Everyone > zultar

Also, Im not a statistician. Im guessing 60% from experience on two other sites, and 10% on my gut here. Could be confirmation bias in that I think Im seeing less EF, so remember attacks more than wrorking together. But still.

We have a fairly good set of site statistics for opening moves and win percentage for each country for both full press and gunboat, but nothing on alliances or any "soft" data that can't easily be measured. If you're interested: www.draugnar.com/vaftstats

Just based on my experience here, I'd say E/F is one of the more reliable alliances in both gunboat and full press, at least in the early game. I haven't played many live games this year, unfortunately, but even when I did play live consistently I would say that our E/F percentage is much higher than 10% and probably has a strong positive correlation with GR - that is, as skill improves, likelihood of an E/F (again, in 1901) is much greater.

I got annihilated the one time I was England and opened to the Channel. I'll never do it again.

England opening to the Channel is far less likely in gunboat, especially with experienced players. Moving to the Channel pretty much guarantees that you'll lose Norway in 1902.

Thanks 2nd, very interesting. And I was focusing more on 1902-03 development.

Could well be that because Im new Im in a bit of low budget games. Doesnt say much about my record in them....

Assuming England doesn't open to the Channel then, it pretty much becomes up to France whether England/France play nice in the beginning or not. France is the one to decide whether he wants to make a play at Germany or England (or Italy I guess, that's usually premature before 1904), and either could be the right play depending on the board position.

France opening to the channel is also largely ineffective in my experience in relation to a sea lion in 1903/4.