No. You learnt o communicate your intentions wiht your moves. those who say there is no Diplomacy in no-press (aka gunboat) just don't know how to read and interpret their allies and enemies orders in gunboat and are bitter at those of us who can.

In practice your average gunboat game consists of three or four people who know how to comminicate in gunboats and three or four who are totally (or at least partly) clueless. This most often results in the clueless people being defeated, and those who survive opting to draw. On rare occasions you might get all 7 people knowing how to play, in which case what you get is something that resembles a normal game of diplomacy but without a lot of the fun.

Now that analysis I can get on board with except the last part. Playing with 6 others who can play gunboat is a real challenge. Then you sit down and do a post mortem of the game afterwards and have a lot of fun discussing it.

How do you communicate your intentions with moves?

And why to limit yourself only to moves?

You mean cheat?

There are many ways to communicate with your moves. Not the least of which is to support hold or support move something where you feel an potential ally could use it or even where it is useless but indicates you want to work with them. That's just one of many ways.

And you have to limit yourself to just moves because talking to another player in PM on a gunboat game is a bannable offense. It is cheating of the highest order and the mods can read your PMs. All of them.

Lets say you're Austria. You may want to give Italy the impression you want to ally with him by support holding Venice. Then you can sit back and enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling of successfully aranging an alliance in a gunboat whiile the Juggernaught kills you.

Is it me, or does this topic come up every week? Try a gunboat game & see what it is like. If you don't like them, don't play them.

Come to think of it, most post gunboat discussions I've seen revolve around someone declaring it to be the worst game ever and accusing the other players of being idiots for not stopping a solo in a WTA :p. I trust Draugnar has had better experiences?

Ike, I am trying to understand the concept and see what other people think. I don't like your gunboat approach :P

Just lately there has been a plague of cds lately. Nothing wrong with a well deserved win

Is it best to play live gunboat or a slower one?

Always start with a slow game if its your first. Live games are nowhere to learn how to play

Live ones, by far. That way they are over quicker and you can go back to playing real Diplomacy ;)