I rather forget the early game as the end just became so drab and drawn out, so I'm just going off my memory here.
From the very start the aim was to clear Turkey out instantly. I worked on trying to get both Austria and Italy to go with the Key Lepanto opening so that Turkey would come crawling to me no matter how he'd opened, and they both agreed to it. Sure enough, Turkey went all out on me and then came straight back to me. So far, so good. England and I had a rather uneasy arrangement as he really disliked my tapping of Norway, despite never supporting ymself in, which I was only doing to ensure I held Sweden against the E/G.
The original AIR got progressively weaker on the Italian side though, as he went with two fleets rather 1 army 1 fleet as we recommended in 1901, and he promptly lost Venice to France in 1902. With his cuckolding and his weakness on the West, I tried to convince Austria to take him out with me and just progress to an A/R by 1903. Whilst Austria agreed, clearly he wasn't that interested.
We'd both been in conversation with Germany, under the pretence of adding him to the A/R, when really it was clearly both of us just wanted Germany on side. My relations with England were pretty strained as he hated my constant tapping of Norway (something I really only did to protect Sweden, as I didn't support myself in til I had to to get Germany on side). In the end, both Germany and I opted to side with Austria, as I knew that if Austria stabbed me he'd never break the stalemate line due to Italy's weakness, and that with France's stubborn resistance and England being stabbed by Germany so the West was a mess, I might have a shot at soloing in the long run.
Sadly Austria then made that stab anyway, which dispelled any long-term ambitions for anything more than a draw. While the initial three-way attack on me looked dire, I quickly came to the conclusion that England and Germany hadn't in fact made a peace to go for me, and was able to convince England to ally up with me and support me against Germany. I thus wrote off my home centres and tried to shore up Scandinavia and Turkey - the latter failing when I chanced the bounce on Armenia and thus failed to take Constantinople in 1905 - but with STP secure and England now proving himself a solid ally, I was still pretty comfortable we'd get a 4 way draw with Austria and the incredibly stubborn France.
At this point the game quality rapidly declined. Italy stopped talking to anyone except Austria from what I gather, and was a mindless puppet that briefly worried us that Austria might be able to solo after all, but some quick thinking by France and I got me into Tunis and killed that off before it started, as from there I was able to get into the WMed and we had a stalemate line in the south secure, in addition to STP already being tied up.
That only left the German front, which led to some dumb theatrics. Germany had done a decent job forcing us to keep him alive originally, so Abge decided to go with the fall-back, which I was fine with because I really didn't want Italy to get into the draw after he'd gone silent on everyone. Thus followed a horribly botched attempt by England & France (not following the plan I suggested) to actually eliminate Germany that cost us Munich and thus required Italy's Tunis to be part of the stalemate after all. I quickly backed out and threw support holds at Germany so he wouldn';t throw the game, and even Italy accepted the support holds on Tunis from France and I, so Abge drew it out one last painful year and finally we ended up with a 6WD. A rather disappointing result after the early promise and fun, and the late-game (essentially every year after I'd got into the WMed and the Med front was stalemated) was really quite drab.
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Westeros Diplomacy
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