Imperial Diplomacy II - Ezio's Reign (Finale)

[@seth8395]

MY TITLE MADE IT!

[@tobiashaythornthwaite3542]

Nice, I remember reading it on the last video, great name

[@theonlyknight3171]

Ezio channeling the inner map painter at the end is so beautiful.

[@DiploStrats]

I've played a lot of Crusader kings and EU4, so ofc it came out! :)

[@you-got-reported-fam3445]

Shame about Mughals- were top of the the board at one point and lost everything because they tried to stop Ottomans, then Qing and Ayattayah just walked in behind

[@q-tuber7034]

Ezio’s point is valid-the win condition difference is a major difference-but I like this win condition better than standard diplomacy. It allows for more varied mid and endgame strategies (without disincentivizing stabs-even this game makes it clear that the best of allies might stab), and it also allows a game to decisively end while it is still interesting.

[@Meowexclamationpoint]

Hey, Qing sub here (Yes Qing had a substitute - I was playing since the first retreats in the previous video) I want to clarify one thing about 1:37:09 - I didn't really want to stab Ezio, but when I went to Inuit an asked them who they'll be working with they told me that they will definitely be working with Ute-Shoshone. I felt the need to clarify that because otherwise it makes no sense for me to work with someone whose position was starting to crumble

[@the1laughing1reaper]

I have LOVED these commentaries on imperial diplomacy and it's been fantastic to hear what plans did and didn't work out. Excited for CaptainMeme's version!!

[@thirdmunky]

the gameplay and the titles have been peak. congrats ezio

[@carbonatedmilk2143]

Hyacinth had by by far the best Austria from any game. Another game had an Austria that ended with two less centers than this one, although it went on for two years after this one ended. The next closest Austria had like 30 VSCC and almost half of Austria players died pretty instantly.

[@melismati]

I just want to point out that although you don't have to stab your ally to win, the good play demonstrated in this series shows it still makes sense to a lot.

[@9tydegreez]

I did a manual count and there are 577 land provinces and 174 sea provinces for a total of 751. This number could be off by a lot but I'm reasonably certain it's within 10 of the true number

[@xDemon1cx]

Diplomacy becomes a slog to play when spaces to SCs ratio drops below 2 or climbs a lot above 2.5 ish too tight games become guessing games with most units not being able to maneuvre too loose games have you moving your units around empty areas for phases and phases

[@BS-bd4xo]

Least obsessed impdip enjoyer.

[@flare2209]

Hey there, impdip map creator here! You got really close! These are all the correct numbers :) 538 land tiles 46 island tiles 156 sea tiles 25 high sea tiles 334 supply centers

[@timothymclean]

With regard to Austria: Either they need to get a _bunch_ of HRE centers at game start or they need their victory threshold to be decoupled from their starting supply center count. If they don't have overwhelming force that lets them simultaneously contest all fronts, they're going to lose on one front or another sooner rather than later. And giving Austria a bunch of HRE centers at game start means Europe doesn't have many neutral centers, which seems 28:13: Diplomacy is a game where you play other players more than the board. And other players are human, which means their logic can be overridden by spite. Or other emotions, but in most _Diplomacy_ games, spite is the most relevant. 43:28: Ezio has an interesting idea of what a defensive war looks like. I won't say it's an _unreasonable_ idea; sometimes the best defense really _is_ a good offense. But it's a philosophy of war where operations and tactics become interchangeable, regardless of your strategic goal. 1:49:10: Ezio's in good company among colonizers. Lots of 19th-century colonization was driven by the simple desire to paint your kingdom's color on as much of Africa* as possible. 53:53: Ezio is not avoiding the allegations that he repeatedly, verbally, confirms. *And other continents, but Africa was easiest, and the 19th-century race for Africa is probably the colonial period where prestige is most dominant over other motivations (e.g. controlling trade or plundering treasures).

[@onebarofsoap9981]

Loved this series! Glad to see a new video, but sad to see the series end.

[@yurigagarin9765]

They still have to make the Captain Meme's Spain run videos, so it's going to have a sequel of sorts.

[@connorbrooks7501]

I’ve watched pretty much every video on the channel - this has been my favorite series. My favorite part was the first ~1hour of part 1 where you analyzed the map and which powers are good/bad and explained why. Congratulations to Ezio!!

[@ripleygallagher1720]

I was wondering what the last title would be and if not the spelling I'm glad the rhyme was preserved :P

[@RoyalFusilier]

Congratulations on coming back for the win Ezio, this was quite a dramatic run through. Imperial Diplomacy is incredible as a format.

[@TheRedNaxelaYouTube]

Bravo. Enjoyed this series very much. Gotta enjoy imperial diplomacy vicariously because i know i would be dead in 2 years if i were to play myself

[@Raven-kn5ih]

On the whole winning thing and sticking to your allies: only 1 out of the 3 allies Ezio made won. In fact, I'd say Shoshone's biggest mistake (from a completely outsider's perspective and with no insight into their communications and no real Indepth look into their strategy) was being a "care bear". They desperately needed to stab either Spain or the Innuits at any point of time. Hindsight is hindsight, but (to me), it felt like they weren't prioritizing their win as much as they could have and it's possibly due to the idea that multiple people could win. I agree with the wider point that it's different, but I think playing into that difference could be a major mistake for a player to make if they aren't in a position to force themselves into the win.

[@droid-droidsson]

Imperial Diplomacy 11/10 variant! congrats to Ezio, and thanks so much to everyone involved in making this possible, especially Flare and Elisha!

[@cixzejy]

It's very funny to me that they literally changed the winning conditions the day before this video released.

[@daintymorsel3110]

This made me go check what they changed on the discord, and they said they're just adding a new ranking system. No actual gameplay changes.

[@BS-bd4xo]

2:19:21 I think the main reason why its so popular is that it's super big and actually quite balanced. It seems like it can still be quite stressful and stabby tho, but idk I didn't play, just followed Aster.

[@you-got-reported-fam3445]

@BS-bd4xo Surprisingly balanced game, but there are some terrible minor powers. I've never seen a game where Austria, Athapasca or the Somali power do well

[@curtiswilson233]

Map painting is in the soul of every Diplomacy player. How many people have made a nonsense move to Syria just to get that Turkish color off the map?

[@louisrizzi9990]

Can we get an youtube shorts entry 5/4: "Ezio's rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain"? You could do a quick slam poetry recap of the events of the series using words rhyming with spain

[@DiploStrats]

I think the list of words I'd come up with would be too short, I was already just stealing from suggestions in the comments for this title :D

[@louisrizzi9990]

​@@DiploStrats perhaps just a short limerick: There once was a lad who played Spain In the New World were dots and big gains But he fumbled Madrid Since his tactics were mid 'Til he stabbed his way back for the reign

[@artvvbna4990]

Well played ezio! I've loved this series

[@torgor_]

Now time for diplostrats's game 🍿

[@unyosalvaje3493]

17:20 as a venezuelan i feel honored that Ezio would core the dot where i live

[@optopesi2156]

vidoe idea meme and ezio minecarft lets play

[@KaneYork]

What a game! Thanks for documenting it.

[@edgeman1135]

I can't wait for CaptainMeme's version where everything presumably goes to shit.

[@theshadowguy6716]

Didnt expect ezio to play town of salem, but its right up his alley

[@Arkangel630]

he has mentioned playing werewolf before I believe so its not surprising really

[@SeverusVergiliusMaro]

this was awesome!!!!!! ive been staring at my notifs so i can watch ASAP -- more imperial diplo please!!

[@PattPlays]

Has anyone experimented with Aerial Diplomacy? Cores have anti air, uncored tiles do not have AA. Flight layer, and the ability to air convoy armies and support attacks from the air layer.

[@yaitz3313]

I'd love to see a commentary of the game that Captain GM'ed. He can hopefully give commentary on details of what's going on (though obviously not as in-depth as player commentary), without being focused entirely on one country.

[@DiploStrats]

It's definitely on my radar as one to commentate, although outside of a few key moments I don't think I can give a ton more insight on any other game - while I do have access to the press channels there are far too many of them to catch up on most of the time. So if we do commentate it'll be similar to a standard, look-at-the-board style one.

[@shilohmagic7173]

I feel bad about what happened to ute shoshone. hopefully there were no hard feelings between ezio and that player, afterwards?

[@DiploStrats]

I hope not too. It's def the nature of Diplomacy, but they seemed pretty understanding about the whole thing. -Ezio

[@bird9230]

Its been a rough week that requires a lot of proactive work from me in uncomfortable situations. So i cant watch this one in one sitting. But im looking forward to seeing how everything shapes up

[@skarppost4322]

Bumble bless

[@jumputtaja]

Love the series! hope to see more imperial games

[@JohnStrain-eu6eu]

Within 6 mths the ImpDip site blew to 1000 members after launching 2nd test game plays

[@c4ndl326]

also it's 334 centers

[@C0-balt_27]

Finally, I needed to waste 2.5 hours😊

[@BS-bd4xo]

Can't wait till they add Antarctica and the Penguin tribe.

[@JohnStrain-eu6eu]

Part four.. epic.

[@c4ndl326]

so when is kalmia? (:

[@brutusthebear9050]

I may end up working on the bot. It sounds like the bot using some algorithm to determine valid retreats, is there a reason why that isn't just programmed manually? It's not like scalability is really necessary here, it's a bot for a single map.

[@vunhatvuong159]

I need instructions for this game

[@Ciurk]

35:00 😁

[@AM-we1es]

I'm probably in the minority here, but I tend to actually prefer the videos where you analyse games you *didn't* play in.

[@DiploStrats]

Don't worry, we'll keep those commentaries coming too! We have a couple on backlog. I'm a bit less sure about them when it comes to Imperial Diplomacy, because there's just so much to talk about if you're not focusing on a single player, and I'm not sure if that'll work out timewise. But we're planning to try it and see at some point anyway.

[@shilohmagic7173]

@@DiploStrats Yeah, commentating on ALL of an imperial diplomacy would probably be an entire video per phase