-Type highly tactic and innovative message to opponent.
-Reread, dilute words as "angry" to "unpleasantly surprised", pimp message, add jokes, add compliments, add fluff, ask about opponent's dog, end by leaving the final decision on your proposal to him to make him feel in charge
-Reread, dilute words as "unpleasantly surprised" to "a little unexpected"
-Solo victory

^My not having solo victories is related to me never doing this lol.

Ah, solos. I get 1 in every 4 games as far as the stats go! :D

Yeah, but how many solos were in 5 player games? As Cartage you've got a much higher chance :p

As to your question, it depends on what you compare. A good diplomat with decent tactical skills will beat a terrible diplomat with excellent tactical skill any day. Except when playing 1v1 variants.

Against high level of play:
- Tactically inadequate, but highly skilled in communication and negotiation can win the game.
- Tactically superior, but terrible communicators tend to fail quickly.

This game is setup so that the moves are simple, it is the negotiation that is the real meat of the game.

Unless you play gunboat, which is its own game with completely different play.

I would agree that in a traditional game with full communication the diplomat will always beat the strategist. Strategists would excel at gunboat.

Even in gunboat there's a need to send signals of various kinds--It's just harder to do so.

Even in gunboat, you need to understand larger strategic concepts such as balance pf power and need to be able to formulate a long-term plan toward success.

In general games, I think tactical skill is helpful, but diplomatic skill and strategic vision is more important. I think amongst high-quality players, tactical ability is roughly at the same level (since frankly the tactics of this game are not that complex), and that strategic vision, style, and communication/diplomatic ability are the key differentiating factors that decide games.
However, perhaps in low-level play, tactic ability is a greater differentiating factor.

NO, not if he is playing SplitD, nobody can

Interestingly, certain countries appear to tailored more to "diplomats" and certain countries appear to respond better to "generals".

For example, England does significantly worse in Gunboat than in FP games, and the opposite is true for Austria.

Seriously? How on earth does Austria do better in gunboat than full press, playing Austria is all about talking, isn't it? I just don't get gunboat...

I did some analysis on this a few years ago. Based on data from about 9,000 games played on email Judges, Austria, England and Russia all did slightly better in press games, France, Germany and Turkey did better in gunboat and Italy was terrible in both.

While long-term strategic vision is probably better, nice fancy tactics can quickly push things in one's favour.

I have not played many games but I believe that in a regular game, tactics/strategy and diplomacy balance each other out. They are like two sides of the same coin. In order to win, you need an almost equal amount of both.

Most people who try to just win the game through tactics alone and without communicating usually go down relatively fast.

However if you are very diplomatic but don't understand the game's mechanics then you will also fail unless you have help.

So it's best to have a bit of both as you can formulate a strategy to win and then use diplomacy to make the game flow your way.

I've noticed that there are three "layers" to the game. Good tactical sense is the bottom layer; it's got the most definite hard-and-fast rules, and in any event the layers above it depend on the player at least having some tactical ability.

Strategic ability is layer two. It's the ability to know when a tactical gain isn't worth it. It's knowing when to send new builds into an existing front or open up a new one.

Layer three is diplomatic ability. This is the ability to articulate tactical and strategic knowledge, as well as the ability to determine the interests of other countries. And it's only as good as your tactical and strategic abilities.

tldr: you need all three, and you should generally work on whichever is weakest.