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DipInit

DipInit hands out the seven powers for a game of Diplomacy. Every player ranks the countries from first to last choice, and DipInit finds the allocation that leaves the whole table as happy as possible.

Open DipInit → Runs in any browser · English and German
DipInit in a desktop browser: seven players, each with a rank from 1 to 7 for every power

About Diplomacy

Diplomacy is a board game by Allan B. Calhamer, first published in 1959. Seven players take over the great powers of Europe on the eve of the First World War and fight for control of the continent. There are no dice. Every turn starts with negotiations: players forge alliances, make promises and plan their betrayals. Then everyone writes down their orders in secret, all orders are carried out at the same time, and only then does it show who kept their word.

Which power you get shapes your whole game. England hides behind the sea, at least for a while, Austria and Italy are squeezed in the middle, and Russia has to fight on several fronts at once. So everyone has favourites, and settling that fairly for seven people by hand is tedious. That's what DipInit is for.

How DipInit works

  1. Enter the players

    Type in the names of all seven players.

  2. Rank the powers

    Each player gives every power a number from 1 (most wanted) to 7 (least wanted). The same number can appear twice, and an empty field means "don't mind".

  3. Allocate

    DipInit shows who plays what and how happy each player is with it. If several allocations are equally good, "Show another" moves to the next one. Leave everything empty for a random allocation.

Always the best result. There are 5,040 ways to hand out seven powers to seven players. DipInit checks every one of them and picks the allocation with the lowest total of everyone's ranks. On a tie, the one where the unluckiest player fares best wins.

DipInit on a phone: the allocation, from Catherine the Great playing Russia to Machiavelli playing Italy, with each player's choice

History

DipInit for Mac

The original desktop app. You entered the seven names, gave each player a priority from 1 to 7 for every country and hit "Allocate Countries". In English and German, and it could even read the result out loud.

Version 1.1 from 2009 for Intel and PowerPC Macs. It won't open on any macOS since 10.15 Catalina. Download for the archive (479 KB)

DipInit Mobile

The same idea as a web app for the phone, for game nights without a Mac at hand. You sorted the powers by drag and drop, one player after the other.

DipInit today

A rebuild of the web app for phone and desktop, with all seven players on one screen. It checks every possible allocation instead of trying a hundred at random.