Diplomacy Reflection
Geography in the board game Diplomacy played a large role because it decided what countries you could venture to and which ones were too far away to get to. It played a major role in what countries you made treaties with, how you defended, and the orders that you gave your armies. I learned that sometimes it was necessary to break treaties with other countries in order to gain more power. Government is not always rational, as Clausewitz says. When backstabbed, a country can make irrational decisions and go after the country that went back on their agreement, which happened a few times in our game. My favorite part about the game was that it made you feel like you had control over an entire country, and it was interesting how the diplomacy part of the game worked out. We even bribed other teams with candy in order for them to side with us. I also liked spying around and listening to other groups, to try and find out information that could benefit us. The thing I liked least about diplomacy was that it seemed like every time you tried to move to an area, another country would make the same error, and neither of you would get to move. It began to be very annoying when we tried to move out of our corner and we couldn’t get out.
Clausewitz has a very good understanding of war and how it works. He says that war is like a chameleon, which means, it can show up in many different ways, but at the core it’s still the same thing. Overall, I liked the game Diplomacy. It gave a hands on feel to the things we have been learning in class, and made it easy to understand how some of the leaders of the countries in this war felt about this and the reasons why they may have made some of their decisions.