To win you basically have to lie to their faces. Still, it’s a great game.
I have a friend who is a nationally ranked player. He says that among players of his calibre people essentially never lie. That is in part because there is a repeated prisoner's dilemma, anyone who lies will get caught and it WILL come back to bite them in future games.
I love the game, though haven't played in.... a decade at least.
I worked at a place where some other people had a diplomacy club and they'd play over lunch or after hours.
I decided I didn't really want to know who at work was best at lying and backstabbing.
I later left the place because they did stack ranking and found that teams traded people from one team to another with the express purpose of "the new person gets the PIP"
Not my cuppa.
Don't play diplomacy at work and maybe don't work where they play diplomacy?
I've found as long as everyone is equal opportunity backstabbers then it's fine. It is when you get people who won't backstab Fred but will backstab Barney every chance they get that you have problems. Those people would have problems playing Mario Party too.
Poker is always zero sum, for me to win you must lose. That is never not true. But in Diplomacy you cannot win without successfully cooperating with other players. Yes there can only be one ultimate winner, but at any given moment in the game you need to successfully collaborate to make progress, so betrayals are much more painful. A poker bluff isn’t a betrayal because it’s not offering you anything you need or making any commitments to you.
To win you basically have to lie to their faces. Still, it’s a great game.