basic idea that I have for a support mechanic, but some of the details would need to be worked out:
- How many support orders could a player issue in a round? Just one? Or multiple?
- Does the support order have to be made in lieu of a stone choice? Or should one be able to play a stone and issue support orders?
- Can a player issue a support order for their own placements (if they can also place a stone in parallel)? I think there would have to be some sort of limit on the ability to make supports, and maybe this limit depends on the strength of onesâs position (like how many stones and/or liberties one has on the board).
If Bob doesnât actually choose to play at X4, but Alice has issued a support order for that move, then the support order becomes invalid and has no effect. Failed support orders are still revealed, since that might provide diplomatic clues.
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