Sargmacher: nice survival :), I wasn't happy, when you didn't bounce warshaw earlier.

England, I was really tempted to take full revenge against you at the end and give the game to Turkey, but my clear head prevailed, glad we could force the draw (and yes, there was a tad bit of luck in there, but when is there not in diplomacy?)

I am astonished that I survived, I took many risks and somehow they all paid off. Good game everyone!

Haha, thanks rokakoma. Letting Turkey into Warsaw that time was on purpose - I felt I needed Turkey to make dramatic advances for the other countries on the map to realise their task was not to fight each other but mobilise against the potential soloist.

I agree that France was making some odd movements at the end and I was a bit concerned that there might be a desire to strike revenge on England rather than join in what was a very realistic stalemate line.

France, I attacked you at the beginning, because it was quite easy, and probably unexpected. Also, my main objective was to kill the ships everywhere, so I can live free.

When you destroyed both my armies in belgium+holland, I was kinda happy, so I could build a 4th ship.

At the end, I really didn't understand your revenge stuff, I was clearly not attacking you, also I put in my draw vote, and still, your were building a fleet in Brest! What the hell???

Sarg, I got your point about warsaw, sadly it caused a lot of problem, I had to convoy my armies into livonia/prussia asap. I knew it will be hard to build up a stalemate line, but somehow I managed to do that. I also knew losing moscow isn't a problem for us, but I wanted to hold it until I can, as an insurance in case sg. goes wrong in tunis/south france.

great game everyone! looking back, I might have had a better chance of solo if I had gone to Tunis and Moscow earlier - by the time I got around to them it was too late.

I was very tempted to wait out a few more turns at the end, but it really did seem like a stalemate line once England and France cooperated in Spring '16.

Emma: as I said, I would have given you moscow at the very end, to get some more points, but you didn't wait for that.

About Moscow, you had only 1 turn, when you could have taken it, it was when I took berlin from denmark with convoy. Every other turn I was covering moscow. Maybe if you took ukraine earlier.

About Tunis, the same, I was in kinda hurry, to help italy keep it, after I killed france's ships.

rokaroma - yes i see, i went to Galicia to hurry for Munich; it seemed that Munich was always the hardest one to get for Turkey to solo.

I was actually also thinking of letting you get Moscow in the end, but wasn't confident of the stalemate line...

I wouldn't have taken moscow, since I can't hold it, all it could be useful is to eliminate russia, the same for you, you cannot hold it without 1 more unit. But who cares, if russia is eliminated, than we can draw, since whoever gets moscow neither can defend it, nor can expand further.

Anyway, good game guys, I'm going to sleep now, I'm glad France changed his (her) mind and went for the draw.

Two regrets:

1. Going after Sweden after Russia opened it up. Once I lost Denmark, I knew I would eventually be going down.

2. Moving my army from Warsaw to Ukraine instead of just disbanding it and building a fleet instead. I saw England as my long term threat basically from Spring '03 on, but I didn't have the balance of forces and I missed an opportunity to alleviate until one year too late.

Bob, I think you have lost at your very first move, it was a really bad opening.

I'm off now too but again, fantastic game folks! enjoyed it very much, even though i came so close to solo and didn't quite make it.

Well, yes, it was suboptimal, because France opened to Burgundy. If France had opened to Spain, then I've got a pretty good chance at knocking Russia out of Scandinavia by the end of '02.

Err.. Why is this game called that?

:), dunno, ask czech or sarg, maybe they have a clue.

Bob, that looks to me like a suboptimal opening no matter what you're trying to do. If you want to control Scandinavia, just do a standard 2-SC opening, block Russia in Sweden in autumn '01, build fleet Berlin, and you've basically got Sweden barring English interference.

I can see what you were trying to do, but giving up a build in order to open East is not advisable, - especially when you are allowing your first target to get an extra one as well by not blocking Sweden. That's my opinion anyway.