Any point being honest here?

[dargorygel]

i'm gonna be honest whenever i'm playing diplomacy and i get nervous and can't think of what to say to try to turn a situation into my favor, i just start mimicking donald trump. like, not about politics, but just start making grandiose claims about the other players in the game with 100% confidence while flapping my hands everywhere while i'm typing to get into the mindset of it
"i've been all over the board, excellent countries, excellent people, but I have never found one like austria, shrewd and best intellectuals here in the entire board down in the balkans, awesome and honorable player, you know i talked to the turkish guy before, very urbane, very smart. but uh i talk to the guy and i say 'can anyone believe you actually moved ankara to armenia? nobody has ever seen anything like it before', after talking to him for a bit I convinced him to move his units into rumania instead. can you believe it? great guy doing tremendous work out there."
i just start spouting information with the upmost conviction like it's the way things have always been
i don't even like donald trump all that much but the art of the deal evolving into speaking with such cocksure confidence in whatever you're spewing works so well, especially when you mimick his inflections and gesturing
it's actually kind of funny how often it works as a negotiating stance

Turns out that when you sound confident, people take what you say as truth.

I note that YOU said that confidently, and therefore I am inclined to believe you.

[burner]

i'm gonna be honest whenever i'm playing diplomacy and i get nervous and can't think of what to say to try to turn a situation into my favor, i just start mimicking donald trump. like, not about politics, but just start making grandiose claims about the other players in the game with 100% confidence while flapping my hands everywhere while i'm typing to get into the mindset of it
"i've been all over the board, excellent countries, excellent people, but I have never found one like austria, shrewd and best intellectuals here in the entire board down in the balkans, awesome and honorable player, you know i talked to the turkish guy before, very urbane, very smart. but uh i talk to the guy and i say 'can anyone believe you actually moved ankara to armenia? nobody has ever seen anything like it before', after talking to him for a bit I convinced him to move his units into rumania instead. can you believe it? great guy doing tremendous work out there."
i just start spouting information with the upmost conviction like it's the way things have always been
i don't even like donald trump all that much but the art of the deal evolving into speaking with such cocksure confidence in whatever you're spewing works so well, especially when you mimick his inflections and gesturing
it's actually kind of funny how often it works as a negotiating stance

Turns out that when you sound confident, people take what you say as truth.

I note that YOU said that confidently, and therefore I am inclined to believe you.

I guess I believe you... Maybe... I don't know, I probably believe you.

[Hughganought]

If you want to make a learning game happen I'd be happy to join.
I'm no great shakes at diplomacy, so I'd be learning too, but I enjoy the analysis, and I think that might be what you're after? At least as a first step to pin down what you want to fix.

I'd be happy to help with the analysis part if you'd like.

So we've got me Pengwinja, DiplomacyandWarfare and maybe the OP wariquari who'd be interested in a press game with lots of analysis on the side, and Yigg maybe there as what? A payer? A commentator? A mentor? A yoda?

I like this idea, but it's not a plan yet, what kind of game are we thinking off, and what does this analysis look like?

I'm happy to see where the idea goes, but as a starting suggestion how about a low bid, open press game with an accompanying forum for analysis - press is inside the 'golden circle' of the game where deceit is judged purely in terms of success and failure, and doesn't make you a bad person, the forum is for more honest analysis, which means that any players will probably limit themselves to discussing past actions/press, but observers can weigh in.

[Hughganought]

Turns out that when you sound confident, people take what you say as truth.

I note that YOU said that confidently, and therefore I am inclined to believe you.

I guess I believe you... Maybe... I don't know, I probably believe you.

Linuxproblem, smart guy, so many solos.

[DougJoe]

I really cannot figure out what I do wrong to start off. So often I am left out or betrayed right away. I am clearly not smart and good here, but cannot learn because I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. I am honest and stick to agreements, but it just doesn’t work.

5. If you feel like you're not learning on your own, you can do a couple things. A) At the end of a game, ask everyone their honest thoughts on how the game went. An EoG debrief. A decent human should usually give some unabridged thoughts on how you did. And that stuff is gold! Understanding how other players can see a game is critical to not only helping you see where you went wrong or how you got played, but you can see another player's perspective. The greatest sin you can commit in this game is to assume that someone else plays the game exactly the same as you do. Learning patterns about how other people can think about this game is next level shit.

On the topic of EoG stuff, I would add this: if you have the time, write notes on the game *as you go*. It's amazing how different something can be when you're only saying it in your head versus actually reading it off a page... and just the act of writing/typing may make you think of something you hadn't otherwise.

[Theodoric]

I'm nowhere near Yigg's level, but would be happy to be an adviser/color commentator on a learning game if that would be helpful!

[Octavious]

One thing I found rather useful early on, but can be extremely difficult to get hold of, is to get a copy of the message logs of a decent and talkative player in a game you've just played in. Most players won't give you them (understandably so) but a few will if you ask nicely enough. Being able to see exactly what was going on with your neighbours is extremely enlightening and will go a long way to destroying a few game myths we like to create for ourselves.

Be prepared, if you do go down this route, to read a lot of insults about you. I expect to be referred to as an idiot by others (and much worse) multiple times in a game, but usually we can stay blissfully unaware of most of them.

The advantage this has over End of Game statements is that these tend to be true. EofGs, even when written by the most honest of players, are written with the power of hindsight from the perspective of the player's personal bubble and prejudices. From less honest players a diplomatic fluke or misorder can very easily be misremembered as an intentional masterstroke if it happens to work out well

[wariquari]

Thank you for all the replies. I'm sorry to have wasted your time though, I am just thinking of stopping playing, I just don't seem to be clever enough to win or get through to the end without someone better than me who allies with me closely until the end.

[Octavious]

Thank you for all the replies. I'm sorry to have wasted your time though, I am just thinking of stopping playing, I just don't seem to be clever enough to win or get through to the end without someone better than me who allies with me closely until the end.

You are quite right, of course. If you believe you can't make it to the end without a superior ally it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In order to do well at this game you need a certain arrogance. You don't need to believe that you're the best player ever to enter orders, but you do need to believe that you can beat any opposition you happen to face. The moment you entertain the notion that you can't is the moment you lose.

As for cleverness, you need to be able to count into double figures. That's about it. If you run out of fingers you can use your toes . Counting and an ability to talk to people are pretty much the only skills you need. You'd be surprised how many people fall short of this bar.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Thank you for all the replies. I'm sorry to have wasted your time though, I am just thinking of stopping playing, I just don't seem to be clever enough to win or get through to the end without someone better than me who allies with me closely until the end.

Understanding stalemate lines and being able to map out how you might fare if stabbed by another player are learnable skills. Good players on this site typically all have a lot of games against bots under their belts.

Winning Diplomacy can be very challenging even if you have a decent strategy. Press engagement can be low and civil disorders are common, so the alliances (and the outcomes they produce) sometimes feel pretty random.

As a bad player myself, one thing I'll say about Diplomacy is that it's probably the most fun board game to lose at. As your position gets more hopeless you can try out more and more outrageous strategies, or you can even just nudge the game in a direction you feel is fun or funny on your way out.

[Spartaculous]

Thank you for all the replies. I'm sorry to have wasted your time though, I am just thinking of stopping playing, I just don't seem to be clever enough to win or get through to the end without someone better than me who allies with me closely until the end.

I will tip my hat to you for soloing as Turkey in a game of gunboat! I've tried many times to win as Turkey, but it's hard to find that 18th center.

[French_boi]

In my (very limited) experience, I think being honest is not a bad thing. If you show yourself to be a trustworthy ally, other countries will want to work with you, even if it is because they think they can stab you later.
In terms of what the other players are telling you, the saying "trust but verify" is extremely applicable. Try to keep as many sources as information going as you can, and use that to piece together what is really going on at any given time.