So, the powers that are not Austria are not making the right moves.
And I'm not talking about tactically. it means jack shit all about the individual specific moves. What I mean is they are not making the right **strategic** moves.
Austria is the clear solo threat and no one can come close to touching him.
He has a lock on 17, maybe only 16 centers. The correct play here is for EGR to back off and LET HIM TAKE 17.
You create a stalemate around your 17, you let him take the extras, you put in the same exact mathematically-impossible-to-break stalemate support holds for three years, and then if he still doesn't draw you call him a son of a bitch and email the mods.
What you do NOT do is continue to drag the game out and risk a loss by attacking rather than defending and accepting the position.
At that point, the only question is whether you eliminate England or not.
For an unranked game it's purely a matter of Honour and Lulz.
If it's DSS, and you can do it without losing, kill him, but don't let anyone know so he can't throw
If it's SOS, could go either way.
Once EGR have set up an unbreakable stalemate line, put up draws, and declared they will not cut anyone else out, they should have their not-loss.
Austria then only has two responses:
1) Convince England that if England let him win, he'll just pull back and Germany will kill him as he's no longer useful. It then falls to Austria's persuasiveness and how much England holds a grudge and whether he sees the writing on the wall as to whether this happens
2) REALLY REALLY pull back and start offering centers to Russia and/or Germany to get the game interesting again. I'm going to toot my own horn, because that's the whole point of doing this kind of thing:
gameID=165825You can see how it freaks out all the other people holding the stalemate line as if Austria **really** wanted to draw with them he'd not have taken the centers and/or built from them.
Of course if Russia and Germany are serious about drawing with each other what would they do?
Stay absolutely fucking still as above.
At the end of the day, this is an incredibly important skill:
Saying, publicly and privately, "I'm making a line. I'm going to hold the line. I will not be tempted off the line. I will not move forward where I could misstep or be sidestepped. Everyone is with me or against me".
Why that last line? Russia's draw is up, there's no way in hell he's going to win at this point, the only people who can do that is Germany and Austria. Why is Germany's draw not up? Yeah, he's not attacking Russia or anything, in fact supporting him into some centers (which can't be held...). What is Russia going to gain here by continuing!? All he's doing is doing Germany and Austria's job for them!: muddying the waters as to who gains and continuing the game in the hope that things get so muddy that they can win.
You need to learn how to end games you cannot win. This is how you do it. Drawing/Not-Losing is more than just making moves such that someone else doesn't get 18 this turn. It's a combination of
1) Making the right moves
and almost as importantly
2) Signalling from the top of your lungs your intentions and questioning like you're goddamn Joe McCarthy who seems to shy away from ending the game.
For those playing at home, figure out what 17 they should hold and what supports from what units are ordered to hold it.
If England, Germany, and Russia don't **already** know the answer to this question, shame. This is a learning game, so this is only a minor shame, but it needs to be fixed if that's the case.