Hard to know what you're doing wrong when you just don't know what you're doing.

You're taking 18 centres. I'm willing to bet they all know that. Aside from a few fiddly bits with convoys and various units interacting it's quite a simple game.

One thing that the students will quickly learn, if they haven't picked it up already, is that experienced players disagree on a regular basis :)

HOW TO FIGURE OUT YOUR OPENING STRATEGY IN DIPLOMACY

Imagine Diplomacy as a three legged stool. To master it, you need to master all three legs (strategy, diplomacy, and tactics). If you lack in any one leg, the stool topples. In this post, I will touch on two of those legs; strategy and diplomacy.

The first leg, strategy is of great importance. Great players strive to avoid aimless wandering and equivocation. You must determine a strategy early in a game or your overall performance will suffer. Note that it is not essential that you develop your strategy before Spring 1901. However, by the end of 1902, your early-game strategy ought to be fully threshed out.

Some great players have an opening game strategy in mind from the outset, and they then use diplomacy and tactics to make it happen. However, I think it is better to take stock of the other players before making a decision on your strategy.

My initial strategy decisions are determined by two factors (Factor 1) assessing the skills of the other players on the board and (Factor 2) determining my relative affinity with all potential alliance partners. You cannot determine these two factors until you talk to everyone else in the game. Thus, strategy follows diplomacy.

Why is it important to assess your opponent skill? Because the odds of a solo increase when you eliminate the best players. Therefore, once you determine which player is the most highly skilled, you implement a strategy designed to kill him.

This does not mean you must attack the best player at the outset. You just need to implement a strategy so that you, or better yet, your allies over whom you have diplomatic influence, kill him during the mid game. Therefore, from the point where you discover a most dangerous player, your diplomacy ought to be aimed at isolating him and creating a scenario where he is stabbed or severely wounded. Go down the line this way from best to next best. If all the best players in the game are destroyed, then you have a better chance to solo against less dangerous players.

Factor 2 (affinity) is almost equally important as Factor 1. This is because it may be that the best player in the game is the player with whom you have the greatest affinity. In that circumstance, maybe you choose the great player as your first ally. Just make sure you have a strategy to effectively stab him.

Generally, I like to find other players I trust enough to make bold moves. The probability of efficiently eliminating the first target of your alliance increases if the allies throw caution to the wind and gain tactical advantage. Look for an early ally who is excited to execute an opening strategy with you.

When the game starts, you should review the different opening strategy options for your Great Power. Go to this link page ( http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/strategy.htm ), select the Great Power you are playing (at the bottom). There are always a variety of options. If you find a player with whom you have great affinity, then go for it.

In a School of War game, your assessments of these two factors are more complicated. However, the game is not anonymous so the game history of each opponent on WebDip is available. You also need to consider the potential influence and skill of each player’s TA.

What if I'm the worst player? Wouldn't targeting the best player just lead to him turning everybody against me and an early elimination?

No. See for example the Peanuts game, where Balki was last to be eliminated.

Sometimes I think that the SoW only exists so that ATC can throw jabs at Balki.

everyone has to have a hobby.

That's hilarious. Probably the thing Balki is best at is turning people back from being against him, though.

I think the ready by yavozovic (Russia) is a scheme to make the other players think he has already made up his mind when he tells them that he will be their ally. After all, he can always secretly change his moves, and he knows that everyone else won't ready.

How does he do it?

Speaking of which no one addressed how you break up an opposing alliance.

It makes it more believable when he tells Turkey and Austria in broken English, "I decide ally with you."

In fact, his thread about needing a WhatsApp friend is probably also a scheme to make the others think he is bad at English and not question his limited communication, when in reality he's limiting communication because he's scheming against them.

@ Ogion

I'd argue that it's primarily about getting the groundwork done early. You want to have established good relations with both players in the alliance against you, and sown the seeds of you being a valid alternative ally firmly in their minds. It's important to keep that good relationship going despite them attacking you. Expressing disappointment is fine, but going off on one will hammer a nail into your coffin.

With that in place you have several options. Ideally use your superior skill to beat them. Try and bring in as much foreign support as possible. If you can't beat them you can delay them. Make it clear that your centres will be painfully won and highlight the rapidly growing empires elsewhere. Point out how much quicker they would grow if they swapped allies, and that doing so may be their only chance to do well as the game progresses.

If things are getting really desperate, allow your centres to fall in such a way that one of the alliance is given a clear advantage over the other, and use this as a lever to pull them apart.

@ peterwiggen if you’re thinking of figuring out and targeting the best player, you’re not the worst player in the game.

The game has started! Good luck to the players, and thanks to the TAs and Profs for helping this run!

Lots of good advice by all the professors so far. I hope everyone will read it, and I think they've responded well to all the questions so far.

Since this is the beginning of the game, here's what I recommend for everyone in this and every game. Talk to everyone.

But, what do you talk about? What do you say? This is a problem that I often have, even after how ever many games I've played. How do you initiate press? How do you begin?

A pretty good approach : for everyone who is around you and remotely involved in what you're doing, you need to explain how you want at least the early game to go. This doesn't have to be super detailed or tactically complicated, but you're in good shape if you can say "This is what I think we should do, and this is why i think it benefits both of us."

So if you're France, and you want to work with/against England, you should be talking in some detail to England, Germany, Russia, and Italy, and at least a little to Austria and Turkey (because if your plan depends on Russia helping/not helping, what Turkey and Austria do will be to be important). What is your vision for the game, and why should I (whatever country I am) want to see it come to fruition? If I am Austria, what's in it for me for Turkey or Italy to get Greece?

Sometimes people commit too strongly before they see the replies to these openings (and by people, I mean often me), and as a result they implement plans that they countries around them don't want to do. The replies to your spring 1901 openings will determine the direction your opening strategy will go.

And TALK TO YOUR TAs early!

Disclaimer: I'm a TA and thus am breaking the rules by posting here, but doing so knowingly and hereby apologize. The issue is sufficiently meta that I suspect no one will mind.

Could the professors please explain what the little checkmarks mean next to the names? I've read what I believe to be a misapprehension of the situation in this thread that I believe that over 90% of the people on this site hold. To ask the question a bit more pointedly, what do players see if a player has not saved moves, has saved moved but has not clicked "Ready," and finally if they have clicked Ready? OK, even more pointedly, at least within the scope of this project, can you disavow people of the notion that a checkmark means that their opponent has clicked Ready? Or correct me if I'm somehow wrong about this. :-)

While yoak's question is fine, it's difficult to draw the line between what is an acceptable question, and what goes too far. Hence, we ask that TAs and students don't post anything substantive at all. I would suggest that in the future, if TAs have a question they think would be valuable for the Profs to address, that they PM it to the profs directly.

No orders: "I am 100% sure I will log in before the deadline". As you can never be sure, this is a bad sign.

Saved: "I will change this before the deadline"
Ready: "If everyone isready, this will do"

I disagree with the definition of ready. It could be the same as a save, if the player knows that not everyone else will ready, and the ready could just be symbolic.

If I can direct SOW participants to the study group for a moment , Chippo just mentioned off hand how he received a message from every country well within the 24 Hour period. Please take note of the importance of communication with all players, especially in the early game.

TRUST - The most in demand asset in Diplomacy

Building trust in Dip is a hard thing to do - everybody knows that your ultimate goal is to win for yourself by using others. However there are ways to build a reputation of a reliable player, being a friend or a foe.

If you develop a mutual trusted partnership you can optimise the use of your units. More importantly you will become a more appealing partner to side with, in the current game and also in future ones!

You can be a reliable and respected foe too - 'I'm sorry but there's nothing in it for me if I stop attacking you. However let me know if you have a plan you would like to discuss as I'd really like to find a way for us to work together'.

Obviously if you are loyal till the end chances are you will get stabbed and lose or, at best, you will draw with someone equally loyal. But Dip is about winning if you can, drawing if you really have to and survive till the end when it's really bad.

So how do we build trust - here's a few suggestions:

1) Do what you said you would do - it seems quite an obvious statement but most players don't follow it;
2) Show that you are willing to listen and able to compromise - this is vital to make others feel they are in a partnership and not a dictatorship;
3) Be relatively generous with your ally, particularly early on - growing too fast has disadvantages!!!
4) Share as much information as reasonably possible - often that doesn't cost anything but has a strong effect on your partners (and enemies).

For example it doesn't cost anything to R to confirm that in s01 they will order STP GoB. Whilst no-one would immediately say 'wow, I trust this guy cause he told me what I already knew' it starts to grow a sense of trust, especially if coupled with more valuable info.

Similarly when you are certain of taking an sc from an enemy just say it - it will go down much better than trying to fob someone off when it's obvious what you'll do. This last example can be the difference between winning and drawing - a reduced and annoyed enemy might decide to sacrifice themselves in order to ensure you don't win. Conversely a pacified enemy could accept to be your vassal and help you win in exchange for survival.

Finally, and just to reconfirm that there are no fixed rules in Dip as far as I'm concerned, you can also play without building much trust in you - I have seen players stabbing 3 countries in 3 years and still go on to win. It is, again, a matter of personal style.

Thank you sir. I liked the message.

‼️- no orders entered
Grey ✔️ = orders entered. The turn will not adjudicate until the deadline.
Green ✔️ = orders entered. Ready. If all players in the game ready, the turn will adjudicate when the last player selects ready.

THE PROS AND CONS OF LYING IN A DIPLOMACY GAME

The Rules Overview section describe the game as follows: "Diplomacy is a game of negotiations, alliances, promises kept, and promises broken." In the Diplomatic Phase section of the Rules, it states: "discussions and ... agreements do not bind a player to anything he/she may say. Deciding whom to trust as situations arise is an important part of the game."

Some people mistakenly think that the Diplomacy Rules encourage lying and the game of Diplomacy is all about lying all the time. However, a player that repeatedly lies, becomes a target precisely because of his lying. Think about it like this. You start the game with six potential allies. When you lie to somebody, you burn the potential alliance with that player. When you lie to everyone, you burn all potential allies and end up isolated and soon to be eliminated. Therefore, an elite player lies only when absolutely necessary. When she lies, she exploits the lie fully to eliminate the target. (If the player you lied to becomes dead, the lie is less likely to come back and haunt you.)

This does not mean that one should never lie during the Spring 1901 negotiation phase. To the contrary, when you have found an affable ally at the outset, confidence of an opening strategy, Spring 1901 is one of the best opportunities to exploit a lie against another player. All Great Powers are weakest at the beginning of the game. Therefore, Spring 1901 lies are most devastating to the target of your alliance. A well-told Spring 1901 lie can lift your game quickly. Spring 1901 negotiation is a phase well-suited to the big and blatant lie.

To add on what eturnage and Djanti have said, one way to strongly increase your chances of getting solo is to be the player that most of the board likes and trusts, even if you fight. I try to never be the player that makes someone say, "I'd rather lose the game than ckroberts benefit." This isn't always possible, because not everyone is rational, but it's something to aim for. You want everyone to distrust each other more than they distrust you. In my favorite solo I ever did, I got the solo because I was able to tell about three different people, "I don't think I can solo here, and so everyone's talking about cutting the draw. They all want to eliminate you, but I don't want that to happen, so we need to figure out how to keep you in the draw" and they all believed me.

This doesn't mean you never lie or stab. But you have to be careful about the situation. Don't stab or lie to someone pointlessly - that hurts your reputation both as an honest player and as a competent one.

Read the situation. My favorite kind of game, I think (which is different from the kind in which I am most successful), is one where I'm an eastern power, and the whole east is mess, and everyone is good but nobody trusts each other, and so there's a constant back-and-forth of alliances and stabs and counterstabs as everyone is capable enough to keep a single power from emerging out of the theater but not able to be that power. That's very different from a situation where you've been part of an EF alliance for six games years but decide you should get Belgium, so you just take it.