S01: Turkey and England both CD. I draw/cancel, Russia and Germany follow. France and Austria keep on going.

A02: By now, both nations are being played. Russia has half the map to himself, France is fighting Germany for a path into England. I do what I typically do - sacrifice a center, knowing I'm about to get it back.

A04: The map is more normal, starting to develop and become an actual game. England CDs. I do what I'm best at as Italy - find a way into 9 centers quickly.

S06: France finally decides to make a run at me. I let him have his fun, turn everything around from Turkey and try to make peace. I probably didn't have to, but I'm so bad at endgame that I did anyway.

A06: France stops submitting orders but never CDs.

A07: France hasn't submitted in order in 5 phases, finally goes into CD. Game finally draws.

France and Austria are obviously noobs, as one might say. Here's my idea…

Diplomacy needs a tutorial! That draw button makes no sense to noobs, they press it thinking that they are about to get a crayon on their screen to play with. The pause button is obviously a diplomatic tool; I notice a lot of noobs like to press it instead of the draw/cancel buttons, clearly because of their misconceived purpose of making pretty faces on your computer screen.

I am unbelievably bad at gunboat. I'm like .. really bad. But doesn't the draw button make sense, especially when everyone else has pressed it? Usually four people aren't metagaming in someone's house down the road and plotting to get a draw out of you when it's not necessary in the spring of 1901. Come on..

I always tell people to learn to play before trying gunboat. Same can be said here. That game was so fucked...