Hi guys,

First of all, let me thank everyone for an awesome game. There were some really great players here and my hat is off to Jerome for a beautifully orchestrated victory.


My perspective on this game is as follows:

1) One of the biggest mistakes I made in this game was basing my strategy on theory rather than on personalities. Theoretically, England and France are unlikely friends and, as such, it makes sense for England to ally with Germany against the French. In 1900 and 1901 I tested both opponents and when both proved to be trustworthy, I decided to throw my lot in with Mike. This proved to be a fatal error. Nathan was a very astute and clever player and would have been a good ally throughout the game. Unfortunately, he was also highly suspicious of me and our early battles eroded any semblance of trust between us. I tried to rebuild the relationship but, unfortunately, neither Nathan nor I were willing to make our builds in a way that would weaken us vis a vis the other. Ultimately, I really regretted making an alliance with Mike who was indecisive throughout the game - constantly oscillating between Russia and England and often unable to make a strong move (more on that later). So, as I said, the lesson I learned is that one should base one's alliances on personality rather than on tactical theory and, furthermore, that it is always better to ally with experienced players rather than with novices.


2) David and I have played before and I have utmost respect for his skills. However, I saw that Russia and Turkey were close allies and that the only place for me to expand would be in Scandinavia. Furthermore, it became crystal clear that if I didn't do something quickly then the R/T juggernaut would dominate the game. I think that the first of four turning points (for me) in this game was in the Fall of 1903 when I managed to knock Russia out of Norway. This prevented David from getting a crucial build and allowed me to convince Jerome to stab David (although he was already leaning towards that without any convincing from me). From that point on I knew that I had to destroy Russia. However, it appears that I overestimate the closeness of the Russo-French relationship. According to Nathan my two enemies were never particularly tight, but I assumed that I was battling against a Russo-French Axis.


3) Nathan's ability to invade England with a transport of an army from Spain to Wales was beautiful and unexpected. That was the second turning point of the game and really hurt me.

4) Still, I think that the ultimate turning point happened when Mike failed to destroy Russia's fleet in Berlin after we had trapped the aforementioned fleet in Kiel. The destruction of that fleet would have allowed me to throw all my forces against France in the west and probably would have guaranteed at least a dual victory. As it happened, Mike refused to budge his army from Munich and the fleet survived forcing me to stick around the east for the rest of the game.


5) The fourth and final turning point of the game happened in the fall of 1909 when I decided to take Portugal instead of taking Brest. I had an inkling that Jerome might trap me, but I was confident that Nathan would move his army to Brest to counter my move there. Had I moved to Brest, I probably would have been able to fend Jerome off for a long time and most likely would not have agreed to a Solo victory by Turkey.


I apologize for being a little MIA over the last few turns. Actually, I was busy making final preparations for the Foreign Service Oral Assessment which I passed yesterday! Hopefully, real Diplomacy awaits!


Best of luck to everyone in round 2 and congrats to Jerome!

Sincerely,

Greg Shtraks





On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Nathan Deily <ndeily(at)yahoo.com> wrote:

Folks,  
I'll keep it short and sweet: This was a very frustrating game. Hats off to Greg, who had an almost mystical ability to influence Germany and who was tactically astute enough to expand across a difficult frontier, and also to Jerome for a well-executed solo (which could and should have been given to him many turns ago, saving us all the trouble, I suppose he wanted as many points as possible?) I found I couldn't be an effective force on three fronts (though I did fine with two), and that was my undoing. I take some pride in being in two English centers at the end of the game.
 Things went very slowly for me because of tensions with Greg, and by the time Russia was
fully engaged, Turkey had expanded too far and fast for us to really stop him. I'll admit that it seemed to me Greg was primarily interested in helping Jerome win the game as opposed to winning or sharing a win himself. It may be that I should have trusted Greg more, but his play was mercurial at best, and he was pretty demanding and (I thought) unreasonable in wanting me to leave myself completely open to him  in order to counter Turkey - so I take my share of responsibility there.
 I didn't understand Andrew's play at all, but I suppose that things could have worked better for him if R/T was not so solid. My style is to find an ally and commit, and I didn't have a willing partner in Germany (very aligned to England), England (at all, it seems) or Russia (until much later on - David and I did collaborate a bit, but Germany proved intractable despite several attempts - I don't know how after
losing as many centers as he did to England and as many offers as we made him, this persisted - maybe we weren't persuasive enough.  Perhaps I'll see some of you in Round Two. Good luck all.
 N 

From: Charles Welsh <welsh_stroud(at)msn.com>

To: Jerome Payne <jeromerpayne(at)gmail.com>; David Knight <davidknight1955(at)gmail.com>; me here <jerome777(at)ymail.com>; Andrew Cassese <landru428(at)aol.com>; Michael Farrington <michael_farrington(at)msn.com>; Nathan Deily <ndeily(at)yahoo.com>; Greg Shtraks <greg.shtraks(at)gmail.com>; Blitz Messageboard <blitz(at)diplomaticcorp.com>

Cc: "mike(at)fuzzylogicllc.com" <mike(at)fuzzylogicllc.com>

Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2013 10:26 PM
Subject: RE: dc444 Turkey EOG statement



Congrats Jerome, very impressive and I did pay a bit of attention to the later game despite my early exit.
Thank for the complement, I am not sure it is so much earned my tactical game is way ahead of my diplomatic game, so I suffer quite a bit in this winter tournament.

Still one has to expect this as Austria, sometimes you just get clobbered and if the russian is clever enough to order Gal S Ser - Bud (which I did consider, too briefly clearly)  then the pain is over even faster, Didn't do Russia much good in the long run...

By the way Mike, Austria is looking very familiar to me in the winter tournament
And Hamish you did a great job GMing, even with the time diff across the pond.
On to round two.

Charlie


Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:05:20 +0000
Subject: dc444 Turkey EOG statement

From: jeromerpayne(at)gmail.com
To: welsh_stroud(at)msn.com; davidknight1955(at)gmail.com; jerome777(at)ymail.com; landru428(at)aol.com; michael_farrington(at)msn.com; ndeily(at)yahoo.com; Greg.Shtraks(at)gmail.com; blitz(at)diplomaticcorp.com


Hi everyone,

Wow! My first ever solo at the diplomaticcorp website, and my second ever solo in my Diplomacy playing career! It seems to have taken me a very long time to achieve, and I'm rather proud of achieving this solo against six very good players.


I would like to say, 'Thank you,' to all six of my opponents for playing in this game with me, and for making this game an enjoyably yet rather challenging one. Thank you also to Hamish for doing an excellent job in GMing the game, I am a GM myself and I know that the task of being GM is largely a thankless task. Without GMs there would be no game for us to play, and I want to pass on my thanks and respect for giving up your time to help us players.


So onto my view of the game. Diplomacy was very slow and far-between before the Spring 1901 moves, certainly compared to other games I've played. Maybe we all had New-Year hangovers, or possibly because I was engaged at that point with three other games, I didn't really have the time to chase other players to get back to me on the messages I'd sent them, so I concentrated on discussions with the one player that was in regular contact with me - David (Russia). David and I started off this game with a firm alliance, and plans to try to achieve a two-way RT draw. Andrew (Italy) also made a brief attempt to form an alliance with me, but his request that I not build any fleets had my alarm bells ringing as to exactly how committed he would ever be to peace with me, and so I chose to go along the Russian route.


The RT went well in the first few game years, and I'm particularly pleased and proud at the way we nailed Austria to the wall together very early on in the game. I know that Charlie (Austria) is a very strong player indeed, having suffered at his hands in previous games, and I also know that no Turkey ever does well in a game of Diplomacy if Austria is having an easy time of it. So, there was no alternative, Austria had to go, and we dispatched him together with aplomb.


Once Charlie was out of the way, I begun to make some headway against Italy, aided by an unfortunately timed NMR from Andrew allowing me to grab TYS in 1904. David threw all of his force onto his German front, and succeeded wonderfully in crippling Michael (Germany) whilst also throwing himself off-balance. This coupled with the seemingly insatiable rise of Nathan (France) convinced me that if there was ever going to be a time to break ranks with Russia and make a play for personal glory, this was it.


Matters were helped somewhat by the seemingly personal emnity between Nathan and Greg (England), meaning that I was pushing at an open door in convincing Greg to share ideas for attacking France and Russia with me. We agreed to pursue the best possible result open to the two of us whilst helping one another out. Greg wanted a two-way draw with me, and had my progress been slower in the Balkans, then that might well have been a possible outcome for us. Still, we play this game to win. Next time Greg, I'm sure I'll be the one asking you to consider a two-way with me...


The vital thing from my point of view was to keep France distracted in his vendetta against England and keep him from building or moving fleets to the Mediterranean so as to prop Italy up, or worse, so as to try to grab some of the Italian spoils for himself. What I needed to do was to get to GoL/WMS as soon as I possibly could, and although he had diligently blocked me well up to that point, in an unlucky (for him) 50-50 coin-flip move Italy failed to stop me taking Tun in Spring 05. The build was nice, the disband to be suffered by Italy even nicer - but the access to GoL that I gained from my retreat was the ultimate prize, and move to GoL I promptly did. That for me was the champagne moment in this game - I then knew that at the least, I would share in a draw from this game.


I'm still surprised that France agreed to bounce GoL - Mar with Spa - Mar with me in Autumn 05, and even more surprised that France did not see the value of the move I made in ordering GoL to hold, thus having him block Mar for his build. Nathan accused me there of making a pointless stab upon him for no value - I didn't think it wise at the time to point out exactly how valuable that stab actually was for me, so I let Nathan continue thinking that my stab was pointless. Nathan built a fleet in Bre, and at first I thought that the MAO fleet was going to enter the Med and challenge me, but a bit of cunning diplomacy aimed at Nathan and Greg helped in keeping France's eyes turned northwards, and the Med remained mine.


From here on in I needed a bit of good luck and a bit of fancy footwork, both of which I got, to slowly grind away a position in the Balkans, defending parts of the front whilst attacking others and also trying to whittle away at Italy's centres to fuel my bid for the solo. Greg's distracting of Russia to the north was immensely helpful, as was Nathan's reluctance to enter the Med. Despite all sorts of fanciful draws being proposed by others, I grew more and more confident of getting a positive result in this game, and so it ultimately proved.


The last set of orders ensured I finished the game with exactly 18 centres, whilst
leaving the other survivors with England as a clear second place, and
Italy with two centres. There's no point in soloing with more than 18
centres with the tournament scoring system as it is, since 18 is the
maximum number of 0.1 points you can get for your centre count (giving a
maximum of 21.8 points for the solo). I could have soloed with 20 or 21 centres if I had chosen to, but that would have involved damaging my ally Greg's chances of
coming second in this game, and in finishing as far up the ladder as
possible in the tournament after the second round. And back at the start
of 1909 Italy approached me offering to do my bidding if I would let him live. I promised Andrew a survival if he
ordered as I asked him to, which he then faithfully did for the next few
turns (hence his retreat to Mar last winter for example). I'm very pleased that David also managed to survive the game, his excellent play early on in the game deserves it.


Overall then a good game for me which (perhaps unsurprisingly) I enjoyed very much. I'd like to wish you all the best of luck in your second round games for the Blitz tournament, and also say that I look forwards to crossing swords with you all again sometime soon. I'm sure any of you would beat the pants off of me if we do...



Best,


Sultan Jerome







--
Greg ShtraksGreg.Shtraks(at)gmail.com
917-834-8358