Also, I wish I could do a project as cool as this for school!

Interesting results. Hopefully there are no double entries by people and the results are valid. It'd be cool to see the difference in values of territories between people who ranked themselves a 10 and those who ranked themselves a 5.

Of course, I ranked myself ten :D

Most effective strategy:

"Yorkshire Pudding"

Just think...there's a slight possibility that that person was being serious...

Isn't that when England moves all his units to Yorkshire?

I did reply as honestly as possible but I found several "problems" First is of course EVERY space is situation dependent as to how important it is, so I answered as generically as possible. The big problem I had was in ranking supply centers, I figure a supply center is VERY important no matter where it may be ...Liverpool is pretty safe and secure in most games so is it "important"? well, not really but it counts toward your total number of units so yeah, it's far more important than say the North Sea that is far more strategically important in most games, I weighed ALL supply centers at a minimum of 6 with that in mind (some of course more)

It's definitely difficult to assess the territories in a vaccum. Yes, supply center territoriess are important but depending on the situations of the game certain non-supply center spaces are worth far more than multiple supply center spaces. Of these North Sea, Ruhr, Tyrolia, Gascony, and Livonia are clear strongpoints that often dictate the game. Yet depending on the dynamics of the game, alliances structures, and so on, these centers could be meaningingless.

More effective stategy is not only contry specific, but situationally so. That's the beauty of Diplomacy and where it takes the principles of chess and randomizes the possible scenarios. There's no way to say what the best strategy is though. It all depends on the other players on the baord, and how you interact with them. Many people insist on a Lepanto opening for Italy, and yet it's incredibly weak and transparrent unless all the diplomatic work has been done in advance, and that you have achieved the desired relationships necessary to make a Lepanto effective. Likewise many people favor the Churchil opening for England, but if France stabs in S'01 you've pissed off Russia, and Germany may smeell blood in the North Sea. Some players buner down as Austria, and other love the Hedgehog. Once again every decision is dependent on what the other six players are doing.

All seven nations are essentially equal at the start. They all have strengths and weaknesses, and the secret to performing well with them is to understand your opportunities and exposures, and compare them with the evolving diplomacy. There is no such thing as 'Oh crap, I drew Italy! I'm screwed!' in Diplomacy. This is simply the mindset of a loser.

Finally I find it rather laughable that any players in this community would be ranking themsleves as a 10 out of 10. That's brass...

I have the same problem with the rating...i just rated key points like Const quite high and the others in the middle...@GC: I to call yourself an expert you should have played at least 3000 phases and that doesnt say much either ;)

I filled it out for you, really is tough because the centers or territories importance is dictated by the strategy of the players. To me Burgundy is one of the more important non-sc territories, if you can grab that from france, having him move away, towards england or spain, you can generally nail france to a cross quickly. Saying that, if you are France and grab it, definately an excellent start. There are many other instances of this with other territories.

And Ruffhaus, it is.......... Crap! I drew Austria, I am doomed. I never have any luck with that country, everybody wants to feed off of you, never have I received any kind of working relationship with Turkey and then Russia always seems to jump on the bandwagon, Italy sees that and decides I want a piece of the pie and before you realize it your centers are raped and pillaged faster then Grant taking Richmond.

But, it could be my style of diplomacy that causes that, that the is neat dynamics of Diplomacy.

who said "play for a draw with 3-4 people"?! I really dont like people doing that right from the beginning >:0

Also, why do so many write "Juggernaught"? Isnt it actually "Juggernaut"?
O_o

"that is the neat dynamics of diplomacy"

Juggernaught is the English spelling, while Juggernaut is the American spelling (I think)

ah

Juggernaut is the only correct spelling : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut

Bam i was right!! (/^.^)/
*celebrates*
:D

How do I see results?

Well you learn something new everyday!

Maybe the mistake arises from naught which is a word in English, as opposed to naut which isn't a word.

5 people said they were 10s. . . woah. We got some bigshots.

i only gave myself 7

I like the discussion more than the actual ratings. From those who feel themselves to be a "10" (again, isn't that sort of situation dependent? as well?) to those who feel "oh crap I drew xxx" to best openings. EVERYTHING mentioned is situation dependent, you may play one way but that is foolish in my opinion, if for example you draw France and you "always" open to the Channel, that sort of thinking is just plain dumb, you must evaluate your opponents and who makes the best partner for you, who can you trust and for how long (trust is never forever in this game) who can you simply not trust? etc. If you always open to the channel but England is your best opportunity as a partner, well you really screwed yourself now haven't you?

FYI, my statement made at the end as to the best strategy was simply to be as nice and agreeable with others as you lied through your teeth to all!

Generically speaking, people favourite certain openings for each country, especially if you are in an anonymous or gunboat game. tO attempt a non conservative opening some things should occur, such as to know the people around you, or assess the opponents well, or believe you have a working relationship, or you decide to go for it.

Gunboat ...why oh why would anyone play that version? The game is called DIPLOMACY, diplomatic interaction among players!

Because diplomacy does occur in gunboat games. It's just a different (and limited) version of communication. You send messages via your orders. It's not for everyone, and certainly not for "dot grabbers", but you can convey requests and suggestions and threats with your orders just as you can with words. In the end it's a variant. People play it for the same reason they play games that award "victory" to player who do not dominate the map. I find the latter departure from the game to be far more appalling, whereas the former is actually an useful exercise in reading different types of communication that can be invaluable when applied to full press games.

You can tell that most of the respondents are experienced diplomacy players because most people said France, Germany, and Turkey. Not Russia. France, because it usually holds the most diplomatic sway, Germany because of its central position, and Turkey because of its safety.

Ranking the territories from 1 to 10 is hard a hard way to put value on them. For me, the value of a territory depends on what country I'm playing as. Although, my highest rankings went to territories bordering many other territories and SCs, and based on how many home SCs they border.

While France is a good answer, saying France does not qualify you as a good diplomat. I would argue that Austria has the best starting position because it is easiest to negotiate with many people as that country (as you need to) which sets you up in a much better position in the endgame than if you do well as any other country.

*France, Germany and Turkey, even.

France is by far in my opinion the best country to start as. So long as you can make England/Germany fight, you hold all the cards in the North. add in a peaceful Italy and you can be in complete control of the Western side of the board before anyone can effectively move on you. Honestly the best alliance is the Russian-French alliance imho

That said, Austria is still my favorite :D

Thank you guys so much for the help! The results are here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_Il31Ql0sIWCqYOPfRwTZNZw9U5sPpPiOpbY_z9p5CA/viewanalytics

If anyone knows how to set it up so that I can take an excel sheet with the data and code a color based map from it, please let me know. Just for some context, this is for a required course at my school called Ezine. In this class we work in groups to create a magazine by the end of the semester. Our magazine is called Reason (It is about formal and informal logic), and I am writing two articles on diplomacy.

I know the idea of rating each country is kind of arbitrary, but (almost) all of us know that the black sea is normally more important than Clyde is. I need to be able to quantify the value of each territory in order to do a thematic map, and this is the only way I could think of doing that. If anyone knows how to find archives on the amount of time units spend on each land territory, I would like a link to that information. Thanks again for everything.

How was it worded again? I think it was best country to draw, it was not "favorite" And even that depends on how you play the game, England has great security and is seldom eliminated while Austria wins more than her fair share of games, she is also the first eliminated in most games as well (feast or famine) I myself just hate Turkey but can't say why and my "favorite" is Italy, probably because it is the hardest to win with and sneaks under the early game radar ...nobody cares too much about Italy in the games start (for the most part). All of this really helps show why we like this game so much!?

Some of the responses to the final question are amusing :) I look forward to seeing a Jaggernut strategy in a future game!

@korn. "...this is the only way I could think of doing that. "

I tried an algorithm, time ago, and posted it into this interesting threadID=19229.

That's cool! Would you mind if I also do something with that algorithm for comparison?

Absolutely. Feel free to do anything. I posted it purposely to help you having some new idea.