well vie cant support tri AND ser, you would pick one and that would ultimately gain power over bud as it would be 2 against 1.

even though you own all 3 units? I understand that I can move one with 2 supports, but its me vs me.

I believe the rule is that you cannot dislodge your own units, but you can move into a vacant territory even though you will have to use support to do so.

Somebody double check for me? I'm too lazy to go look up the rules.

If Tri S Vie-Bud
Vie-Bud
Ser-Bud

Then I'm pretty sure that Vie to Bud succeeds.

according to jdip you dont bounce, triest moves to budapest

n00bzorz pwnage is correct. You cannot dislodge your own unit, no matter how much support you (or anyone else, for that matter) gives you. You can however contest yourself for a territory and the one with more support wins.

This is particularly interesting when you know an opponent will be bouncing himself to cover a third territory. You can support one of them in and then walk right into where it came from.

Example:
You have units in Greece and Vienna. Your opponent has units in Serbia and Trieste. He wishes to keep Vienna out of Budapest without leaving Serbia open, so he orders:
Tri -> Bud
Ser -> Bud

You, the sneaky bastard you are, order:
Vie S Ser -> Bud
Gre -> Ser

He ends up in Trieste and Budapest, and you've just walked into Serbia. Woot.

AND, you managed to be a sneaky,(and tactically brilliant, bastard)
:]

I was thinking more along the lines of an opponent promising to convoy a unit, but that exposes the open SC to his fleet... if you support your army, but hit it with a 3rd unit, you can bounce his attempt at treachery.

For any questions on the rules, I encourage people to download jDip, a program I found that adjudicates diplomacy moves. It basically allows you to play the game on the computer with no board. If you have a question, just plug in the orders, and it will tell you what happens. =D

"This is particularly interesting when you know an opponent will be bouncing himself to cover a third territory. You can support one of them in and then walk right into where it came from"

Tricks that rely on quirks of the rules bother me. I mean, I appreciate the cleverness, but what sort of real-world equivalence is there for something like this? (I guess Dip is too high-level for that question to be anything more than rhetorical, but still...)

I even feel a little twinge of disappointment when I set up two of my own units to bounce each other.

Ninja, think of this situation:

The enemy is approaching marsellies, but we have two platoons, one in gascony and one in piedmont... so we send those two platoons in to cover the attack from the borders, but the enemy uses stealth and communication warfare along with guerrilla warfare to pull one platoon into the city where it faces the other platoon, and with the enemies help, keeps the city. It isn't until the dust settles do the platoons know they fought one another and the enemy just forced one of them out of position...

eh, I'm bored and was trying... it isn't perfect, but it works somewhat, right?

Trieste gets into Budapest.

@SamuraiCut-throatAndroidSkeleton: "Tricks that rely on quirks of the rules bother me. I mean, I appreciate the cleverness, but what sort of real-world equivalence is there for something like this?"

Diplomacy is a very abstract boardgame. It isn't really indended to provide an accurate simulation of real-life warfare. If you can move your counters around the board in a way that leads to your victory, that is what you should do.

The other thing to point out is that higher-level experienced players DO use these strategies - so if you know about them, but do not use them because they 'bother' you, you are putting yourself at a self-imposed disadvantage compared to other players who will willingly (and quite rightly) use these tactics against you.