Wow... I'll admit, I skipped everything after the first page of comments (so I apologize if I'm repeating some of all of you, which I sure I am).
I have -no- idea what all the talk is about. This game is about winning. 18 SCs is the goal. Only one can win. When it gets down to 3 or 4 countries, or the leader is at about 12 SCs, the first thing everyone else should be doing is preventing the solo.
Sylvester did himself in by supporting G into T. I'm sure he knows that. No need kick the dude when he's down. He learned a lesson. There is no honor amongst thieves. This isn't a game of honor. Going into a draw does not make you a better player or anything. In real F2F tournies, when someone executes a fantastic stab it is viewed with admiration, not disdain.

I hate to see any player leave over a game. If it is that emotional for you, you shouldn't play. It is a -game-. Learn your lesson and get onto the next map.

Remember, folks, if you don't make mistakes, you can't improve yourself....

Losing isn't being defeated in the game. Losing is being defeated in the game and refusing to play another.

"Losing isn't being defeated in the game. Losing is being defeated in the game and refusing to play another."

+1 Well said, fortknox.

I don't typically like to do EoG's, but I decided when I was pulling this invitational together that I would do one for each game, so here goes:

The first thing I remember is that France informed me he would take Burgundy in spring 1901. Nothing pisses me off more (not in real life, just in the "it's just a game" sort of in-game frustration that isn't really a big deal) than someone that doesn't even bother to discuss something, that makes a decision on their own for their own benefit with no consideration of me. So, I start the game hoping to figure out a way to kill France since he's clearly self-centered and not a good "team first" sort of ally that I try to find in every game I play. I feel if I can find one other "team first" ally, that the two of us can both get to the end game very strong over 90% of the time. But, unfortunately for me, it did not appear that there was this sort of ally to be had, at least not one in a position to work with me immediately in the game. Bummer.

In fall 1901, France gave England Belgium. I wanted war with France, and France gives England Belgium, that's a bad sign for me. I also chose to bounce Russia out of Sweden, and Russia is not at all happy with me. Things were about to get interesting.

I decided to build an army and a fleet, but since I wanted the army in Berlin, to take at Russia and/or defend myself from Russia (since I pissed him off), I had to build a fleet in Kiel. The moment England sees the fleet, he sends me this four word message, which I won't soon forget: "Fleet Kiel explain. Now." Seriously?! So, I now have a Frenchman that only thinks of himself, but is upfront about it, a Russian I have pissed off by bouncing him out of Sweden, and a loose cannon of an Englishman whose arrogance and demands make the Frenchman look like a prince. I have no idea what to do here. I have chatted nicely with Austria and Italy (and Turkey for that matter), but what can they do, they have the southeast to contend with, and my problems aren't their problems, right?

So, for spring 1902, I tried to talk Enlgand down off the ledge, but he doesn't have much to say in this game, super quiet. I tried to talk nice with France, since, after all, he didn't actually attack me yet, he was just unwilling to hold a converstaion with me about something that had an effect on me, and even though he was self-centered, at least we could talk. As far as Russia, I'm not sure why I had hoped building an army would make him feel I would be too difficult to attack to bother, since it also looked as if I would go after him, but I tried to talk him off his own ledge as well, and hoped he'd leave me alone. So, England supports Russia to Sweden (son of a beeoch!!!!) while Russia slides right next to Munich (sure Russia can claim it was to attack Vienna, but I again tried to bounce Russia out of Sweden, the guy could not be happy about that). But, it sort of looks like France shifted on England, which, as Germany, England and France fighting is a beautiful thing, *and* Italy actually shifted at France with everything he had!!

So, I begged England to not support hold at Sweden, and to shift on Russia, to attack StP. England never responded to me, even though I sent the message at least 12 hours before the phase went through, so my hopes were low. I told England how Belgium was safe and I would not take it, and in fact, that I would support its hold. But no word back. Bummer! With Russia so close, and Austria looking to be in trouble, I decided I had to do anything I could to slow Russia down, so I had Munich attack Boh, just because it was the only thing I could do, and it ended up being the thing that allowed Austria to take Galicia. Also, England ordered what I had hoped and I got Sweden, and Russia went from someone pissed at me and a guy I feared very much to not much of a threat very quickly and what seemed to be somewhat random at the time, but I still hated Boh being occupied right next to my Munich. France comletely shifted at Italy, to defend, so it seemed like since England actually worked with me against Russia up north, that he would actually turn out to be that one long-term ally I was trying desperately to find, finally!! I mean, I did have hope for Italy, the two of us were getting along real well, and I enjoyed chatting with Italy a lot, but with England there was much potential for growth for us both, to double-team France, to double-team Russia, while with Italy, Italy would be butting heads with France for years, so even though I thought Italy was clearly the best person in the game to be my game-long ally, our units weren't in a great position to work together, so it was just a bit of wishful thinking, perhaps, but I did hope something on that front would evolve into something more at some point.

So, this is about where things got desperate, and just looking back at the game season by season, I must have missed explaining a few things. Now, remembering better, I could not talk England into attacking France. England, I suppose, wanted a Western Triple, which involved England circling his units all around me, into Scandinavia, into StP, England was circling me like a vulture, and I absolutely felt like prey. France could not be convinced to do anything against England, for France was 100% about defending against Italy and any sort of "big picture" discussion of how things were to play out long term (meaning that England would kill us both if we didn't do something) did not appear to even be considered because France was going to do what France was going to do regardless, kind of like the whole Bur thing in spring 1901, so I wasn't really surprised, I just needed to do something, anything. So, after feeling trapped in a corner, like England would kill me, in the end, as if France would not help me if England did come at me (because he had his own problems) and knowing Russia could not be happy with me and that he was still in Boh, I decided to go against all logic and just played with my gut and decided that if I were to have any chance at all surviving this game I just had to go fight England right now even if it would just speed up my ultimate death, which I was convinced it would, I'm just not a suffer in silence sort of guy, if I was going to die, I was ready to get it over with and at least go down fighting. So, after finding out England would be sending his London fleet to English Channel, to go "help" France fight Italy (i.e. to secure his ability to kill off both France and me), I attacked Belgium with the intent to kill that unit, and even though I could not hold Belgium that autumn, enough was enough, I had to make a move. I had hoped Russia would leave me alone, assuring him I would be busy in the northwest for a long time, if, in fact, I were around that long.

Combined with all this, Italy had total peace with the southeast and had actually gotten into a good position against France, and in the autumn, Italy had a 50/50 shot at one of France's centers, and the outcome of that guess may likely not only determine the Italian's future success, but mine as well, since this was quickly turning into an EF versuse GI. France was unwilling to commit to me at any point during the game, but I'll be damned if England wasn't his immediate best friend after I attacked Belgium, but I digress.

So, England was *furious* at me taking Belgium and killing his fleet, and he let me know it, and I tried to get in his head a bit, make him a bit more Mad, in the hopes it might throw him off a bit. I in no way expected it to work, but as long as I was alive, I was going to at least try everything I could to succeed. So, in Autumn 1903, the entire game changed, somehow England and France double supported a convoyed army from Norway to Belgium, which would have succeeded and certainly been my death, but England ordered the North Sea fleet (that was to do the convoy) to attack Skag, are you kidding me?!?! I kept Belgium. I took North Sea! Italy guessed correctly against France, and all of a sudden the GI is in total control of the northwest while EF is literally on its death bad, all due to one misorder, of which I had no control. Honestly, it is better to be lucky than good! :-)

The rest is pretty much history. I very much like to try two-way draws, especially because if either of the two gets nervous, you can always fall back on a three-way, so I find it very seldom a bad thing to at least explore. My philosophy on pursuing a two-way draw is to never put myself into a position where the other person can stab me for a solo, ever, and if I get paranoid about it, it's time for a three-way. To sum things up quickly, since I could write for days on all the nuances of how things played out in the end, the Italian took a different approach, and even though I like to think I don't pay much attention to GR, in the end (I'm absolute crap at prediction how I will react to any given situation, I need to actualy be faced with the decision to make it, only then do I have full information and thus able to really make the decision, so as I played, I did not know if I would two-way draw or go for the solo, the decision was never made ahead of time, just in the moment of going for it), knowing if I won this game my GR would break into quadruple digits, I took the win. I honestly don't know what I would have done if breaking the 1000 GRpoint barrier weren't a factor (obviously, since I just said I don't know what I'd do unless faced with the actual decision, and my decision did include the GR aspect), which is why I'm trying to continue discussion on that topic of taking a solo or not, if you can.

Anybody else got something to say about this game?

Ok here goes. I had played three recent games as France, and all three affected my initial stance in this game. In one of them, Italy moved to Piedmont and cost me a build, in another, Germany moved to Burgundy, and in the third, Italy initially attacked, but I convinced him that I was *not* interested in moving into the Med, and we shared in a three-way with England. So I wanted to try pushing into Burgundy to be sure of getting two builds no matter what Italy did, and was absolutely open with Germany about that.

Germany initially proposed leaving Burgundy open, which I have had bad experiences with before, and I don't make agreements and then violate them. When I turned him down, he asked if I would at least bump in Burgundy, but by then I was 1) leery of Germany, and 2) still intent on a fool-proof two builds.

England didn't talk much but I had a good feeling about him, and I think he would have been perfectly happy to launch and maintain a western triple the whole game, but of course Germany was leery of that. I suggested that England and I go all-out against Germany, who was protesting a three-way alliance and asked me several (!) times to attack England with him.

England wanted nothing to do with attacking Germany and was intent on attacking Russia, for whatever reason. I decided to hope for the best and try to jolly Germany into doing the Triple. I had my doubts about Germany, but wasn't able to pull together a firm alliance against him.

Mujus, no offense, that's just how I personally react to that kind of thing, your approach was perfectly valid, it just got us off on the wrong foot (largely because of my "extreme" take on that sort of thing), and I was just trying to describe my honest thoughts on how things progressed. I look forward to playing you again sometime, if you are interested.

Meanwhile, in warmer climes, Italy and I had great repartée throughout the game, and I thoroughly enjoyed our interaction, except of course for the fact that he was absolutely unconvinceable. lol. Then England *finally swung* around after Germany robbed him of Belgium (which I doubted the wisdom of, since it pushed England into my camp). I offered to help him get back into Belgium (Germany kept saying that we had to attack England), but a mis-order torpedoed that when the convoying fleet moved. And as Marx says, by then Italy was busy outguessing me most of the time!

Marx, no offense taken! Your style worked for you, this time! And yes, I'd be happy to play in another game with you, whether as allies or as opponents. In conclusion to my EOG summary, however, in this game I had absolutely no luck convincing any of my three neighbors to go along with my plans. lol!

No luck, or no success. And yes, the combination of your reaction and my determination to move to Burgundy started us out on the wrong foot.

I agree with your view of Italy, Mujus, I thoroughly enjoyed chatting with him, I can't think of many that I've enjoyed chatting with more, honestly... That said, it is my firm belief that that should not commit me 100% to not stab him and share a two-way draw, even if that only means I 99% of the time do not stab him and share a two-way draw.

Yeah, Mujus, that whole Burgundy thing really killed us. I enjoyed playing with you as well, but our interaction was always tainted. Even if you had said you had whatever bad experiences lately and you were strongly leaning towards supporting an attack on Bur and merely asked me if I could go with the flow, that at least pretended to me that you gave a crap about what I thought, which is all I am looking for at the start of the game, or at least that gives me hope and doesn't push me to write you off entirely (assuming I can find a different option for a top ally in my area of the board, though in this game England and Russia also did not qualify, so I was stuck up north until Italy got and track and we started kicking butt together).

Thanks Mujus and MM. I did have loads of laughs as well ;)

I still won't comment this game, but I just wanna say I'm quite amused while reading everyone's (well, not everyone... You know who you are) interpretation of my EoG and my desire to leave this site, which was more or less related to that game. The emotional result of what resulted in that stab just accentuated that desire.

Thanks for (almost) every answer, it was interesting reading through.

slyster, I have a question for you, and you don't have to answer. If you enjoyed the game the whole time you were playing, and you 100% stand by how you played it out, based on your ethics and how you believe a game should be played, and given the fact you have no control over the orders I submitted that last season, what do you regret about how you played, or do you? I'd like to think, if I were you, I'd focus on how I played the game, that I would feel I did the best I was able, made my best guesses for how to play, and even though it didn't turn out how I expected, that's just how I play and it is what it is. Of course there are much more emotions about it in the moment, but if you can, for a moment, strip the emotions and expectations of others aside (especially since it's the expectations of others that got Babak so worked up, extreme expectations are a dangerous thing!), do you not stand behind how you played and thus are you not proud of how you played and what your play stood for, in your opinion?

This relates to my MO of it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.

PS - This is what caused me to attack England and kill his fleet in Belgium that one fateful season. I said, to myself, "screw it", this guy is going to kill me in the end and I'm not taking it lying down, I will fight, and if I die, so be it, I die on my terms doing what I believe is the proper thing to do given my circumstances.

Since this is a really relevant question, MadMarx, I will answer it, and it is not comments about how the game was played from A to Z. Anyways, most of you already figured out how all the game was played, so no need to add about that.

The logical outcome of this game would have been a 3 Way-Draw, no doubts about that, no one can argue about it. Yet, I decided otherwise. No stalemate lines are possible for a 2 Way-Draw except the one some mentionned about that diagonal one from StP to Western Med. At that time, I knew that this decision would make me open for a stab until EoG and greatly favored Germany, position wise. I never put myself in that "open stab position" (look through my games if you want), because at that time, I have to say, I wanted to test what kind of "guts" Germany had. I thought he would pull this through, even tho I was so easily "backstabble". I was wrong. Yet, as I mentionned, I chose a different way of playing. Because there IS different styles of play. Whilst I call myself an honor player, I, sometimes, play the game differently and go (or try to, needless to say that) for the win.

As for the regrets, right now with the emotional side of it gone (first reactions were purely emotional), my only real regret was to attack Turkey (Balaran), while he didn't deserve the attack since he played really well that game and should've thought this more through. I'm just happy now because I exchange messages with him and the guy is just climbing up and up my "respect" scale. A good individual he is.

As for the rest, I really have no regret in the way I played because I pursued what I felt was the best thing to do at that moment, I really thought I could trust MadMarx until the end, based on our exchanges, views of things, etc. I have to specify, even if he knows we have our differences, MadMarx did play a really good game and is "one" (there has been many others just to specify and, hopefully, will find others) of the players I really enjoyed playing with, no matter the outcome.

I am proud of how I played it because I remained true until the very end of this game. I don't care about points or anything else. I play, and always played this game for the exchanges, strategical discussions and FUN this game brings (even when the emotional side of it takes its place at the end!)

Since I'm at it, I also wanna pay tribute to Cachimbo, a Real Life friend that has much to offer and is really worth discovering. His hardwork put into defending the way I played, even if I know he doesn't agree completely with it, his brilliant way of bringing conversations to a higher level proved once more what friends really are, and should be, in life.
Thanks Oliver!

As for the others, there will be other games and other "styles" of play that I'll try to do, it's not because you go for honor once, because you feel it's how this "specific" game should be played, that it always will be the case. And, between me and you all, with all of these talks that went on about one single game, isn't it a good achievment, whether or not you agree with the way I played? ;0)

For those interested, MadMarx started this cut-throat invitational which I really look forward into participating! Since there wonn't any 2 Way-Draw possibilities, I thought this would be the perfect event, even for someone like me! (Just kidding of course, you folks!) Meet you there and hope we can converse some more, with those interested!

I think that does it! Cheers everyone!

So are you staying?

A note: There is another viable 17-17 line which is quite common for the parties involved here (Germany and Italy).

F NAO H
F IRI H
F ENG H
U Gas H
U Bre S U Gas
A Bur S U Gas
A Mun S A Boh
A Boh H
A Sil S A Gal
A War S A Gal
A Gal H
A Mos S U Sev
A Ukr S U Sev
U Sev H

===

U Por S U Spa
U Spa H
F WMS H
F NAf H
U Pie S U Mar
U Mar H
A Ven S A Tyl
A Tyl H
A Bud S A Vie
A Vie H
U Bul S U Rum
U BLA S U Rum
U Rum H
U Arm H

14 units apiece, 17 centers apiece.

I'm sorry, aren't there a lot of ways to do it if the leader just backs off enough so that stabbing #2 is impossible, but not so far that #2 can take the win?

I haven't looked closely, this is just my impression.

Yes there are lots of ways to do the stalemate PE mentioned. Including ones that swap trade around with some of the centres.

@FK: yes, I'm looking forward to play that game with you and see how we'll fare! I will take some time off after these games tho.

@PE: thanks for that example, I'll keep that in mind! Its really just that in that game, with Turkey pissed at me for trying the two way, I really was left with only Germany's agreement and sincerity... It really was my only "safety"! Oh well! Time to move to an other game and turn the page on that one! A new game means a new challenge and a new way of playing things out! Will look forward into playing with you in an other game (if we have the chance to and if you'd like too of course!) somewhen!