Diplomacy is a game of relationships, trust, cooperation and, well, diplomacy. As such, it is somewhat surprising that one of the most popular variants appears to lack all of these things.
Gunboat Diplomacy is a game in which there is no communication between players. Instead, players simply command their units on the board and try to capture 18 supply centres without speaking to anyone.
Types of Variants
Variants are versions of the game in which the rules change. There are several different types:
- Map variants: These variants use a different map. Colonial Diplomacy is an example of one, being published as a standalone game. It is set in Asia, but it features mainly European powers, with China.
- Historical variants: These might be set in Europe, so on a version of the same map, but in a different era. 1648 is an example of this. Of course, the board isn’t exactly the same, as the political map of Europe was different, but the setting is still pan-European.
- Rules variants: These are based on the standard Diplomacy board but the game has different rules. Usually, the basic rules remain the same (although the BUILD ANYWHERE variant rules apply to a lot of variants). Chaos Diplomacy is an example. There are two versions of Chaos Dip, one which involves seven players but where the starting SCs are scattered across the map and could be in any SC on the board, and another that involves 34 players, one per SC.
- Fantasy variants: These tend to be based on works of fiction, TV shows, or films. There is a Middle Earth variant, for example, based on the world created by J R R Tolkien.
- Synthetic variants: These are variants that are based on a map which has no context other than itself. One example is the terrible Chromatic Diplomacy, also known as Five Italies Diplomacy. This game seeks to provide a perfect balance, and has a circular map featuring, you guessed it, five Italies joined together by a central landmass. Why is it terrible? Because it’s boring!
- Format variants: Diplomacy was designed to be played face-to-face, and to be a one-off game. Any other type of Diplomacy is a variant, whether it’s face-to-face or not.
As you’d expect, a lot of variants could be classified as being in multiple categories. The variant Versailles, for instance, is a game of seven powers based in Europe, but in the 1930s. The Major Powers are: Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, USSR, and Turkey. However, there are also seven Minor Powers: Spain, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Rumania (yes, still misspelt), Yugoslavia, Greece, and Egypt. Seven players are allocated one Major Power and one Minor Power, but you don’t know which player controls which Minor Power.
Versailles, then, could be described as being a Historical variant, being set in Europe in a different era, or a Rules variant, as it uses a very different rule set, at least at the start of the game. For me, though, it’s a Historical variant, as there is only one significant rule change: the introduction of Minor Powers, obviously… although it is a pretty big change!
What is Gunboat Diplomacy?
Gunboat Diplomacy is a Rules variant. It is set on the same board as Standard Dip, has exactly the same rules, but simply removes any communication. It can be just as easily played face-to-face as remotely, although it is best played remotely where it is an anonymous game: to prevent secret communication between the players (via email, IM, etc) you don’t know who is in the game, let alone which power they control.
It is, then, a game of pure tactical play. There’s no over-reaching strategy – no way to plan alliances with other players by talking to them. For me, this makes it a game I find, on the whole, dull. I’ve played it several times, with mixed success. Tactics aren’t really my strength: in classic Diplomacy, I have a tendency to over-complicate the tactical side (albeit with some success occasionally). This might be a strength in Gunboat Dip, I suppose, in that it keeps people guessing but often I find it simply means I make bad choices.
It makes for faster games, though, which makes it popular with PUSSYCAT players. Removing the need to discuss strategy, tactics, moves, etc, means that deadlines can be much shorter. There is even a variant of Gunboat Diplomacy called Speedboat Diplomacy, in which deadlines are just five minutes long!
Working Around the Rules
No communication means it is difficult to work with other players, so players have found ways to get around this complication. I’m going to leave aside the cheating aspect, which involves finding ways to discuss moves with someone else in the game: this should get you sanctioned on any website!
One way of communicating is to sacrifice a move to signal your willingness to work with another player. There are often times when one or more units are not going to be doing anything significant, for instance when you have a unit that might otherwise be ordered to hold. Instead, you might order that unit to support another player’s unit when it can’t actually do so, eg: Turkey orders their fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to support England’s fleet in the Barents Sea to move to St Petersburg. It’s not a particularly subtle tactic, and – in this example – Russia is certainly going to notice!
Another way depends on what rules govern draws. On Playdiplomacy there are alternative options for ending a game in a draw: the DIAS draw and (what I call) the DINS draw. In a DIAS game, you can only draw the game with every other surviving player; in a DINS game, you can choose the players you want to draw the game with, excluding some survivors. This means that, if DINS is selected when the game is set up, Player A might use a draw proposal with Player B to signal that A wants to work with B. For me, this shouldn’t be allowed: it is a very obvious way of suggesting players work together using a process that should be limited to ending a game, not playing it; but it also delays the game because players have to indicate that they don’t want the game to end.
What makes Gunboat Dip so popular?
There are a few factors, perhaps the foremost one being the speed of the game. As I mentioned above, without the Diplomacy Phase, without including the time to communicate with other players, the game can be much quicker, using short deadlines.
Gunboat Diplomacy can be added to almost any other variant of Dip, as it simply removes communication. There’s no version of Diplomacy that can’t be made poorer by removing communication.
It is also often held to be a good way to learn the tactical side of the game. Without the need to communicate with others, the focus can be on learning how to move the pieces, how to organise your defence, and how to launch successful attacks. I understand the thinking behind this but I’m not sure I completely agree, for two reasons.
First, although I often write about Diplomacy being a game of two parts – on and off the board, or tactics and strategy, if you prefer – it’s a game in which one aspect doesn’t do well without the other, especially when learning it. What happens on the board depends greatly on what happens off it. So, while I get that Gunboat Dip allows players to learn the tactics, I’m not sure how this is more valuable than learning the tactical side in the context of the strategic side.
Secondly, I think that Gunboat Dip has encouraged a significant number of players who play most – if not all – of their Diplomacy online to want to play quicker games of regular Diplomacy. I think it encourages players to see the communication aspect of the game as an optional extra, whereas it is the most important part of the game. In short, regular Diplomacy is becoming a game where communication is seen to be of lesser importance.
THE DIPTIONARY 