International Match Tournament 2014 (Rus v s French)

Jel(necro) win Lars(Chaos) 116
...And even a few goblins and GM running around with boots couldn't fix the situation, because diplomacy wasn't leveled up at all, I was just unlucky...

As one of our fellow players noted, it's also beneficial to level up tactics. With diplomacy, you'll have a larger army in terms of quantity. But with tactics, your army will be stronger. And these are roughly equivalent things. And one more idea: don't visit the witch's hut in the first 10 days. So that the opponent's trash doesn't scare you away :D