Mongoose, are you saying you know some who is just naturally talented at Diplomacy? I hope you remembered their name.

Edi Birsan. So good, Calhamer named a province after him.

Oh dear :P

Someone who is good at Diplomacy? He's the guy who offers to buy you a drink at a bar, but you end up buying on for and making you happy you did so!

i do that everyday ;-] its quite easy, really. all you do is you say ops i am miss just 1 buck, can you chip in? and the other person has a 5 instead and will just say, nah forget it, i got it. then you are good to go.

idealist, you are pathetic.

before you know it, you'll be buying me a beer with a smile

hey man, a beer is a beer! (Im kidding of course, but I have bought people beer in that situation, especially after having some richer friends mostly fund my college experience).

I don't think so.
Oh wait a minute. I just did!

the key, hellalt, is not what you drink but who you drink it with. id pay for anything if my sitter has any curiosity in intellectual pursuits. though sometimes id pay for a wonderer who can entertain me with a story of adventure of some sort. then there are those who catches my attention and id pay for them. its really those who make the drink boring who ought to pay

I'm a social drinker so i can't enjoy drinking if my company is boring.

i'll keep you entertained with ideas, my friend. ;-]

INTP. I think. INTJ is probably just as good.

The N really applies much more for ftf, I think.

(I'm I N/S T J)

Here is a list of personality traits that I think make for a good diplomacy player:


Charming
Manipulative
Pathological Liar
Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Paranoid
Incapable of real human attachment to another
May state readily that their goal is to rule the world

Something like the description of the North Korea Dictator with the exception of charming :P

The key is always trusting your allies less than they trust you. You can work with someone, but never, ever believe them.

I've been told I display sociopathic tendencies. I like to think that might help.

At least, it might explain why everyone in the face-to-face circle (a) believes my every lie [it's just so damn convincing, it's almost like he does this all the time!] and (b) is scared as shit when they double-cross me even by accident [who knows what he's going to do next?!].

As for Myers-Briggs, I think an INTJ, ISTJ or INTP is going to make for a fundamentally superior player (fundamentals referring to tactical and strategic elements), but an ENTP would be a formidable negotiator and probably would be fundamentally solid as well. If you can find a particularly charming bastard of an INTJ -- *clears throat* -- then you're pretty much set.

And spyman, did you just read off the DSM-IV self-diagnosis for sociopathy or something?

It has always struck me that there is something a little sociopathic about diplomacy. So I found an article which cited a few traits that seemed to fit with the game. I am not saying dip players are bad people in real life, but it helps to be in-game.

I am a E/I NTP. And I tend to be of the view that a borderline E/I is best, for the reason Eden suggests -- helps on the negotiation phase to be E, but as long as its borderline, you still get the benefits of introverted paranoia.... But I do think I would be a better player if I were a J instead of P.

My personality tests suggested the two jobs I was best qualified for were (1) serial killer or (2) prisoner of war camp commander.

Diplomacy is very individualistic, and you must always place your interests first...Ayn Rand may have been a good Diplomacy player, callous b**** that she was.
Also, I won't flatter myself to self-identify as a good diplomacy player, but I'm INTJ.

One of my favorite traits is the desire to pick a fight just to pick a fight. Coupled with the ability to know which fights you can win and which you can't strikes the perfect balance between the tension of needing to press a fight to the end for victory, and caution to preserve your force for the appropriate time.

The best diplomacy players?
Not Neville Chaimberlain..
The inventor of the time-space continuum viewing machine.
A close second would be a skilled mind-reader.
Third would be and autistic savant with perfect mathemetical knowledge of the probabilities and statistics involved in human relationships and decision making.


In the absence of these improbabilities:

The best diplomacy player is the one in an anonymous game who convinces you ultimately to defeat yourself while crippling your ally, all the while helping you feel good about it, until you realize you have lost, then he mercilessly wipes you off the map. Then you find out that "he" is your 12 year old female cousin from montana..

Oh and in the absence of all of that, study game theory.

I'm finding more and more mathemeticians that are becoming obsessed with the study of diplomacy form a game theory perspective.

oh, and I'm not saying I have any of those traits, or machines, or hypothetical cousins even. But I am trying to study game theory to better understand the diplomacy side of things..

I would really like to meet that hypothetical cousin of yours...

I seem to fall under the ENTP category of "formidable negotiator". I'm also cold enough to throw away my chance to win and take someone else down with me if they refuse to cut a deal on MY terms. The people I play with in person know this, so they usually all scramble to be my one rock-solid ally or all gang up on me right away. As far as anonymous games... again, making that one rock-solid partner is crucial, as is the willingness to stab them in the back as soon as it becomes beneficial. But again, most importantly, don't leave yourself in a position where they can stab you easier than you can stab them.

This is at a slight tangent to the subject, but I would love to see Derren Brown play FTF Diplomacy. I reckon that with neuro-linguistic programming he would solo by 1907 every time!

Search for Derren Brown NLP on YouTube if you don't know who I'm talking about.