As JMO said, we have a very active gunboat community here. I'd have to imagine they'd be willing to give you tips.

Now I can't pretend to have much backing behind my recommendations, but I'd suggest good ol' practice.

Play the games by the establishments expectations, and take eog criticisms as tips, as opposed to attacks on your game.

The best way is to just jump in. I started playing gunboat a few years ago and I'd say I'm pretty well versed in it by now... I might not play well all the time, but I can pick up on clues and hints.

The biggest thing is to remember that those moves may be signalling something.

A country supporting your unit to hold usually means support or neutrality.

Typically in gunboat, Italy and AUstria shouldn't fight.

Russia opening to St. Petersburg is a fairly safe move.

Examples.

The first couple of moves seem critical in GB. Peruse the wealth of information about opening moves by country, look at the popular ones and determine why they are.
In the early stages, I still reckon its like chess between 5 or 7 or 10 or 17 people.

The other thing that seems important (which will be obvious to old hands, assuming Im right) is critical mass. Since you cannot negotiate effectively, once you're big you're likely to win.

The best way to improve, in my opinion, is two fold. First, you obviously get better just by playing more often. Second, do some analysis. Take a look over games you played (and other games that didn't include you), and try to look at how games develop, common patterns, and think about why people might have made decisions they did. Additionally, feel free to send a PM to some of your opponents after the game ends, and ask them why they may have made certain decisions they did, or ask them opinions about decisions you made. Not everyone is receptive to this, but there are plenty of good players who are happy to spread information around to others. The worst that can happen is that they won't reveal anything to you, and then you'll only be in the same place as before you asked.


I'm not sure where you are receiving criticism, but it's most likely to be end-game. WTA Gunboat endgame is, for the most part, preventing a solo threat (unless you have the solo threat, in which case you want to influence a solo). It's important to learn when to drop the conflict with your other neighbors in order to stop the solo. Nobody wants to be the guy who breaks the bored and allows the enemy to solo where it can be prevented.

Following the same principle, you need to learn the common stalemate positions, if you don't already. This will help you tremendously with both preventing enemy solos, and achieving your own. Knowing what you can let a solo threat take and still stop his solo is paramount.

And, of course, tactics. Since there is no verbal diplomacy, tactics are more important than ever. Be sure to think about not only what your moves are going to be, but about likely moves your opponents might make. Depending on the skill of your opponents, this reasons make go several layers deep. This is an idea most commonly associated with poker, but it applies to diplomacy as well. Level 1: What do I want to do? Level 2: What does my opponent think I want to do? Level 3: What does my opponent think that I want him to think about what I want to do? This is a more complicated facet of the game, but it's critical. If you're only looking at your pieces and what you want to do in a turn, not only do you make yourself predictable (and more easily thwarted), but you'll also miss many opportunities to interfere with your opponents' plans.

Actually, once your big, all the other *good* players will band together to keep you from winning. One key is to watch for that to happen and not attack someone who is actually protecting the draw.

I'm not a very experienced gunboat player, but I have played some. Like in normal diplomacy, the key to winning the game is ... diplomacy. You *need* to have other players make moves that are in your favor. So just like in normal diplomacy, your main goal is to make sure you have allies, or at least make sure your enemies are fighting a third party.

The biggest difference in my opinion is inertia. In normal diplomacy, alliances can be fluent and things can change very quickly. Say France is attacking Germany and gets stuck, while England is heavily committed against Russia in the North. It is now in the common interest of Germany and France to stop fighting, establish DMZ's in Ruh/Bur etc, and stab England together. If they are allowed to talk, all of this can happen in one season, with England blissfully unaware of his impending doom. In gunboat, the same will happen, but it takes much longer. France has to stop his attack, and issue support holds. On the next turn, Germany returns the support, and the alliance is ready to start off. But, it has taken a full year to "negotiate", and England will at the very least be prepared.

Therefore, you should choose your enemies carefully. Once you start an attack, you'll be committed for a while. So don't just take centers off anybody whenever you can. As the saying goes: "Never start a war you haven't already won" :)

The corollary is predictability. Because the alliance structure doesn't really change over the course of one or two moves, you can predict what will happen reasonably accurately. You could try to do this for some current high-level gunboat games, like gameID=129929, gameID=127189, or gameID=129104. Don't post your predictions here though, we don't want to discuss ongoing games!

Because of the unique nature of gunboat, your actual moves matter a lot less than your long-term strategy. Try this when practicing your games. I think you'll be surprised how well you can predict and manipulate your opponents' actions.

basv, you make some great points, but I do disagree with your last paragraph. Sure, you can get pretty good at predicting enemy actions, but remember, skilled opponents will also be able to predict yours.

You still need to have a long-term strategy, of course, but because all of your communication and negotiations is done simply by the moves you make, those moves are all the more important.

Here's a quick example: In full press, you can conceivably open to the Channel as France, with the intent of using it as leverage against Belgium in a fight against Germany. If you open to the channel as France in a gunboat game, England is almost certainly going to immediately prepare for conflict against you, even if your move, in your head, had no intention of going after England.

Additionally, you can't coordinate moves easily with your allies, apart what you can infer from the board and the qualities your ally has shown. Strong tactical moves are even more important, since you don't have verbal communication to use as a crutch, so to speak.

Individual moves are critical when you have no way to talk to your opponents.

<reads comments voraciously>

I was already intrigued that you arrived at the exact opposite conclusion from me. Of course moves are important, but I most gunboat games are lost not due to inferior moves, but inferior strategy. In the long term, you'll win the guessing games about as often as you'll lose them. The real key is to avoid situations where you have to outguess your opponents to make gains.

I'll consider your example: France moves a fleet to Brest in S1901. While this doesn't necessarily invoke a war between France and England, a follow-up attacking move will. So how will that end? Well, England will outnumber France in fleets, so in the long term England will be able to push back. If England gets either Eng or Mao, France's attack is over. But France has the initial advantage. If he can convoy an army to Wales/Clyde, or directly to London/Liverpool, England is toast.

So you might say that the outcome of France's gamble will be decided by concrete moves and tactics. I would argue the opposite. The channel and surrounding areas will be chaotic for at least a few years. The real question is how Russia and Germany respond. If Russia builds in Stp (nc), England will lose. On the other hand, if Germany moves into Burgundy at an opportune moment, or grabs Belgium, France has overstretched and is in big trouble.

Let me also offer my own example: gameID=63906. In this game, gramilaj managed to solo, against a pretty strong opposition (and me :p). Now I don't think any of us made exceptionally bad moves, or that gramilaj played exceptionally good (he even missed a turn and still won). The key to his victory was that he read the board perfectly when making his Spring 1903 moves. It was clear that Austria/Russia was going be chaos for a long time. France and Germany looked to be headed for a long struggle, while England was scattered and unlikely to play a big role, at least until the endgame. So all he needed to do was to get rid of me, Turkey, and that's what happened.

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=130718
Get some experience here

One thing i'd add especially occurs when trying to stop a solo, but can happen anytime.

Predicting what players will do, and supporting them. Now when trying to stop a solo, experienced players will expect support from you to somewhere, perhaps when trying to get a stalemate. Other times, for example in austrian/italian alliances. Austria might try for bulgaria with italy in the aegean. As italy, you should think about what Austria wants you to do, and hopefully when you need support later he will give it. Now this doesn't always work as it is of course gunboat, but when two good players are on the same page, it can be very powerful.

I would definitely suggest playing some gunboats in other variants other than the classic board. This will hone your skills in 'reading' player's intentions. The classic map is a little dull for gunboat games (IMHO) as many of the openings made are quite standard. Play & explore some of the lesser known variants, you'll be thankful that you did.

@basv, I see your point. We only really slightly disagree. My opinion on why actual moves are more important in Gunboat is due to the lack of press. Not only must you take into consideration the pure tactical value of your moves, you also have to take into account what message it gives to your opponent and the rest of the board. Again, you have to take that into account in a press game too, but in those games, you have conversation to help explain and persuade.

For instance, when France opens to the channel, England is likely to respond defensively, preparing for a French attack. Your point about that move not being a sign of war until an follow-up attack supports my argument in some respect. Normally wouldn't be in a full press game, but it's more likely to lead to conflict between England and France in a gunboat game. It's a situation where England and France could have both had the initial goal of teaming up against Germany, but what France's move signaled to England chanced the course of action.

Had France talked with England in a full press game, they may have come to an agreement that would have let France move to the channel without raising huge alarm bells for England. In a gunboat game, it's more likely to spiral into war. England responds to France's move by defensive/offfensive preparation against France. France, seeing England's response, may then execute aforementioned follow-up attack. That would be an instance of two people, who were initially on the same page, driven to war because of the message that a single move made.

As I started with, I don't believe our opinions differ too much. We both agree that moves and tactics are extremely important in all game modes, we're just disagreeing which game mode is the most reliant on it.

Anyway, back to the OP:

Here's a link to a game that I soloed the other day that should have been stopped. Try not to read the chat from after the game (at least until you've analyzed it), and answer some questions:

Why did I, as Germany, make some of the decisions I made? Why did I attack France, not Russia, when England was about dead? Did I make the correct decision (don't think about the fact that I ended up soloing into account here. Remember, the solo should have been prevented)? Why?

What could have been done differently by my opponents to ensure that I was not able to solo?

Look over the game in as much detail as you like, and feel free to ask me the reasons why I made any decisions I did (whether it be general strategy or a specific set of orders on any given turn), and I will answer you to the best of my recollection.

If you give us some more information on the specific parts of the game that you are having problems with (early-mid game strategical decisions, knowing when to stab, endgame and knowing when is the right moment to drop what you are doing and to stop a solo, etc.), we can give you more focused answers.

I don't consider myself to be a top tier gunboat player, but I think I'm solidly above average. There's been people to offer me advice along the way, and it's nice to pass some information along. Hell, if for no other reason than my selfish desire to have higher quality gunboat games on the site.

And then I forget to post the link to the game: gameID=130880

When I first started playing I would be super-aggressive and grab at every available SC with no regard to what else was happening on the board and because I had no end-game I was reducing the quality of the games I played in, now I can be taking units from one country whilst supporting them into another because I am trying to prevent other players get too many SCs, if you can hang in a game opportunities can present themselves later on so you don't have to be gung-ho immediately.
It took me probably about 300-400 games to understand all of the various stalemate lines, once you know these you will change the way you play because earning a draw working with fellow gunboaters to prevent a solo can be more satisfying than actually soloing yourself.
In saying this the solo stats in gunboats are heavily in favour of Turkey and then France so be way of them getting too many, once Turkey gets about 9 SCs they become very difficult to stop.
Also try not to fight too many enemies at once, don't spread yourself too thin.

ok well we all know russia was just a noob skittles :P

"Because of the unique nature of gunboat, your actual moves matter a lot less than your long-term strategy. Try this when practicing your games. I think you'll be surprised how well you can predict and manipulate your opponents' actions."

I disagree as well. A good gunboat player (IMO) is able to react well to a changing board or to an opponent's moves. In other words, a strategy is never set and you must be ready to take advantage of any potentially beneficial situation.

You also need to be able to "read the board". By this I mean you need to be able to view, analyze, and predict the rest of the moves of the board, as best you can, and use that to your advantage. For this reason, most high level gunboat games have very traditional and predictable openings.

^all the more reason to try playing gunboat games in some variants other than the classic board IMHO.

Bump

If you have a plan in gunboat that lasts longer than 2 moves, you're doing it wrong. That's how I view gunboat as an advantage over press personally. In press you need to somewhat commit to a long term plan with allies to make things work, but if you're good at gunboat and can communicate intentions through moves, you don't have to verbally commit to anything long-term and still get to ally with people, it's just a lot trickier. Each move can be analyzed as an individual effort to gain tactical advantage, and if you take all the tactical advantages you can, you'll kick ass most of the time.

Feeniks: you can always check my webdipquiz, which is meant to help gunboaters willing to improve.

http://webdipquiz.blogspot.hu/

On basic long-term strategy I would suggest join/follow School of War games/threads.

All (seemingly) good advice. Thanks all.

Read and memorize what y2k just wrote, its probably the best description of gunboat strategy I've read on this site.