Any point being honest here?

[wariquari]

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.

[Jamiet99uk]

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.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do.

Keep trying, it will come.

[DarthPorg36]

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.

Sometimes it's just bad luck, yeah. Players out there will be honest and stick to agreements, others don't care about breaking them. It depends on people's playstyle and sometimes you attack the honest guy and befriend the guy who stabs you and you die. It happens.

Considering you've played 18 games and won three of them though, including a public gunboat solo, I think you're doing very well!

[JECE]

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.

Try public press games! Honesty can go a long way when everyone can see that you stick to your agreements.

[wariquari]

Sometimes it's just bad luck, yeah. Players out there will be honest and stick to agreements, others don't care about breaking them. It depends on people's playstyle and sometimes you attack the honest guy and befriend the guy who stabs you and you die. It happens.

Considering you've played 18 games and won three of them though, including a public gunboat solo, I think you're doing very well!

Thanks for the reply. The other two wins were just the Cold War map and I think I just got lucky on the gunboat as Turkey, I got left alone most of the time.

It seems that when I have to talk, I fail, and I have no clue why. I have watched advice videos etc., but so often fail to find an ally. Seems like a skill/intelligence issue, but without feedback it’s impossible to learn.

[wariquari]

Try public press games! Honesty can go a long way when everyone can see that you stick to your agreements.

Thanks, maybe I’ll give that a try.

[David E. Cohen]

Of course there is a point in being honest. The more honest you are the more effective your lies will be when you need to lie.

[Theodoric]

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.

I think a big part of it can be making agreements with a healthy dose of paranoia. If you commit to something that leaves you vulnerable to an effective stab, some players will figure that you're either lying (and so stab you) or you're not lying and therefore they can get a strong position by attacking you. Especially at the beginning of the game when everyone is usually offering alliances to everyone, so the cost of killing a relationship doesn't feel as high. My sense is that if the way you like to play is to form a strong alliance and stick with it, it can work better to start off slow with a few options and make higher-trust moves as you see what the other players do. But of course this is risky too because if your neighbors form a strong alliance while you're feeling them out, you might be too late. It's a hard game!

[WindowsErrors]

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

[Yigg]

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.

Here are a few overly verbose thoughts for you, as is my way.

1. If you're having trouble with how to start off, do some reading on some standard openings for countries. These are good launching points to get a handle on both how to open and how other players may themselves open. Don't take what you find as gospel, necessarily, but there's valuable nuggets of info to be had there. If nothing else, you can pick up on common opening vocabulary (Western Triple, Lepanto, Hedgehog, Sealion, Bohemian Crusher, Juggernaut, Alpine Chicken, and so on).

2. Another good tip for starting off and avoiding being left out, start proactively by presenting confident plans of your own. If you wait around for someone to come to you with an offer, you might be the one left out. Speaking for myself, I'm more likely to connect and work with someone if they come to me with a well thought out idea right off the bat. Especially fun or exciting ideas! My own weirdness aside, if you're Germany, and you wait too long for England and France to come to you with a plan to attack the other, they've probably already talked and are gonna come after you. Get it there and mix it up right away. Early birds and their worms, as they say.

3. If you're finding that you're getting stabbed right away, look at your past games and reflect. A) How are your moves? Doing an alliance requires some trust, but are you leaving yourself too open in doing so? That might invite overly opportunistic players to stab you. B) How is your press? Are you keeping up with good communication? Talking often? A good alliance requires upkeep. If you're not sending messages often enough, then you might inadvertently be putting second thougts in the other person's head. Conversely, are they ghosting you? That might be a red flag. Both of these aren't black and white rules, per se, but they are indicators. For yourself, check for commonalities in your playstyle. Studying your old games has value.

4. You found your way to Diplomacy, my friend. You're not dumb. This is the game of games! Getting good is a matter of practice, study, and reflection. No one started this game as a prodigy maniac. Well, maybe Chris Martin did. But still.

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. B) Find someone to mentor you. There are probably some people left around here who wouldn't mind walking you through some stuff. Exhibit A, this massive post. My own game definitely saw improvement when I asked some of the fine notables of this establishment for advice. Sheeeeeeeit, you can always ask me.

6. Being honest and sticking to agreements is a good thing... right up until it's not. The key is knowing that precise critical moment of when it's not, and either predictng and defending against the stab or executing the stab yourself. So I would encourage you to continue to be honest and stick to agreements. No one likes to ally with liars and agreement breakers for long, anyways. Keep doing it until you start seeing when that moment comes. If you miss it, do an autopsy and look back. See if there were signs either in the moves or in press. If you keep doing that, you'll start to get that innate paranoid feeling where you go, "Ope, I bet this is the turn they stab me."

7. Play Public Press games! First, thanks to JECE for bringing that up. Second, they are my very favorite variant of this game. And third, it forces everyone on the board to put their playstyle and press-style on display. It's a game workshop on crack. You learn tactics in Gunboat. You learn diplomacy in Wilsonian.

You'll get there, my dude.

[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.

[cdazz30]

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

I cannot wait to try this tactic!

[cdazz30]

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.

I was falling victim to the same thin, so I started focusing more on gunboats and AI games so I could get the basics of strategy down. When you know how to maneuver strategically, it helps with the "diplomacy" aspect in making deals / allies so you never leave yourself wide open to a stab

[Yigg]

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.

[Pengwinja]

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 would also be down to join, as I have to learn as well :P
My skill is… lackluster

[DiplomacyandWarfare]

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 would also be down to join, as I have to learn as well
My skill is… lackluster

I would also be interested in this
My win count is... low

[Pengwinja]

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 would also be down to join, as I have to learn as well
My skill is… lackluster

I would also be interested in this
My win count is... low

(Says the secret account of Andrew Goff)

[dargorygel]

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 would also be down to join, as I have to learn as well
My skill is… lackluster

But your skill at not having ANY knees is stellar...

[Pengwinja]

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 would also be down to join, as I have to learn as well
My skill is… lackluster

But your skill at not having ANY knees is stellar...

Achsually, pengwinsh do hashve shnees, it’sh jusht tucked into sheir belliesh.

[CaptainFritz28]

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.