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