When submitting the original rules of "Mercenary Diplomacy" for inclusion in the variant banks, I learned that (owing to the pre-existence of a Lew Pulsipher variant with the same name) the variant would become known as either "Mercenary Diplomacy III" or "Mercenary Diplomacy IV." Yuck. To quote The Dubliners, "I've never fancied being numbered."
So at this point, I undertook to rename the variant, and I asked for suggestions from all quarters, including the players of the test game. Some of the suggestions I received were:
I must admit that, when going over my saved mail to write these annotations, I was shocked to find that the variant was named after the first game to be played, and not vice-versa. I remembered, of course, that the variant was originally named "Mercenary" and that it was then renamed, but I had forgotten that the decision to name it "Payola" happened so late.
The most common assumption is that the bribery concept was taken from the game Machiavelli. For those readers unfamiliar with it, Machiavelli was Avalon Hill's first application of the basic Diplomacy ruleset to a different game; Machiavelli is set in feudal Italy and adds bribery (though very much unlike that in Payola), garrisons, assassination, and such chance events as plague, floods, and famine. Personally, I am not a fan of Machiavelli, as I consider the introduction of chance elements to be a ruination of what I think we all consider to be the perfect ruleset of Diplomacy (basically, if a game uses dice, I consider it intellectually inferior -- this is just me). I only played Machiavelli a few times, and this was so long ago I that no longer remember the mechanics of the game. So -- although I knew that Machiavelli added bribery in some form -- the thinking behind Payola Diplomacy neither began with nor centered around Machiavelli.
Rather, the Payola concept came from a different Diplomacy variant, the two-player "Intimate Diplomacy." Again, for those who are unfamiliar with this variant, two players each assume leadership of one of the seven Great Powers, as in the standard game, and then the players bid against each other for control of the units of each of the five other nations for each gameyear. The bidding is one round, and control is decided on a country by country basis (not, as in Payola, on a unit by unit basis).
The rules for Intimate Diplomacy were posted to the Diplomacy newsgroup in mid-to-late 1993, with the notice that a pair of games of the variant would be started on the USEF judge and that "dummy" players were needed to provide e-mail addresses for the five "inactive" powers. I volunteered to become one of these "dummy" powers, and at the same time I roped John Woolley into playing a quick game of Intimate against me to familiarize ourselves with the variant.
Admittedly, the couple of games John and I played were a small sample, but from them, John and I found Intimate Diplomacy unsatisfying. It seemed that any lead was basically impossible to overcome. One other thing I remember is that we considered the penalty for overbidding to be especially harsh and unforgiving.
So we set out to improve the game. I came up with the "let each of the two players offer bribes to each unit rather than to each power" idea, and then -- before even playtesting the two-player Intimate variant this way -- I quickly applied the idea to the full seven-player game. I'll just say here that although I do think that this rule would, perhaps minimally, improve Intimate Diplomacy, much of the beauty of Diplomacy -- the whole alliance and "chase the leader" concepts -- are lost on a two-player game, simply by its nature. This is not a knock on Intimate, and again, I surely have not played Intimate enough to pretend to pronounce judgement on it.
Another important feature that Payola provides which is not provided by Intimate Diplomacy is secrecy of control. In Intimate Diplomacy, both players know, when writing their orders, exactly which units will be controlled by the other player. By keeping this information secret until orders are processed (as Payola does), Intimate would be made more challenging. Indeed, in a multi-player game situation, this secrecy of control is one of the most important features of Payola.
To resume our story, though, puma was the name of the Intimate Diplomacy game for which I volunteered to act as a "dummy" power. After the very first "bids" for control of the five neutral powers were processed, the winner of the game was decided (in other words, there was a forced win even before the units were actually ordered). Before and while all this was taking place, I entered into a broadcast conversation about the faults that we "dummy" powers saw with the variant, initially intending to offer some mechanism for the five "dummies" to obtain some result from the game themselves. It was during this discussion, which occurred coincident with my own Intimate games with John Woolley, that the idea for what became "Payola" first hit me. From the history of puma comes this broadcast of 3 January 1994 which describes "Payola" at its genesis.
Okay, fellas, get a load of this. In discussing the problem of activating the inactive players in judge Intimate Diplomacy games, he [John Woolley] and I ended up aboard a train of thought that put that problem on the back burner for a minute. But here's a variant idea that just sounds absolutely fascinating. I hope it sparks some discussion from you guys. I would LOVE to play it.So, as you can see, the ideas in Payola were nearly fully formed on its very first day of existence. In fact, acceptance lists and retained control by the unit owner in retreat phases are about the only concepts missing from the above broadcast. Also, at this early stage, the concept of secrecy -- not knowing exactly who is controlling each unit -- is not to be found.Standard seven player game. All units are basically mercenaries, and if you don't pay your units enough to keep them following your orders, they'll look to pad their own pockets and follow someone else's....
At the beginning of the game and after each winter, each player gets $5 (or 5 pounds, 5 francs, 5 marks, 5 rubles, 5 lira, etc., whatever you want to call them) for each controlled SC. So for Spring, 1901, each country has $15 (except Russia, of course, which has $20).
Then in each Spring and Fall, every country may issue orders for any and all units on the board, whether owned by that power or not. With each of these orders, the power submits how much money it is willing to pay to get that unit to follow the order. Each unit then follows the order which would pay it the most money, all bids considered, with bids for like orders summed together.
If a unit receives two or more orders that would pay it the same, the owner of the unit decides which of these orders his unit will follow.
All money offered for a followed order is spent, gone either as pay to your own soldiers and sailors or as bribes paid to the soldiers and sailors of other powers. All other (losing) bid money is retained in each country's treasury.
The power whose order is followed during movement also controls that unit during retreats, if necessary. If more than one power contributed money to issue the order that the unit follows in the movement phase, the owner of the unit chooses which of these powers will control the unit during the retreat phase.
If a power "wins" control of so many units that he spends more money than he has in his treasury, all his bids are lowered by one dollar, and every unit that would have accepted the order he issued it decides anew, based on the new bids, which order they should follow. If a player is still in this position, his bids go down another dollar, etc.
Builds and removes are entirely the business of each power, acting alone and in its own best interest.
Players may not give money to other players. Well, I guess they could, but it would be a pretty stupid thing to do, and just an extra headache for the adjudicator, so, like I said, they can't.
The interesting part, though, is how John and I tested the Payola principle. When we gave the idea some thought, we realized what the addition of bribing for the right to make every move -- both yours and your opponent's -- does to normally deterministic games. It is a fascinating change! To test the idea, we applied it to tic-tac-toe ("naughts and crosses" outside the United States), giving both the "X player" and the "O player" 100 units of currency each to begin with. Both the players then secretly write down how much they will pay to place the first "X", and the high bidder places it, and his treasury is reduced by his bid amount. Then the players bid for the right to place the first "O". It is absolutely amazing what an interesting game tic-tac-toe becomes; tie games are much more rare, both players seem to have an equal chance to win, and a player always has no one to blame but himself if the outcome is against him.
Oh yes, tic-tac-toe will never be the same again. From now on, every tic-tac-toe player will have my name on their lips. Tic-tac-toe will certainly soon become a professional sport, rivalling soccer ("football" outside of North America) in the hearts of the world.
Next: applying Payola to Chess! Can you imagine?! The winning bidder makes the move for whosever turn it is -- any legal move...!!!
Payola is, to pat myself on the back, a revolution in gaming, since it is a variant that can be applied to basically any game. Diplomacy is called the chameleon game because it is uniquely "variantizable," while other games are not. However, Payola's "bid for the chance to make a move" idea is a legitimate "variant" for just about any game in the world.
It was obvious from the beginning, even under the rules to Payola Classic, that Mastering a Payola game would be more difficult than Mastering a standard game of Diplomacy.
By the time the first playtest game had gotten underway, I had written a computer program to resolve the bids as they came in to the Master. This "Payola adjudicator" has been kept strictly up-to-date. Indeed, it leads the continuing development of the variant, since new changes to Payola have never been considered official until the adjudicator properly handles the modification. (Or, in a couple cases, improperly, since some bugs in the program unfortunately surfaced during play and were thereupon fixed.)
After a while, the Payola adjudicator was given a Web page front-end, so that it was no longer necessary for me, as the GameMaster, to copy and paste bribe offers into an input file and manually run the adjudicator and then manually send its output to the Ken Lowe judge or error notices to the players -- all that became automated. At that point, there was the adjudicator (written in C) and the Web pages (written in Python) that fed input to the adjudicator and read its output and delivered that to the Web screen for the player.
Eventually, the bribe adjudicator itself was rewritten in Python and it became part and parcel of the Web interface. The whole set-up now also supports a number of different maps and subvariant rules.
The final result is The Payola Place Website, where players can enter their bribe offers, update their acceptance lists, transfer money from one to another, enter retreat and adjustment orders, and see the complete game map. As a result, Payola games are now run with absolutely no manual intervention by the GameMaster. Hallelujiah and good for me!
The retreat phase was another issue. We also ruled out bribery almost immediately, this time mostly for reasons of expediency, and in the end, of course, total control over retreating units was granted to the unit's owner. However, the thought process that led to this decision was much different than that for the similar decision concerning the adjustment phase.
As can be seen in the initial ruminations on Payola, the initial plan for the retreat phase was to reward the right to retreat a unit to whichever power "bought" it in the preceding movement phase. This plan ran into trouble right away when we realized that it would often be a coalition of two or more powers that successfully bribed a unit. Our quick solution was to grant to the owner of the unit not the right to retreat his piece but instead the right to choose, from among the contributors to the successful bribe, the player to be given control in the retreat phase.
One would think that this short-lived rule would have been killed by the decision to make secret from a unit's owner the contributors to each bribe. However, the decision for secrecy had not yet been made, and the rule on retreat phase control was changed once and for all to allow a unit's owner total control for quite a different reason. Simply, it was decided that the rule should be changed out of interest in the speed of the game. We envisioned that a game would be held up if two "orders" had to be given to each retreating unit (first, the "order" specifying to whom the right to retreat should be given, and second -- from what could be a different player -- the retreat order itself).
In retrospect, it seems that we should have realized that the current rule was the proper way to go all along, drawing parallels between uncontrolled removal and the disbanding of a retreated unit by an enemy who wrested control of the unit from its owner -- perhaps by as little as a single silver piece -- during the movement phase. But, as you just read, that's not how it happened.
Francs, of course, seemed a bit small -- and also too real-world -- so the purposely vague "Swiss mega-franc" was invented.
As the players of the first few Payola games that I Mastered know, the taxes from owned SC's were actually paid yearly in the currency of the various European nations. For example, the yearly reward for controlling Bulgaria was paid in lev. (Actually, it should have properly been paid in mega-lev -- an oversight of mine, I suppose.) And, as was apparent from the bank statements received by these same players, it just so happened that -- strangely enough -- the exchange rate for every different unit of currency with the Swiss mega-franc was permanently fixed at one-to-one.
I suppose some of these things grew to bother me, and I decided to rename the basic unit of Payola currency the "piece of silver." The only thing that initially held me back was the thought that the reference might be lost on players who may be unfamiliar with the Christian tale of Judas Iscariot's betrayal of Jesus in return for payment of thirty pieces of silver.
This was a minor concern, though, and so the shift from mega-francs to pieces of silver took place. I planned on replacing the currency abbreviation "MF" with "SP", but J. Andrew Lipscomb suggested the far better "AgP" abbreviation instead.
Seven was chosen for a couple of reasons. Having decided that income would be paid annually, and not before both Spring and Fall movements, it was felt that an odd number would make decisions on how much to spend for each of the two movement seasons that much more interesting for the player. The initial number was five silver pieces, but this was increased to seven in order to provide more flexibility to the player, and also since seven seemed a nice number, given the number of Great Powers in the game.
At the beginning, a concern that I had about the variant was that the extra income that Russia receives at the beginning of the game would constitute an advantage that would be difficult to overcome. I had nothing to back this up, and the first couple games got underway using this tax scheme.
The first-ever game, "payola," saw a strong Russian emerge immediately, and he seemed destined to win the game going away. Almost before the other powers had time to breathe, Russia was up to something like 15 supply centers. This confirmed in me that the tax income scheme needed to be re-adjusted.
However, as it happened, the game benedict actually finished (a Russian victory, though not a runaway) before payola, and in the End Of Game statements, I solicited from the players their opinions on the rules and their suggestions for improvements. It was at this time that I made public the "decreasing sequence" idea I had conjured up. The idea was well-received by the players (a bit less enthusiastically by the solo winner, who said jokingly that the game is hard enough to win) and so it was decided to try this new payment plan for the next game.
The new income scheme works very well, and it addresses the issue I hoped it would. A power with 17 SC's finds himself with less income than all the other players combined. It seems to encourage the "catch the leader" aspect of the game, and a large power with a chance to win and who knows how he intends to go about doing so is offset by a stronger coalition working against him.
Interestingly, the game "payola" is, at the time of this writing, still in progress, with Russia having been cut down to size by an alliance of France and Turkey, and so it seems that the "seven silver pieces per supply center" rule used by Payola Classic is not at all the impediment to play that I was concerned it would be. Payola Classic seems to be just as viable a game as is the grown-up Payola.
In fact, the mature Payola is sometimes played with just the single change to use the "seven AgP per center" tax income rule from Payola Classic. Such games are called "flat-tax" Payola games.
[Addendum: The game "payola" ended after the gameyear 1922 in a 20-center victory for France.]
When a Swiss resident (Mick Zwahlen, who is sadly missing from the net as of this writing, due, I understand, to sad circumstances) joined the fourth-ever Payola game, I took the opportunity to ask him to correct my pidgin German. Here, from a message he sent me, is his response:
If you want to write it German you should say "bank" instead of "banc." However, "Bankmeister" is a word that definitely is not German. "Zahlmeister" would be someone who pays ("zahlt") money to other people.The original leader of the Swiss national bank is called "Präsident des Nationalbankrates" (president of the national bank's council) or even "Vorsitzender des Verwaltungsrates der Schweizerischen Nationalbank" (chairman of the governing board of the Swiss national bank which is similar to a CEO but more delegating than executing).
I decided to stick with Swissbancmeister.
When the first Payola game was getting started, I solicited the opinions of the players. Everyone seemed to agree that the transfer power would be used sparingly if at all, but didn't see any harm in leaving it. I believe that my decision at the time was that I would leave it in for this first game and that if transferral was never used in this game, the rule would be removed.
It seemed that in discussion, no one could list a single good reason to transfer money from one power to another. However, under game conditions, occasions arose that showed that it would have been a mistake to remove this ability from the rules. Money transferral is indeed a rarely used rule (though not as rarely as I initially thought), but it can provide some useful tactics. At this point, I can list five situations in which the monetary transfer rule can be advantageous.
For a long time, there was an addendum to the transfer rule to the effect that no player could transfer money into an account of another player who, on the same turn, had previously transferred money into the first player's account. You see, I realized, when beginning to Master Payola, that the ability to transfer money from one account to another was one more burden for the GameMaster to bear. In fact, though I knew it was likely a light burden, this was the reason I contemplated removing the transfer rule. When the decision was made to keep it, I decided to regulate it with this "no returning transferred money" restriction. Doubting it would ever happen didn't keep me from thinking of the poor Master who had somehow, someway, gotten on the bad side of two of his players and for their revenge, they decided to transfer money back and forth thousands of times on each turn. Adding the restrictive phrase would at least give him refuge in the written rules from this headache.
This prohibition was lifted when the Payola Place Website was inaugurated. That site automatically handles transfers and never gets a headache.
Note that in some Payola games, a similar prohibition (to wit, that a player may only transfer money into each other account once per turn) can be used as a subvariant. For example, if used in a no-press game, this discourages players from using transfer amounts to communicate in coded messages, but it still allows for transfers to be used for damage reparations, offerings of thanks, and confirmations (or, rather, promises) of peaceful intent.
When Payola and Blind came together, it was realized that the ability to offer zero silver piece offers to faraway units would allow a player to determine the locations of units he could not "see" without cost. By simply offering a zero silver piece bribe to a unit in every possible location on the board, and then waiting to see which units accepted the bribes, much of the blindness of blind would be gone.
Knowing that the ability to discern unit locations by offering bribes was still an important feature of Blind Payola, it was decided to simply disallow zero silver piece offers made to foreign units. A player could still determine the locations of units he could not "see," but it would cost him at least one silver piece.
After implementing this restriction in the Payola automated adjudicator, I decided that it deserved to be applied to all Payola games -- not just Blind Payola games. I figured that in real life an army wouldn't really sell out for nothing, and the possibility of a zero silver piece bid deciding what a foreign unit would do was very remote anyway.
5 : A MUN - RUHwill reduce (on player overexpenditure) from an initial offering of 10 AgP to eight (rather than nine), and then to six, four, two, and zero. However,
5 : A MUN - RUH
5 : A MUN - RUHwill reduce (if need be) from ten to eight, then six, then four, then three, then two, and no further.
5#2 : A MUN - RUH
The minimum soon evolved, however, to where it is no longer a hard minimum. This happened when it proved too bothersome, frankly, to programmatically determine the sum total of a player's minimums in order to see if he is still vulnerable to overexpenditure even if every bribe was reduced to its minimum. Accordingly, the minimum became a "plateau" to which the bribes reduce and remain as long as possible, but which disappears if all bribes reach their plateau without seeing the overexpenditure remedied.
My initial plan was to convert all impossible orders to be issued into HOLD orders when transmitted to the Ken Lowe judge. There were some problems with this plan, though, since a unit ordered to move, even impossibly, is unsupportable, but a HOLDing unit is supportable. So I quickly decided that I could only accept what the judge accepts, and I broadcast this fact to my players. At this point, my Payola adjudicator was dumb when it came to the legality of the orders given it, so I relied on myself to catch these orders.
It was when the direct (colon) offer type was augmented by arrival of the newer offer types that even this "take what the Ken Lowe judge takes" rule became untenable. As you are probably aware, the Ken Lowe judge does not completely validate the orders sent to it, and some orders that are guaranteed void can indeed be issued. For Payola games, this was not good enough, and it became necessary to restrict the orders for which bribes could be offered to only those that are legal and valid. As a result, I undertook a long effort to add code to the Payola adjudicator to enable it, first, to understand what the orders being fed to it meant, and second, to disallow any order that could only be rendered "void." I can say with reasonable certainty only now -- after looking hard at and updating my own code when the subject of no-press Payola came up -- that the loopholes are all closed and the Payola adjudicator is tight as a safe.
For the logic behind the need for this strict "only valid orders are acceptable" rule, I include a section from my recent correspondence with Stephen Beaulieu concerning no-press Payola and what types of communication would be possible through Payola orders.
Say someone wants to convoy into Greece, but the Turk has an army there. The best way to do it, the invader figures, is to pay the Turkish army to move. He doesn't care where the army moves, though, because Bul, Alb, and Ser are all vacant and will probably (or better yet assuredly) stay that way. So he puts in an offer like 10 > A GRE - ALB ("ten to move to Albania or anywhere else for that matter"). All is well and good, and this ten silver piece bid is the best the Turkish army gets. That is, until some joker on the other side of the board decides to spend one silver piece trying to play some malicious joke on Turkey, say by putting in the offer 1 : A GRE - PAR. Now all of a sudden, the Grecian army gets eleven silver pieces to move to Paris, a bribe that bests all others. Of course, the end result is that "A GRE - PAR" is (*void*), so the army will end up staying in Greece -- not moving at all! The would-be attacker is out ten silver pieces (which he promised to pay only if Greece moved) for a HOLD order and has only a bounce to show for the expense.This seems like the germination of an article on Payola tactics....Now, of course, the joker on the other side of the board could still -- even with the current strict rules -- screw up the invasion with a single silver piece by ordering Greece to convoy out via the fleet that is carrying the incoming attack. The (*no convoy*) result achieves the same purpose as (*void*) and cannot be disallowed.
| 8 : F TYS - WES 4 : F TYS - TUN |
Despite this, it was felt that, more often than not, an offer containing a duplicated order is mistakenly entered, and that it should be rejected rather than accepted for consideration. Therefore, in order to specify quicker reduction of bribe amounts in case of overexpenditure, players must split a bribe into two or more smaller bribes, which will each be reduced by one.
An optional repetition count can be specified with an offer to cause it to be repeated automatically. This convenient shorthand provides for easy specification of this quicker reduction. For example, the offer:
Although I initially balked at the new prohibition against repeating offers in a chain of alternatives, the arguments made by the members of the mailing list were convincing that it's more often than not an error, and the rule was added. Later, I came to realize that only by instituting this rule can negative bribes be made as consistent in their semantics as possible with the other bribe types. Repetition of an order in a negative bribe was and would forever remain completely superfluous. To allow that orders could be meaningfully repeated in one type of offer, but have no meaning if repeated in another type of offer was an inconsistency that was easily and best avoided.
To illustrate the various types of bribes, we will set up a hypothetical
situation. Let's say that France has launched an attack on England,
and has surrounded the English army in London with two fleets -- in the
English Channel and the North Sea. Let's also say that an English
fleet sits in Yorkshire and an English army occupies Edinburgh.
At this point, France would like
to capture London. This can obviously be done in a number of ways; we
will choose only one.
Let's say that France would like to move his Channel fleet into London with support from the North Sea. After consulting his pocketbook, he decides to pay both fleets the price of seven silver pieces if they obey these orders. So he enters the following two direct bribe offers:
| 7 : F ENG - LON 7 : F NTH S F ENG - LON |
The Frenchman could, of course, issue direct bribe offers to
each of these two English units, detailing what each of them
should do to assist in the French invasion of their country. However,
perhaps another bribe type is preferable. Indeed, as we shall see
below, France has other forms of bribery in mind.
It is the case that all of the different bribe offer types can be written as direct bribe offers, but that the other types serve as useful shorthand. For example, if the French player wishes to make sure that the Yorkshire fleet does not support the army in London, he may issue a series of direct bribe offers to that fleet, asking it to issue each order other than this SUPPORT order. That is, if the French player has decided that five silver pieces should be sufficient incentive for the Yorkshire fleet, he could issue the following set of direct bribe offers:
| 5 : F YOR H 5 : F YOR - EDI 5 : F YOR S A EDI 5 : F YOR - LON 5 : F YOR - NTH 5 : F YOR S F NTH |
| 5 : F YOR H | - EDI | S A EDI | - LON | S F NTH |
| 5 ! F YOR S A LON | - NTH |
|
5 ! F YOR S A LON 5 ! F YOR - NTH |
Notice here that I have chosen this situation carefully. The number of valid order choices for a fleet in Yorkshire is much more limited than, say, an army in Galicia (or even in Yorkshire). The usefulness of the shorthand is much more apparent in most other situations. The player who would rely entirely on direct bribe offers is likely to find that when the orders go through, he has overlooked listing one of the many possibile orders for the unit in question (to support some adjacent unit, to support some attack originating from a distant location, to convoy somewhere, to HOLD, etc.), and that this order spells doom for his campaign.
The offers, as they stand, are for the English Channel fleet to move to London with support from the North Sea, and for the English fleet in Yorkshire to permit this supported attack to go off without interference.
The Frenchman, however, is probably unsure that the five silver pieces he's offering to the English fleet in Yorkshire will be sufficient to bribe that unit, and so he could be afraid that this fleet could act against his wishes and either support the London army or attack the French fleet in the North Sea. To account for this possibility, the Frenchman decides to offer some money to the London army. Consider that if this army moves out of London, the support from the North Sea will be unnecessary, and the Channel fleet is allowed entry (meaning that it is no longer important that the Yorkshire fleet not attack the North Sea). Consider also that even if the army attempts unsuccessfully to move out of London, any support given to London by Yorkshire would be rendered void (meaning that it is no longer important that this support be avoided).
Given this, the Frenchman decides to ask the London army to move, offering it four silver pieces to do so. The following direct bribe offers are prepared for it:
|
4 : A LON - WAL 4 : A LON - YOR |
| 4 > A LON - WAL |
The alert reader will note that Wales and Yorkshire, as listed above, are not the only destinations for a moving London army. To properly expand the move bribe offer we built ("4 > A LON - WAL"), we would need to list not only the direct bribe offers to move to Wales and Yorkshire, but also to convoy to each and every possible location reachable via the North Sea and/or English Channel fleets. Thus, we can see a bit better the usefulness of the move bribe shorthand.
We've been discussing, in the above notes, how France would go about capturing London from England. Let's continue this discussion to explore how England may choose to defend himself. Of paramount importance to him could be that the London army not be moved, since if this happens, either of the two French fleets could enter London unopposed. So he could decide, hoping that three silver pieces are sufficient, to offer a direct bribe offer to the London army as follows:
| 3 : A LON H |
Now, to contrive an example, let us say that the Turkish player, far distant as he is, has decided to have a little fun with the English player's units by asking them to perform useless but otherwise harmless actions. (Perhaps the English player is allied with the Turk, is aware of this practice, and has even condoned or suggested it, in order to make the English pieces look as though they are being bought off, and thus to drum up sympathy for the embattled island nation.) In keeping with this, Turkey has made the following toss-off direct bribe offer:
| 1 : A LON S F YOR |
| 3 @ A LON H |
Let's go one step further. Rather than simply defending himself, England may see an opportunity to turn the tables on France. The English player might choose to issue the offer as follows:
| 3 @ A LON - ENG - BRE |
|
3 : A LON - ENG - BRE 3 @ A LON H |
The first use for the gift bribe is in Blind games. Much about the combination of Blind and Payola is described in other notes, but one feature of this game is the ability to obtain (via bribes) information about units that a player cannot "see." For instance, if the Russian player -- confined to the eastern side of the board -- would like to know if there is a unit in Portugal, he could offer such a unit a one silver piece gift bribe offer, then wait to see if it is accepted. By using a gift bribe, the Russian is almost guaranteed not to affect in any way the order that will be issued to the unit (since his bribe amount is added to every other bribe received by that unit).
The second use for the gift bribe applies to the standard (non-Blind) game as well as to the variants. It involves a true apathy about what a given unit does, combined with an ardent desire to profess interest. Let's take an example of a player who, in true diplomatic style, is courting the affections of two warring nations. In the course of his artful dodging, this player finds that both sides in the conflict are interested in obtaining his financial support for their conflicting aims. Let us say that it is of paramount importance to one player that a certain unit is moved, and that the other player considers it imperative that it holds in place. Our hero, on the other hand, is only concerned with his diplomatic standing with both of the enemy nations, and honestly could not care less (despite all his verbage to the contrary) what actually happens to the unit in question. So he issues the unit a gift bribe, knowing that whatever order it issues, he will be able to claim a share of the credit. He can accurately claim to each player that he lent his assistance, and can enjoy the celebration of a shared triumph with one player while agonizing with the other over their shared failure. Indeed, the owner of the unit (if he is the one whose order was accepted) will have concrete proof -- in the form of the list of bribe amounts accepted by each of his units -- that his own bribe was in fact augmented by the amount claimed by our hero. Conversely, if the enemy's bribe goes through, the owner of the unit will be certain that his own bribe, combined with the amount claimed by our hero, was not sufficient to gain control of the unit (he simply will not know, of course, that the same amount was contributed by our hero to the winning bribe as well). Using the gift bribe (or some combination of other offers like it) can ensure that no matter what happens, the fence-sitting player can almost certainly maintain his friendly position with both the combatants.
Bruce suggested the addition of the functionality as a variant rather than as part of the standard game, but I felt that there was no reason not to incorporate it into the base Payola rules. The additions to the Payola code were relatively simple, although the changes to support this feature were much more widespread than were those of any previous release.
Bruce further suggested that players might be allowed to direct that their available monies be split into multiple "accounts," from which separate bribing campaigns could be conducted, each account able to be given its own separate savings requests. This, however, seemed to me to be a bit complex for the standard game, so if implemented, it would be as a variant.
Basically, initially the problem was logistical, having to do with the fact that Payola games were being run on Ken Lowe judges. Any press sent to observers only (through the Ken Lowe judge) will appear in the game history. Apart from that, there is always the fear that a personal friend of one player could signon as an observer and pass information to the player.
Interestingly, however, I later added a variant to the Payola adjudicator that will cause generation of a broadcast message listing the total bribe amounts received by each unit on each turn. So it seems that the original set of Payola observers may yet get at least part of what they asked for, providing that the Payola games they observe are using this new (non-standard) variant.
The history of secrecy in Payola is much broader and deeper than the few paragraphs above. In fact, the original concept of the game had no secrets being kept by the Master at all. Not only would the total amounts paid to each unit be revealed to all, but the origin of the money as well. Support for this position eroded slowly and gradually, and credit for the present rule goes to the players of the first game, who voted on the proper way to handle the issue. At the time, I wasn't sure, but on reflection, it is very obvious that they made the absolutely correct call.
My own (temporary) contribution to the acceptance list was far less impressive. In fact, I'm not even proud of it. I gave the thing its original name. I decided to call the list a "reference list" and immediately began a constant search for a new and better name. I chose "reference list" to try and keep the "bank account" theme going, intending to draw a parallel between the list and a list of personal references kept on file at the bank. But from the beginning, "reference list" was understandably confused with "preference list" (a well-known term to Ken Lowe judge players), and many Payola players would submit "preference lists" to me. Anyone familiar with the Ken Lowe Diplomacy judge knows that the words "preference list" already hold special meaning, and to re-use this descriptor would (did) play havoc.
I've since realized that the list is more like an "exchange or black market currency rate." It can be looked at as the ordered list of currencies that are practically or morally acceptable by a unit of a particular nationality. The reason why Turkey may be second on the Russian list is because the commanders of Russian units, whose nation enjoys an alliance with Turkey, can easily convert Turkish money to Russian money without suspicion (or without appreciable loss in the exchange). This is perhaps stretching things, but it does make sense that some currencies would be more readily accepted by some armies and not by others, and this nicely explains the nice, tidy tie-breaker list.
However, I was at a loss to come up with a short, proper name to convey this concept, and so it remained "reference list" for a very long time.
Enter Mike Connaghan, who suggested "acceptance list." Needless to say, I found this term quite appropriate and very fitting, so it was adopted. To quote from Mike's suggestion: "[the list represents an ordered sequence of] the currencies that are most acceptable to the commanders. Another way to look at this concept is that, sure, commanders will take money to convoy enemy armies to the homeland, but they have a little bias for friendly countries as long as they're not too stingy to come up with an equal bid."
Thanks, Mike!
I liked this so much that when I implemented it on 5 September 2004, I modified Rule 4.2 to state that the initial default value of each player's acceptance list (at the beginning of the game) is simply that specific power followed by a question-mark. As examples, the initial acceptance list for England is E?, for Russia is R?, and so on.
| French Offers | 5 : F BRE - ENG |
|---|---|
| English Offers | 4 ! F BRE - ENG |
| German Offers | 2 : F BRE - GAS |
In this case, the fleet in Brest would receive five silver pieces (from the French player) to move to the English Channel, but six silver pieces to move to Gascony instead. So the unit is ordered to move to Gascony.
| French Offers | 5 : F BRE - ENG |
|---|---|
| English Offers | 4 ! F BRE - ENG |
| German Offers | 1 : F BRE - GAS |
In this case, the fleet in Brest is in a quandary, having received two offers that total five silver pieces each. To break the tie, the French "acceptance list" must be consulted. Let us assume that this acceptance list is the following sequence of powers -- FRITAGE (meaning that French offers are to be regarded as preferable to Russian offers, which are in turn preferable to Italian offers, etc., etc.) From this, we can easily see that the French fleet sets sail for the English Channel, since French money (the most preferred to French units, according to the acceptance list) is involved in this order.
Consider now, by way of contrast, the following set of offers to the same unit.
| French Offers | 1 : F BRE - MAO |
|---|---|
| English Offers | 4 ! F BRE - ENG |
| German Offers | 6 : F BRE - ENG |
| Italian Offers | 2 : F BRE - GAS |
This time, we see that the fleet is given four choices: to HOLD (for four silver pieces of English money -- this is the "hidden" order behind the English negative bribe offer), to move to the Mid-Atlantic Ocean (for a total of five silver pieces contributed by France and England), to move to the English Channel (for six silver pieces, offered by the German), and to Gascony (for six silver pieces from the English and Italian accounts). The HOLD and the move to the Mid-Atlantic are both outbid by the other offers, and so they are not considered as options. Both the remaining two orders (to move to either the English Channel or Gascony) would pay the unit six silver pieces, and so the acceptance list of the French player is consulted. Assuming this acceptance list is as given above, and since none of the orders involve French (the most preferred) currency, the order backed by Italian money (to move to Gascony) is preferable to any order that is not. So the unit is ordered to Gascony.
| French Offers | 5 : F BRE - ENG | - GAS |
|---|
Here, we see that the French fleet would be paid five silver pieces to move to either the English Channel or to Gascony, and that, since this money would be paid by the same power, consultation of the acceptance list would not help to decide which order should be issued.
The solution was to decide that the sequence of the various offers given by each player is significant. In this case, the fact that the order to move to the English Channel is mentioned before the order to move to Gascony decides the matter. The unit is ordered to move to the Channel.
Note that this rule has no regard for the amount of the various bids offered by any particular player -- only the position of the offers in the list. Consider the example below:
| French Offers | 1 : F BRE - ENG 3 : F BRE - MAO |
|---|---|
| German Offers | 2 : F BRE - ENG |
Here, the tie between the two choices (both of which would pay three silver pieces) is broken by this "position in the list" rule. The fleet in Brest will be ordered to the English Channel despite the fact that the first power in the unit's acceptance list would pay more for a move to the Mid-Atlantic than it would for the move to the Channel. All that matters is the position of the offers.
For the hand-adjudicator, it is important to note, then, exactly how each negative bribe offer should be transcribed. Consider the negative bribe offer "4 ! F BRE - ENG." This is converted into the following two offers: first, an offer of zero silver pieces to HOLD, and second, an offer of four silver pieces to do anything other than move to the English Channel.
Note that the reason this first offer is for zero silver pieces is that the offer to expend four silver pieces for a HOLD is implicit in the other part of the offer. Note also that the prohibition against zero silver piece offers being made to foreign units does not extend to this case.
Similarly, the negative bribe offer "4 ! F BRE H." would be expanded into (first) a zero silver piece offer for the unit to HOLD, and (second) a four silver piece offer to pay for anything other than a HOLD, Despite the directive not to HOLD, the offerer also is put on record as asking the unit to HOLD (without promise of payment).
Because of this "expand the negative bribe offers" rule, a unit that receives no offer except for a single negative bribe offer will still have a direct bribe offer (the implicit HOLD) to consider (and accept).
This third tie-breaker is not necessary in Payola Classic. Just as the second tie-breaker became necessary due to the addition of multiple bribes from one power to a single unit, this third tie-breaker is required because of the addition of the negative bribe offer type. Basically, the situation that calls for this final tie-breaker is exemplified by the following:
| French Offers | 5 ! F BRE - GAS |
|---|---|
| English Offers | 1 : F BRE - PIC |
| German Offers | 1 : F BRE - ENG |
Here, France (who is positioned at the top of his own "acceptance list") has offered five silver pieces to the Brest fleet to do anything other than move to Gascony. This gives the unit two competing six silver piece choices: to move to Picardy or to move to the English Channel. The fact that France occupies the first spot in the "acceptance list" in question is of no help here, so subsequent powers down the acceptance list must be consulted. In this case, if we assume that the French acceptance list is FRITAGE, the German offer is preferred over the English offer, so the unit is ordered to move to the English Channel.
Notice that had France also submitted a one silver piece direct bribe offer for the unit to HOLD, then this would make a three-way tie of six silver piece offers, and the unit would be ordered to HOLD (a decision made at the first tie-breaker).
The interesting thing is that this third tie breaker, in combination with the method of expanding negative bribe offers, guarantees that there will be a single order issued to every unit. No further tie-breaks are necessary.
One of our complaints about Intimate Diplomacy was the penalty for overbidding; I don't recall exactly what it is, but overbidding seemed to be a death knell. We didn't want anything like this in Payola, yet we knew, of course, that there must be some provision or procedure for cases where a power would find himself with more money promised than he could pay out.
I don't recall any consideration of deficit spending, nor of limiting the amount that could be offered to the amount on hand. We considered both of these to be inferior solutions, and we knew that the ability to offer more money than you had was an important one -- one that required that more unconstrained thought be put into each offer. As I say, it seemed to me like John came up with this elegant solution ("reduce all bids by the offending player by one silver piece and repeat if necessary") in the wink of an eye.
I can't imagine any better way to resolve this issue. To illustrate the principle, consider the following set of offers:
| French Offers (Bank Balance: 20) | 10 ! F BRE - GAS 15 : A PAR - BUR |
|---|---|
| English Offers (Bank Balance: 20) | 8 : F BRE - GAS |
Here, the Brest and Paris units initially jump at the ten and fifteen silver piece offers. However, it becomes obvious that the French player cannot honor both of these. One can imagine the French leader sheepishly re-approaching the leaders of these two military units asking them to accept less than they were promised. Instead of ten silver pieces, the fleet in Brest is offered nine, and instead of fifteen, the army in Paris is offered fourteen.
At this point, the French offers are still the best offers that these two units are given, and so both would be accepted. Once again, however, the French bank balance will not cover the planned expenditure, and so the process is repeated and the units are re-offered eight and thirteen silver pieces respectively.
Yet again, the French money would be accepted (the money for the fleet via tie-breaker), but it cannot be (since this would bankrupt the French player). As a result, the French offers are reduced once more, this time to seven and twelve.
Now France would be happy (and finally able) to pay the money offered. However, the fleet in Brest now finds that it can get more money from another source, and so it takes the eight silver pieces offered by the English player and heads for Gascony. Paris is ordered to Burgundy at a cost of twelve silver pieces to France.
In Blind ("Tin Cup") Payola games, this proved to be too much information. Consider the case of a French player who has no tangible information as to the location of units in the Balkans. Before this rule was adopted, the French player could have -- by simply making the gift bribe offer "1 & A SER H", and at a cost of only one silver piece -- received a message not only telling him whether there is a unit in Serbia but also what that unit did.
Obviously, this took the "blind" out of "Blind," and so the rule limiting the information returned for offers in Tin Cup games was instituted. Note that despite this restriction, bribery is still a powerful intelligence weapon in a Tin Cup game. For example, for a player with no knowledge of Balkan unit positions to determine whether there is a unit in Bulgaria, the following three offers would suffice:
|
1 & A BUL H 1 & F BUL/sc H 1 & F BUL/ec H |
To make up for a bit of what was seen as overcompensation, the nationality of the unit accepting a bribe is also reported to the power paying the bribe. It just made sense that covert intelligence operatives would be able to send back a bit more than "Well, I see an army here, but I have no idea whose army it is." So not only does the above set of three bids return the information about whether or not such a unit exists, but also who owns that unit.
This rule does not make it impossible to also find out what order the unit actually issues; it only makes it more difficult and more expensive. This also makes real-world sense -- a spy can be paid to look through a fence and obtain information about a unit's existence and ownership at far less cost than it would take to pay this spy to actually infiltrate the unit and learn its plans for the coming season. For example, if a player having no knowledge of the Balkan situation wished to determine not only whether there is a unit in Serbia but also -- if there is -- something about what it is ordered to do, this player could enter something like the following hefty set of bribes.
|
1 @ A SER H 2 : A SER - TRI 3 : A SER - GRE 4 : A SER - ALB 5 : A SER - RUM 6 : A SER - BUL 7 : A SER - BUD |
This is still incomplete information, since without issuing a similar -- actually, an even more extensive -- set of offers to everything else in the region, the bidder cannot know if the move succeeded or bounced, or even if the Serbian army itself was dislodged. There is also the disadvantage not only of cost, but that these intelligence gathering offers would actually decide the order issued by the unit -- perhaps to the detriment of the bidder. However, even the ability to get (purchase) this amount of guaranteed correct information is a unique addition to Blind games, and this rule seems to provide the proper mix between paid intelligence services and the work-in-the-dark atmosphere of a Blind game.
Frankly, I've found Tin Cup Diplomacy to be the most fun way I've ever played. In it, you obviously need to use your diplomatic skills to get information about the placement of other pieces, and you also have a treasury at your disposal to help you do the same. The espionage and counterespionage options available in the game are tremendous. It seems to force a level of strategic thinking, deliberate planning, intelligence gathering, counterintelligence dispersal, intrepid diplomacy, calculated risk-taking, and careful execution which (I imagine) closely mimics real-life warfare.
For example, if England's offers include:
10 : F LON - ENG
and France's offers include:
3 : F LON - NTH
then in eBayola, London will move to the Channel but England will pay
only four (one silver piece better than the second-best offer)
instead of the ten he offered.
Savings are awarded to players in acceptance list order. For example,
England offers:
10 : F LON - ENG
France offers:
3 : F LON - NTH
Germany offers:
5 : F LON - ENG
London will move to the Channel -- England will pay zero (his bribe
being completely reduced away and the offered amount still sufficient
to better the bribe to go to NTH) and Germany will pay four
(his bribe having been reduced the one more it took to get the Channel
bribe down to "one silver piece better than the second-best bribe").
You can tell by looking at things, though, that England sholdn't pay the full ten. If the only person he is "bidding against" is himself, that should not be held against him, keeping his bid high. To avoid this, the following occurs:
Another example -- England offers:
6 : F LON - ENG | - NTH
France offers:
2 : F LON - YOR
1 : F LON - NTH
Germany offers:
2 : F LON - YOR
The winning bribe, again, is the North Sea move, this time at an (original)
cost of seven (six offered by England, two offered by France). Without the
extra step, the "second-best" bribe is the Channel move (six AgP). But
before the "second-best" bribe is determined, all non-winning offers to
F LON are reduced by (up to) six English AgP and one French AgP (the make-up
of the winning bid). After doing so, the second-best offer is found to
be the YOR move, which totals 3 AgP. Therefore, the cost assessed
for the North Sea move is 4 AgP -- three paid by England and one paid by
France.
So, even though England had offered to pay up to six for an order that was not issued, the end result is that he is charged three for the order that was issued for a total cost of four.
The second subsurface eBayola implementation detail concerns the interaction of bribe plateaus with the eBayola bribe-cost reductions.
Essentially, bribe plateaus are obeyed...except for any plateaus given by the OWNER of the unit. (That is, unless the total bribe amounts accepted by all units are being disclosed to all players, in which case even the plateaus requested by the unit owner are obeyed.)
An example should clarify. England offers:
6#4 : F LON - ENG
France offers:
3 : F LON - NTH
Germany offers:
6#6 : F LON - ENG
The result is that London moves to the Channel. England doesn't pay a
penny for it (because F LONis an English unit, England's plateau is
ignored and his offer is reduced from six to zero) and Germany pays six
(his plateau is obeyed, and even though his bribe could have been
reduced to four, it is not.
As mentioned above, if the game is being run in such a way that the total accepted bribe amounts are being disclosed publicly, the English plateau would have been obeyed as well, which would mean that the Channel move is made at a cost of four to England and six to Germany.
Obviously, using plateaus in eBayola to pay more than you really need to pay can cause the unit owner to mistakenly believe that his units were the subject of a heated bidding war.