You can play online if you have ever wanted to give it a try. It’s probably the best way to learn, since you can take your time communicating and planning your next moves.
Diplomacy is probably the emotionally hardest game I’ve ever played. It feels bad when people betray you, it feels bad when people utterly outsmart you, and after this happens to you (on say, turn two) you still have a couple hours in person to play, or a couple more weeks in person. You have immediately roll with the new situation, try to get help from previous enemies, and keep going with loosing your cool or your will to fight.
Even when you win it’s not great because chances are you did something shady and your friends are mad at you. This might explain why I haven’t played/ thought about this game in 30 years.
I like board games (competetive and co-op) but have no desire to play this again.
I don't enjoy deceiving my friends and having them deceive me. It's hard for me to understand what kind of person enjoys basically trying to manipulate other people for sport.
I've never noticed the issue with Risk, though I noticed it more often with Diplomacy the summer I played it multiple days a week (it was at a "pre-college" camp thing for academically inclined students). We were stuck there for 5 weeks with each other, and it was actually a good experience because it taught us to overcome how we felt towards each other. So alliances would change regularly each game, which was nice, and we all learned how to move on after and go do something else...usually Ultimate.
Risk actually has a different problem— the kingmaking problem. It’s easier for a player to decide who _won’t_ win than it is for a player to use skill to win. It’s easy in the later stages of the game to utterly cripple someone who annoys you.
> It's hard for me to understand what kind of person enjoys basically trying to manipulate other people for sport.
Your question contains the answer: it’s _for sport_. Sport and games are a place we can play out desires we’d never want to in real life. Tons of gamers like to pretend they’re shooting people. Strategy gamers orchestrate war and genocide. In sport, boxers pummel each other to unconsciousness, and many boxers are lovely people.
You're not pretending to manipulate though, you're actually doing it. There's a massive difference between deceiving an NPC in D&D and actually manipulating your friends to win at Risk. This is what makes it uncomfortable for me.
Diplomacy is probably the emotionally hardest game I’ve ever played. It feels bad when people betray you, it feels bad when people utterly outsmart you, and after this happens to you (on say, turn two) you still have a couple hours in person to play, or a couple more weeks in person. You have immediately roll with the new situation, try to get help from previous enemies, and keep going with loosing your cool or your will to fight.
[0] https://www.playdiplomacy.com