Whats the difference between tactics and strategy when it comes to a game like diplomacy/

cause it seems like some of your positions overlap.

I think 3 players per country.
Person who decides orders.
Person who conducts diplomacy.
Person who gives the general idea of what the country should do.

Tactics and strategy differ a great deal in diplomacy. God tactical player can be successfully enough, but to win strategy is needed. For example, with good tactical play England can expand to 10 centres fairly easy, but to transform this to win he need good strategic vision. England who is interested in draw can go with easier route and expand in Scandinavia/St.Pet, but England who wants to win have to go west and brake through to the med before Italy or Turkey seals it forever. England can win without control of the med. Good tactician will expand England to 10 or so centres, and then find that Italy took Portugal and MAO, so any chance to push unit on the other side of the main stalemate line is non-existent. God strategist will carefully plan how to push for the med and secure Tunis and only then go east for easy pickings.

Building on fasces' idea, you could have three roles:

- Minister for Foreign Affairs to organise diplomacy (presumably with his Foreign Affairs equivalents)
- Minister of War/Defence to strategise/recommend tactical movements for units
- Prime Minister/insert relevant Head of State title here to assess his Minister's advice and submit orders.

I'd expect all 3 would need to act in concert to a certain degree and the variant as a result would lend itself to longer game phases.

If you really wanted your could also make it a 4 person game by splitting Minister for War into Field Marshall (controlling army movement recommendations) & Lord of the Admiralty (or equivalent country title) for fleet movement recommendations.

I see the only stumbling block being how this could be coded up! The alternative may be having a designated Prime Minister (who actually bets the Dip points & wins them dependent in the result) or even getting the 3 to play 3 seperate games but with their roles being rotated for each game.

What do you blokes think?

(of course if there's no coding involved everyone would need to be logging into the Prime Minister's account, so it could be a bit of a nightmare. I think in an ideal world the coding solution would be best but would require Oli's expertise & availability no doubt.)

I like the 4 person more. that way more co-ordination is required.

Not really..PMs would do the trick.

You can create the game, fill it up with volunteers and then they can pick they advisers in the forum.

I like this....this also would be great for a School of War game too.

Nice idea Gobble. Since I'm mostly a gunboater, I think I'm better at Strategy/Tactics than at negotiations. I think I could be a good Minister for War, if a Prime Minister wants to hire me.

@ fasces:
Dejan is right. Tactics' horizon is usually limited within 1 year, rarely 2. It starts with the building phase (what/where to build is tactics!), it involves units movements, their interaction, the analisys of your opponent's possible counter-moves. It usually ends in the autumn retreats phase, when Strategy decides the new goals for the following years. And tactics then restarts. The product of a Tactician work is "The Plan". Bad Tacticians make a plan for a single turn, best can make it for a year or two (cluster of plans based on whatever can happen).
Strategy's horizon is so much wider. It goes through all game long on a different level. Strategist is always wondering what the Main Goal is. So he starts with "How do I win? how do I get 18 SCs?" but, depending on how things are going, the question could turn into "I can't win, how do I get a draw?" or "They're about to defeat me, how can I survive?". His answers involve things like "I should ally with X against Y" or "now is the time to stab K" or "A & B allied are a threat, the Minister for Foreign Affairs should break that alliance with some promise" or "Since our enemies stabbed each other, then our strategy changes". The product of his work are 1) a request to the Minister for Foreign Affairs for Diplomatic goals 2) a request to the Tactician for Military goals.

@Ambassador. I guess you're a wondeful Diplomatic (and your name suggests it, lol). But the idea of splitting Minister for War into two Sea & Land Ministers (2 tacticians? really?) makes me think you're not a wonderful tactician. Perhaps I'd split it into Strategic Affairs and Tactical Affairs. But, probably, the "Strategic Affairs" are what the Prime Minister should do (basically it's what fasces said "Person who gives the general idea of what the country should do. ").

If we really want to get picky we could have this:
Head of State: Leads the nation, gives general orders to the others
Minister of Foreign Affairs: Conducts diplomacy
Minister of Industry: Decides Builds
Field Marshal: Gives orders to the army
Admiral: Gives orders to the navy
Diplomat/Soldier: owner of the account, fowards diplomacy messages to the others/finalizes moves.

We have 2 options:
1) Keep it small and efficient.
2) Demonstrate the effects of bureaucracy on war by having massive cabinets.

Yeah, like Italy in 1941-43. Air Force didn't know what Navy was doing and vice-versa. In 3 years they weren't able to take even Malta!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta

If you code it, then there will need to be a third kind of message (global, private and internal). Breaking up the tactics (Field Marshal and Lord of the Admiralty) would give the strategic player more of a role. But remember that 7*X can start to become a big number within the context of the number of people who are actually on this site.

Yes. To be practical, I think that:

1) Head of State - HoS - Strategist - Person who gives the general idea of what the country should do.
2) Minister of Foreign Affairs - MoFA - Diplomat - Person who conducts diplomacy.
3) Minister for War - MoW - Tactician - Person who decides orders.

it's 3x7= 21 people and it would be complex enough. I mean that would require a phase lenght not shorter than 3 days. Even more if we say that the Tactician can't coordinate moves directly with an allied MoW, but he must forward his proposal to his MoFA, who will forward it to the allied MoFA, who will forward it to his MoW, who will think about it and will reply back via the same "iter". In this case what would we need? a 10 days phase lenght?

Or we could play a smaller map. Like Ancient Med and make it 5*x...

Currently, I could just see how to the tactician could completely ignore the Head of State/Prime Minister/general idea man, and just go with his own thoughts. I'm assuming that they would all be able to talk to each other, but what if the Tactician and Diplomat could only talk to the Strategist? This would give more of a job to him.

I think the Tactician must obey Strategist's orders. Say Turkey. If the Strategist say:
"We're at war with Russia, allied with Austria and neutral to Italy. Diplomat {MoFA} says Austria doesn't look reliable as ally and Italy could replace him whithin a couple of years. Russia is idiot and must die. So cooperate with Austria but don't let him grow too much because we could either be stabbed or need to stab him",
then the Tactician must do a plan that follows this guidelines. He can't stab Austria yet or help Russia or put a fleet in Ionian to piss off Italy! No?

About the "Tactician and Diplomat could only talk to the Strategist {HoS}" proposal:
So if the aforementioned Turkish Tactician {MoW} has to agree a "support move" with the Austrian Tactician the iter would be: "he must forward his proposal to his HoS, who will forward it to his MoFA, who will forward it to the allied MoFA, who will forward it to his HoS, who will forward it to his MoW, who will think about it and will reply back via the same "iter". I think a Month/Phase would be needed.

@Gobble. Which phase lenght did you have in mind?

I am not planning on playing this game or anything, but a word of advice, if you do do this, play on Classic with Custom Start... that opens the game up even more for strategy and Tactics...

I was thinking of something like a 3-day or more.

About the "Tactician and Diplomat could only talk to the Strategist {HoS}" proposal:
So if the aforementioned Turkish Tactician {MoW} has to agree a "support move" with the Austrian Tactician the iter would be: "he must forward his proposal to his HoS, who will forward it to his MoFA, who will forward it to the allied MoFA, who will forward it to his HoS, who will forward it to his MoW, who will think about it and will reply back via the same "iter".

Good idea :D
But if so, the MoFA has to be the player in the game, because that way he can use the normal ingame chat functions. Or, the Strategist can be the actual player, but he is obliged to only communicate what the MoFA advises him to say.

You quoted me cutting off "I think a Month/Phase would be needed.", LOL!
Well, yes, but I was thinking more about the possibility for a MoW to directly PM the allied MoWs that his HoS allows. And only for tactical matters like "who supports who" and so on.
In the example above, The Turkish HoS allows his MoW to PM Austrian MoW and maybe Italian. Not the Russian. If alliances change, permissions change too.
This quick communication between allied MoWs, allows a MoW to advice/warn his HoS whether something is going wrong in the war. So the HoS consults the MoFA and they could find that what the "Ally" is doing is different from what he says. And so the HoS could decide a change in strategy, whithin a reasonable time, and give new orders to his team.

If the tactical conversation, between two allied MoWs, passes through the HoS and/or the MoFA, then they could be tempted to make tactical decision cutting off their MoW, who could become useless.

if you do this game i would be willing to be an advisor for someone if they would like. any position would be fine by me

We could do this way:

The game is No Chat. Strategist (Head of State) is the actual player.
- Strategist can PM only his Diplomat and his Tactician - no one else.
- Diplomat can PM all the other Diplomats, and his Strategist.
- Tactician can PM only the other Tacticians that his Strategist allows him, and his Strategist.

This way would be about like:
Strategist is the brain and eyes
Diplomat is mouth and ears
Tactician is hands & feet
Everyone would have a share of the "nose", advicing/warning the Strategist if they smell something.

So, each one would have his own important and irreplaceable responsibilities and therefore would have fun.
Toughts?

Hi gobble!

Well, the problem is that the increase in number of players also increases the risk of ruining the game by having one inactive...

Another problem is that incorparation may happen and may be a problem when it is a high stake game...

Share of pots is another issue.
Since the strategist is the only one with the right to make the moves, should he be taking the responsibility by getting a larger share??? This leads to another problem: so are strategists forced to pay more at the beginning to make it fair?

Some minor issues are like what happen if a strategist quit...

Thoughts?

Sorry I mess up with the technician and strategist but my points still stand as long as making the roles correct...

Sorry guys

or we can do a game with global chat only to help keep control

I've played a few games like this (all face to face), and it really does test how well you can work as a team. Every time, the team that won was the team who was able to work together the most effectively and efficiently, not necessarily the one with the best single person on their team. I know from experience that this method works, and am behind any attempts to bring this to vDip.

Coding ideas - make 21 "countries", 14 of which with no units whose elimination is connected to one main center. This would allow the whole "PM" idea to be replaced by a little creative coding. The "Grey Press" variant was able to alter the effects of chat based on the country, so this should be able to do the same. Each country only has a certain number of chat boxes, so that they can only talk to who they need to. If we did this, all games would have to be anonymous so PMing couldn't happen illegally. If it were possible, the "orders" section of the tactician and diplomat could be redone as "suggestions" to the strategist instead of hard-and-fast orders. That way, the "suggestions" would become the actual orders if the strategist were to CD. Everyone would have to contribute points, that way everyone has a stake in their country, and will want to better it for selfish reasons. If we go on the honor system and have volunteer cabinet members, they have no reason to support their own country, and may give incorrect advice just as a prank.

Just a few ideas, do with them what you will. : )

Good idea, but we need to find someone to write the code for that.

Sounds interesting, I'd like to try your variant when it gets ready.