To tell you the truth, I think that both versions pale in comparison to playing FTF. That is how I learned and that is, in my humble, THE way the game is supposed to be played. But I can't get 6 others to come over and give up 5 to 10 hours of their weekend to play.

"And I will bet that all of the truly great players on this site absolutely kick ass in gunboat."

I don't think that's true at all. Unless your definition of "great player" is somebody who is good at gunboat, which is an obvious tautology. As abge mentioned, it's difficult to draw comparisons between them because they are really very different games. It's like trying to define the best general tennis player by taking both their singles and doubles play into account. Sure, you can make a rating and find the "best," but likely won't be the best at each variant.

Splitdiplomat is a great GB player (the greatest?), but he positively eats balls at press games. That may not be true for others, I don't know. Anybody who plays press well will tell you that tactics are only a relatively small portion of that game. Yes, it's nice to be tactically sound, but you won't get anything rolling without diploskills. It's not called "diplomacy" for nothing.

One final note about GB games as played on this site: you can't do some things with invalid orders that you could otherwise use for communication in PBM games. For example, Spring 1901, England can orders LVP - MOS, to indicate a willingness to work with Turkey against Russia. The order is invalid, and the army in LVP holds, of course, but it gets the point across in a way that you can't do as easily with the constraints of this site.

@Lando

Oh, and I'm not sure why you'd be insulted. I'm not claiming that people who play gunboat are idiots. I'm saying that being good at gunboat doesn't correlate to being good at Diplomacy.

@Yellowjacket: "It's like trying to define the best general tennis player by taking both their singles and doubles play into account. Sure, you can make a rating and find the "best," but likely won't be the best at each variant." Singles and doubles are VERY different games, much more so than the difference between two variants. For one, the court (or game board) is different. You add doubles alleys. Also, you have two players (pieces) on a side instead of 1. Gunboat and traditional are played on the same board with the same pieces.

And I said "And I will bet that all of the truly great players on this site absolutely kick ass in gunboat." I did not say that all great gunboat players were great at traditional play. The other way around. If the top 10 players were to all of the sudden start playing gunboat, it is my opinion that they would dominate it in short time.

^^ abge lando thinks gunboat is a subset of diplomacy, hence, the implied insult.

Now, both you and I know it's more of a bastard offspring of diplomacy's 3rd cousin, but there it is.

Gunboat is the intellectuals' diplomacy

So gunboat GR is a significant predictor of classic WTA GR, but if I limit the analysis to only include players with more than 20 of each, it is no longer significant. Part of this is that nearly 80% of the sample has fewer than 20 of each. I'm going out for the night, but if anyone is interested, the tables on the GR site are pretty easy to load into any software for analysis and there's probably a lot that can be done.

@jimgov OK, thanks for the clarification. I don't think I agree, anyways. It is true that all of the of the best press players are tactically sound....

But basically your claim is functionally the same thing as claiming, "the press aspect of the game is fundamentally meaningless" i.e. the players who are best at traditional play are still the best if you strip them of their press skills. I'd seriously doubt that is a fact.

I'm hardly one of the best players, but I'm pretty good for my # games played, and I have no doubts that if I wasn't allowed to utilize my gift of the gab I'd perform much, much worse.

@Yellowjacket: "But basically your claim is functionally the same thing as claiming, "the press aspect of the game is fundamentally meaningless" i.e. the players who are best at traditional play are still the best if you strip them of their press skills. I'd seriously doubt that is a fact." I NEVER said that the press aspects were meaningless. Ever. But I stand by my opinion that the best full press players are so strategically sound that they would, given time to get their feet under them, absolutely dominate at gunboat. They are, whether they know it or not, great gunboat players with great diplomatic skills. They just don't give it a try. And I am glad that they don't. Leaves a few crumbs for the rest of us mere mortals.

No, you didn't say it, but I'm claiming it MEANS the same thing.

Lets take an extreme example. We'll call it "BFG" diplomacy. In this face to face variant (lets pretend it's super popular) everything is exactly the same as a press game, but everybody at the table has a loaded gun and may open fire on the others Whoever wins the game, or survives the firefight, is the winner.

Now, if you were to claim, "And I will bet that all if all the truly great players at BFG diplomacy stopped playing, then they would, given time, come to dominate traditional press diplomacy as well," you are basically claiming that the skills that it takes to win the firefight are ultimately irrelevant as to who the best BFG player is. Ergo, you claim one's pistol skills are ultimately meaningless in BFG diplomacy. The same people would have won regardless of whether or not you are allowed to shoot everybody in the face.

It's the same argument, yes?

I do not like when i can't talk
I do not like when i can't squawk
I will not play it, it's a racket
I would not play with Yellowjacket
I do not like gunboat and ham, i do not like it, Sam I Am!

Alright, I'm about to have a graph with 500 players who have played over 10 classic and gunboat games.

I don't even know how to respond to that. But no. It's not the same. It's a little disturbing. But it is not the same. You are bringing in a freaking WEAPON that can kill, Regardless Of What Happens On The Board, to a game. It is not the same. It's not even in the ballpark.

Sorry. My response was to Yellowjacket.

Would you feel more comfortable then if our hypothetical involved telepathic ability?(presuming humans actually had this) and they could influence their opponents minds with their psychokinetic powers?

Regardless of whether its a gun or telepathy or anything else, it's ultimately just a 3rd tier of ability, added to the 1st tier (tactical ability) and 2nd tier (diplomatic ability).


Either way, back to reality, you are claiming that the 2nd tier does not influence the result, that the 1st tier is the one and only skill that really matters. You have claimed that a game that allows skilled play based on both 1st and 2nd tier skills will have the same winners as one that allows only the 1st. Thus you in fact claim that the 2nd tier of skills doesn't have bearing when determining the result, and I think I've demonstrated why that is false.

Sorry, meant 50. Should have it in a minute.

@Yellowjacket: "Would you feel more comfortable then if our hypothetical involved telepathic ability?(presuming humans actually had this) and they could influence their opponents minds with their psychokinetic powers?"

No. No I wouldn't. I would feel better if you had played more than 3 full press games and 1 gunboat on this site and stuck to talking about Diplomacy and not guns and telepathics. YOU are confusing things and making wild claims. You just don't have the experience in gunboat to really know what you are talking about. After you play a few games, let me know and we can talk about it in an intelligent manner.

Looking forward to your results abgemacht.

Here is a pdf of my findings:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwH0Gnsrya38NUVlTXUzcmFBX2M/edit?usp=sharing

The two charts contain the same data; they are just sorted differently. Also note that this is Ghost Rating, not Rank, so a higher number is better. Only players who have recently played at least 10 GB and 10 Classic games were included.

I see no correlation between the two data sets.

Very interesting. Thanks for running that.

No, what I did was ensnare you in a brilliant logical trap that you are unable to work your way out of. It's OK, I do it to everybody.

My skills, or lack thereof, at gunboat hold absolutely no bearing on this argument - since I am claiming absolutely no knowledge that would require an expert gunboat testimony. So you can take your appeal to authority and redeem it to the trashbin.

You, however, are making a claim about the importance of press as to the endpoint, and I have handily refuted it, much to your obvious dismay and impending butthurt, should you continue to "press" the issue (no pun intended). The example (and it was a damn good one, mind you) was only to make the refutation easier to follow, but the argument stands alone without it. Again, it's a simple logical exercise.

If you believe the same star press players would also be stars in gunboat, then your implicit claim is that press skills are irrelevant. Both claims are false. I don't know how much simpler I can put it.

Minor error. Doesn't really change anything. Here's the update:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwH0Gnsrya38aVBTcU5ET2NTZVE/edit?usp=sharing

I wouldn't say that this chart shows no correlation. If you look at the top chart, the lower rated (worse) full press players are, generally, better at gunboat. As their skills increase in full press, it outweighs the gunboat skills and overtakes them. Generally. Hmmm. I will have to think about this. Once again, thanks for running the charts.

Interesting results, abge. Could you plot them against each other, instead of having person on the x? That would be a bit more easy to read, though it is pretty clear there isn't much there. Honestly, I expected it to correlate much better than that, myself.

From this I think we can definitely reject the implicit claim that press skills are irrelevant. We can also reject the (unmade) claim that top press players ARE also top gb players, though that doesn't say anything about whether they WOULD be top gb players should they stop playing press.

Since nobody is going to run THAT experiment, I would make my own appeal to authority, as every top rated press player I know has said loud and clear that diplomacy skills are a far greater contributor to press game success than their tactical skills.

@Jim

I'm not sure what you mean. If I look at the top chart, when Classic GR increases, GB GR remains the same. That is the definition of uncorrelated.

Now, what you do see is that people who play both Classic and GB are better at GB than they are at Classic.

@YJ

Are you asking to see Classic vs. GB? I can do that easily.

"I wouldn't say that this chart shows no correlation."

I saw that too, but I think there are enough outliers there at the lower echelon to return a null in a correlation test. Also note that the high end of the chart, where the top tiered players lie (and the ones you base your claim on) is all over the place.


Give us a spearman test, abge! give us a p value!

It seems the tipping point is about 27 (left to right) by about 110 (top to bottom). With only 50 players on the chart, it could mean a few things. For instance, are the players on the left playing a significant percentage of their total games of gunboat and then, as they get better, leaving gunboat for full press? Just conjecture. I have no way of knowing that. Maybe gunboat is the gateway drug to full press Diplomacy?