That's a terrible answer to his question. The article quoted has nothing to do with gunboat.

All I know is (on this site) you have to look at the orders archive to determine what hidden messages players may be sending you by moves that don't show up on the map.

This site will be helpful :
http://www.variantbank.org/articles.htm
If you have specific questions you can always ask in the forum,people will help,just don't forget the rule : never talk about ongoing games in the forum.

The best piece of advice I can give you is patience. You will be successful in gunboat if you can combine good knowledge of general diplomacy strategy with a solid ability to predict/influence the other player's moves. In the early game, attacking a neighbour will result in a known-variable, you and the other player will have war. This benefits the players on the board who neighbours both of you. There are times when you want to affect the other player's decisions to, and as Charlie mentioned oftentimes intentionally failed support orders will indicate this to them.

Patience...and practice.

I don't agree completely with what Lando says about attacking a neighbor early. Attacking just to attack, or doing so because you're looking to gain a specific center, the board be damned, is bad strategy.

Generally, when I make an aggressive move towards a neighbor early, it's to make them appear vulnerable, by getting their units out of position. My goal is to make them look like a better target for a mutual neighbor. If that neighbor can see the opportunity to gain, let's say 2 centers in the next two years against the player I moved against, but has no guarantee of gaining a center against me, then more often than not, he's going to go where the builds are. When it works, I'm in position to either follow through with the "pile-on" alliance, or move on the mutual neighbor if he get's out of position going for those two centers.

Opening moves: Same as normal games (though the game goes better for I/A if they don't immediately attack each other).

Make sure you look at the large version of the map (click the button between the arrows beneath the mini map). The large map shows all of the orders entered, the minimap only shows some of them. If you click on an area of the large map it zooms in to that area to give you a closer look.

Look at all of the orders. No, that's wrong. *Study* all of the orders, so you can see what moves people intended, who is supporting whom or offering support to whom.

Study the map from *every* players view point. e.g. As France: What moves might England make? What moves might England want me to make? What moves might England want Germany to make? What moves could France make that could help England? What moves could France make that would help Germany?

As France, you might order [Pic S Yor-Bel] and even though England didn't order Yor-Bel this isn't a wasted order as you are indicating to England that you'd like an alliance. (If Germany also ordered [Ruh S Yor-Bel] then England has a decision to make.)

Some players have used the different voting buttons to communicate intentions in GB games. This is against both the spirit of Gunboat and also site rules. The only communication allowed between the players is the orders the players enter.