Another game falls to an AI player

Backgammon wasAI an easy win. Chess, harder. Go, harder still. But for some aficionados it is only now that artificial intelligence () can truly say it has joined the game-playing club—for it has proved it can routinely beat humans at Diplomacy.For those unfamiliar with the game, its board is a map of Europe just before the first world war (except that, for no readily apparent reason, Montenegro is missing). Participants, seven ideally, each take on the role of one of the Great Powers: Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Turkey. Each has armies and navies, and geographically based resources to support them, and can use its forces to capture the territory of neighbours, thus gaining the means to raise more forces while depriving others of the same.