Napoleon has asked for advice in a PM with me, and I'm glad he wants to get his head back into the game. But I can't just write the advice in private or I'll be violating my impartiality as a Diplomacy GM (even if I'm not the main GM).
So I'm going to write out my advice publicly, plus the advice would apply for poor USA too. And anybody else would deserve the same opportunity. So there's that too.
Now...
It's funny that
Dr. Hendrei Gromsinger mentioned briefly exactly what I was going to hit at and I also had hinted earlier on:
"I don't mean just writing unit orders that are bold, yet brilliant. Pfft, that won't save the day." Lannes won't save the French Empire, not while outnumbered against a giant coalition here. Tallyrand is the key person to employ in your services,
Frederick the Great. It's the diplomat, not the marshal.
When facing an enemy alliance, even with good moves, you're likely to lose by yourself (hence the game of Diplomacy being called Diplomacy), but you can try to split the enemies apart and somehow turn things around. I'll be honest, a rough start is a handicap, but comebacks definitely do happen in Dippy games, more often than football or cricket in percentage-wise I would think.
Whatever the problems that had led you to a position down on your knees aren't going to disappear by themselves. For whatever reason, your allies aren't helping you, or worse, they're actively working on your demise right now as it looks that way on the map. I cannot speak for them as to why they chose to do so. I don't even know what was being said in PMs anyway. It's possible that each one of them has an entirely different reasoning behind their neutrality and/or animosity against you, and a single solution wouldn't solve all of it at once. So each player has to be approached in a method that works with his own particular unique personality.
I wish I could find that old article on 4 basic motivation-type-personality-profile-thing of Diplomacy players. I remember it was highly helpful in both outlining the 4 types but also general advice on how to handle each type in a Diplomacy game. (Perhaps
Transfermium could work his magic once more and grant you the link that I can't find?)
I'll just distill the basic information to the best of my memory:
One of the personal motivations is romanticism. He who has a strong match of the Romantic type likes to seek glorious victories, and when is facing certain doom, is likely to implode into himself in a self-destructive blaze of fiery explosions rather than to accept a share of the draw.
One of the personal motivations is logic and/or perfectionism. He who has a strong match of the Classicist type likes to seek the most optimal strategy or tactic that is likely to bring him forward in progression toward a victory. When facing two choices, he would be more likely to choose the less risky path that allows him to at least preserve what he already had accomplished and settle for a share in the draw than to fail completely.
One of the personal motivations is sadism, or at least some kind of schadenfreude. He who has a strong match of the Deviant type likes to seek the most incredible deception and/or stab. Other types will use lies to play the game, but the Deviant (IIRC) plays the game
for the lie instead. He would be absolutely happy to see someone else get caught into some kind of a hilarious tragedy, but only if he was the one who laid the trap in the first place. Something like that.
One of the personal motivations is fun, just pure fun. He who has a strong match of the Club type likes to seek the most fun way to play a position. Of course, a victory is nice, but if he's stuck without one, he wouldn't mind finding a way to get some joy from an alternative goal instead. It can be just the conversations between the players that he enjoys the most. Or it can be the spectacular fireworks of seeing his country going down in flames (if he's partially a Romantic). Or it can be some kind of an adventure that wanders long and wide, up and down but leads to an amazing strategy being used, even if he's not the one who is winning (this is if he's partially a Classicist). Or it's possible that the Club player is also partially a Deviant, but to a lesser degree of psychopathy, and more social-friendly.
Okay, obviously some offers work on some people, but doesn't work on others.
Ideally, you should already have done the groundwork in communicating with the other players a long time ago at the beginning and continuing to find out more and more what you can do to work with them as phases goes by. I'm guessing you had difficulty in achieving that which leads to this current disaster you're in now. Better late than never, go ahead and see what you can do to make things work differently from on now.
Less abstract advice, more specific and concrete advice now:
You're going to have to somehow find your way inside the current state of BOP (balance of power). Right now, you're the second little guy (and USA is the littlest guy over there in North America, by the way).
Typically there's a main flow of things that is favoring a player or two players at the moment. Things are going his way, that's the whale(s). Every time he shifts in his seat, waves are rippling out from him (and to him at the same time). Don't be too hasty in determining if it's better to go with the flow or against the flow, because not every game is the same. Plus, your goals aren't always the same in every single game anyway, so the word "better" is very, very relative in this context.
Remember to have relations with other players and don't lock yourself into only one path.
Going WITH the FlowYou can opt to be the puppet of the whale, riding out the waves and see everybody else drown under his weight (potentially including yourself also). The problem is that it might not help you improve your position in the BOP. Every player that's trying to fight the flow will notice right away what you're doing with France probably would take their anger out on you for being the whale's stooge (especially if they can't easily reach the whale himself but is located a lot closer to you instead).
Or, it works and you served your master successfully, but all too well... the whale has no further need for you and swallows you whole because you're still such a little shrimp anyway. Congratulations, you get no silver medal because it doesn't exist in Dippy.
For the future reference: this puppet/stooge is also known as the Janissary in Dippy, btw.
One more potential problem with offering to be a Janissary is having the offer declined. People are independent and make their own choices and they might not agree on making the same choice. Sometimes, in the whale's mind, there's no good reason why he should accept you as a Janissary when he could just take your centers directly instead. Don't forget that a whale might have an even bigger (and more useful) puppet to benefit from than you.
Going AGAINST the FlowThis is probably harder to accomplish at first, because you're such a little guy, and you barely can make a splash in the ocean. So it's hard to create your own waves by yourself. But remember, moving a whole ocean by yourself isn't the answer to turn things around. Otherwise, if you could've done that, you would've already used your Lannes to march your armies over the bones of your enemies.
What you can do is to search to find the weaker links amongst the alliance and split them apart at those critical points.
Remember I already covered the whale and the shrimp, right? But not all games are at that moment, or even sometimes have something entirely different. Instead of one single superpower and the many little ones, sometimes you can see a bunch of medium-sized powers. The larger ones among the mediums has a good chance of becoming whales but they're not whales yet. They're kind of baby whales at the moment, I guess? The biggest player on the map still could be in the baby whale stage, but the second largest one is most likely to be somewhere in this area.
Baby whales are usually the players who could replace the whale as the leading power if things change (and you know how easy things can suddenly turn around!
). They're good candidates to persuade in going against the whale. If it's likely that the whale would continue to make bigger and bigger gains than the baby whale, that's a good time to warn him of the impending doom that inevitably will come for him (probably after once you're already dead though). Keep in mind... the whale can be smart enough to reassure the baby whales that they're making bigger gains (or 'better' depending on the positions of the map), not the whale himself. Then it's harder, a lot harder to persuade the baby whale to take up your cause.
In that case, it's probably easier to persuade the other shrimps that they really should avoid being a Janissary for the whale, because the whale will serve them up to the baby whales, sating their appetites temporarily before the whale feeds upon the baby whales. Er... maybe it's not cannibalism because it's whale eating... seals, not baby whales. Yeah, seals!
I know I'm using unusual terms to describe large, medium and small powers, using oceanic animals instead.
The problem is that... none of the 'with flow' or 'against flow' stuff I've just told you now are assured to apply to a player in a game. A player might have motivations that cannot be persuaded by logic, only by emotions. Well, use whatever he likes more, speak his language, not yours. That's why I explained the four basic motivations first before I went into the balance of power among players second. Be the Tallyrand, not the Lannes, thank you
Dr. Hendrei Gromsinger indeed.
Alright, I've found some reading material for everybody to purview whenever they like, like if they're sitting on a train or in the bathroom or just at home on the couch.
www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/strategy/articles/prevent.htm (probably the most helpful article)
www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/strategy/articles/art_of_negotiation.htm (make sure you look at the points 1 to 5 at the end)
www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/strategy/articles/grand_alliance.htm (overlaps with the whale vs shrimps vs seals part above, but still good to read)
