Talk. Talk to everybody. Every turn.

Find an ally. Be loyal all game. Stab him for the win.

Play PPSC until you are ready to move on.

Always Check your orders one last time before you are done.

http://www.diplom.org/index.py is your friend.

Don't ever quit. There is freedom in knowing you are going to die and using that knowledge to hurt the people that put you in that position.

And last but not least... Don't discuss ongoing games on the forums. It's against the site rules.

All good advice, except the stab-to-win part. Players have memories, and draws are better than stabs in the long run. That is, if you intend to play for a while. Oh, a d have a think skin. More people think they are great players than actually are, and will be obnoxious to you when you don't follow their advice/orders. In the end, it is just a game. A great game, but a game.

@Qin - No, the game is about winning. A draw just emans you weren't good enough to win the game if you are big dog in it.

@Chan - Don't listen to Qin. If you have a chance for the win, *take it*! A respectable diplomacy player will respect you and, while grumbling, will consider you a quality player. Qin doesn't understand the game as it was originally intended.

@QSHD: I doubt that. Play anon. Even if you don't, a good player will not hate you for stabbing for a solo. He'll trust you less implicitly, true, but it doesn't mean he wont ally with you under reasonable circumstances in the future.

YJ has good advice. The most important thing is to talk to everyone. If you are brand new to Diplomacy, make sure that you understand the rules of the game. After that, just join some games and see where it takes you. There is a good chance you will not do so great early on, but it is really a game that you get better at with some practice. After a handful of games, you will know basic strategies and will begin to refine your play. Good luck.

More advice:

1. Trust no one, even if they won trust. Keep your guard up, "He who desires peace, prepareth war" or something.
2. Be nice. Always be nice. "I had no choice but to attack you and it's not personal, just a strategic choice" > "You've been an asshat all game and now I take revenge."

Never quit.

If you're about to die, do anything you can to hurt the one who killed you. Attack him, support his enemies, attack his friends, sacrifice your pieces to his enemies. When you're losing your mantra should be "... to the last, I grapple with thee; from hell's heart, I stab at thee; for hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee...". Do whatever you can to hurt him, but don't ever quit the game.

Trust no one.

Be paranoid - always look for the stab.

Always look for a stabbing opportunity.

Watch your back.

Paranoia is a fickle friend.

Never stab half-heartedly. A double backstab with +2/+2 poisoned blades is far more effective than a single stab with a penknife (Speaker used to have (be?) a 4/4 thief/assassin - the DM wouldn't let the assassin out to play very often though).

Use the big map, there's more on it (click the square beneath the normal map). Use the orders history (links are at the bottom of the game page).

Never accuse a player of cheating on the forums. Email the mods instead ([email protected]).

Oh, and never ever quit a game. Ever.

Enjoy it. It's only a game.

P.S. look at my stats. I'm crap at this game, but I have a lot of fun.

don't listen to them. if it's guaranteed that you'll lose, you might as well quit. forcing yourself to stay in a game that you will definitely lose will just make you dislike the game and leave this site. then again, that could be a good thing too. so weigh the options.

No, don't quit when you're losing. It's childish and it's not part of the game.

Bolshoi you are a fucktard.

Quitters are the worst type of players.

Don`t quit a game. When the end is near, strategic suicide is unpredictable to your opponents and a lot of fun.

What Nike said. Also, read this:

http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/

bonus of quitting, you can laugh at these fools who get emotional everytime you mention how you enjoy quitting.

One concrete thing to know about quitting, OP -- if you have a lot of quits ("resignations") on your profile, you probably won't be invited / allowed into the better forum-organized games.

Have fun and don't take it too seriously. It's only a game. That being said, I rarely listen to my own advice.

HAVE FUN!!! HAVE FUN???? This isn't about fun, this is about WAR!!! ;-)

Have fun, and mostly play. That's the best suggestion. Lose, listen, talk, learn. And you'll be on your path to greatnes. Oh, and take a long while to look at the map, familiarize yourself with the location of the provinces, the different openings, etc. People will surprise you always, but if you know the map well they'll do it less often.

gameID=78959

Consider my last game. I did a stab that turned out not too good, and was about to get pinched by an opportunistic France and a very angry Germany. Rather than quit, I opted to make a public show of throwing to France (I believe I was singing the French national anthem in global chat at one point). Doing so made him trust my words - he listened when a few turns later I showed him (truthfully) that even if I did throw to him that Turkey would almost certainly solo.

This put me in a position where he (and Germany, grudgingly) allowed me to share in the draw. Now it wasn't situation critical in that game (yet) but it would have been if I hadn't found a way out. Even if I had failed at that I would have been delighted to make sure that France or Turkey soloed.

Also, look at late game Austria. with only 1 SC left he HUGELY influenced events and was probably the crucial factor in unifying the west, since we all 3 needed to coordinate to stop him from tear assing around France. There is LOTS to do when you are underpowered.

How on earth were there that many neutrals left after 1901!

It's a WT variant. Very powerful if England doesn't fuck it up :P

Thank you..To all of you I hope I may Like this game...

Here are some more advanced tips too, that I am only starting to get a grasp on:

Explain your stabs. Suck up to your enemies, stroke their egos even while you take their centers. Let them know if they can make you see its to your advantage to make peace then you would much rather be working WITH them.

Bantering with your rivals can be a LOT of fun, and you can learn a lot about whats going on in other spheres by talking to people you aren't directly engaged with (this is something I'm NOT very good at, but I've definitely fed good intel to rivals across the board)

Be subtle. The better your rivals are, the less likely they are to do what you want. They *will* see through thinly veiled bullshit.

Okay fuck it, we're boosting mr. Chanakya to the top 100 GR with his first few games. More advice:

*Language: avoid sloppiness, ambiguity, bad spelling and grammar, etc.. You want your messages to reflect your thoughts, bad language reflects bad thinking and it makes you a potential target.

*Following on that last piece of advice: Opening posts. If you want to construct a certain alliance with a country, write some nice paragraphs about it. Start wishing that person a "great game and lots of fun" or something, put in a joke (doesn't need to be very funny, people will appreciate your reaching out to them, if they're strong players, that is) and continue to explain the general outline of your plan, followed by some tentative moves.

*Write EoGs (End of Game). This will provoke other players to contribute their own EoGs and you can learn from them. Also, it makes you reflect about what you did during the game, why, and whether in retrospect how that worked out.

*The forum is your friend. You won't find many multi-accounters having two of their characters exhibiting two different personalities here, so if somebody's contributing here it's bound to be a good choice in player (plus since they feel part of the community there less likely to NMR.

*Play passworded games (less cheaters there), play WTA (not PPSC), play anonymous (but demand to know who's in the game), play for some real points (20, 25, so people are at least a little interested) and finally

*Learn this thread by heart.

*One last thing: this is not about having fun. You are here to win. You will suffer, playing bad players in the beginning who do things that only hurt you and himself, and you will tell him, and he won't listen. Then you both die. You will feel cropped up anger and think the game is no fun at all: revel in it. Frustrate yourself to victory rather than to pleasure yourself to death. Don't make friends either, make temporary allies, but they're not your friends, they're other people on a computer who - if they're good players - are also not interested in making friends. So don't have fun, and don't make friends.

*You're ready now.

If you are not in an anon game look at your opponents passed games and what they did when they were that country previously. A lot of players are a creature to habit in their opening moves and allies so know that