This echos a lot of what I've said about it. The one thing I will take time to argue on is an implicit premise in the way you talk about statements as "lies" or "truth". There is in fact a 3rd, much more powerful option. "Bullshit". I mean that in the highly technical sense as outlined in the Harry Frankfurter paper title "On Bullshit". The thesis of that work is that a liar knows the truth and makes something intentionally the opposite of it, whereas a bullshitter doesn't know nor care about the veracity of what they are saying. A bullshit statement may latter turn out true or false, but that doesn't mean the bullshitter was right or wrong. A lie is the opposite of the truth, bullshit is uncorrelated with truth. I offer a deal to France to support me into Munich now in exchange for support against the English next year. I'm also very openly working with the English, so following this plan would be a stab. Was my offer to France a lie, or was I honestly planning to stab the English? Neither. It was bullshit that got me Munich. I'm not actually forced to accept or reject either version of "the truth" until later on when the situation forces me to take a side. Everything I say is true (in the sense it is a scenario that I haven't dismissed) and nothing I say is true (in the sense that I don't consider any of my narratives to be categorically true, merely more or less likely than others).
I agree. This is a nuance beyond the scope of this video, but one that is certainly relevant. (I was at Princeton when Harry Frankfurt launched his 2005 book, for what it's worth.). I think in our annotation scheme for our 2020 paper, nothing is a lie, so everything could have been considered the truth. Like you say, the lie is only forced later.
Cynical me frequently thinks that dialogue/alliances is actually useless in Dip. It seems rare to find a game where real alliances are created and followed. Ie, alliances come after a person's moves were already decided. I do realize that I'm just bitter after too many backstabbings tho 😋
Even if alliances last only a turn or two, getting the cooperation is key. And using people's emotion to turn against your enemy is a valuable skill. This is where I think CICERO still can be improved. But I could be wrong ... maybe Diplomacy is only about the moves ... perhaps the communication is only thin communication on top of the moves. If that's the case, then CICERO has mastered Diplomacy.
![No, CICERO has not "mastered" Diplomacy [Rant]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
