Meme Openings - Why not to do them.

Ok, but what if Spring 1902 Turkey goes to EAS?

I was going to do Part 2 of France today but I came across something in a game I'm currently playing that I thought would be good to address instead. New players after looking at the map are very likely to go online and look up articles or videos for 'Best Opening Moves'. I did it myself. Almost everyone I've introduced to the game that came back with interest claimed 'I went online and looked for some good ways to start.' It's perfectly normal. And very soon you see words like Lepanto and Western Triple and Juggernaut and it's very easy to imagine yourself running a giant steamroller across Europe where your enemies flee in terror and everything goes exactly right.

It's understandable and even advisable for new players to look at common opening moves and alliances. The classics are a classic for a reason. There is usually just one problem though:

If you can find the moves readily available online, someone else can too. They will understand the script and know how to counter you.

What's important in Diplomacy is to understand the difference between Strategy and Tactics. You've probably seen dozens of definitions and explanations of the differences between them, so in a purely game context:

Strategy is determining the 18 dots you intend to take and roughly the order you intend to take them.

Tactics are the orders delivered each turn to progress towards the 18 dots.

New players see Juggernaut and they immediately consider this to be a series of tactical decisions. In Spring '03, Turkey does A and B and C. For a Lepanto, Italy convoys to Tunis while Austria takes Greece. Etc, etc.

But that's the exact opposite of what you should be thinking. A Juggernaut is an alliance between Russia and Turkey that drives east to west across the board. A Lepanto is an Austrian and Italian strategy to quickly flank and dismember Turkey. The specific moves used to accomplish this are largely immaterial, so long as they accomplish this task.

Yes, obviously some moves work better than others. That is why we say Turkey does A and B and C - because most of the time, those are probably the best or at the very least decent moves to accomplish a given turn's progress on the Juggernaut. But if the moves fail to do that, they are useless.

As a rule, your strategy for a game - or at least a campaign - should be fairly firm. You are Austria. Your plan is to convince Italy to help you conquer Turkey. Once you commit to this, you should not back out lightly. You should not stab on a whim. Now your plan might also be "I will convince Italy that we are going after Turkey and then as soon as he sets up for Lepanto, I will stab and seek to take Venice and Rome with assistance from France." That too is a strategy, and differs significantly from "Oh, Turkey looks tougher than I thought let's see if I can grab Venice."

Your Diplomacy should aim at proactively advancing your strategy.

Your tactics on the other hand need to be flexible. They are a currency. There purpose is to advance the strategy, they serve no means in and of themselves. They should always be slightly unpredictable, and if you have a situation where two moves accomplish the same thing all the better because your enemy must guess. If Turkey figures a Lepanto is coming and knows you will inevitably seek to move an Italian fleet into Eastern Med, he can use his Bulgaria build to produce in Smyrna and then move to East. If on the other hand you get an Italian army into Greece and then convoy into Smyrna over an Austrian fleet in the Aegean, he may be out of position to stop it.

Your Diplomacy should use possible tactical move sets as leverage to convince other countries to (knowingly or not) advance your strategy.

Your moves are negotiable. Your strategy may seek to include or exclude Russia from the partition of Turkey. In which case, you must consider what are you going to do in Galicia. Does Russia have an army or fleet in Rumania? Is France misbehaving around Marseille/Piedmont? All of these elements need to factor into play as to how they help or hinder your primary goal. A rigid set of turn-by-turn orders cannot account for this, and what makes this game so infinitely replayable is there is no single way to accomplish a given campaign.

Read the classics. Understand the logic behind them. Ask yourself why certain openings or campaigns or alliances seem to naturally work, and some are naturally antagonistic.

But once you're on the board, make sure to divorce yourself from that and go into each turn with a firm, proactive idea of what you want to do... and then use your moves to advance - and convince others to advance - your path to victory. However those moves may differ from what someone else has penned.