...in your opinion?

No, the word of god. Of course its my opinion.

God talks to you as well? Damn.

only about diplomacy strategy

Stay on topic please

He is on topic. Santa is advised by God, and therefore is infallable. Of a certainty, he...or HE....can not distinguish between strategy and tactics as to him....or HIM....all is one within one.

Great tactics are *useless* without long-term strategy. If you successfully and with great short-sightedness take 3 SC''s in one turn, but were too naive to perhaps see the negative consequences -- maybe you opened up a corridor behind your lines to do so, or didn't grasp that your sudden surge would force an alliance between neighbors, etc.....i.e. if you can't see the consequences of ANY single turn, then whatever supposed skill you demonstrated there is irrelevant.

That being said, if you have a grand scheme in mind, but don't have the intellectual capacity to figure out your turns, then you are a failure to.

I get the question...and the answer is neither is more important, IF you want to be a consistently successful player.

Sometimes strategy requires bad tactics. In some games the best way for a player to get into position for a stab or to make someone feel comfortable enough to ally with them is to let yourself lose a center or two.

Strategy will get you in position to move towards a solo, tactics will make it more likely you win you that solo. Since you'll never get the chance if your strategy sucks, I'd vote strategy as being the more important.

I'm more on the strategy side of this too. In general you want to have a strong vision for how you want the game to play out so you can be consistent in your diplomatic efforts. Having said that, a little reflection and analysis will often yield some astounding tactical options.

Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics, but professionals study logistics.

lol flc, you're dead right :) Logistics is ultimately the important subject.

I say it's the short-term. The game is so fluid and changes so frequently on a dime, that long-term planning is nearly impossible. I've found that the only real long-term planning I engage in is among those players furthest from me. I'm interested in hearing how you plan long-term, however.

I decide exactly how I want the entire game to go once I know which country I am. I decide who is going to live and for how long. I determine which alliances I want on the board and where. After that I start talking. Then I start modifying my plan. Usually once the first or second turn is done I have a "game-map" in my head for how the game is going to go.

Of course I have varying degrees of success with this, but mostly it works. The key is, I really do plan out what I want to have happen to every country for the whole game. Having this plan in mind greatly helps with my diplomacy. When I see a country getting off course I can recognize it early and focus on my diplomacy to fix the problem.

I agree on the strategy being more important side of things. I usually don't play with a very strong vision, and allow it to develop into whatever it wants. As you can see by my win draw ratio, thats resulted in not so many solo chances despite my tactical abilities

I think that strategy is a hard term here, because I just realized that my definition is not the same as Jacobs. I view strategy as planning for a few years ahead. i do not plot out the entire game, instead I take possibilities and I base my moves to disrupt the players in the best position until I have the opportunity to take that position and hold it. Since I'm not quite up to par with some of the better long term planners like Madmarx, djbent, and Jacob here I prefer to disrupt the long term planners. I still count this as strategy though since I do pick my moves based on what I want to see happen instead of on the best result for the next turn.

I think I'm pretty good at tactics. However, tactics and strategy are very intertwined. Allowing England into Belgium in the Fall of 1901 for example may preclude France taking Belgium with German support in 1902 and Germany taking Sweden while Russia takes Norway. Now, tactically, is allowing England into Belgium in 1901 and not taking it yourself a bad move, but strategically, it is a good move because of developments in 1902 or are the tactics and strategy linked? I think the latter. I think the better question is, what is more important, strategy/tactics or diplomacy?

I would say that it is easier to be a great tactician in Diplomacy than a great strategist. The main thing with tactics is to properly consider all the consequences of a set of moves. For example making sure that defeated enemy doesn't slip behind your lines. Their is of course room for some pretty clever play on occasion.... but strategy on the other-hand requires vision. To see all of the board and well into the future and to have a superb sense of timing.
But more important than both is diplomacy. I think you can be a mediocre tactician, a reasonable strategist but your skill is a diplomat is what will you really make your game. Indeed a great diplomat can almost get other players to do a lot of the tactical thinking for them. Or to play certain moves that make the tactics fairly easy. Its when you are being double or even triple attacked - that is when you really need to be a great tactician (and or psychic or just plain lucky).

Absolutely agree that diplomacy is a third skill that is vital, but I want to try to leave that out of answering this question as much as possible.

"Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat" - Sun Tzu

I don't know if you guys play chess a whole lot but there are two types of players in chess: tactical players and positional players - one creates their situation based on tactics, the other on strategy.

If we can apply that same framework to Diplomacy I think strategy comes on top easily, because the tactics are kind of limited in the game. (there are only two kinds of pieces and only so many squares the unit can move per turn). that said tactics can always make a difference, and spoil strategy but if both are in check I believe strategy is more significant in the game of Diplomacy...

But leaving diplomacy out of the question is like leaving it out of the game. Strong diplomacy (and the game is *called* Diplomacy after all) can get both that strategic mind and the tactical mind on your side.

But if we must leave it out... Strategy is long term, and without it you will be constantly putting out fires but not have any direction. Tactics can handle situations, but are limited in what you can do by the moves available and will never, by themselves, see you to the end game. With good diplomacy, tactics can get you to the middle game, but then even the diplomacy becomes less important on some scale as the remaining 4 or 5 players theoretically all have the size and diplomatic skills not to fall for the ploys and traps, so long term strategy becomes important and relaying that to others in opemn and honest diplomacy becomes the key to seeing your strategies through. One in the end game, it goes back to tactics. With just three players, the tactical mind is the one that can break the line because there is no mor elong term and there is no tricks you can do to equally skilled opponents diplomtaically. And with three left, if one person tries to get ahead, the other two will always push him back down if they can, so the tactical mind will see what is coming from the other two and have the best shot at breaking through.

I do the same as you do jacob, but in shorter terms. I certainly think about what I want to happen across the board and work to make that happen, but I never go so far as to decide where my pieces will be in x-year (roughly). I look for short-term and maybe 2 years ahead of where I'm currently at. I do have a vague plan of what I want to see and when I want to see it, but a lot of that is dictated on the opportunities that arise as the game goes on. My stabs are not planned stabs, but patient opportunities that may or may not arise.

i think you should build a strategy based on an opportunity, but that'd be tactics right?? :)
though i never succeed in doing it i think the key is playing save in the start and wait for an opportunity, best would be staying neutral but with all good players you get attacked for being neutral (since that's a danger for them, your whole army is ready to invade someone...), or if everybody uses this strategy you'd get a cold war and then it comes back to strategy i guess... and everywhere you need diplomacy but here the most, since you'll need to decide who to kill and how without leaving the backdoor open...
i think if everybody would play with this principle the people in the center will have to team up against the rest or if one of the corner countries wants to take out his corner-neighbour the center has a chance...
i think they should still use it by working together against the rest but then there's a civil war on 1 side, allowing you to focus on the other...
what do you guys think??
am i talking bullshit again?? :)

Its just like the chess debate. I am a highly tactical chess player, i find it hard to make sacrifices and gambits. But with multiple players tactics remain important but strategy and diplomacy become more important. Until the endgame, where tactics are of utmost important (stalemate lines, etc.). And of course in 1 v 1 games they are basically all tactics.

Diplomacy tactics are very simplistic IMHO, especially when compared to a game like chess. Sure, there are occasional opportunities to do something imaginative, usually involving convoys, but at the end of the day it's a game with perfect information & limited movement, so it's very difficult to find brilliant, unexpected moves. Once you reach a high enough level (& I'm not talking madmarx high, just experienced), I think it's a safe to assume that all the players see the potential tactical plays & it becomes a question of outguessing one another.
Strategy is much more important because it gives an advantageous position to make use of tactics. For example, if an experienced Germany & an experienced France are fighting in the west it will not be decided by who is the better tactician, it will be decided by who had the foresight to build that extra fleet, or stick that fleet in NAO. Tactics are the tools that strategies use.

Brilliant but unexpected moves besides convoys.

Support one side of a bounce to get it to move instead of bouncing.
Move a unit that might be under siege to cut a support elswhere, but then move additional units in with enough strength to bounce a possible attack on the moving unit preventing it's dislodgment.

I'm sure there are more I'm not thinking of, but checkers only has one type of unit yet still has some interesting tactical elements to it.

I think diplomat33 has a nice point about tactics becoming more important later in the game. I'm starting to think that strategy is the more important skill earlier in the game and then as the game progresses tactics becomes more important.

Tactics = micro, strategy = macro. Strategy is made of tactics.

If your tactics are good, but your strategy and diplomacy suck, it may be possible for you to stalemate with your neighbors long enough to pull out a survival or draw. But you have to rely on poor strategy and diplomacy on the part of your neighbors, and must therefore rely purely on tactics to defeat them. A poor strategic and diplomatic position can make tactical victories impossible.

If your tactics and strategy are good, but your diplomacy sucks, you can defeat your opponents if they don't recognize the threat you pose and don't work together against you. But you have to rely on poor diplomacy on the part of your neighbors, and they can throw a monkey wrench in your strategy by diploming to do things you don't expect. A poor diplomatic position can make strategic victories impossible.

If you're good at all three, you're competitive.

If your tactics suck, you'll probably have a hard time achieving your strategic goals, whatever they may be... which will put you in a weak diplomatic position.

I'd honestly say that strong tactical knowledge is the foundation of a good Diplomacy player. But it's only the foundation.

As far as limited opportunities for creative or brilliant play I vehemently disagree. I don't think I've ever played a game that didn't have some examples of outstanding tactical play. Brilliant tactics are limited by the lack of solid analysis. In my opinion, very few players possess enough skill to analyze an opponent's position, deduce how they will move and then respond creatively.

IT's really a triangle that rotates to put the most important part at the top depending on the phase of the game.

Early game - Diplomacy. You have to be able to smooth talk the other player(s) out of attacking you evebn when they have already started.

Mid game - Strategy. You have to have a solid one to present to your allies that they can get on board with and follow it through.

End game - Tactics. Negotiations are done. The strategic course is run. It's time to knuckle it out to the end if you have the wherewithall to outwit your opponents and allies both to stab and get the win.

@Draugnar
Yes, those are very nice tactical moves. My point is that they are seen often enough that they are typically considered along with mechanical moves. I know that in most of the games I play, support moves are just as much a part of the thought process of players as are simple attacks and holds. Plus, I'm assuming you came up with those examples off the top of your head. That just goes to show how frequently they crop up in games, no?

What's the big boys' position on the use of boats? I try, whenever I can, to land armies on land and leaves the boats in the water where they belong. Is that a good thing to do?

Yes and no... I pull them a lot, but for some reason, my opponents overlook them when considering their moves. The one I didn't mention is just sneaking in behind another player's ,move sequence. I've done it where I let not only the first, but the second and third move up because I knew the player would try to block and cover his block and in some cases cover that one as well.

Yes, I completely agree with you that there can be some truly satisfying moments when your play works out, but theoretically, in a high-caliber game, the possibility of sneaking in behind will be observed by all participants and so whether to attempt to do so or not is more of a guessing game as to your opponents' moves than a tactical insight that only you can see.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that yes, it absolutely takes a strong tactical foundation to be a good player, but there is only so far you can go due to the limiting nature of the move options, so my tactics will be as good as yours and any other experienced player.

Maybe, maybe not. Many top players have weak tactics but can talk their opponents into doing really stupid stuff. So don't assume because the person is a highly experienced and top player that they are top notch tactically speaking.

A happy balance of tactics and strategy brings victory. 50/50

Says the man with 57% defeats :P