Diplomacy Dojo Episode 6: Stabbing in the West26 min read

Intro 0:00  

The Diplomacy Dojo is a weekly discussion, led by Your Bored Brother, about Diplomacy tactics and strategies. Let’s listen in on what our players are discussing this week.

BrotherBored 0:15  

So let me take inventory of the topics: how and when to stab Germany as England, and how and when to stab England as Germany. And we’ve got, is Italy doomed if a France England Alliance forums? And any other topic ideas come to mind?

Hunter 00:39 

Well, I guess there was also the idea of Germany stabbing England without building a fleet until the stab.

BrotherBored 00:45 

Okay, more specifically, I will call it, that’s more like a sub-topic.

When and how to stab England as Germany? So, contained in this question is the assumption that you’ve agreed to an England-Germany Alliance and it’s played out well enough that there’s some opportunity to stab your ally. So let’s… I think I understand the question. Let’s think about how this plays out. So when I am agreeing to an alliance with England as Germany, my expectation is that England is going to help me against France. That’s what is the most valuable to me, and then maybe a secondary goal is that England can help me against Russia. The reason why helping me against France is such a big deal is that Germany cannot invade France alone and make captures. I mean, maybe England could attack France in some kind of incredible, double backstab trick, or whatever and make it work. But just in terms of attacking by force, France can defend against Germany, no problem, really. Germany needs some help.

And so, if England is going over there, supporting my moves, or breaking France’s back somehow by attacking Spain or Brest, then I think that maybe my attacks on Paris or Marseille, somehow I’m going to succeed, and we’re going to bring France down, or at least reduce France to where France is no longer a viable power, like France only has Portugal and Spain, or something like that. That would be my… That’s a key strategic goal. That is a good reason to ally with England, as Germany is not going to be able to bring France down alone. And you could accomplish an early-game strategic goal of eliminating a neighbor as a viable power. Whereas, Germany can pretty much attack Russia alone and not have significant issues. It’s much easier to make a surprise attack where you just convoy into Prussia or Livonia, or move from Berlin and Munich to both Prussia and Silesia and start breaking Russia down by yourself; or you could easily get help from Turkey or Austria in many games. So for me, it’s not really a priority…  I wouldn’t ally with England just for the idea that English is going to help me attack Russia. I probably would say, “Eh, that’s not valuable to me.” So if England is selling you the Alliance as, “Well, let’s go attack Russia first,” probably the result of that is just that England’s going to attack you, Germany, second, after Russia is no longer viable.

One thing is, is that if that’s all England’s willing to do, is help you fight Russia, then maybe you don’t want to play that alliance at all, or maybe you want to stab England right away. Because that’s not a very good alliance. That’s one thought. You could even stab England in 1901 with a Trojan horse alliance. Just say, “Hey, I’m going to work with you!” But actually, you’re going to do “sea lion” and cooperate with France and Russia. The reason why stabbing England this early could be good is that if you do the sea lion opening, and England doesn’t see it coming, England won’t be able to interfere with or block any of your moves.

But I bet you that your question is more about—please confirm if I’m right about this—your question is more about how, “Hey, you know, our alliance has gotten us each respectively to five to eight centers, and I’m thinking about backstabbing my ally.” Is that more of the situation you’re talking about?

Okay, so there are tactical opportunities that might make you want to stab. One is, if you think you’re going to be able to sneak your way into North Sea. Maybe you’ve got a fleet in Belgium or Denmark or something, and you have mutually agreed that you’re going to move away from North Sea; England’s going to move North Sea to, say, English Channel and you’re going to move your fleet in Denmark to Sweden, or something. You’ve agreed to this, and you believe England will keep that promise. That might be time to stab. If you think England’s going to vacate the North Sea, and you can just walk right in, or sail right, into North Sea. Oh man, that changes the situation completely. Even if England eventually knocks you out of North Sea. I believe North Sea has more retreat options than any space on the board. I believe it is has the number one highest amount of retreat options. Don’t quote me on it, but I think that’s true. Therefore, it’s an incredible nuisance. Even if England pushes you back out, you’re going to retreat your fleet somewhere good, or if England doesn’t have the ability to push you back out anytime soon, you might be able to convoy onto Great Britain. That’s a very enticing opportunity, a moment in which you might be able to sneak your way to North Sea. That’s a good opportunity.

Another one is, if you think you’re going to be able to take England’s gains elsewhere in a surprise attack. So for example, let’s say that England has had control of Belgium since early on, and you’ve bypassed Belgium so that England doesn’t lose a center. England still has Belgium. And you say, “Hey, England, you know, it looks like you’re going to take Spain this turn. Maybe this is time for you to give up Belgium.” And England had known this. England says, “Oh, sure. Yeah, you know, you go ahead and pick up Belgium. I offered it to you earlier. I said I would give it to you if I was going to pull ahead. Sure, okay, you can have Belgium.” And say,” Okay, thanks.” And then, let’s say, somehow you have a setup where you can just walk into Belgium, and then instead of supporting England into Spain, you make a support attack on Brest. And at the same time, instead of supporting England into Moscow, you make a support attack on Norway. Or something like that, where you get a center for free and take two of England centers and now, bam! England’s going to have to make three disbands—or at least—maybe two or three disbands, and you’re going to get multiple builds, including, of course, you’re going to get multiple fleets builds. If that moment exists, you set it up, that can be the right time. And that feeds in, both of these situations feed into your question about “How Germany gets away with not even building one fleet until stabbing England?”

In the first scenario, the one fleet you have might be a fleet that you move into North Sea. That could be good enough in the short run. But in this scenario that I’m talking about, okay, if you attack England over land, at centers that England captured, such as Belgium and Brest, with your armies, then you disable England pretty badly, and you’re going to build two fleets because you got at least two builds, and now you’ve got three, and that’s enough to start fighting England in a naval battle.

If you’re playing a game in which the center counts don’t matter, for whatever reason, or you find a player who’s very advanced in quite trusting, an England-Germany Alliance can easily have Germany at three or four more centers than England, as long as Germany doesn’t build a fleet, and it’s a basically balanced alliance. I’ve seen board states where Germany has nine supply centers, and England has five and England is actually looking to be maybe the stronger or the more favored power because Germany never built any fleets.

If you have an English player as an ally who’s willing to appreciate this, then as Germany you could maybe go really far. Just see, how long can this go on? Can I capture Venice? Maybe I can capture Sevastopol or, like, Budapest or something. Let’s just see where that goes. You could maybe go on for a while without backstabbing that ally. But if you’ve got an English ally who’s like, “We need to have exactly the same center count. That is the point of an alliance is both allies stay balanced,” and their understanding of balance is that both players have the same center count, forget it. England gets like a plus two to their score in my mind just from being a corner power. Germany doesn’t have a corner, Germany is a central power. And then if Germany’s not building any fleets, then give another plus two to England. So if England’s got five and Germany has got nine, England gets plus two for being a corner power and plus two because Germany didn’t build any fleets, that’s equal. That’s balanced in my opinion.

You may have read the article, my first Solo Win Tip article in my series of solo win tips on my blog, Solo Win Tip #1, Forget the Numbers Game. And in this article, I strongly discourage players from counting supply centers to estimate the relative strength of the countries because that’s not a very good estimate. It will prevent you from winning; it will cause you to make mistakes, etc. So if you’ve got an English player who thinks like this, and they’re just counting, “But you’ve got nine and I’ve only got five!” That’s not going to work. Because when you have seven and England has seven, England has much more power than you. And if you don’t have any fleets, then England’s, like, way, way stronger than you in that situation. So if you’ve got an English player who wants to be your ally, and they’re insisting on keeping the center count equal, you’re going to need more fleets, my friend. You’re going to need fleets to keep things on an even keel.

If England is insisting that an England-Germany Alliance is, “You each have an equal number of supply centers, and Germany doesn’t build any fleets,” you’ve made a mistake. That is not the ally you want. That is a player who is going to use and abuse you.

When I played in my ODC round game as England, the one I kept my journal for, I was England and Germany was my ally, and we stayed at an even center count and Germany didn’t build any fleets. And what do you know; I backstabbed that player and took almost every single one of his centers.

My most general heuristic, or my general rule for how to approach when to stab my most major ally is whether I have secured a center, a faraway center that is a stretch goal for actually getting to 18. For England, those would be Tunis, Italian home centers, Warsaw, or Moscow. Those are those are like—in a blue, once in a blue moon, maybe Sebastopol. Those are the stretch goal centers, with the most prominent being Tunis and Moscow. If I have one of those centers, and I feel like I got it somewhat under control, then I’m starting to think about whether it’s a good idea to stab Germany. So for example, let’s say that I’ve got two or three fleets in the Mediterranean, I’ve got control of Tunis, Italy’s in shambles, and there’s no other player who looks like they’re going to assemble fleets to take Tunis back from me, okay, maybe it’s time to fight Germany because I’ve got that center I need on the faraway side on the stalemate line in order to win, I’ve crossed no man’s land. Or let’s say, I’ve sent significant armies into the middle and I’ve got, let’s say, I’ve got three armies in the east, maybe I’ve got one in Livonia, one in Moscow and one in Ukraine, that’s weird, but, like, let’s just say that I do, I probably feel comfortable stabbing Germany. Even if I lose Moscow, I’ll probably be able to fight for Warsaw, at least. It will be dynamic, but I feel like I have a pretty good chance of keeping at least one of those centers, and that may be the time to do it.

I was referencing it earlier in the game where I was England and I kept my journal for the ODC 2019, I stabbed Germany without having any of those centers. I did not have Tunis, or Moscow, or any of those other stretch goal centres, and I did not win. I only reached—I think I reached 17 off the top of my head. It was not it was either 16 or 17. Maybe it was 16. But I did not win. I think that the reason I did not win is that I backstabbed Germany without having one of those centers under my control. In my defense, I wasn’t playing to win that game. I was playing to top the board, because it was a sum-of-squares scoring tournament and I merely needed to clear to the next round; and I felt that I was going to top the board for sure if I stabbed Germany, even though I knew I couldn’t solo win.

So speaking generally about the idea of gaining an ally early on who is one of your neighbors and seeing how far that alliance takes you, and then stab that neighbor to try to get the win. That is probably the bread and butter strategy of Diplomacy. Get a neighbor ally, cross the stalemate line, betray that ally for the win. If the other player is also playing that strategy, then that’s just a risk that you’re taking, in my opinion.

A lot of players, some players who are like a “solo win or a bust” mentality, do you ever see Talladega Nights? The movie Talladega Nights, it’s a movie with Will Ferrell. So the quote that I’m thinking, it’s a NASCAR parody movie in which Will Ferrell plays a comedic NASCAR driver; and there’s, like,  John C. Reilly is in it also playing a NASCAR driver. Sacha Baron Cohen plays like a Formula One driver who joins NASCAR. There are a bunch of comedy actors, and it’s very ridiculous. As an American southerner, I identify with a lot of the jokes in the movies, such as the kids’ obsession with Mountain Dew, and whatnot.

But the reference I’m making is that Will Ferrell’s father character instils in him this mantra, “If you’re not first, you’re last,” and he repeats that to himself throughout the story, and it’s his mentality about being a race driver. And the story later examines this statement, “If you’re not first, you’re last,” and says, “Well hold on a minute, you could come in second, third, you know. There are other things besides first!” But there are players—okay, that’s was a long aside. But my reference is that there are players who approach Diplomacy with the idea that you either get a solo win, or you don’t. That getting eliminated and getting a draw, or any size of a draw, that’s all basically the same. There are players who really, really devalue draws; even though there are scoring systems that will give you points for doing so. And those players are immensely attracted to this strategy, even though it means they sometimes get backstabbed first. So a juggernaut is a common example of an alliance that facilitates solo wins, because Turkey and Russia can play that alliance for so long. A really long time, get very far across two distinct positions, and then stab one another for the win. And likely one of those two players will be the solo winner.

The England-Germany Alliance isn’t so strong as that because it’s difficult to play the alliance that far out, as long as the juggernaut. It’s not that long of a long-lasting Alliance. At least—I mean, you could play the England-Germany Alliance as long as you wanted. I’m just saying it’s not so easy to play it for a long time. So bringing it down to this specific situation, if your mentality is, “I really, really want a solo win. I want to maximize my chances of that and I’m willing to risk getting eliminated in order to get that solo win,” then, I would say, just accept the risk that Germany might be the one to get you first, depending on how things play out, but that’s okay.

In a well-played game, between very good players who do want to win, but are wary of being stabbed, both players will likely make moves that really discourage the other from stabbing them. I’ve played plenty of high-level games in Diplomacy—like let’s say an England-Germany alliance, as England, I see, “If I stab Germany, I’ll get at most one center, and then this whole match is going to turn around,” and Germany has a similar line of thinking like, “Dang it all. Even if I backstab England as hard as I can, I’ll only really get one center, and then I’ll be at war with England, and that really doesn’t help me.” So if both players have that mentality, and they’ve kept some pieces around, you know, some kind of token defense to enforce the truce, or to enforce the Alliance, then they might not stab each other and the alliance could go on for a while. It’s unlikely that the players are going to get to extremely distant positions unless they have some big gestures of trust, because of the unit commitments that are going to be involved. But that’s why many Diplomacy games, in my experience, play out to a draw, where both players would prefer to solo win but aren’t… a tactical situation exists where they don’t really have the ability to go for it, so they don’t.

So let’s get a little more specific; when I was talking about stabbing England, I gave, like, these very specific tactical situations. Let me see if I can recall some for when you are England. I’ll say, a turn in which you can move from North Sea into attacking Germany and backfill North Sea might be a good moment, or, even better, a turn in which you can convoy from—an army—convoy it, using the North Sea probably, directly on to one of England’s centers. That can be a great moment. Let’s say you’ve got an army in Wales, and you… oh, England. I’m England, “I am going to convoy that army in Wales into Brest, or something like that.” That’s what I’m telling Germany; and Germany doesn’t have any unit in Denmark, or Germany is vacating Denmark, and I believe it. I believe Germany is going to leave Denmark open. Okay, perfect, let me double convoy that army from Wales all the way into Denmark, bang! Combined with some other treasons, I don’t know, you know, somewhere else on the map, I slight Germany and take one of their centers… Whoo. That can be a great setup. Because if you begin your invasion of Germany by convoying an army into Holland, or Denmark, that means that your invasion will pay off in the long run.

And let me explain maybe a little bit more what I’m talking about. One of the tactical nuances that you need to be mindful of when you are playing as England, is that Munich is entirely landlocked. And that is a center that you very likely need to have in order to solo win.  I’m not saying that you need it 100% of the time, but, like, 95% of the time, maybe more. If England wins, England has Munich, even though Munich is entirely landlocked. So that means even though armies are tactically… Ugh, they can be kind of frustrating for England to use. Because let’s say you convoy an army to Denmark, well, an army in Denmark can’t move to Baltic Sea for good follow up, or it doesn’t have a retreat option to Heligoland Bight. Yes, an army in Denmark is more tactically limited than a fleet.

However, getting an army involved in the fight is going to pay off in the long run, because you want to acquire Munich and hold Munich, and that’s going to require between three and, like, five or six armies eventually. Well positioned. Other players might try to go for Munich while you’re fighting Germany, and you’re going to later have to kick them out. Maybe Italy or Austria goes from Munich and you’re going to later have to kick them out, so you’re going to want your armies in position.

So if you’re going to attack Germany with the fleet attack, tactically North Sea to Denmark, and then backfill North Sea with another fleet, that’s pretty good. Because that fleet in Denmark… On the next turn… On the winter turn, you’re going to want to build an army, let’s say build an army in London. Then on the next turn, use North Sea to convoy that army to Denmark and move your fleet in Denmark to Baltic Sea. That’s a great setup, wow! A fleet in North Sea, army in Denmark, fleet in Baltic Sea. If Germany’s got any presence in Scandinavia, Germany has now been cut in half. And you can make these incredible follow-up attacks on Kiel and Berlin.

But even just convoying in Denmark outright is good; if you can get away with a convoy of an army to Holland—that’s sometimes a little harder to finagle—but that may be the better convoy, because that army in Holland can immediately move to Ruhr, potentially, and from there, bring down Germany. If you can get that army into Ruhr. So Germany, being mindful of England, how England would want to stab Germany, the German player is usually very insistent that England not build armies, or at least not build them in such a way that they could be theoretically convoyed out to Holland or Denmark, or if they could, then Germany is going to defend those places. So engineering a situation in which you’re going to have an opportunity to surprise attack Germany by convoys—either immediately convoying them onto Germany’s centers, or you know that your attack pattern is going to permit you to make some convoys on the follow-up moves—then that’s a good time. It is not a good time to attack Germany with all your fleets, because you’re very unlikely to be able to keep and hold centers that you’re going to need to solo win later, such as Munich.

In my experience teaching players, they feel that building armies as England is very unintuitive. It just doesn’t feel right, because the armies are going to waste a move of your fleets convoying. Sometimes you’re going to have to make double convoys, like double convoying going into Sweden, or double convoying into Kiel, or something like that. It’s going to use up a bunch of moves, and the armies themselves are going to seem tactically inferior to the fleets.

But, as an experienced Diplomacy player, knowing what the board looks like when I win as England… Every army I build, every army I convoy into the middle, “Ooh, that feels good. Yes, I know, it’s technically difficult, but ha, I know what I’m doing! I’m playing a long game here, I’m going to… When the time comes to go for a win, and I’m going to be able to do it because I’m going to have armies in position.”

So another way that you could set up for stab on Germany, now that I think about it, is to persuade Germany that you have to build an army, or that you should build an army for some reason. For example, maybe you want to say, like, “Hey, listen, you know, in the long run, I want to be able to fight for Moscow. I want to have an army in Livonia and an army in St. Petersburg so that I can fight for Moscow.” If Germany is not feeling it, then maybe that’s not going to be persuasive, but if Germany goes, “Okay, that makes sense,” and then you build an army in Edinburgh, that is supposedly for convoying to Norway, but then you just convoying against Germany. That could be a way of getting away with that setup.

You feel like we covered this topic of how to stab Germany as England? Okay, we got one last question on the chart here, we have: is Italy doomed if a France-England Alliance forms? Haha.

I’m going to say… I’m going to disagree! I’m going to say Italy is not doomed. Because early on in my Diplomacy career, I witnessed, several times, an England-France-Italy alliance, in a Press game, play the game out to a three-way draw. I’ve seen it. What happens in this situation is that France and England, they’re not going to be board toppers, so this makes more sense in a draw-size scoring game. But France and England concentrate on taking out Germany early, then maybe make some headway elsewhere. And Italy makes progress in, takes over, the South, and perhaps ends up ceding, or losing, Tunis to France at some point.

And Italy actually has, in those games that I played, Italy was the board topper. And I have also seen a game that started off this way… I was England, and—if I recall correctly, this was many years in the past, so my memory could be wrong—but if I recall correctly, I was eliminated as England, and France and Italy got a two-way draw, both controlling each one side of the traditional north-south stalemate line, in the end.

So if the England-France alliance is a temporary alliance to take out Germany, and then once Germany is gone, either France or England betrays the other, then Italy is not doomed. Italy could do just fine, actually. Now, you might be thinking of a very hard-core England-France Alliance, where England takes on Germany and Russia, with all—with everything, with England saying, “I’m going to take all my might and fight Germany and Russia!” And France supplements England’s attack on Germany, and then is concentrating some attacks against Italy. Sometimes people will call this the “western juggernaut,” or something equivalent to that. I don’t think the moniker applies, doesn’t make sense. It’s not an alliance that can… To me, it’s not analogous to the juggernaut alliance. I think that it is an alliance that’s very powerful tactically, there’s a lot of gains to be made. But usually, neither England nor France ends up soloing, in my personal experience.

This is not seen that often, in my opinion. But I also think that an Italy-France Alliance can be very stable, because both players can just expand in one direction to their side of the map. It doesn’t necessarily give them a great opportunity to solo, but it can go on for a long time. The reason why that doesn’t really feel like an alliance, why, like, France-Italy doesn’t really feel like an alliance is that they’re not going to do anything to help each other, really, for most of the game.

I think some players—the word alliance, I think, connotates the players supporting each other’s moves somehow, and that’s why it doesn’t really feel like Italy-France, is much of  an alliance; because they’re not going to support each other’s moves early and they’re not going to support each other’s moves often. It’s more like just a really awesome non-aggression pact.

Well, we’re coming to the end of our time allotted for this dojo. Thanks for coming, Hunter; I really appreciate your frequent participation in dojo.

Outro 28:12

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