A new guest post on the BrotherBored blog! An interesting exploration of the dynamic between England and Russia in Gunboat Diplomacy.

How to Fix Russia's Gunboat Metagame
or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Not Fixate on Norway

Last night nobody was around to play games with me (sad!), so instead I wrote another essay about serial killers and American action movies. This is not exactly a gruesome essay, but it is serious discussion of murder—real and fictional—in America. You have been warned. The Perverse Fantasy of Heroi...

Okay I got the bot going today without doing anything different. I'm not sure what changed.

Now I have the problem that it's giving like a notification every 10 minutes for the same game, it's going nuts!! haha

Man maybe I'm running into the limits of my tech skills, but like what do you mean by "using" d.help? I tried sending "d.help" as a message to the bot after getting the bot to appear on my server, but nothing happens.

Hey I am trying to get this to work on my Discord server, but I'm unfamiliar with how Bots work. I have the bot on my server. How do I subscribe it to a match?

A guest post by VillageIdiot! Discover the hidden treasures of Advanced Diplomacy Maneuvers...

@Squigs44, I appreciate the enthusiasm but the qualification of "diplomacy" leaves me wondering...do we even have much...competition....?

I learn a lot from conversations with myself. In fact, I might say I learn as much from that as anything I've learned from someone else. Try it. Self-reflection is a good habit. The ability to converse with yourself is HUGE in being able to understand and predict cryptic players (try impersonating t...

@AnimalCS Probably >50% of my gunboat training with this student has been about how to form a psychological profile of a given player based on their moves. Once you have an accurate profile, you can often predict nearly all of a player's moves. That's why I keep track of whether I'm guessing a playe...

Please bear in mind that this conversation has been edited down for focus and readability. However, the included statements are copy-pasted from the conversation I had with my student (other than the square bracketed clarifying addition). BrotherBored: "I don’t have my draw vote up Italy always mov...

Okay I finished the second part. I hope you all enjoy!

A Winning Strategy for Russia in Gunboat Diplomacy, Part 2

I don't think R/T is even the most powerful Russian+Neighbor alliance. I think A/R is stronger.

In the scheme of all possible 2-power alliances I'm not sure I'd even put Juggernaut in my top 5.

I think it is extremely rare that both countries thrive in a gunboat game. Maybe you have a very different experience as this is just what I have observed. What’s confusing here is not your point that Austria and Turkey rarely both do very well in a gunboat game. That is 100% a fact for (in my opin...

My friends, I've published a new article today. It is part 1 of a two-part series. In these articles, I discuss how I was able to get a solo win as Russia in a high level gunboat match. This is maybe 30% my musings on Russian strategy in gunboat, and 70% After Action Report. Not as thorough as my jo...

This week I've written a shorter, more basic kind of article. I think newer players would find these tips helpful!

https://brotherbored.com/5-influential-diplomacy-tips/

In my new piece, I answer a write-in question about how I deal with feelings of fatigue that come from playing Diplomacy for long stretches of time. What would make me want to take a break from Diplomacy? Things like that. This is a personal topic, not a strategy article. I consider this to be "Dipl...

If you are sharing your moves with your rivals, and you want to be stabbed less often, you can reduce the amount you are being stabbed by reducing the amount that you are sharing. There are strategic reasons for sharing (as I explained in my article), but you should have that reasoning in mind when ...

Hello again friends. It's been a while since I contributed via my blog. Life got busy and difficult...but on the other hand, it is invigorating to contribute to a community that I enjoy so much. Sometimes I should remember that I feel better after I finish writing than before I started! The Top 5 Re...

Because I was asked: My face-to-face mafia games have been 100% serious and competitive, and are among the most intense games I have ever played—period. No special powers or whatever. Just the original (Russian?) rules. My group has reached a point where it is common for the mafia to be voted out co...

I had a misunderstanding of the rules, sorry but I want to withdraw from this game!