Grey Dip Ends

[Bosh]

Four way TEIF Draw

Players:
Turkey: CyberGnu
England: Iain Lindley
Italy: SnowFire
France: Napoleon, replaced by Ruffhaus
Germany: Midshipman
Russia: Reismark
Austria: Imran
[This message has been edited by Zhu Yuanzhang (edited May 09, 2001).]

[SnowFire]

Hahahaha. Some of you will remember me accidently posting a blatantly Italy message before, and I said in that original thread that I had dropped out and had arranged for a replacement.

I LIED! That's Diplomacy for you.

Anyway, Italy was instantly attractive for me in Grey Dip, I decided. Austria would most likely not be nutty enough to attack me. Plus I could have fun in terms of manipulating others. I decided that I wanted a big war between France and somebody else allowing me to stab 'em. After all, I hadn't taken Italy west yet in any of my games, and getting ahold of Gibraltar seemed like a good idea in a turbulent Grey game (this turned out to be really nice later).

Plans went fairly well. Germany attacked Austria, insuring that Austria didn't get too uppity, though I wouldn't have minded Austria being a bit stronger to fight off the Turk with. France didn't guard Marseilles in Fall, and I walked right in. So, with a quiet eastern front, I proceeded to build fleets to run and take over Iberia with. I also tried to rally support from Germany and England to attack France with, without too much support, but it was worth a shot.

Unfortunately, Italy isn't exactly the faster grower, and Turkey & England were clearly the major powers on the board, whose slight lead in supply centers was actually a lot bigger because of their offensive position. Also, my third place Italy was right between England and Turkey with regards to fleets. To seal the MAO, I was forced to call off the conquest of France and send out an olive branch. And with the rising Turkish tide, I was forced to stick 2, and then 3 fleets on guarding Ion (I got the 3rd thanks to a stab of Munich from the dying Germans). At this point I'd like to note that Britain probably could have been a much larger power had she moved her armies that had been supporting each other in the lowlands out to conquer Germany earlier. She could have gotten all the German SC's fairly easily, and from there perhaps attacked Austria or Warsaw.

Anyway, Turkey kept on growing, and while I had a stalemate line with the Frenchies on MAO, I did not have one on the Ionian. So the Turks broke through and conquered Italy. Oh well. I'd like to also point out that if Britain had stopped its siege on the stalemated MAO before the game situation went critical, I could have stuck the dagger in the Frenchman's back a lot earlier and finished the job I started. Perhaps with the builds I could have held the stalemate line myself, and then we'd have a 3-way draw instead of 4. Oh well, no matter.

Speaking of which, RUFFHAUS, you did an excellent job supporting me in the end game. I have to admit I was a bit surprised that France wasn't vindicative about my earlier advances and was willing to work with me, but once I figured out that the writing style was RUFFHAUS's and that he likes to take up falling apart positions and France's earlier press was much differently worded, it all made sense.

We all know the end game pretty well. We convinced England to move back from attacking the MAO, allowing France and myself to stop the Turks just in time. Thus, instead of having to congratulate Turkey or be executed, I will merely congratulate him out of respect for a very worthy opponent. I congratulate England for conquest of the icy northern realms and France for his friendship and aid in dark hours.

The Italian republic lives on! Albeit not in Italy.

-King SnowFire

P.S. Just as a random note, this is another small press game where corner powers requiring less press have done well (since England and Turkey did the best this game). In SDI, it was another England vs. Turkey endgame where LS1's England beat me out (and one of the reasons of this was CyberGnu's heroic defense of Austria against me). In SD2, CG's Ireland beat us all. In SD3, it was my England vs. Mao's Ottoman empire, again corners. And in SD4, Mao's Turkey won.
[This message has been edited by SnowFire (edited May 10, 2001).]

[CyberGnu]

Alas, thwarted in the end

I started out already working from the assumption that other people have discussed here: Corner powers are easier to play in gunboat games. That said, however, they are harder to solo with, something I eloquently proved here. Well, perhaps not eloquently, since it was a gunboat game, but still.

My first move was to neutralize Russia. I was helped by a mysterious move on russias part where he left me Bla while bouncing me in Arm. By s1902 I was in Sevastapol, Bulgaria and Rumania... And realized that this was a good place for a stab. Russia was already tethering, not being able to project any force in my direction. On the other hand, I was overextended north, but had the balkans just sitting there. I snuck in and stole Serbia, while moving a fleet to Sevastapol for the occupation. This was a risky move, but I figured it was worth it for two reasons, one the occupation of serbia, the other becuase it might convince russia that I was content with sevastapol. With some communication saying the same thing, I think I had russia convinced. He did not mount any campaigns against me, at least.

Following that I entered the long slugging match with Italy. I second guessed myself, when I thought that Austria would follow the sound strategies Italy suggested... Instead this caused me to lose one or two rounds because of long terms plans instead of immediate results, which would have worked better in the end.

I was fairly hopeful of a solo until the second to last round, when out of nowwhere england joined the alliance to stop me... Very annoying. Compounded with a mistype, where I ordered F Ion -> Tyn instead of Tun, I lost a valuable round in securing Wme... If I hadn't mistyped that, I think I still would have soloed the game...

Presswise, I didn't write a lot under my own name, for the simple reason that I expected people to be suspect of anything the leader had to say. Instead I wrote anonomously, as well as posing as other people... Germany, if you ever wondered who the imposter was that tried to form an alliance between Germany and England, that was me. Ich sprechen nigscht deutsche.

In the end, kudos to Italy for stopping me, and my hat off to Ruffhaus for taking over such a bad position, and surviving as well.

Good day to you all!

Da Gnu

[*End Is Forever*]

Very enjoyable game... hard luck to Turkey, but I just about guessed right in the end. SnowFire did a great job of frustrating me, to the point where I thought that he was going to chuck the game to Turkey rather than let me into WMe... nevertheless, kudos to both Ruff and SnowFire for trusting me to enter Gascony (which ultimately saved the game) when both had legitimate reasons to tell me where to get stuffed... Russia lost my sympathy with a poor set of opening moves, and hence any criticism from Reismark is taken with a pinch of salt on the part of the English.

Still, good game everyone, really enjoyable... and once again thanks to Boshko for GMing and mapmaking.

[RUFFHAUS 8]

Interesting game. I really took over a mess with France. I was pretty sure that it would be over in a year or two, getting smashed by Italy and England. But insstead of laying down and dying, I tried the unusual. I appealed to the Italians who had been coming in for the kill. I gotta say that I doubt I would have done this if I had know SnowFire was Italy, because I haven't noted him to be the type to take on ruined nations. So a bit a of a pleasant suprise there.

But getting Italy alone wasn't enough. England seemed to have designs on moving south, so I had to do some hard dipping here to survive. At first I didn't think England would get the message, but Turkey began to back up my prophecies with strong action, and it started looking bad. Fortunately Iain saw the light, and we all excercised trust at the appropriate time. Sorry Cyber, I may have wrecked your solo here.

I've played press only gunboat games before, but using Apolyton and "Sed" was definately a challenge. I screwed up once, and quickly edited my post, but that had to alert people that I was int he game. Snowie, Iain, and Reismark did it as well, and I began to have a good idea who people were by looking at writing styles and exampling playing styles. Ironically I was trying very hard to disguise my writing style at times, so I was suprised that Snowie said that he had me pegged. But I have lamented the general lack of willingness at Apolyton to accept diplomacy with ruined powers before, and I did slip up with a post.

SnowFire mentions the corner powers being very strong in thsese game, and there's a certain amount of validity to that. But in this game people could talk. And I followed it form the beginning, and there really wasn't all that much going on. Down the stretch, EFI really coordinated well in an open forum. If I had been Turkey I'd have been writing a lot of press by real and staged to throw things off a bit. I was suprised that this didn't happen.


[This message has been edited by RUFFHAUS 8 (edited May 09, 2001).]