AI GAMEPLAY

Diplomacy and
Meta AI’s CICERO

Learn about the game, watch our AI agent CICERO play with experts and read about its performance in an online league.

About the game

Diplomacy* is a seven-player board game that can be described as a combination of the board game Risk, the card game poker, and the TV show Survivor. The game begins with each of the seven players controlling one of the powers in Europe in the year 1901. Their objective is to gain control of at least half of the game board. To succeed in this challenge, players must cooperate, negotiate, trust and support each other, while also competing for as much territory as possible.

The basics of Diplomacy:

  • The goal is to control the majority of the map on the game board.

  • Players negotiate alliances and support each other through private, one-to-one conversations.

  • There are no binding agreements, so players can misrepresent their plans and double-deal.

  • After negotiations, players write down their moves which are then executed simultaneously (and trust that others do what they said they would).

  • The only way to win is by building trust, negotiating and cooperating with other players.

For more in-depth rules, visit webDiplomacy.net, an online version of Diplomacy.

DIPLOMACY GAMEPLAY

Playing Diplomacy with CICERO

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CICERO as a partner

Andrew and Noam discuss how CICERO’s patience, focus and empathy make it an exceptional player.

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Forming alliances

Andrew and Adam discuss how CICERO chooses and negotiates its alliances.

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Making moves and aiding others

CICERO suggests a smarter move to Adam.

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Making plans and conversing with players simultaneously

CICERO uses relationships with other players to keep its ally, Adam, in check.

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Using honesty as a tactic

Andrew and Adam speak to CICERO’s strength as a Diplomacy player through its use of honesty.

League

CICERO plays, and wins

From August to October 2022, CICERO was put to the test in an online Diplomacy game league played on webDiplomacy.net, during which its strategic dialogue and gameplay abilities were on full display:

• CICERO played 40 games, against 82 anonymous human competitors.

• During each game, CICERO sent an average of 130 messages to the six other players.

• CICERO achieved more than 2x the average score of its opponents.

• CICERO ranked in the top 10% of participants who played more than one game**.

RESEARCH

A breakthrough in cooperative AI

The research breakthrough we call CICERO rests in the achievement of combining two different areas of AI: strategic reasoning and natural language processing. But that’s only part of the story. Visit the CICERO project page for more about how the agent can perform at a human level.
Learn more about CICERO

RESOURCES

Read, learn and build for the future

Read our paper and blog for more about the technology behind CICERO, download the code from GitHub and request access to the model to build responsibly upon our work.

RESOURCES

Read, learn and build for the future

Read our paper and blog for more about the technology behind CICERO, download the code from GitHub and request access to the model to build responsibly upon our work.

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* All rights in Diplomacy are owned by Hasbro, Inc.

** When playing 40 games against human players, CICERO achieved more than double the average score of the human players and ranked in the top 10% of participants who played more than one game.