THE PROPER PLACE FOR A FLEET IS ON THE WATER!
By Ron Newmaster
Reprinted from Northern Flame #87, November 2002
Some years ago while playing in my maiden PBM Dip game I had the good fortune of having Rob Lesco playing Austria adjacent to my Russia. Though the record may show that Lesco’s Dip skills have deteriorated with advancing years, I assure you his inaugural effort was a masterful achievement of skillful tactical play within sound strategy. I heard he equaled his maiden outing several years later by again achieving a second place survival. During the course of the 89CG game we exchanged at least seventy letters each. Many times our missives crossed in the mail. Many times we simultaneously congratulated each other on how great minds ‘think alike’. The afterglow continues to this day such that I still count Rob as a friend not yet seen.
One of Diplomacy tenets, however, required considerable repetition before Rob grudgingly acquiesced. Fleets are the force multiplier of Diplomacy. Each power needs multiple fleets and fleets for the most part belong on water, at sea. Now, I will admit that the circumstances at the time which led me to exhort gullible Rob to build fleets and set them adrift might well have stemmed from my desire to see Austria and the Balkans stripped of all those armies he was stockpiling, but the idea has lingered on and survived the tests of time and use. The ‘fleet force multiplier tenet’, initially born of paranoia, has become an article of faith in my own play. You must have multiple fleets in order to be a significant factor in the game.
Though seven landlocked Supply Centers are untouchable to fleets, more Supply Centers…. England, Turkey, Tun, Por, Rom/Nap (A Apu supports Rom)… are impregnable unless fleets are used. A fleet provides strategic and tactical advantages that belie its rules-based parity with an army unit.
In chess a knight is deemed slightly more valuable than a bishop in the early stages of game whereas the bishop assumes a more valuable role, when the board is cleared of intervening pieces. It projects power at a distance, something the knight cannot do. So it is in Diplomacy. A fleet provides the means to project the power of the state well beyond its contiguous land borders. That power is demonstrated directly by the fleet move itself or indirectly through convoying armies via the transient land bridge available to the game player controlling the fleet. Granted, you may be able to rent a fleet from another player for convoy purposes but the diplomatic cost may be high. There is no assurance that the army units thus ferried will ever be actively used again.
What else can fleets do that armies cannot? They bypass occupied land spaces. The relatively large sea provinces of the gameboard enable fleets to travel great distances in a short time. He who controls the sea lanes controls where the battle is joined. And, once joined, units in the littoral provinces are subject to support from the sea or naval bombardment as the case warrants. If your army beachhead is about to be overwhelmed, it need not be lost to annihilation. Most sea provinces border on multiple ‘targets’. When one is adequately defended, hyperjump to the next. Fleets enable armies to be marines in the most versatile sense.
I’ve heard it said, ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King.’ In Diplomacy, fleets provide a slight advantage in maneuverability over near-sighted army builders. Given equal play that advantage becomes manifest in the mid-game. If your fleets are unopposed, you control the strategic options regarding changing the location of conflict. To maintain control of the tempo of operations you always need one more fleet than your opponent. You need more force to disrupt his convoys; you need more units to breach the sea bottlenecks. If your opponent builds fleets, you need to build at least one more than he.
I’m sure Teddy Roosevelt and Machiavelli would both have agreed. To win in Diplomacy, speak softly and build fleets.