no, he meant things like where it says "phpDiplomacy rating: member".

I guess it's Member, Experienced, Pro, Mastermind, Diplomat.

you missed a lot. there's also "Political Figurehead", and a bunch of other stuff.

Hm, currently, if I have never played someone, and I want to know what their relative skill is there are a few things I check in their profile.

Firstly, the date they joined, people that have joined earlier are typically more seasoned, and more importantly, as well as knowing all the ropes and bugs, they know more people than you do, and may have prior relationships.

Secondly, check their win PERCENTAGE. Don't just look at the wins as a lump sum, because that just may be indicative of someone who handles a lot of games at once, which may increase their experience, but lower their quality of individual gameplay. Count all their finished games, and find a percentage. Of course the percentage is all relative, but compare it to your win percentage. Most of the veterans have at least 20% win/total, I believe.

Thirdly, check how they are doing in their active games, especially their later active games, as opposed to one that just started. Check their unit count, that's the best indicator of their prowess, although it does not always mean they are skilled.

Fourthly, you can check what countries they seem to excel with, and which they have trouble pulling off a victory. It helps you watch out for them in new games.

Lastly, in-game, send them a message. Ask them questions, about what they think about other countries, about what they plan to do, about which countries they favor. Whether they answer or not, how they answer, and how their answer corresponds with what you've heard from other players and how the pieces are placed on the board can tell you a lot about a player, as well as help you gather some intelligence.

So, those tips are good indicators of another player's skill, although none of them are entirely accurate. Personally, I pride myself on playing only a few games at a time, but maintaining a very high win percentage. I am currently at a 46.67% win percentage, which is the highest I've seen so far, out of people who have played more than seven games. Most people just look at my seven wins and assume I might be a rookie, very few check my total games as well as the time I joined. Remember to respect all players, regardless of what your intelligence brings up.

Chrispiminis, thanks, but i wanted a list of possible ratings you can have.

p.s. that part about win percentage FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE FINISHED SEVEN GAMES or more is very good. i have a 100% win rate right now - 0 out of 0 finished games won.

We need to remember that each game has it's own circumstances and as such wins are not a definite indication of skill level, for example i am in some passworded games with friends and although these are fun it is easy pickings for me, whereas i am in other games that are filled with excellent players and i can only scrape third or second. This is another indication of skill levels, i have only won two games (although they were well won!!) but i have finished second as part of the winning alliance many times, does this mean that i am a poor player? or just that i prefer alliance play to going all out for the win? I think that this must be taken into account when judging peoples skill, because not everyone will go all out for another point on the wins tally.

i am not really interested to know who has won most, but rather what the differing countries fare like. I understand that italy and austria are the 2 hardest nations to play, and am quite happy that i have won 2 games with them. However i sense that the dynamic of online play, with people forgetting orders quite often means that sometimes it is the luck of the draw, so i want to find out on an average how these countries fare now.

hey guess what, i found a guy 14 wins out of 20 joined februrary 2007. his name is Rait. I guess that beats salmanessar. played with him once, though he didn't win.

i've played with him too, that was alliance play at its best, except i didn't win.....

Wow, I'm impressed. Good digging. As for the worst countries, while Italy and Austria are classicly at a disadvantage, I do quite well with them. I find that England is at a disadvantage, since convoy support is not implemented yet, and convoys are easily interrupted, making it hard for England to get a beachhead convoy going.

All Hail Rait!

I just looked at his profile and it's incredible. He's managed to maintain quality gameplay, active alliances, and tactical prowess, even though he is tackling quite a few games at once. Thanks to the revived history function, I can see that he is a big fan of active alliances, and heavy reciprocation, which is what I've been looking for in an ally for a long time.

I hope I play with him sometime soon. = )

P.S. The team stalemate line Rait formed in one of his games is impressive to see. I would like to hear from Rait and what his previous Diplomacy experience is.

^Agreed. My England game is a rush to get enough armies in the mainland so I can get 18 centers. I have only played one Austria game, where Italy and I bum rushed each other. I've played a lot of Italy games, getting to 10 centers for most of them.

I don't think people here coordinate on a large enough scale to stop either country early on. Italy is usually left alone, with France usually asking for Piedmont DMZs. Everyone(Russia, Turkey, and Italy) wants a piece of Austria, but Turkey wants a piece of Russia more, and Germany usually keeps Austria safe. In my limited experience, Italy and Austria duke it out and everyone takes a bite when it's too tempting.

Hi there - thank You for worshipping me, but I'm not that good.... Before joining phpDiplomacy, I had played perhaps 10 games at most (probably less) with regular Diplomacy board game. As inviting friends to my place & having those 24h marathons were pretty exhausting & most of the people didn't have such endurance in them, I started looking places to play Diplomacy online - fortunately I found phpDiplomacy (thanks to all the developers!).

If You are looking for real expert level game, You can follow 'Masterminds'. I was trying to invite Mastermind & up level players only (although I didn't fully succeed). In this game I got beaten pretty fast :) :)

I think I will continue this series of games for top-class palyers to offer the possibility to sharpen their skillis also in the future. Actually I think we could start another one just now (I haven't joined any new games for awhile). My own time resources will be unfortunatelly much more limited during the next 3-4 months, so I will participate in few games only.