"Sorry, just saw the "busy schedules" response. So all of the time options, including 7 days, isn't enough time for you to enter orders? Therefore you eschew discussion?"

I really hate to pull rank, but until you've played some games with high-level competition in them, you're not going to understand how big a time commitment FP really is. If you're not capable of checking in roughly every six hours or so outside of sleeping, and writing reasonably detailed messages all the while, it's impossible to stay abreast of the diplomacy on the board and to manipulate it to your advantage in these kinds of games. When I'm fully invested in an FP game, I'm very likely committing 10-15 hours a week to that game exclusively. In a gunboat game? Maybe 10-15 minutes a day, depending on whether people ready up or not.

There's a separate motive that's particular to me that I can share too, although I expect most people don't have to deal with it as much. As contradictory as it sounds on the face of it, after my talk earlier of how much time it takes to play FP, the game is too long. Press is fast-paced and it seems like there's never enough time, but the actual duration of the game is deceptive. If you make it to the endgame of an FP game with 1 phases, you can expect it to last 3 wks. Set it to 1.5 or 2 phases - and you really need that in order to get enough time to do a good job with press - and you're looking at a month to a month and a half. Add in the inevitable pause requests because you're juggling seven busy schedules for 4-6 wks and it's not at all unheard of for a game to last two months. I'm in one that's just eclipsed the three-month mark, and there's been 10 years in-game. And sure, that adds more time for negotiations... sort of. The average time per turn goes up, but since it's extended due to pauses, it's kind of a bad-faith effort to continue negotiating while someone needs a pause (and thus can't negotiate effectively)... and even if you're okay with that (most people are, I think), the time is distributed unevenly around particular turns determined by stuff outside the game.

TL;DR, much like this post, FP games are time-consuming and go nowhere fast compared to gunboat games. The social interaction in FP games is obviously a strong sell, but it really is a big time sink and if you don't have the time, gunboat provides an avenue for playing Diplomacy without the heavy time investment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYgniftVxQ8

Plus one of the pros of GB is that some good players are total jackasses with bad taste.

For me gunboat has little appeal. I don't like the limitations that not being able to discuss complex strategy places on you, I do not like the additional random elements to the game (such as having no influence whatsoever on other player's opening moves), and I don't like the public press nature of what limited communication methods are open to you.

Still, some people clearly like it...

Thank you PresidentEden, that was very enlightening.

Idiot said - "I generally find GB games pretty ridiculous." (ignorance is bliss)
Some poor Village somewhere is missing him ......

@Octavious
As I said before, to each their own. Both gunboat and FP exist for different reasons and different players play or prefer one or the other for a specific reason.

To be completely honest I didn't like gunboat before because it seemed to have little appeal and also because it just seemed ridiculously hard. Now, I do like it and haven't played press in several months.

@Nigee - I can't give a serious response somebody who steals their wit from bumper-stickers. That's for contributing to the conversation anyways.

I'll address this to seth and EP since you both seem to be the strongest advocates with something to actually say about it. I have to assume in GB games that things like NMR's have a significantly stronger ripple effect. It's a lot harder to get collaborative pauses or cancels so people just play on, and as soon as one country gets an advantage it will have such a heavy impact on the end of the game. Would drive me nuts having such little control over these influences.

@ Cardcollector

The study of other people's orders has always been too much like playing with spreadsheets for me, and I do enough of that at work. I can see the appeal of a shorter game with minimal typing, but I find the Risk based games over at the Warlight site to be more entertaining.

What I find most annoying about it is that it reduces the number of people available to play diplomacy live games :p

Longer phases in full press games do not address the time commitment question. There is an expectation of response and interaction in press games that requires some relatively frequent interaction (as well as real thought time). GB allows a much more asynchronous approach to the game ... if I can find 10 minutes sometime within the phase length to think deeply about the game and enter orders, it can be at the beginning or the end of the period without regard for when others are doing the same.

"I can't give a serious response somebody who steals their wit from bumper-stickers. That's for contributing to the conversation anyways."

http://i.imgur.com/7x3osyb.gif

@VI what you discussed in your last post is completely true about gunboats, nmr's are extremely hurtful to a game in gunboat. It usually gives a couple of powers an advantage over the others, which is not unlike the effect of nmr's in press games but it does have a wider effect.

Those issues you mentioned are why there are so many of these "7 game gunboat series" threads and the like. Because one bad or inconsiderate player can hurt the game considerably, but still that is not much different from press, if you have one player in a press game who barely replies then he certainly will be quickly eliminated, and the people who benefit from his centers will have an advantage over everyone else.
"Would drive me nuts having such little control over these influences." I see this as really being the reason you don't/probably won't ever, like gunboat. You like to have complete control over your surroundings if at all possible, I am sure that in press you can manipulate the games pretty well! Good/great gunboat players can do the same, believe it or not, it just takes the most imperceptible signals to make a power think they won't get stabbed for another year or to commit themselves to a fight that will delay them for years in game. And these skills aren't something that I can explicitly explain really, gunboat really is more of a feel, and a completely different art form than press.

Yes certainly harmful in press but at least there's some means to react, whether it's seeking rapid replacements and pauses or simply rallying against the person with the advantage.

Shame it's uneasy to explain, if I could get my head around that a science does exist to the game I'd be more prone to giving it more of a chance.

What makes you think the players in gunboat can't react similarly to one player taking advantage of NMR to become a solo threat. No different than reacting to an organically developing solo threat. In high quality WTA gunboat games the other players stop solos all the time.

Well VI as I stated above, you probably aren't a personality type that will ever come to love gunboat, and it would likely take you 15-20 fairly high quality games to start to understand some of the stuff I am talking about. But yes Yaleunc is correct and you will see people rallying to stop or slow down the board leader at any given time.

But if you want to get a gunboat game going any time let me know. I would be more than happy to play and if we had a pregame commitment that everyone would write a detailed EoG statement I think that might be the best way to communicate the things that can't be easily understood by an outsider to the game.

I would play as well. Also you can check out the thread for Gunboat SOW currently in progress for lots of additional general commentary about gunboat.

oh, I HATE GUNBOAT------lol

but I'd play with Seth and Yal anyday

Wow. I'm completely dismissed as a serious advocate for gunboat. Hurtful... :c
(I didn't explain since no one seemed to be open enough to it to ask rather than just bash it)

But everything seth said was what I tried to and would have gotten at. He just put it so much more eloquently.

@Seth we should start another GB SoW with the mods. I'd love to be a part of one (either as TA if I'm qualified, or as a student).

Gunboat doesn't need advocating. Almost all of the quick games in the last few days were gunboats.

Everyone coming to this thread saying "I hate gunboat" has completely missed the point. There IS a strong appeal and this thread tried to put it in words.

@Yal - even in press games I find you end up battling common sense all the time and usually takes a whole lot of conversation to make people either see the logic of stopping the solo threat (at the appropriate early enough time) or feeling safe enough to attempt to do so. It's no easy task and would be surprised to hear it's an equivalent level challenge in GB.

Correction: This thread tried to bash gunboat harshly. Well known active community members came to its defense by putting together in words.

@Zmaj - No need to be defensive, While I personally do hate GB at the moment I am clearly trying to get another side to it as are others. The "it's good because I like it and that's that" approach isn't all that helpful.

to my credit, and i believe Yal,seth and cardcollector will back me up, ive played pleanty of GB. I dont think im terrible either, i just choose to hate it. I ned to be able to yell out,and not rely on people understanding the board. I dont see press games, as being to much time. The nature of the game, to me, is much better with press.(my opinion)

Yes, ssorenn has played plenty of gunboat. And he was terrible. Jk, he actually played decently - his unorthodox tactics took many by surprise.

@VI I think that gunboat helps train an important aspect of diplomacy, which is reading the board. Because it is so pertinent to GB's play style, learning to predict what will happen actually helps in press as well because you can predict a stab even if there are no indications one will happen in your press.

Yeah I suppose I get there's some value in that. For me I learned that aspect of the game over at PlayDip where they allow two-player games. Could master the board without it getting spoilt by unreliable players.

This is also the reason of why I play with people recruited through a thread. We won't have as many NMR's (and CD's), and the quality of the game is sure to be (or almost sure to be) higher than a random one.

I agree with CC.

Yes some gunboat games have trouble getting people to form stalemate lines. The recent series I organized was one, way too many solos in that one. But I play almost exclusively gunboat and have 74 draws, plus a good chunk of the 64 games I was defeated in ended in draws as well. Limit it to WTA games and there are even more draws as a percentage as PPSC games that probably would be draws as WTA sometimes don't make it there.