I can see thinking of NAf as an oddity, but England gets flanked in NAO regulary, by France moving from MAO or Russia from Norwegian.

Despite the famous exception of the Lepanto, Syria is probably a much more secure corner than NAO, and even I would wager more secure than NAf. If any sea square in the northwest is frequently unused, I'd say it would be Irish Sea, not NAO. But I'm a newb listen to what our lord Abge of the Moustache says.

NAF is great for when Italy is soloing as France; taking no Eastern centres but swinging loads of fleets around the top after opening strongly westward.

NAO, even.*

Thank you guys for mentioning Syria and Irish Sea. I forgot to mention those spaces. They are also pretty unused, especially at the start. Not to mention Clyde. Has anybody even heard of that territory? Ha-ha!

The mere mention of Clyde makes me want to check my emails

@Hellenic Riot
That may or may not be good. Better to check, though, just to be safe.

Not really answering the question, but thanks for creating these strategy threads. It's nice to see some discussion about Diplomacy on the forum instead of the usual political posts.

@captainmeme
I really appreciate your comment. You are the first person to recognize my underlying goal in the creation of all these posts. The forums on this site spend way too much time discussing political issues and real-world events, rather than discussing Diplomacy. I create these posts to re-inspire an interest in the game. I think we need more posts discussing the game, not other things. I mean, this is a website dedicated to Diplomacy, so let's enjoy our common interest.

Thank you for your opinion, I will now disregard it.

North Africa is cool now that I found a stalemate that locks up the med (sans mar and Spain) from the east with only 3 fleets and two armies. Plus it looks so fragile it pisses people off

There's actually a Syrian opening for Turkey. Never heard of the Clyde opening though.. Nonetheless Clyde is probably used more, even though Syria is important to a Lepanto.

Heligoland Bight is more of a buffer than something to put an army in. I've also been using Skaggerak less now that I found out the hard way (F2F) it doesn't connect to Baltic Sea.
Beyond the obvious, I think Bohemia is underrated.

@Santa, define stalemate line? I'm certain you can't make one that's impossible to break with only 3 fleets and two armies. You can make it annoying as balls.

Perhaps he means A NAf, F WMed, F GoL, A Pie, F Tun/TyS?

Wait, that's strictly worse than.. Never mind.

Yeah to hold that stalemate line you would need 4 fleets and an army. If piedmont was a fleet and everything else was the same then that would be an impregnable stalemate line.

You could hold a Med stalemate with 3 fleets and 2 armies if you don't count Tunis as part of the Med... Otherwise you do need at least 4 fleets.

Is that position 5b?
F Lyo H
F Mar S Lyo
F Wes S Lyo
U Tun H
U NAf S Tun

www.dipwiki.com/index.php?title=The_Gamer's_Guide_To_Diplomacy:_Stalemates

True, I wasnt thinking about a western power that had pushed that far into the med.

F North Africa, F western med, F tyranhean sea, army Piedmont army Tuscany

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=191060#gamePanel

In action

I think what you can say about North Africa is that it has a lot of tactical importance as a way to force or stop movement in and out of the med but you usually don't see it in standard games, in 1v1 though you get to see its importance

I my humble opinion....

NAf is useful for helping break in or out of the Mediterranean, which means it's useful, but not useful in every game. Sometimes I wish there was a land bridge between NAf and Spain, as it would make the territory much more interesting.

I've always found Heligoland Bight to be useless strategically - it's a useful buffer to keep Germany from building fleets on the edge of the north sea.

NAO/IRI are also useful when facing standoffs over MAO. They really only useful when England/France are directly involved, because by the time any other power gets big enough to take MAO, an arms-race style standoff over MAO is usually circumvented by finding another route to/from England's SCs. I'm not an expert playing expert games, so I've seen NAO used as a route to get a fleet from NWG to MAO one phase faster, and as a really obnoxious unexpected retreat for dislodged enemy fleets. The same goes for Clyde - in fact, both seem like more of a liability for England than an asset.

As France I've found NAf useful many times. If France sets up a Western triple or an Anglo-French alliance against Germany and then turns toward Italy, they have more armies than they need. A convoy to NAf creates a unit that can either move to Tunis or provide support that can't be cut. And if France gets the army into Tunis it provides defense while the fleets move east.

Irish Sea is also useful for a unit moving against England. Because it's hard for England to maneuver units there early, it's a good place for an attacking fleet to go and make life hard for the English. It's only neglected because it's so freaking hard to get that much of a jump on England in the first place.

The most useless territory is clearly Rome. Don't let it being a home SC trick you

That is indeed one dodgy-looking stalemate, Santa.

@uclabb
You might be on to something. I never usually consider supply centers to be useless or neglected, since they are needed to win the game. But Rome is pretty unused, even by Italy. It is a good place to build armies, though.

I'm just shocked to see five Diplomacy strategy threads on the front page.

A pleasantly surprising change, eh?

@Tasnica
Yes. And most of them, if not all, are courtesy of myself. I mentioned in an other thread that I wanted to make the forums of this website more about Diplomacy, rather than nonsensical topics. This is part of my attempt to do that. The more everyone enjoys these types of threads, the more of them I will make. I'm not looking for popularity, by the way. I just enjoy good discussions about the game.

Spain NC FTW