Part I
The first half of this post will cover up until Winter 1903, focusing on the East. I will have the rest up by tomorrow night.
As Alex Mennen has noted, he and I know each other in real life. The major effect that this had on the game was the exchange of information early game and my late-game switch to mainly telephone based communication to reduce the credibility of French leaks. We have played Diplomacy against each other among our high school friends, so we both had a good estimate of each others’ strengths and weaknesses. We had no meta-game commitment.
The opening impressions I got of each country greatly influenced my decision to open North. Turkey was pragmatic and polite, and was obviously very familiar with the normal sensitivities that surrounded the Black Sea. He immediately stuck out among the players as someone who had previous experience playing Diplomacy. He took the time to explain his points thoroughly, both before and after he knew that I had Diplomacy experience.
Austria’s first press was a single but beefy paragraph, proposing that we establish a DMZ in Galicia. I had not planned on this, instead expecting to arrange a bounce, so I made a counter-proposal that he accepted that we bounce in Galicia. I later changed my mind when I decided to go North and he agreed to a DMZ again.
My communications with Italy in Spring 1901 were politely stilted, although we hit it off in the Fall. I learned (importantly) that he was opening to Tyrolia, so I figured that Austria would be properly pre-occupied in the South and West and allow me free access to Rumania.
Germany was the most conversational in 1901, and made allusions to Richard Sharp’s “The Game of Diplomacy.” Her decision not to move to Denmark in the Spring earned her major kudos points from a grateful Russia, guaranteeing at least one build (or so I thought).
I initiated communication with Britain, proposing mutual non-aggression. He replied politely, but given what I had heard from France about his ambitions in Belgium, I was a bit worried that an unchecked leviathan would be descending on my in 1902. I decided that the move to St Petersburg would be the most bang for my buck because I anticipated that Italy and Turkey would keep Austria tied up.
Then, out of the blue, Austria moved to Galicia. This put me in a bind because I had to choose between supporting an attack on Rumania and defending Warsaw. I supported myself to Rumania. The gamble did not pay off.
My moves for the rest of 1901 and 1902 were mostly dictated the necessity of recovering Warsaw. This forced me to withdraw from the North and halt any action in the South. During this period Italy and I began cooperating closely.
It was here that our differing strategies became more apparent, with me wanting to offer Austria a position as a puppet/buffer state in the Russia-Italy alliance and Italy wanting to eliminate him and move on to Turkey. My gambit fell through, though, when WrongBot didn’t reply until late on the day of the update. Deciding that WrongBot was unreliable and wouldn’t be useful as an ally, I let Italy take Budapest.
I was also slightly disappointed with the proposed division of centers proposed by Italy. Italy had just picked up all of Austria and wanted to take the easy pickings of Serbia and Greece while promising me the unappetizing prospect of cracking into Turkey for my next build. This made me uneasy about our alliance because I was worried about a Parfit’s Hitchhiker scenario in which I never got my builds.
Despite my military weakness in the South, though, I was negotiating from a position of strength. With Italy and Turkey both maneuvering their fleets in the Mediterranean, their chances of both allying against me plummeted. I had continued to negotiate with Turkey, telling him (correctly) that I was worried about Italy’s size. Turkey responded favorably to my hints that I was interested in building a Juggernaut (R-T alliance).
Here is where I made two mistakes that severely complicated the rest of the game. The first was not articulating clearly enough with Turkey that I was not allying with him in the spring. I had made this decision to delay allying with Turkey until after Serbia fell because I felt his position was so superior to mine that if I allied with him I would be a junior partner. The omission of this fact was a mistake that only made Turkey mad and did nothing else. It was not a ploy to open him up to attack; I did not expect Italy to take Greece.
The second mistake occurred shortly after the spring turn was resolved showing Italy with two extra supply centers. This sudden, unexpected gain by Italy did not fit with the slow, even advance that I had been hoping for against Turkey. I decided that Italy was too big and needed to be stopped. However, I chose to wait for Turkey to contact me that season instead of contacting him early. By the time I was able to convince Turkey that I wasn’t going to stab him again, he had already sent out an e-mail to the West decrying me as untrustworthy.
Amusingly, I heard about this e-mail from multiple sources in the West before I heard from Hugh, tipping me off that I had made a major misstep and needed to mend my fences. As far as I can tell, his e-mails had little effect in the West until 1906, three years later when Britain was dying and I had actually become the dominant player in the North. The only person who I didn’t hear from concerning his e-mail from Turkey was Britain. This was definitely a factor in my final decision to cooperate in his downfall.
In the West I was wary of England’s power in Norway, but without an ally I had no way of stopping him, so I maintained my “good fences, good neighbors” policy of keeping a militarized frontier. Contrary to a rumor I heard, I did not ask Britain to take Denmark. I actually preferred a German Denmark as it made any operation to take Sweden more complicated for my enemies.
That's the game up until and including my stab of Italy. My next post will cover Italy vs the Juggernaut, the fall of Britain, and the three-way draw.
Part II coming soon.
The first was not articulating clearly enough with Turkey that I was not allying with him in the spring. I had made this decision to delay allying with Turkey until after Serbia fell because I felt his position was so superior to mine that if I allied with him I would be a junior partner.
Interesting. Though I'm not sure I agree that you would have been terribly far behind me. You could have moved into Galicia in Spring 1903 and gotten Budapest in 1904.
...The omission of this fact was a mistake that only made Turkey mad and did nothing else. It was not a
(A full list of game moves and commentary is available here; the game maps are available here.)
Since I was GM, I had a distinctly limited access to private communications, so I've relatively little analysis.
A brief review of the game:
Austria was the first player to get eliminated; in contrast to the sort of min-maxing I've usually seen in Diplomacy, they took a lot of big risks in the beginning, in particular leaving Trieste open to Italian attack, in favor of quick expansion to the east. Although they did manage to take Warsaw and Serbia, the Austrian forces wound up overextended and unable to hold onto their gains, and in a weak position diplomatically; the fall of Trieste didn't help matters. Nobody was willing to help Austria, and so Italy seized all of Austria, with Turkey taking the Balkans and Russia taking Rumania. After that, there was a long period of stalemate in the Balkans, as neither of the three powers was willing to divert enough troops to one front to make any offensive progress.
In the west, Germany initially faced a combined Franco-British attack; they held out surprisingly well, aided by cracks in the alliance and occasional Russian attacks on Norway. Britain was actually the first Power to fall in the West, when France piled on after the fall of Norway; the British player was forced to stop participating in the game at around that time. France wound up with all of the British Isles, and Germany was squeezed between it and Russia until it cracked. (The brief Italian occupation of Munich didn't help.) Germany did manage to hold out for most of the rest of the game; there were only a few months of inconclusive war between France and Russia before the draw proposal.
Meanwhile, in the east, Italy gradually fell back before a combined Russian-Turkish attack. After Russia seized Vienna and Budapest, and Turkey seized Trieste, Russia mostly concentrated on attacking England and Germany, leaving Turkey and Italy in a period of stalemate, broken by the advance of Turkish fleets into the Ionian Sea. Soon after, Italy's player had to drop out, and Turkey soon seized control of Italy. Then the game ended.
One thing I'm curious about is how much communication there was between the eastern and western powers. (In-game, beyond Russia fighting on both fronts and a single, chance retreat by Italy, there was little direct interaction.)