Why is gunboat so popular among the high ranked players

[DipPlayer88]

I noticed that most of the high stakes games here are gunboat (no in-game messaging). Just curious, why is this the case?

[Lord of Broken Plains]

Also curious!

[Octavious]

Gunboats are a lot like cryptic crosswords. There are a lot of unwritten rules that if you're privy to makes the game a lot easier, and if you're not makes it largely incomprehensible and your play seem erratic to more seasoned players. Because of this a lot of gunboaters set a high points buy in as this prevents players new to gunboats joining in and adding more random elements to the game. Knowing how to communicate in Gunboat is utterly useless if the person you're communicating with doesn't speak the lingo.

[flash2015]

I think also gunboat in general is a much smaller time commitment than full dip. I could see someone playing seven gunboats simultaneously. Only a few masochists would play seven diplomacy games simultaneously.

[Claesar]

It's true. Ten Gunboats are roughly the same time commitment for me as one FP game. And even then the Gunboats have the advantage that I can just do the orders once every 24 hours and then not log in for another 24. That doesn't usually go well in Press.

[ILN]

There are a lot of unwritten rules that if you're privy to makes the game a lot easier, and if you're not makes it largely incomprehensible and your play seem erratic to more seasoned players.

Yes, people playing gunboats need to learn to click on the larger map button. That one shows all orders, even ones that weren't carried out, and you can see for example that Russia support held your fleet in black sea even though you decided to move to Rumania with it... If you never checked the large map you would never know.

[swordsman3003]

I realize I am repeating some points made earlier. But in short:

• Gunboat takes a small time commitment. If you log in once a day, you can submit your orders and be done with it.

• Gunboat requires a huge amount of self-reliance and experience. Newer players depend more on press to know what's happening and what they should do.

• The webDip points are used to lock out newer players who can ruin a gunboat game; that's less of a problem with classic Diplomacy.

• You might be tricked into thinking that the "top" players are the players with the most webDip points. Because it's possible to play a huge number of gunboat games, and because the players wager these high bets, it's possible to accrue more points through gunboat. So what really matters is not the points, but a player's ghostrating. You can even check someone's ghostrating that excludes gunboat.

If you're curious about gunboat -- what makes the play deep, interesting, and popular with experienced players, I wrote a journal for huge-bet game we played here back in 2017. I write other stuff about gunboat Diplomacy on my blog, including strategy tips.