I think one of the key words in Full Press Diplomacy could be "dynamics." You want your relationships and moves to be as dynamic as possible, evolving your relationships to closer alliances, moving your enemies into the friend zones, always trying to find the best solution for every unit. That's also the most fun, I guess.

play play play and play more.
My experience is gunboater skills actually are a disadvantage. Those fullpressers I met are far away strategically from those gunboaters I know.

The two types of games are completely different and what's obvious in gunboats (never attack austria with italy) are barely true in fullpress.

What I see is fullpressers do a lot more strange and insane moves/stabs which a gunboater would never do, because it's strategically stupid. On the other side these moves happen because of alliances, deals, etc. which you don't see.

So my advice is throw out all of your gunboater thinking if you want to achive something in fullpress games. And from the point, when you became a solo threat, then pull it and behave like a gunboater, and win the game.

The bigger you are the more strategy the less talking you need, but to get there, o hell, do anything but gunboat behaviour :)

@Roka- see the thing is, I hardly ever played gunboat at first. so I had no "gunboater thinking", it was always full press or global only press... the occasional gunboat game where I would do decently, but usually I stuck to press games. but lately I seem to get screwed quicker and quicker in full press, so I tried my hand at gunboats, where I began to really start to do good. not so good that I am always winning or anything, but enough to put myself in a center lead for a time or force my way into a decent draw...
@redhouse- I try that, but people just don't like being my ally :(

@butterhead - check out the School of War thread. There is tons of information there and links to past School of War threads with even more advice. Its quite literally a treasure trove.

threadID=940795

@butter: well I suck at fullpress, I simply don't understand those guys :)

@butterhead, why don't people like to be your ally?

@redhouse- I don't know. I try to be a good ally, I offer really nice deals that keeps us even or sometimes even they stay slightly stronger, and then within a year I have 2 or 3 people attacking me. and it seems like that's the case in almost every full press game I play now.
@roka- haha I enjoy my gunboats :)
@goldfinger- alright awesome will check out.

@butterhead - depending upon who you play with you can't become complacent. Alliances can shift much, much quicker in full press than in gunboat

Hmm when you say "keeps us even" that sounds like you have one ally in every game? Or do you have several?

@red- I usually make 2 major allies(one near me and one cross board for future cooperation) and then some other people that I am more neutral towards, those I consider my "minor" allies. I.E the ones I stab first if needed...

I'm in the same boat, way better at gunboat, I think full press requires a lot of practice to get a feel for how often to send press, how to ask the right questions, how to develop those relationships.

I will say I have practiced gunboat a lot more, but it's easier to play several gunboat games at the same time. I only keep 1-2 full press going at once or I get confused about what convos I've had. I would also encourage you to join password end full press games to learn from experience from quality players.

@red- that's considering the number of players... in larger games(like the 34-35 player variants we have at vdip) I have many many more allies...
@Gen Lee- experience isn't my problem really. I have plenty of games under my belt between here, vdip, and facebook(where I started)... It's just that I can't get anything going for me...

My initial thought is that you need to improve on communicating with everybody. Communicating with two people won't be enough. And if you're not talking with everybody, you don't have a solid idea for what's going to be happening. That in turn, can make you less valuable to an ally if you are incapable of providing him with information compared to somebody else that has done their job of figuring stuff out.

Now, if that's not the case, maybe you are sharing too much information and word gets around that you are not one to be trusted. Try to keep in mind which powers don't stand to lose anything by spilling information you give to them. Giving information to a power that doesn't need it can have devastating results if it gets back to the original power that gave it to you. That power now no longer trusts you, and is most likely looking to come after you.

Just a couple things that came to mind right off the bat.

@butterhead - from your comments I see one potential problem in your gameplay style. Now, everyone has different styles of play. Some look for an alliance to stick with to the end, some look for one they can flip in a turn. But regardless of that, you have to be talking full on with everyone, and be "allies" with everyone. No major/minor stuff. The classic board is much to small for that (Vdip is different).

what is vdip is it better than webdip and if so can you play variants and are they better

who is 2ndWhiteLine??? Is he new?

roka, you didn't leave webdip yet? :P

He's some troll. Really bad at diplomacy too.

That Jok3r...what a clown.

2WL: I have 2 ongoing games which I intend to finish. Not joining new ones for weeks now.

2WL- if you are being serious: vdip is another site similar to this one(sister site actually), but it has a bunch of variants(some 30+ I believe). some are great, some are not so much. in my opinion, it's better there than here, especially the overall community. the biggest downside to it is the community itself is much smaller.

@butterhead
Sorry you're having trouble. I'm not the best Diplomacy player, but if you've diagnosed your problem accurately it should be easy enough to fix.

Next time you're playing a full press game, maybe try to glance at the board before you glance at the press that people are sending you. Form a mental picture of what it is that everyone is thinking/planning before you read the press. If someone says something that radically contradicts the mental picture of the game paradigms that you've imagined, then it's reasonable to assume that they're lying.
After you've sorted out who you believe to be lying versus who you think is honest, maybe consider being honest with the people that are honest with you (up to a certain point, of course) and then send deliberately misleading misinformation to the people that you believe to be lying to you.
I'm not actually that good at Diplomacy, but I find that (variants of that) simple strategy is good enough to at least get me into the middle of the game, unless I have terrible luck.

Hope this helps!

Hey Butter: want to play a variant with me so I can stab you?

@ez- because we don't already play together enough? ;P haha