Why do you really good gunboaters like it? And has anyone felt the way I feel during their first game and learned to enjoy it? If so, why? What about it eventually hooked you?

duck with my enemy = fuck with my enemy

Note: preemptive Draug "teaching moment": this is an anonymous game but no one there knows me and boomed here knows which game, there are currently 162 anonymous GB games so spare me the "Dont talk about ongoing games in the forum" lecture ;-).

Just Fucking with you ... See? That's what I want to do in the global press, but I can't. :-(

You have to learn to read your opponents pieces, not just the person. You have to learn to see the entire board and deduce what your opponents will do without him telling you one way or another. You can play tons of games at a time and not worry about someone replying before your moves are due. It really hones the strategy aspect of the game, IMO. If you are good at gunboat, the diplomatic aspect can be learned. But just because you are a good diplomat does not mean that you are a good gunboater.

God damn Autocorrect!

Boomed = no one

@jim

I would argue that the diplomatic aspect of Diplomacy is much harder to master than the strategic aspects. Playing a few games of gunboat may help with strategy, but it will also blind you to how powerful diplomacy can be in changing the board.

Everybody knows gunboat is not real diplomacy anyways, so it's kinda a moot point.

@jimgov: that makes sense, I guess. Would you compare it to speed chess, where you hone your ability to see the next move quickly, but the long term aspects become less important? But then when you play an intoned chess game the quick skills you learn in speed chess compliment your long game?

@abgemacht

I'm not saying that it isn't hard to master. I'm saying that without a great strategic base, you can talk till you are blue in the face. You will always rely on others pointing moves out to you. And I will bet that all of the truly great players on this site absolutely kick ass in gunboat. They are great at both the diplomatic aspect AND the strategic aspect. And I was just saying why I like gunboat. I don't think for a moment that it is a superior version of the game. It's a great training tool. And sometimes, I just don't want to talk to people. Gunboat makes it possible to play and enjoy some piece and quiet.

@abgemacht: in fact wouldn't you say that GB doesn't exercise strategy at all, but rather tactics? The strategy is the long term alliance that ends in a stab, which is all about diplomacy while you're allied.

@philcore: Strategy - the science and art of military command exercised to meet the enemy in combat under advantageous conditions. I think that gunboat is exactly that. So is "real" diplomacy. They are just...different types of strategy leading to the same end. Total domination!

@jimgov: I always think of strategy as the long term goal, and tactics as the means to achieve your strategy.

@phil

I would say that tactics in Diplomacy are trivial. Don't let people retreat behind your lines. Know how supports work.

@jim

Of course you need to understand strategy, but I'm not sure gunboat helps that much more than full press at teaching you it.

To each his own. The question was why people liked gunboat. Those are my reasons. I know that it is not for everyone. But I like it. Not as much as a full game, but I like it.

Yeah, that's fine. It's a game; it should be fun. I'm just saying that I don't think you can make a claim that it will help you with Diplomacy.

I respectfully disagree. But life goes on.

So this is telling ... Splitdiplomat, #1 in diplopoints seems.to play GB exclusively, at least on his first page of games - I didn't go past that.

But MadMarx plays almost exclusively press games

Tend to agree with the original poster. Gunboat is good for the community, though. Cheers to all gun-boaters!!

Advantages of gunboat? You can run a world map tournament of seventeen simultaneous games where each player has each nation once and you won't lose your mind. Try that with press.

@philcore: I don't think those two really prove anything. Just because MadMarx has only played one gunboat on this site does NOT mean that he wouldn't kill in it. And Splitdiplomat has only played 4 tradition games here. The Czech plays mostly gunboat and is #3, but he is also #84 in traditional games.

@dubmdell: Amen!

Player...............Gunboat GR.......Classic GR
SplitDiplomat...1.......N/A
Barn3tt..............2.......N/A
cspieker...........3........30
Sarg..................4........N/A
rokakoma.........5........78
Fairfax...............6........N/A
NoFog...............7........N/A
Partysane..........8........N/A
Lando................9.........35
2ndWhiteLine...10.......389

I don't think there's any indication that gunboat increases skill at Diplomacy. Of course, this may be just because those who play a lot of gunboat don't play a lot of Diplomacy.

@abgemacht: After looking at the lists, I also noticed that most of the top players sort of pick one over the other by a large margin. Curious. And I don't have the inclination to look further down the list. I guess this falls into the category of to each his own.

@jim

Yes, I think it's very hard to draw conclusions either way because the two camps are fairly segregated. I'm trying to see if I can download the ratings to do some better data analysis.

Oh, abgemacht, I disagree with so much of everything you have just written.

First of all to call Gunboat Diplomacy a pure strategy game is extremely inaccurate. There is far more than choosing where to send your own pieces - you have to try to influence the moves of the other players, make them feel comfortable before a stab, be passive aggressive and play a balance of enemy/ally. It has all the dynamics that a full-press game of diplomacy does, just very different media.

Secondly, to say "I don't think there's any indication that gunboat increases skill at Diplomacy. Of course, this may be just because those who play a lot of gunboat don't play a lot of Diplomacy" is so utterly false. Both Gunboat Diplomacy and Press-Variant Diplomacy are played on the same map with the same rules for movement. As such, any practice you can get with predicting upcoming moves, reading common stab-"tells" and mastering various different stalemate positions will absolutely be beneficial to all applications of the game Diplomacy.

I can understand that you don't enjoy Gunboat Diplomacy, or that even you think that that it requires different skills than Press-Variant Diplomacy but to dismiss its merits all together is down right insulting.

If you can pull the data - I am sure if you filter it for players who have played a significant amount of each variant (not dabbled one way or the other) you will start to find that things come together. The top press players that play gunboat tend to do all right and the top gunboaters who honestly try prss games tend to be pretty good as well.

I just looked up my stats. It's been a while. I'm 205 full press and 206 gunboat. How the heck did that happen?

First: gunboats never appealed to me. I've never played one, and don't intend to. As I wrote in my profile page, it's called "Diplomacy," not "Move a Bunch of Pieces Around the Board."

That said, I think there are several nice things about GB games:
1. They don't take a big time commitment. Because of this, you can play many at once without your life being sucked away by this site.


2. They require a different sort of communication—you have to review the move logs to see what happened sometimes, to see if, for example, a potential ally tried to convoy your army somewhere. Or, say you're Austria and start out with a hedgehog, but you notice that Venice supported Trieste's hold—good reason to believe Italy wants an alliance. This communication through orders is different than full press, but it's still a form of communication, and very interesting to gunboaters.

3. You get to know tactics very, very well.

@Lando

It most certainly does not have all the dynamics of a full press game, but I do take your point about still needing to influence other's moves as well as your own.

As I've already said, I think gunboat games *can* help with stalemate lines, general strategy, etc. But, I don't think it helps any more than playing classic games. And, if classic games hone strategy and diplomacy, surely it's better for training purposes..

I'll try to post some useful data, as I'm quit curious myself. However, not having access directly to the DB may make it a bit hard.

In general, I dislike playing press games with mostly-gunboat players. They tend to assume a lot and talk too little. Lando is an exception, however. I know he's highly ranked in GB games, and I've found him to be one of the better press players I've played with as well.

What abgemacht said earlier, though, I find to be true:
"Playing a few games of gunboat […] will also blind you to how powerful diplomacy can be in changing the board."

This is what I love about full press games. I have talked my way out of some crazy positions. I've defended my completely vulnerable home SCs with my mouth. There is no other game I know of that lets you do something like that: talk someone out of pressing their tactical advantage on you.

It's not so much that I dislike gunboats—I just think they miss the best part of this game; the part that makes it so unique.