TJ in Oregon
TJ in Cleve
Junior Chimp
Posts: 8,948
Political Matrix
E: 0.13, S: 6.96
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« Reply #2 on: January 21, 2020, 12:53:21 AM » |
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It was a fun game and thanks to Muon and everyone else who also played.
From the Austrian perspective this is how things went:
At the start of the game I tried to establish lines of communication with all my neighbors in particularly and passed notes with everyone except for Turkey (who responded to no one as has already been said). As Austria, my main priorities at the outset are to make peace with all my neighbors so as to avoid an early elimination and increase the odds that no more than one neighbor attacks me. Italy and Russia seemed interested in partnership, whereas Turkey declined to respond. This is fine from my perspective since Russia and Italy are the more immediately scary neighbors anyways in 1901.
It turned out that Russia and Italy were both friendly and that Turkey was a basket case. So this made the immediate moves straightforward enough. The next question would become where to turn as Turkey's days were numbered. The calculus on this was also clear and simple: Italy kept making very demanding requests for concessions to them for continued partnership, while Russia was happy to split up the spoils in Turkey and move on elsewhere. So it became clear I had to stab Italy. There really was no clear path for us to continue working together. Unfortunately, I was not well-prepared to do this and my strategy in dealing with Italy was incredibly vanilla and came as expected at basically every level.
When poor Oregon Blue Dog took over Turkish control, he made a serious attempt to work with me, but it wasn't to my advantage to turn on Russia when Russia had already promised me Constantinople . And even there, it would have put a dangerous potential ally of Italy on my rearguard. Altogether it wasn't an offer I could seriously consider. Turkey could hardly end war with Russia to help me against Italy. And there was no real plausibility of mending things with Italy with Turkey already eliminated and Italy having no interested in heading west.
I screwed up a bunch in the next phase of the game wherein I was fighting the slow war with Italy and made the mistake of letting France in. Italy then made the unexpected move of trying to throw the game to France to try and get me to lay off. It was tempting to reconsider my strategy, but it wouldn't have worked either. So I was left waiting for France to make his solo gambit. Italy reached out to me as a last ditch effort but there was little he could offer me to substantially change things at that point. Though I could see France's strategy clearly, it was still in my interest to take Venice when he moved to remove Italy, so I went along with it.
The next phase of the game started. At this point, France and I were both allegedly setting up to stab our allies to break up the slow AR vs EF endgame. This was an offer I had seriously considered since I could very likely win a war with Russia and saw the possibility of getting to 14 centers. However, France had pinned me to where I had very little chance of getting more than that. So I needed to play along enough to get France and England fighting, but not enough to actually start a war with Russia that would result in a French solo. So Russia and I orchestrated moves to make it look like we were at war. But there's a limit to how many turns one can do this and have it look remotely convincing. Still it bought enough time for England to see the threat of a French solo and reverse course, so it served its purpose. Now for the first time in years, Russia and I were collectively making gains against France and Germany (acting as a French puppet).
This is about the point where the game fizzled out. The likely next step would have been to see how long the three of us (AER) could keep working together before someone stabbed. I was in the exceedingly odd position of having a decently powerful Austrian navy, so likely I could have pushed it back to the stalemate line, maybe even making a play at Iberia if Russia/England had a falling out in the North.
It was something of an usual game in that it felt for large portions of the game that there was a kind of 5-on-2 alliance structure with Russia and I against the world. With France and England as long allies and Italy and Germany as their Janissaries, and Turkey marginally aligned with Italy and against Russia to the extent they were involved. Given that array of alliances, I was happy that Russia and I could play our way into a solid half of the board. I felt as though I could have played a lot better, especially early with how I dealt with France and Italy. Still, I doubt it would have transpired remarkably differently given the play of Turkey and of the western powers. I still have trouble seeing how a partnership with Italy could have been mutually productive given Italy's constant demand for centers and desire to pit Russia and I against each other. I could definitely have been less vanilla in my tactical decisions though. France and Italy had me outguessed at every single turn. It's interesting how sometimes in this game you are able to see your opponents' every move and sometimes you can't seem to do anything right.
I was Austria once again, which isn't obviously the favorite country in this game, but one I rather do like playing, especially early on. The thing I like about Austria is how involved you need to be with everyone right from the start. The thing I don't like about Austria, which became more and more of an issue throughout this game, is just how one-dimensional the endgame really is. It's so incredibly hard to solo as Austria without stabbing both Italy and Russia at some point, perhaps moreso (wkith stabbing neighbors) than any other country except Turkey (which is by far my least favorite to play as; yes you're really powerful but it's also boring).This game was unique in that the length and changes in alliance structure made it actually possible that I could be making a play into France and Iberia with the mighty prowess of the Austrian navy. So many sentences that are weird to see.
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