Hahahahahaha. Thanks for making me laugh Lan. We should play again sometime. You always talk to me, even though I'm pretty sure you'd beat me. :-P

Woah, that sucks. If they refuse to talk in a 101 bet game then they are horrible diplomats.

What makes you think they can't speak English? That would be a pretty big drawback on an English-language site...

The sentences they form are 5 words, and don't have verbs in them.

I thought you said they weren't talking to you.

If you choose to count that as talking you can. I don't.

If they're beating you I'd say their tactics were working. The goal is to win the game, right?

My fav line to use is "At least give me a "sorry, bud, you're gonna die" message instead of nothing!"

That usually gets them talking... if not, keep working them... ask about the weather or how old they are... anything to illicit a response... then go from there...

Yeah....

it can be a little discouraging when you have literally sent them ten messages in a row. It's like... if they didn't read the last thirty messages why would they read this one?

But you just have to assume they're reading them and press on, as well as trying to "send them messages" in your gameplay, gunboat style. Try anything. I've tried everything. Something usually works, but in the process of trying to figure that out, it's true you do get screwed a lot.

Find out where they live, go round to their house and then, when they go out to get milk, sneak into their house and hide behind the sofa. Once they come back and log on to the computer you'll be in a position to read out your own messages to them in a ghostly voice as they plan their moves.
This has literally never failed for me.

Parallelopiped +1!

You should contact other players early and often. If they don't respond back or are bad at communicating, that should move them up the "potential enemies" list, and you will need to be ready to fight them. Specifically, you should do what you can to work with more responsive players to try and take them out.

Unresponsive players are a threat, and should be treated as such.

PeripheralVisionary: I fully agree with you, but it should still be noted this should not necessarily be confused with taciturn players.

rlumley: Really? 'Infuriated'? I would have said 'frustrated' or 'annoyed'. Does this happen to you a lot.

Infuriated as well. When somebody should be talking and allying with you, their making a mistake to your detriment too is infuriating.

I would have to say that I've actually bugged some people w/ too much chatter. Though I just started my second league game w/o hardly being able to respond to any press. That may not bode well.

@ rlumley - I've enjoyed any game I've played w/ you (allies or not:), let me know if you get a game that you need another country and count me in - but I've got to finish at least one of my games first, as this was an unusually busy week for me and I didn't get as much chatter as I'd like.

I had a recent game where someone purposefully did not ally w/ me because I joked around on the global board.

Wow. That's a bit much Lan.

@ Peripheral: The first thing I do when a new game starts is contact every player on the board. Some respond... some don't...

@JECE, agreed, taciturn is not necessarily problematic; and I don't have to hear from everybody every turn. But when I get the feeling that somebody can't even be bothered to open their mail, I'm tempted to see if a gunboat shelling their capital city might get their attention.

@Lan: How can one take their ally seriously if they're the Global Jester? =P

Even sadistic, potentially good allies who also have to occasionally backstab as they try to win/draw/survive can be global jesters:)

The sad thing was that game where they wouldn't ally w/ me was anonymous:( I'm sure it would have been different if they knew it was me:P

Maybe they thought its was draugnar...

By the way, when I said 'this', above, I was referring to encountering mutes on webDiplomacy.