I make no apology for not liking the apps. I don’t enjoy playing on them. I can’t remember which of the apps below I played on it was, but one of them used to record a negative reliability rating if you hadn’t finalised your orders – you might have a full set of orders entered but, if you hadn’t finalised, you lost reliability. That, frankly, is ridiculous as it encourages rushed play.
Conspiracy [I haven’t found the web interface… I’m sure there is one, though]
This is rated 3.8 on Google’s star scale, which isn’t encouraging. I’m a little concerned about a comment on the front page of the app, which gave 5 stars, despite a negative comment, and this: “And a small suggestion maybe make a mode where there are some sort of buildings.” Um….
And another comment posted in July 2021 asked for a formal declaration of war be included. A third called it a Risk-style game. Oh, boy.
This is something that indicates the quality of players on the apps (OK, this app maybe) which is one of my big bugbears about them. If the FTF hobbyists take a knock at Webplay for quality of play….
I know, I know – I’m generalising from the ignorant, but still.
Beyond that, Conspiracy seems to be a better apps. If you read the owner’s description, you can tell at least someone involved knows Diplomacy. A lot of the comments, though….
Diplicity [see web interface here]
With a rating of 3.1 we’re entering the worrying zone. At least the top comment is very positive… and the developers respond to comments.
Given that the developers actually care enough to respond to pretty much every comment, I think it’s worthwhile.
By the way, this was once known as Droidippy, when it was truly awful to play on.
The other decent app… but still not my thing.
Primacy [see web interface here]
This is brand new, so I’m not going to tar it with the same brush as other apps. If you use it, let me know.
As I’m writing this now, I don’t think it’s available on Google Play… yet?
Realpolitik
This app doesn’t seem to be in development, which is a blessing. It has a 3.0 rating.
If I’m going to be generous, I’d hope the developer didn’t have English as their first language, or that they simply expressed the “fix” badly, otherwise they fixed something that wasn’t broken: “If during the Fall period a unit retreats into an enemy supply center, the center doesn’t change owner.” Which, of course, it should! If this is a case that this has fixed something that was correct, it shows that the developer didn’t understand the game.
The last update was in February … 2017. So let’s hope you’re not attempting to access it on a modern phone, eh?
However, Realpolitik isn’t meant to be a game but a Sandbox. The problem is, it’s on Play and, well, people expect it to be a game, especially as it’s based on a well-known board game. Go figure. I’m not sure there’s much point in a Sandbox app for Diplomacy.
THE DIPLOMATICON 