Let's see. First off, congrats to Balls Deep for his victory.

1901: I was Austria. I went with a pretty standard Austrian opening and pretty much hoped Italy would play along, France wouldn't attack Italy, and Russia might open north. Other than Russia opening to the south, this pretty much went as planned.

1902: France builds a fleet in the South, Italy balks on the Lepanto... not looking good. Russia confuses me, because despite building in the North, he doesn't actually attack or do much of anything in the North. England also begins attacking Germany.

1903: France fully attacks Italy in the Med. I keep battling in the Balkans... no real progress.

1904: I screwed up and lost Greece. Russia continues to do NOTHING in the north, and just wastes his units there, which England takes quick advantage of.

Skipping ahead... no one has bothered to attack England, and France hasn't bothered to cover his back, despite making little progress against Italy. Turkey and I are deadlocked. 1907 begins the full on invasion by England and the perfectly timed stab against France, who really played this game a bit naively. Where else did England have to go except into France?

1908 is when everything falls apart. France appropriately turns back to defend against England (although its mostly too late), but what is utterly absurd is that Italy decides to stab me and NOT focus on England at all. We've all got draw votes up, and yet Italy keeps attacking Austria. WHY?!

We can very easily form a stalemate line at this point. We have the armies to make a stalemate in central europe, and the fleets to seal off the Med.

Italy's attack on me decided the game in favor of England. It was a move that I cannot comprehend at all. He gained nothing.

Gobb, what were you thinking when you stabbed me? You let England solo. France may have not played the best defense, but you didn't aid him in the slightest, and instead pressed the rest of us further from the English front line.

I was thinking along the lines of me replacing you completely, and then send fleets west. I misjudged the timing obviously, but I felt that a 4-centre Italy, in a 5-way draw, is not a good result and I wanted to try something risky. It backfired, but oh well.

England here! jolly good! pip pip and all that.

i wanted to establish a good e/f, and that worked out well early on. I'm a little surprised he went so hard into italy so early, but as long as he kept some pressure on germany, i was happy. i saw pretty quickly, though, that i wasn't going to be getting a lot of headway against russia. so i juked south into germany when i saw that he was going to get sweden, but was still fighting france off. He seemed like a good target at the time.

Once I picked up a couple centers from germany, i was starting to get to a spot where i wasn't making any progress, again. I am glad france didn't get the chance to attack me at this juncture. I thought he could've made faster progress against the italian and he made some moves I didn't understand. It looked like russia had kind of stopped paying attention in the north (hold orders when he could've signalled friendship with supports, or tried to attack me. When I saw him take a stronger defensive position by moving to finland, (denying me access at some point in the future) I built an army in london (which would sort of indicate continued fighting against germany) and convoyed to norway to get 3 units against his two defending st. pete.

I started to try to connect my german front and russian front, but the forced disband in livonia slowed that plan down for a few years. So, I finished off berlin in a spring phase and then jacked 2 centers from france in the fall. This is when I entered what i call 'beast mode': total war against everyone on the map. No one else was anywhere near my size. I pounded into france with lots and lots of units. Austria seems to have cottoned on, but italy was still insisting on fighting him. Great news for me. I had enough momentum that i was able to renew my conquest of russia.

for the next couple years i let everyone else just slap fight each other while i kept growing. i think this is where i threw up a cancel vote as a joke, which russia was like 'yes please!'. Yeah, no. Austria did a clever with his move to silesia in fall 1910, causing me to have to divert way too many units to get berlin back. By 1911, everyone had figured out that I was going to win if they didn't stop their local conflicts, and so they did. I saw the draw votes all go up around then, but it was too late. No one could keep me out spain, portugal and marseilles by then. I continued to push down the center into austria.

When going for the solo, I find it's best to be very aggressive and cross any potential stalemate lines as quickly as possible. Get in their faces before they can shore up a line against you. A lot of solos of mine, I'll get more than the 18 I need, just because I keep pushing in every direction, in case someone manages to stop me in an unexpected way on one front or another. And so it was here, you saw me go for vienna and tunis even though I had the iberian peninsula on lock.

I think you guys had a hard time settling things amongst yourselves because there were still so many players in the game at the late stage. A lot easier to get 2 guys with 10 centers working together than 4 players with 5 centers each to work together.

I think Italy summed things up appropriately.

He apparently decided that being part of a 5-way draw was not a good finish, and that losing was far more preferable.

Either way, well played England, lucky for you Russia and Italy were not thinking clearly on this one.

Six way draw that would be Poozer, Germany was the only player to be eliminated.


First off, BALLS_DEEP congratulations on a well played game. Your timing was very good, killing France when time was ripe. I especially liked your move on Germany in Spring 1904 with a massive attack on a well defended Denmark. Balls indeed. =P


I made an anti-Russian opening, but what seemed to me as a Lepanto coming my way quickly changed my plans and decided to team up with Russia if he wanted. Italy luckily didn't bother me much, as he was occupied with a French *invasion*. France was really messing around in the Med, gaining nothing for his efforts. At that moment I thought France was a noob or something. He was definitely fooling around.

What followed was an unsuccessful war against Austria. I tried to support Russia into Serbia a few times but those supports were cut or ignored by Russia. We didn't really work together. In 1904 I succeeded getting into Greece, but for pretty much the rest of the game my units were placed wrong, with an army in Greece, a fleet in BUL(sc) and an army in CON. Under the constant pressure of Austrian attacks it was nearly impossible to swap units.

In spring 1906 I decided to take a risk. England and France were starting to be the big guys, and who would be a logical third party? Turkey of course. So I 'betrayed' Russia and tried to get into SEV. However, Russia didn't devote all of his units to England as I hoped, and was able to keep me off. So until the endgame I didn't really get forward in any direction. Wrong placed units and only one fleet on BLS.

Lastly I tried to get an army into RUM but even that didn't work. A bit selfish perhaps but also to help in the war effort against England. Russia didn't let me in though, and I can't blame him.

So anything I tried messed up, I've not been more than five centers but I think I did my best. Perhaps some of the builds could've been better chosen. Until I stabbed Russia the A SMY build was pretty much useless.

Never could really figure out a way to work with you, Ursa. Unfortunate, as if we could have both pressed north (myself towards Germany and you through Russia), this game may have had a different outcome.

And yes good point on the #s of the draw, although I think France may have been fully eliminated

You fought well Poozer, keeping Russia, Turkey and later Italy at bay. If only I had an army in BUL, you could've supported me into RUM. There were little suggestions of support in this game I think. Did you at any point try to support Russia into BUL?

GERMANY.

Scrolling back, I remember thinking that losing Munich in fall 01 was a perfectly acceptable opening gambit. The opposing unit in Mun is stranded without support and is easily dislodged in spring 02. I did this by ordering my army in Ruhr to Belgium instead of covering Munich against France's army in Burgundy in fall 01. So, after capturing Bel, Hol, Den, and losing Mun, I got 2 builds. I simply built armies in Kie and Ber, and recaptured Mun immediately. Unfortunately, I could not enjoy my cleverness because England decided to capture the Heligoland Bight at that time. Germany alone, against France and England(especially an England played as brilliantly as BALLS DEEP), has no chance at all. I was put away in short order. Kudos to England and France(yebellz) for their brilliant play. That's all from me.

So you guys have finished your 2nd game of the group and 1-G hasn't even gotten the first match off the ground?

Is there anything being done to get 1-G going?

Congrats to BALLS DEEP. Well played, indeed.

On the other hand, I played indifferently. (Russia is my least favorite power in gunboats. Seriously, I'd rather play Italy or even Austria). I could never get any traction in this game and felt I was always reacting instead of making others react to me.

Turkey and I could never get it together. In a typical example, in 1903, he had ordered A Bul S A Rum-Ser, while I had ordered A Rum S A Bul-Ser and for whatever reason, instead of figuring it out, neither of us ever followed through in subsequent seasons.

I was able to force an English disband in Livonia (and for which I was repaid a couple of years later when he inflicted a forced disband on me) but it was only delaying the inevitable. And when Turkey moved on, I decided that if I was going down, I'd rather lose than give him a single SC. But enough of my pettiness.

Congrats again to England for his very impressive win.

Clarification:

*And when Turkey moved IN on ME, I decided...

@joker, it was only our first game. The naming was due to the first having to be cancelled due to a withdrawn player.

France EOG

Ugh, that was a miserable game. We could have stopped the solo and left England with a larger draw to settle for, but poor play and seeming unwillingness to form the stalemate line left us with what we deserved.
Congrats to England (BALLS DEEP) on the solo.

As I had hoped, England and I got off to good start in avoiding hostilities and working together on Germany. I was hoping to continue the partnership into the end game with perhaps Turkey balancing out the 3way.

However, I played quite poorly in the Med, making a number of weak tactical decisions that stalled my progress against Italy. Some were moves were overly conservative in absolutely preventing the negligible risk of a passed unit, while others were completely suboptimal regardless of intent.

I left myself quite vulnerable to the English stab in 1907 as I pushed armies forward. However, I gambled on this calculated risk in hope that England would continue the partnership given that he was not yet securely across the stalemate line and that competent players should be able to set up the stalemate forcing a large draw, should he choose to stab. I hoped that he had made this same calculation and would have chosen to wait to stab until he had a workable position across the stalemate line in Central Europe (and until I had a better position to dissuade such a stab). Unfortunately, that is not how things unfolded.

With the stab from England, it was quite clear that he had chosen his moment to make a run for the solo. I immediately put in my draw vote in winter of 1907 in hopes of rallying the others to play to stop the solo and disbanded my forward armies. The others could have had the line east of Switzerland covered. Brest and Paris would be inevitably lost, but I could make a stand on MAO and eventually fall back into Por, Spa, and Mar, with Italy supporting from behind to secure the western portion of the stalemate line.

Unfortunately, many of the others did not grasp the urgency of the solo threat, nor seemed willing to commit to stop the solo before the situation had become irreparable. Russia and Turkey continued their petty fight, with Russia willingly sacrificing ground to England to continue to spite Turkey. Meanwhile, Italy turned toward Austria, viciously riping into his flank with blind abandon that seemed to be only motivated by selfishly (and foolishly for a WTA) grabbing at SCs while destroying any hope for a central counter-offensive and ignoring the English threat in the west. No one else, save for Austria, even put up a draw vote until several precious years and vital position had been sacrificed by short-sighted infighting.

In the final few turns, the course we were on was hopeless. The draw that should have been was simply thrown away.

Well stated yebellz, shame we were the only two who tried.

Why does that never happen when I attempt a solo? Everyone instantly unites against me. Bah!

Say you're holding the line and someone tries to cut you out of the draw. Do you continue to hold the line or do you defend yourself?

I'd say defend yourself and let the guy who is threatening to win, win.