Short and to the point, 4 way draw stalemate line was rock solid. Then turkey got greedy and gift wrapped the solo.

It looks like austria attacked Bul...

You must be kidding.

1916 there is a 100% unbreakable 4-way draw. Spring 1917 Germany in what turned out to be a brilliant move pulls back to give away 2 centers. Recognizing that the only reason he would be doing this is to make room for another elimination I move trieste to serbia and albania to greece to make sure turkey didnt try and grab it and to make room for the extra build i had been unable to use yet.

Spring of 1918 I'm defending myself from elimination. What are you looking at achillies27?

Interesting game! And long.

I was Germany and England opened very favorable to me (Lon-Eng, Liv-Wal, *Edi-Nwg*) so I took the offer and we were off to the races. We worked well together against France and Russia, and took those guys down.

France had about a turn or two left, and Russia was basically cooked. I had made a foray towards Austria which put Russia off his guard and allowed me to punch through to Warsaw and Moscow. But now things were getting a little nervy. What would England do now? I was engaged against Austria (who had just stabbed Italy surprisingly) and France was about to gobble up all of France except for my army in Paris. We had the North Sea wonderfully DMZ'd, but at this point I got a little worried and moved Baltic over to Denmark. That and the fact that I was basically holding St. Pete hostage set off the tinderbox. England bulit a fleet in London. We bounced in North Sea and the hostilities began.

Things were pretty tight there for a while with Austria pushing in the South and England munching my centers in the far West. Luckily Turkey sort of kept to himself at this point. I made some good guesses and got the momentum away from England, and Italy started crunching Austria.

That ended up finally with me at 16. England at 1 and a very solid line put up by T/A/I. I had Mos, War, but they had Spa, Por. There were no seams where cooperation may have been a problem so I was stopped dead.

At that point I could have knocked off England and accepted the draw, but I was hesitant to kill my former ally with whom I had cooperated so well just to get it from 5 to 4. I figured, if I was going to kill my ally then the other three T/A/I should have to kill off one of their own too. So I dropped back (gave up Moscow and Warsaw) and kept bouncing with England.

Turkey immediately jumped and took the bait, and even pulled off his draw toggle! At that point I was a little nervous because I now no longer had enough to stalemate A/I/T and contain England at the same time. But things went nuts in the South! I was hoping that A/T would gang up on Italy. That seemed the logical choice, but everyone was attacking everyone! It was quite delicious. While all that was going on, England gave up the ghost and resigned, and I got a couple lucky moves in a row and grabbed Iberia from Italy. Turkey still hadn't set up a line at War/Mos at that point so I pounced.

Today is my 50th birthday and I got a present of 2100 . Thank you all, and good game!

The pull back by Germany move reminded of the Joker throwing a broom stick to those two guys for "tryouts". lol In hindsight I wish I hadn't messed with Italy, but I did believe he would be joining in to cut the pot down to 3 as well.

I mean fall 1918 the stalemate is still in decent condition if Turkey backs off budapest and stays in position to hold moscow and warsaw. Instead he takes budapest and ends up so far out of position it was lost without a massive goof up by cspieker.

Happy birthday lol

As an aside, one thing weird I noticed was that England was denoted as "left" after he missed just one move. Usually it takes two NMR's, correct? Does resigning happen more quickly after a certain point in the game or if the power is down to 1 center?

Congrats cspieker. My abridged EOG.

I wanted to try something new with England. I don't have a go-to with England and find it one of my weakest gunboat powers. I was happy that the signal was accepted by Germany and that we had a good alliance. I wasimpressed with how long it took him to stab me - not that it was his best move, but it worked out for him.

I knew from the way things went that Germany was going to become the big ally of us two. France defended me well and Germany less well, I was behind from the beginning. I contemplated changing course earlier but weighed as being worse than trying to simply speed up my gains. I could not speed them up fast enough. There was a point when France was gone that I knew I had to stab or be stabbed - turns out that we went at the same time. I was slightly weaker that Germany but had a good position. I was hopeful that the south could unite a front against him that would improve my chances. I think I made some good moves and I really think that I delayed my own death as long as I could, there were not enough outside forces to tip the scales in my direction. Germany also seemed to be making great guesses, it was a good fight.

At the end of the game, I was away on vacation. I burdened with too much work from all my games and I guess he also got busy towards the end of the week. I apologize for my CD at game's end.

All in all, I was beat by cspeiker in a great game. It felt like a game between the two of us for almost the whole thing, it was a fun head to head thing and I am very glad that he won considering I was eliminated (if I survived, a draw obviously would have been my preference). Congrats again.

When I saw that I had drawn Austria I thought...I'm screwed. It was the only country I didn't feel comfortable with and in a game full of titans I figured I would be eaten up.

1901 - I opened conservatively. I had gone to each persons profile and found a couple games where they were italy. Most notably Czech and Zmaj nearly always attack Austria in 1901, so there was no way I was moving venice to albania to go for the extra build. I bounced gal. and took serbia. Italy opened lepanto and turkey opened anit-russian to armenia, this was excellent. I was also thrilled to see that russia took romania with a fleet.

1902/1903 - I take greece and bulgaria. But Turkey gets his convoy defenses in place and Italy can't get to Turkey for the life of him. This has me concerned that hes going to get frustrated and move to attacking me since I am seeing steady growth. I bounce at albania thinking he may convoy there, and cover trieste. In the meantime germany and england have made an all-out alliance trusting each other completely and are making quick work of russia in the north and france.

Builds 1903 I am fully expecting a fleet build by germany as enland was wide open. But he sticks with the army at munich. Fall 1904 I have now picked up romania and am sitting at 7 centers, the 2nd biggest power in the game. And then I made my dumbest move Spring 1905 I moved to tyrolia and took venice. It is incredibly foolish to make yourself 1 more enemy to be surrounded with as Austria. You have to wait for the right time, and this was not the right time. To make matters worse germany began moving in south on my area of influence.

From 1906 to 1908 I'm just trying to play the best defense I can against 3 opponents coming at me. Germany had turned on england in Fall 07 and by Fall 08 he looked to have the upperhand, Turkey throws up his draw and after an NMR makes a completely non-aggressive move to put himself at a stalemate position.

Fall 1909 Turkey goes from the draw team player to knocking out 2 of my centers at once. An early foreshadowing event.

1910 I'm down to 3 units and germany is in great position in gal/vien/ukr but he needs the units to finish off a still lively england. I move to vienna 3 times over the next 2 years and italy offers no support to a take out a defenseless german center. So knowing that he probably plans to off me I take trieste and move on tunis/naples. we swap trieste back 2 more times until germany is breathing down our necks and its gotten serious.

See a few posts up for 1916 and on, since I already chronicled it.

It was a fun game, my first big pot game and it had a lot of great players in there, minus me. Wish I would have got that 4way, I was counting on the points. But I did learn a new move I plan to use on someone curtesy of cspieker. I love how he disguises it as kindness for his ally, he probably just enjoyed watching us squirm.

Italy here. I haven't read the entire thread, but Gen. Lee, you did cost us the draw. You had no reason to stab me whatsoever, yet you did... Our left flank collapsed, and that was the game. Nice work :/

I should also mention: GG to all, congrats to cspieker. As you can probably tell, I was brimming with schadenfreude watching the game end after I was eliminated.

france here. not much to say, germany/england worked really well together and i never really was able to do anything to stop them. congrats cspieker

Bull crap. Czech cost the draw.
Did you expect me to let him eliminate me? lol.

Gen.Lee, looking through the maps, you stabbed Italy and Turkey, when you didn't need the builds. you should've just held

FD, That has nothing to do with the solo, as the 100% stalemate was after that point in the game. Turkey removed his draw after he took moscow and warsaw. Germany put up his draw, there was a point in time when Turkey could have hit draw and decided when the game ended in a 4-way, instead he proceeded to attack me and in turn got out of position.

Well, I wasn't there, so we will need to wait for Czech to arrive