you refer to the abomination we call GUNBOAT

I assure you this is a beaten to death topic. As someone current in 58 Anon+NoMessaging games, let me give you the succinct version:

Diplomacy is 7-player free for all chess with negotiations.

you can take out the negotiations and still have a grand old, fun, intellectual game of 7-player free for all chess.

Basically, we have this option for an inferior version of the game (known as Gunboat) in order to welcome beginners to our site and allow them to get used to our map. :)

It is stupid to say that just because you cannot send messages you cannot communicate. Gunboat is diplomacy at its finest. Non-verbal communication is so much harder to master than good ol' words. Plus you have the added bonus to not having to read all the whining on global whenever someone gets stabbed

Valis likes GB because essentially all of his opponents are immediately and effectively muted.

Gunboat is a bit like being stuck in a huge queue on a motorway, where you signal your intent to change lanes not by talking, but by the positioning of your car. Will the car in the other lane notice your signal? Will he stand back as the cars ahead shuffle forwards to support you in, in the hope of securing an ally, or will he deliberately close the gap to bounce you out?

Gunboats don't quite live up to the fun and excitement of being stuck in a real traffic jam, but they come close.

Why do GB players not hit 'Ready' once they have orders in? Is it a subtle negotiation signal that I miss? Or the first line of a joke?

Usually cause they expect to be away from the computer for a while and rather have the extra time added. Or they're using the preview function to make sure the orders are correct. Or, in rare cases, they're trying to freeze someone out (although I don't know if that's ever successfully worked).

[I'm not above trying that tactic out in a live game to get a solo threat to draw the game]

threadID=1092941

Well, your replies gave me an idea. To be specific, I understand that gunboat (nice to start learning terms... :P) is still a strategy game and somewhat interesting at the very least. But from my point of view, it's not a Diplomacy game anymore. As I said in the beginning, what surprised me was the number of games like that, not whether it existed or not.

It takes me 30-60 seconds a day for gunboat. It takes me anywhere between 5 minutes to 3 hours a day depending on how much I want to win a Full Press game. You can see why there's a temptation to play gunboat in addition or in stead of FP games I hope, just on that fact alone.

Yo Balt, wanna try a game? First hit is free (well, 5 technically). I'll set one up for you and make an analysis each phase so you can see what kind of thinking, non-verbal communication, etc goes into it.

you can do diplomatic stuff through your moves. support holding to ask for an alliance, they support hold back: you're in (or they're lying, just like in messaging)

it is also good to see how people are trying top betray you, and trying to read into one's actions.

Some of us have careers and lives that make playing anything other than Gunboat impossible.

I prefer FTF over the bastardized online full-press version of Diplomacy anyway.

indeed, ridiculous to play this game with more than 15 minutes of face except because of necessity which has been ingrained into the community from the postal days when it is no longer true necessity. the idea that someone has multiple hours if not days to consider your words and to make a decision is just silly.

I've also never shown up at a FTF game where I'm the only one sitting at the table and all the other players have their orders finalized.

"Valis likes GB because essentially all of his opponents are immediately and effectively muted."

COTY nominee.

wait who said that?! Let me check the thread in an incognito window.

Valis, I fully intend to join gunboats games. But since I am a newbie, I actually prefer to go through the classic version first for some times. After all, that was the element (the whole diplomacy stuff) that attracted me to the board game in the first place.

See, I got hype for 7-player simultaneous algorithm-based deterministic move adjudication...

"It takes me 30-60 seconds a day for gunboat. It takes me anywhere between 5 minutes to 3 hours a day depending on how much I want to win a Full Press game. You can see why there's a temptation to play gunboat in addition or in stead of FP games I hope, just on that fact alone."
This is why it is and will continue to be almost unheard-of for me to play full press outside of a live game. It's too much of a time sink.

With GB (and with the forum), I can choose the times that I come and go. With press, the pace of participation depends in part on other players (beyond just the time limits set for the game, which always matter) and can be escalated outside of my control.

Non-Live FP are the worst (not really). I get to choose between feeling like I'm playing suboptimally, and showing up to work.

I feel that the diplomatic aspect is the great equalizer of the countries. It seems that the countries would be far more unbalanced in a gunboat game. My guess is that the success rate of a country like Italy declines while France increases.

A_Tin_Can said to me that "gunboat is like fast food" - and I agree. :-) It's the same game, really, but it's on a quicker/narrower front, both diplomatically *and* tactically.

Don't mistake "no communication in words" for "no diplomacy" - you're still playing 6 other humans, and the social/diplomatic aspects of gunboat are still as relatively important vs the tactical/strategic game as they are in standard.

There are *more* tactical and strategic options in standard than in gunboat too, because you get to communicate explicitly about options, so that's ramped up as well.

Tru: I am vaguely curious about actual stats on that. I'm not convinced it really changes the game balance that much, but y'know, total lack of evidence for my belief. :-)

@thorfi and @Tru
I don't feel like digging it up right now, but numerous websites highlight country win statistics and often break it down by the level of press. From what I remember, there are some noticeable differences in FP and gunboat, but the game balance doesn't change all that much.

I changed my mind. Here's a link (though there are other data sets as well worth checking out):
http://diplom.org/Zine/F2007R/Burton/statistician3.htm

@Tru
You're right France does a lot better in gunboat, but Italy doesn't do any worse. According to this, Russia's the only country with a lower solo rate.

@Brankl

Makes sense just looking at the opening. In FP, Russia usually gets Sweden. In GB, that build is often denied by Germany. Combine that with a good chance of an agressive Austria AND Turkey and life gets very hard. Often no room to even help someone enough signal that you want to work with them.

@Brankl: Yeah, I think what we need to prove the case either way is what's known in the trade as a "Meta Analysis".

Because it feels to me like there are some differences too, but I don't honestly know (a) whether those differences are really significant in an actual statistical measurement sense (i.e., they're likely to be more than can simply be accounted for by chance), (b) whether those differences are consistent on a per-country basis across the various blobs of gathered statistics that have been published.

I mean, we know from just this site's stats that country win rates vary over time a fair bit, so variance between gunboat/press could potentially just be "fashion" rather than actual difference in balance. It's not trivial to prove either way. :-)

It always amazes me to see people say gunboat is anything like the same game as diplomacy. For a start gunboat is far more luck dependent. Indeed, the how the first phase works out for you is almost entirely down to luck as you have zero influence over anyone else. After that you slowly gain the ability to influence, but essentially have no say on anything other than your immediate neighbours. It's so limiting!

But the thing I dislike most is the public press nature of it. Everyone can see in glaring technicolour every attempt at communication you make. Ugh!

If you like that sort of thing, great, but don't pretend that it's anything like diplomacy.

Gunboat is a limited variant. Nobody is particularly pretending otherwise. But it's silly to pretend it's not a part of the same game.

And I'm going to flat out disagree that you can't have influence over far flung players in gunboat. Certainly I at least care about what other countries that aren't my neighbours are doing in gunboat games, and I'm certain I'm not the only gunboat player who does. The standard map is not so big that those other countries are irrelevant.

I don't understand how you can take the position that you can't affect movement on one side of the board from the opposite side. That's just ignoring some of the basic principles of the game. It doesn't matter if you're playing gunboat or full press, but if Turkey opens to Armenia or England opens to the Channel, its going to effect play elsewhere.

To a certain extent, Octavious, you're right about S1901. You're opening with no information about the rest of the board. You can take this a few different ways. First, its an opportunity to set the tone for the entire board, or at least among your immediate neighbors, with a high risk, high reward opening. This could backfire, obviously (England bouncing in ENG plus a Russian northern opening, for example) but it could also pay off big time (Bohemian Crusher plus a Turkey anti-Russia opening). You can also force other players to respond to your play, rather than the other way around. It can sometimes mean the difference between dictating play and playing in response to other moves.

Of course, gunboat often rewards conservative play, which is why most high level games will have the same typical openings - for example, France A Bre-MAO, A Par-Bur, A Mar s A Par-Bur. But this just puts that much more importance on F1901. Germany often has some big decisions in F1901 - a possible bounce in Sweden, protect Munich, offer support to Belgium, take Belgium for yourself, sneak behind French lines, plus a few others.

In short, its silly to call gunboat "limiting"

Gunboat is limiting.

Ok, 2WL, you can have some affect on the other side of the board, but it is impossible to judge what that affect will be. Say in Spring 01 Turkey decides to throw everything he has against Russia. Will that impact England's decision making process? Quite probably. But will England think "Russia looks vulnerable, time to exploit this and attack!", or "If I fight Russia it will allow Turkey to grow rapidly. Best give Russia freedom in the north so he can put up a strong fight in the south", or will he ignore it completely? You can't speak to him, can't try and understand the personality behind the pieces, so you have no way of knowing. You are pissing in the wind on a particularly blustery day with no idea whether the next gust will break your distance record or soak your trousers.

Lrn2read order sets. You can judge a surprising amount of the personality behind he pieces from order sets alone. Yes, even though the order sets are restricted on here to legal orders only.

And if you think you have a way of knowing what someone is going to do just because you can talk to them... Heh. You have more data in the form of words. That doesn't necessarily mean you actually have more information. Probably you do. But not necessarily.

The name 'Gunboat' comes from the tactic used by european powers in east asia, of sending in gunboays and shooting up port towns until the country in wuestion agreed to open up trade.

This is, using military force instead of words to achieve your ends. Perfect for what the Gunboat we know and love ( or love to hate ) is...

Not disagreeing with that characterisation at all :-) gunboat is definitely more smashy than press games.

I may have skipped the wall of text, and just added my 2 cent worth of etymology.

baltazor7: The term 'no press' is also used to describe this variant.

Also, in case you didn't catch this, whether player identities are anonymous or not, it is never okay to send private messages to opponents in games with variant press rules in effect (at least for the two variants implemented on this website: no press and public press).