Hi all,
 
First let me add my thanks to you Douglas for GMing the game.
I don’t agree that the map was hard to read though I do agree that the
ships where easily confused as we talked about before. The armies where
instantly recognisable by both colour and design and worked very well. The map
itself was very readable. The commentary was a breath of fresh air and helped
the game flow.
 
My initial plan was to side with Russia
while keeping Austria happy
till I was in a position to stab Austria
then sweep forward into Italy
after that play it by ear. Well that plan failed miserably almost as soon as it
was formulated due to a lack of communication on both my part and Russia’s.
I ended up in a position where my quick demise was extremely likely. After that
my only goal was survival and to hope that something popped up where I could
once again become a contender, although I didn’t think it likely.
 
There was one round where I was in a position to move on Austria and
cause a lot of damage to him. After a lot of deliberation I decided not to
strike for 2 reasons:
 
1.       I required
allies to do this and I had not been communicating enough with anyone else
enough to pull it off.
2.       (probably
the main reason) I liked Austria’s
style of play and communication.
 
Austria
 
            Well
played, you seemed surprised that so many people were willing to work with you.
I am not surprised, on a personal level you were a pleasure to talk to and plan
with. On a strategic level I think you made few mistakes and had good timing.
 
Russia
 
            First
off after my early successful removal of Austria
from Greece we had the
perfect opportunity to deal a crushing blow to Austria ensuring dominance in the
south. You chose to play it safe and not push, I can understand caution but I think
this was a strategic blunder. After that if you remember there was one fatal
move and a few emails that made working together difficult to say the least. To
recap that was the move when you assisted Austria into Bul. Afterwards we exchanged
a few emails in which you said that you didn’t feel that you had any reason
to try to mend our relationship, I think that time has shown that to be an error.
Secondly you chose to tell me that we could never work together, an even bigger
error. As far as I am concerned supporting Austria
and going to war with England
at the same time was a major strategic blunder since if you had not helped Austria both he and Italy would have been stuck in a
war with me with very little chance of any of us gaining ground. By assisting Austria you
ensured I would loose. Once I was dead who do you think would have been next?
As I explained at the time you could have stayed neutral and have avoided
fighting on two fronts if you didn’t want to fight in the south, the
second front being vs England.
So I was left with 3 real choices, convince Austria/Italy to leave me alone, convince
you to help me or convince Italy
to turn on Austria.
You had ruled out the second option. I deemed it unlikely Italy would turn on Austria
and any communication I sent suggesting this to Italy would probably be passed
on to Austria making it unlikely that Austria would leave me alone. The rest
was a logical progression.
 
            Austria asked me why I was willing to support
him since he was the initial aggressor vs Turkey and the explanation was a
follows:
                        I
can happily forgive being stabbed if the stab makes sense, it is in the nature
of the game, and if you can’t forgive then you shouldn’t play dip.
I can not however easily forgive stabs that I regard as strategically wrong.
Add to that I thought you made several blunders and it doesn’t strike me
as a good idea to ally with someone whose strategy you regard as flawed.
 
France
 
            Well
to you I feel I owe the biggest explanation as to my motives and moves. You
were right I should have attacked Austria. Unfortunately our timing
was off by a round. There was only really 1 window of opportunity for me in the
game to survive stabbing Austria
and I didn’t take it. You contacted me after that window had passed, when
it was favourable to you and no longer to me. The mistake I made was not
contacting you the previous round. I am of the opinion that if you are going to
stab/upset a player then you better makes sure it’s as close to a fatal
blow as possible or it will simply be a short term gain and you will probably
regret it in the long term. Add to that Austria was the only one who “seemed”
even remotely concerned with my survival even if it was as a pawn. On top of
that I was worried that if I helped you against Austria/Italy then I would be
replacing 3 stronger opponents with 1 extremely strong one, i.e. you.
            Btw.
After the initial few rounds I wasn’t playing for a win, I was playing
for survival.
 
Italy
 
            In
essence you were as much of a pawn of Austria as I was so logically we
should have worked together to get out from under the thumb of our “oppressor”
but how to do that? It’s so risky, so likely that any comments would find
there way back to Austria.
We both had our problems elsewhere and even if we had wanted to turn on Austria it
would have been hard. You had France
to worry about and I had Russia’s
enmity to deal with.
 
England/Germany
 
            Well
we never really had much shared interests so not much here to say except, England I thought you played very well and Germany you had
similar problems to me and didn’t really have the opportunity to play
well, but you survived and got a draw.
 
All said and done I learnt a lot from that game and enjoyed
most of it. Thank you all for playing