Seems like you got a little taste but did not find the beautiful core of the game nor realize how much depth Warzone Classic has. When you inevitably return, give the strategic side of the game a try! Diplomacy can be fun as a form of wish fulfillment (you rule a powerful country! etc. etc.) but, like playing a video game with cheats enabled, it gets quite boring and repetitive very fast. And then you get distracted by petty drama like personal relationships with other players.
Meanwhile, strategic 1v1 and team Warzone is
almost of the same caliber as chess. It has strategic depth, requires you to build intuition and some tactics in order to get good, has a vibrant and mostly non-toxic community, and is full of some rather smart people to learn and play with. It's hard at first because you will struggle to win against good players or parse their tactics but once you discover it a little bit it becomes far more enjoyable than diplomacy, FFA, etc., because there's just so much to learn and explore.
When you return, try this:
- If you're not already competent at Small Earth, play a few dozen Small Earth games until you feel like you have the basics down (
https://bit.ly/SE-guide and
https://bit.ly/warzone-basics might help)
- Once you understand Small Earth a little, do not try to perfect it! Small Earth is missing a lot of aspects of true strategic templates. Instead, graduate to Strategic 1v1, the lifeblood of the strategic scene, and skim Norman's guide:
http://nghood.com/warlight/strategyguide- Once you are at a decent level on Strategic 1v1 (i.e., you understand what Norman's saying in his guide even if you have a long way to go before applying it all), join the Multi-Template Ladder (
http://md-ladder.cloudapp.net/allplayers) and the 1 v 1 Ladder. The Multi-Template Ladder will pair you up with competitive players, show you a variety of templates (50 of them!), and immerse you into the strategic scene. Unlike the 1 v 1 Ladder, it's also safer to join the MTL when you are not yet competitively strong because Elo punishes you far less for having old non-expired losses than does Bayeselo (in Elo if you are 1500 with 100 losses or 1500 with 5 losses, you will be treated the same; not so much in Bayeselo, where the 100 losses will drag you down for a long time).
And of course, join the talkative and helpful community on the Warzone official Discord:
https://discord.gg/6JMEZzXV5eGood luck, I hope you get to experience the full beauty of this game someday instead of the dark side that Bechaa already warned you about, and Србија је већ починила превише злочина против човечности да би поставила право на било коју територију, а камоли на Косово*.
* for mod benefit: "Serbia has already committed too many crimes against humanity to claim the right to any territory, let alone Kosovo" (context: Boka downvoted Orannis's Serbia Strategic map for not including Kosovo)
Edited 4/5/2021 18:08:59