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 ploy to open him up to attack; I did not expect Italy to take Greece.
It's not just that you didn't articulate that you weren't allying me, it's that you blatantly stabbed me. Supporting Italy into Serbia was a stab. Furthermore, letting Italy think he might get somewhere from attacking me was what caused him to gain centers. Otherwise, he would have played Vienna supports Budapest, and moved Vienna to Trieste. To me, your moves only made sense if you were declaring war on me with Italy, which is why I made such a big deal of it.
If you'd warned me that you were supporting Italy into Serbia to sow confusion, then I wouldn't have been so bothered. But even so, I think you needed to pick sides between Italy and me that season. You looked like you had picked Italy, so I was correct to warn the West about IR.
With Italy and Turkey both maneuvering their fleets in the Mediterranean, their chances of both allying against me plummeted.
I deliberately created this situation by preemptively striking Italy in the Ionian, which would have only succeeded if he went for two Austrian builds without telling me. I deliberately burned diplomatic capital with Italy to make it easier for you to work with me without worrying that I would stab you with Italy.
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.
That's right. I was a bit confused about why my emails didn't move the West. Did they think that I would stab you myself to get revenge, even though I made it very clear that I wouldn't act alone against you? Did I manage to annoy them with my messages? Did they fail to understand the significance of a strong IR (which switched to an RT in 1904)? Or both: they failed to understand the significance of the growing alliance in the East, which led them to interpret me as being a big windbag?
If you'd warned me that you were supporting Italy into Serbia to sow confusion, then I wouldn't have been so bothered. But even so, I think you needed to pick sides between Italy and me that season. You looked like you had picked Italy, so I was correct to warn the West about IR.> quoted text
This sums up my mistake pretty well. My deception had no purpose and I gained nothing from it. I attribute this to the way that I was compartmentalizing negotiations at the time. The agent in charge of Turkish negotiations considered us as already allied, and ...
(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.)