Diplomacy 5 - Treaty Example 3

If you find yourself in North America playing as Grey, you need to think carefully to make sure that you can take advantage of your situation without others getting too concerned about your higher continent bonus. There are basically three borders to protect and expand from. The Asian side is not critical in the early game as usually there are no strong threats in Asia. This leaves North America with two options. Your choice between these options highly depends on the current situation and the type of players you are playing against.

 

1. Dealing with South America. If the player in South America has already made a treaty with Africa over Brazil-North Africa border, he has only one direction to expand to: North America. This example is shown below. Hence, he is not going to be interested in treaties in this border, otherwise he won't be able to expand to anywhere else. You in North America are only left with one choice: make a treaty with Europe. This simply shows how important it is to be the first to make alliances and treaties. As more and more treaties are made, your options are reduced and so is the willingness of players to make yet another treaty.

Invading South America is not a bad choice after all. In fact it is quite ideal since one continent can be conquered without increasing your number of borders which is always an extremely important point to consider when expanding.

 

2. Dealing with Europe.Suppose Europe has already made a treaty with Africa on its south border. This is shown below. As a result of the treaty, Europe will be interested to expand to North America. You now have no choice but to make an alliance with South America or you will end up with two fronts. The problem is that your options are limited. This is bad news indeed! South America may easily realise that you are in a weak position and will probably exploit this. He will not be interested to cooperate with you. This unfortunate event happened since you were late in making up your mind in selecting who you can make a treaty with! By the time you decided on your overall strategy, Europe had already made a treaty with Africa. The moral of the story: Don't hesitate!

As you have seen in this section, deciding on alliances mainly depends on your ability to perform a trade-off on your potential options and to be able to take decisive actions. However, trade-offs can be manipulated by your opponents. You should be aware that your opponent can play many psychological tricks on you and you should deflect it as much as you can.