Especially the more advanced players: please contribute. I'm hoping if we post enough cases like this, we can draw some lessons for each of the games.

The game is:
http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=125554

The game developed into a good alliance (and likely three-way) R/F/I, but with F lagging to capture his front. At first I was going for a draw, but in Spring 1906 I decided to try for the solo. Germany was bearing a grudge against F, and for a while it seemed this could be exploited. In the end he - rightly - turned against me.

Obviously I didnt get the solo, and the game ended in a five-way draw. So for the more advanced players, please help out. If you go back to the pivotal point in S06:

- Was there a solo available in this game?
- If so, what mistakes did I make that caused me not to get it?
- Was the timing for the solo run too early, too late?

(also, others, please post yours - I want to learn from as many games as I can)

(et tu jmo?) ;-)

Okay, so Autumn of 05 was the last chance I think you had for a solo. What I would have done in Spring 06 was moved to Denmark with Sweden, moved the North Sea to Hel, Warsaw to Prussia and Norway to the North Sea. That would have crushed any stalemate line in the north and given you room to build a fleet in Norway. That would have forced Germany and France to panic in the west and would probably have prevented the rush to shove armies at you in the mad scramble that ended up happening. Italy would have been a fight, but all you need there is to hold him off until you can spare some units south since the north would have been yours. You would have taken Denmark, Kiel, and maybe Berlin, all the while helping France hold Munich, and propagating the war between France and Germany. From there it would have been a slugging war in the north and south to get unit's to push into 16, 17, and 18, but it would have been possible since you had killed the stalemate.

Please keep in mind this was a quick glance, and I didn't look back before that turn so this was just the first opportunity or semi importunity I saw. I'll give it a better glance over tomorrow.

I think your mistake was the stab of Italy. Had you made peace and moved in on Germany, a well timed year of +2 or even +3 would have given you the builds to launch a successful solo bid against the Italian

Now I'm not an authority. I am horrible at getting solos, absolutely horrible. But, I don't draw if I can't solo - I keep going. I offer these two memorable games to the crowd

gameID=55581
gameID=60765

But to answer TMW's question more directly:

There certainly was a solo opportunity, and you moved too early on it. I would have given Constantinople to Italy in fall 1905, keeping him as an ally. Since he didn't have armies over in Anatolia, you didn't really have to worry about security there. At this point you should realize the true player you need to manipulate is France. He has two conflicts that he's in that he can't win without help, and a vulnerable backfield exposed to Italy. At this point you and Italy would be even at 10 SC's each, and both of you would be interested in driving further across the stalemate line. So I would offer to help France (particularly against England) while pressing Italy to move on France in the south. France will get builds from the English SC's and use them to fight Italy and Germany. At this point, you're sitting at 12 SC's with units encircling Germany and Italy having a significant force out by Spain and you run your solo attempt then

I think you could have won that second one goldie, it would have taken years and a lot of work, but you had Italy beat to the Med with those fleets and 3 fleets behind him.

Minister and I had alot of diplomatic press during this game which I thought was pretty interesting. Especially circa 1905/1906
I spent 2 years pretending I didnt see a solo danger thru my blood red rage at France (which at that time had cooled to extreme distrust and paranoia).
Minister spent 2 years pretending he didnt see an opportunity for a solo.

For me it culminated in Denmark surviving in 1905/1906, even so far as a Russian fleet retreating away from Denmark in Autumn 1906.

Would things have been different if you had retreated to Denmark and gotten an extra unit?

@jmo - yeah, there's a bit of regret in that one. I tried finessing my way around with the draw button, but it bit me in the ass. I was too concentrated on the short-term effects of getting my ass kicked in Russia/Balkans to realize the long-term potential of my Western units.

But man, that stab of Italy was the prettiest one I've done to date.

@Gold: Actually keeping Italy on board was actually my first strategy. But after a miscommunication in F05 made me grab Con (not intentional, I kind of expected a two-way bounce), Italy was on alert and not moving to France anymore. He built one army to hold the line in the South, and even waived an anti-French build F Rom. You're probably right I could have prevented it by giving Con to Italy.

It was that build A Nap more than anything that made me think I should quickly push south rather than north, since Italy clearly wasnt planning on letting the line go.

@Dyager: yes we had fun didnt we? :-)
I don't think having Den would have been significantly different in the north. The pivotal point was to have some cooperation there, either with F (preferred but impossible after my stab of Italy), or with you. In the end, without you, there wasnt a solo, so I didnt pretend at all! :-)

@Gold, as an addition, I'm not sure that Italy and France would really have gone at it. Both seemed to trust eachother more than they trusted me. Possibly due to Con, but still.

That may be true, but my point remains that you could've held Italy in the south easily. Besides, if that were the case you could've been able to paint Italy as the aggressor. The North is where I would've concentrated my efforts.

are we only allowed to post games that were drawn? I'd like to post a game in which i soloed, in what looked like would be a draw

Feel free!

alright here is the game gameID=128931

Initial strategy for me to start out was forming a western triple with england and france as i was germany. I hoped to ride that as long as possible, and it was working well, even though everyone was aware of it. Spring 06, england stabbed me, but then left shortly after so i was able to recover. Skipping to autumn 08, france and i were allies still, and at this point i could tell he wasn't the most experienced player.. just from his messages and overall strategy. Keep this in mind. Spring 09, i begin to talk to russia, as he really wants to survive the game. He offers to help me diplomatic wise to help me solo. He was doing things to ultimately mess up the players, and make them a bit less unaware of the solo threat. Russia destroys st petersburg, and i will let him survive there. I soon realize that i am over the stalemate line on land, and could solo by stabbing france. The key thing here is, Russia was still talking to people. France had no defense against the stab, because of Russia's diplomatic maneuvers. In the end i stabbed the unsuspecting france, as he thought him and i would 2-way draw and take solo.

The main point i'm emphasizing here, is using small powers to your advantage! Even if they are very tiny, use them any way you can. If it wasn't for Russia, and keeping France unaware of the solo threat, turkey and france would have made made up, and agreed to force a draw, and France would have locked up the Mid Atlantic area, leaving me no chance to solo.

I can certainly agree to that. But smaller powers certainly don't give themselves willingly all the time, or even often. In your game it would also seem that France had a *severe* underestimation of your intentions. Were I France, your moves in S10 would have prompted me to make peace with T immediately and turn back.

Which begs the question: are solos always the result of others' strategic mistakes? I would say the answer must be no, since so many different players get so many different results.

So what's the secret of getting the solo?

I firmly believe that in a good field, a solo can only be achieved by someone else's mistake/greed

@TheMinisterOfWar: The stabbing of Italy was not that well prepared. And why the hell did you wait so much to (not) take Denmark? But I admit, after you stabbed the pizza guys France went berserk! Fantastic display

@ccga4: You may not, please see the thread title. Also why do you think a game when a player dropped out when having 9 centers would be interesting to anyone? No I haven't seen your solo coming, until everybody dropped out of the game and let you win

@alamothe You know, I think the key may be that in fact the solo run was indeed not so well prepared. In fact, I had planned to focus north before focusing south, then changed my mind when Italy was consolidating his line. And knowing my north was still weak, I allied with G and decided to forego Den.

So what should I have done? Sandwich E/G with F and await an opportunity? I figured the southern front held some promise, since I was outfleeting Italy slowly. But maybe I should have waited on that front?

I guess I'm just not sure what to focus on once the endgame really sets in.

The question is, is a solo really not just a draw between one player? Is soloing qualitatively different than drawing?

One key to success in Diplomacy is to create and sustain division. A player such as Tasnica (userID=37930) is an absolute and undisputed master in this area. Don't "obliterate your enemies", rather take from them what you need and offer peace on favorable conditions, turning them into allies. The ratio remaining SCs : remaining enemies is the factor you'll want to bring as close as possible to zero over the course of the game.

This has consequences for the early game: foster long-distance relationships: contact long distance players early and feed some intel. "This player is not very talkative", "this player came over as highly aggressive", etc..

In all the above: don't overdo it. Subtleness is key.

This game just ended a couple of days ago: gameID=127479

This game was extremely close to a three-way draw. That's what I expected it would be until the phase that I was supposed to hit draw. I realized that England and France were fighting, which isn't all that unusual, and decided that I could probably pull a few strings and keep them fighting long enough to get to a stalemate line, which I did, eventually getting Tunis, Munich, and Berlin. If you have all three of those centers, no matter what nation you're playing, you have a good opportunity to solo. That's what I do, though I admit this strategy doesn't work well all the time.

Here is one from a couple of months ago ... gameID=125340

I apparently hit draw on my mobile to end it early, but I would be interested in any expert thoughts on which of the 4 remaining powers (if any) had a legitimate shot at a solo and what the general strategy should have been.

@bo - even into 1910 and 1911 there were some mighty strange French moves in that game.

Yes, mendax, there were. I likely would have had to draw if he'd decided to put some faith in his only potential friend, but honestly, when was the last time someone got a solo without some mistakes on the other end?

So when should we be expecting part 2?

@ Virtual Bob: At the point at which you hit "draw" you had the best solo chance in that game. You should have finished off France and in doing so wrapped your fleets around ready to hit Italy. Diplomatically you should have been doing everything you could to keep Italy and Austria at war. A solo was definitely possible in that one.

@VirtualBob- You almost certainly would have soloed that game if you had kept going. Italy was completely out of position to fight you for France, so if you had picked up one of Warsaw and Moscow the solo was pretty much locked up. And you only don't get one of Warsaw and Moscow if Austria had moved with 100% faith in Italy that turn. There also was a decent chance France would have taken Tunis that turn. Never put in an early draw in any game, and especially not in gunboat.

Oh, it was a gunboat, I missed that. Well, ignore what I said about diplomatic talks.... but actually, even more chance of a solo!

I have two main concepts for how solos can be created in high level games.

The first is having your competitors have the wrong kind of units and/or have difficulties with builds. There are a bunch of examples of this. For example, as an eastern power, when you stab Germany, often the first centers you take are Munich/Berlin and thus keep Kiel occupied for the rest of the game, stripping Germany of the ability to build. If Germany has a bunch of fleets, all those fleets do is freak out his neighbors. This is why it is often good to go take Munich/Berlin fairly early as a southern power. On the other hand, as a Western power, Warsaw and Moscow are often vulnerable in the late game (especially with some good diplomatic planning ahead) because Russia often has a southern fleet sitting in Sevastopol that gets in the way of defending those centers from an attack from the north. But the obvious example of this is also the most common reason for a solo by France, which I would guess solos twice as much as anyone else, but I don't know that stats. Very, very often France can set up a situation where the whole top of the board is clinched because England/France/Russia don't have enough northern fleets to avoid being overrun. Combine this with the relative ease with which France can hold Tunis, and France has a very clear path to a solo. The two examples I will link to here are both gunboats, but that is just to emphasize that you don't need a silver tongue or anything like that. It's just raw strategy/tactics.

The first example is one of the more breathtaking gunboat performances I have seen, by Babak, one of the best players ever on the site. gameID=56629 If you look at the board after Autumn 1905, the solo is already essentially clinched when he as France has only 11 centers! The only center that he needs that he might not get is Berlin, and by Autumn 1906, that is clinched too. A beautiful game.

A more extreme example from my own games is gameID=104961. In this one, I would argue that my solo was virtually clinched (although not as absolutely and clinically as in Babak's game) in Autumn 1911 when I had only 7 (7!) centers. This is because I had broken England's back and Russia was underfleeted with only one more obvious center on the way, and so I was pretty much guaranteed the entire top half of the board except Berlin and Munich. The south was even better, as Austria only had the one original fleet, so it was almost certain that I would eventually get all of Italy. And that's what happened.

The other main concept to help one solo is to use the threat of elimination to get a small power to work with you. In particular, powers are often doomed to be eliminated when the draw contracts unless they get across the stalemate line, and so they can help you break the stalemate line open. And you want to get them working with you as early as possible, ideally when they still have 6 or more centers. The fact that this doesn't happen more often is the number one way that the general quality of games on this site could improve. Early draws are boring. For example, the game that is simultaneously my favorite and my most frustrating is gameID=15117 where I became an early English vassal of davebishop's France to help him solo, after which I found a way to turn the tide, making him my vassal and leading to me having a clinched solo. He then bamboozled me and I pissed it all away, but nevertheless it was a great game. A very similar example from the World Cup that I didn't screw up is gameID=81978, which basically has the same thing going on. France faced certain elimination unless they worked with me, which gave me the opening I needed.

It's obviously not just and England/France thing. My favorite live game I have ever played on this site (which has a lot of familiar faces) is gameID=46844. The key to my solo in that game was leveraging a completely doomed Austria as my ally in 1912 onward to help me break into the west. Otherwise, I had absolutely no chance of soloing.

So I hope that is at least a little bit of insight into ways to break open a game into a solo opportunity.

A lot to digest here. One of the things I take away from it: the solo is achieved through builds. Interesting way of looking at it. That basically means the preparation for the solo run is something continuous from the start.

Thanks for the comments on that game. You hit on my plan exactly. Unfortunately, I apparently hit draw by mistake on my iPhone. :(

You should have coordinated with England and attacked Germany at the same time you stabbed Italy.

I'm just flattered that Redhouse still remembers me!