Hegemony vs webDiplomacy

webDiplomacy has been a pillar of online Diplomacy since 2004. Here is how Hegemony compares as a modern alternative for negotiation strategy fans.

webDiplomacy is one of the oldest, largest, and most respected platforms in the Diplomacy community. It is a non-profit, open-source (AGPL) project run without advertisements, hosting a community of roughly 400,000 registered players across many variant maps. Hegemony provides a modern alternative designed specifically for touchscreens and smartphones, featuring native iOS and Android apps, a Telegram Mini App, a bot that plays surrendered seats and stands in for players who miss the deadline, end-to-end encrypted chats, and a procedural newspaper written after every game year.

Feature comparison

Where webDiplomacy is better

• Huge, active community: With around 400,000 registered members and twenty years of continuous operation, finding an active game on webDiplomacy is fast at any hour of the day.
• Open source and non-profit ethics: webDiplomacy is licensed under the AGPL, completely free of ads, and maintained as a true community project.
• Battle-tested rating system: Points and Ghost Ratings provide a sophisticated competitive track record built over two decades.
• Live games and flexible press rules: Fast 5-to-30-minute turn games and specific game modes (such as gunboat or rulebook press) cater to competitive purists.
• Enormous variant library: A vast catalog of community-created maps ranging from 2 up to 34 players.
• Hegemony's honest weaknesses: Hegemony is much newer, has a significantly smaller player base with fewer concurrent games, lacks a decades-long ranking archive, and is closed source.

Where Hegemony is different

• Native mobile apps & Telegram: Instead of relying on a mobile browser, Hegemony provides native apps for iOS and Android as well as a full Telegram Mini App, making notifications and mobile negotiation effortless.
• Bots prevent dead games: While webDiplomacy offers separate bot-only games, in Hegemony a bot plays seats whose player surrendered and stands in, in the last minute before the deadline, for a player who gave no orders.
• The Gazette: An automated, in-character newspaper chronicles every year's betrayals, troop maneuvers, and shifting power balances with dramatic historical storytelling.
• End-to-end encrypted diplomacy: Private negotiations between world powers are cryptographically secured end-to-end.
• Visual tap-to-order map: Tapping any unit immediately highlights legal destinations and draws visual movement/support arrows, making order entry fast and intuitive.
• 10 interface languages: Play comfortably in English, German, Russian, and 7 other languages.

Which one should you choose?

Choose webDiplomacy if you want an enormous, seasoned player community, open-source software, fast-paced live games (5–30 minute phases), or an encyclopedic collection of community variant maps.

Choose Hegemony if you prefer playing on your phone through dedicated iOS, Android, or Telegram apps, want a bot to play surrendered seats and stand in for players who miss the deadline, love reading an atmospheric turn newspaper, and want modern tap-the-map order entry.

Play Hegemony now

Other comparisons

Compare Hegemony with other online Diplomacy platforms:

• Hegemony vs Backstabbr — a Backstabbr alternative
• Hegemony vs PlayDiplomacy — a PlayDiplomacy alternative