(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.)

In addition to the two games currently being played on Less Wrong directly, the NYC group formed a third game; we filled five of the seven slots, with two being taken from an open call on LW when it was clear we would not reach seven players otherwise. While there were some technical problems for a few players, I feel the game was quite interesting. The game can be found here: http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=42765. Commentary was posted to the discussion group LW-Diplomacy@googlegroups.com which you can access here: http://groups.google.com/group/lw-diplomacy/browse_thread/thread/e8141331abf8a114, which all are free to join and review. These were neutral point of view overviews of the situation, to help bring everyone up to speed, and were done without private knowledge. While some figured out who I was right away, we didn't reveal it explicitly until much later. In terms of the software, a lack of good notifications makes it problematic for games that aren't either very long deadlines or very short, but it is a strong system otherwise.

Also available there are all my communications and my journal, which I updated as the game progressed. I will give an overview here of what happened, as I understand it, and am happy to discuss anything and everything related to the game or Diplomacy in general.

Early on, Italy and Russia quickly realized I was Turkey from my messages, and given my experience in the game and in games in general decided to try and take me out, agreeing on a triple with Austria, while in the west England and Germany formed an alliance against France. In the fall, both Austria and England had technical issues that cost them a center, which served to help keep France viable in the west and position Austria's units in awkward fashion. The first key movement in the game was that Austria decided that he felt that taking me out for who I was wasn't sporting, and so he backstabbed Italy but without making a deal with Turkey because he'd read (correctly) that Austria/Turkey is not a good deal for Austria in general. However, by lying to all and refusing to make a deal with Russia or with Turkey until too late he put us all in a position where it was easier to take him out. France jumped on Italy while he was weak and took advantage of England's struggles and Germany's fleets to realign the west. With Austria out of the way, Russia jumped on Germany and Turkey continued west safe from a Russian stab due to the tactical situation. I spent a lot of the midgame trying to get Russia to stall as much as possible in the north while I made progress in the south, with mixed results as England joined the alliance in exchange for assistance growing and once again becoming relevant. France asked for too much in deals with me and with Italy, forcing him to agree to be a Turkish puppet and me to stick with Russia until I could go for the win outright.

In the Fall of 1906, Russia repeated even louder than usual his request that I leave Black Sea, which of course I had no intention of doing, and it was the natural time for him to try and build a southern fleet. He however had been following orders for some time, although they were strong orders, so he was out of position for a war. I guessed he might move to Romania so I went for Sevastopol, which is harmless if it fails, and I got it, preventing a Russian build. He then backed off since he wanted no war, but I couldn't let him pick up more centers and build a defense, so I pretended to agree to peace and went straight for him; he bought that the first turn's move was defensive so I got two free turns. Meanwhile, Russia pulled off a stab of France to get into Burgundy, so France agreed to let me into the Mid-Atlantic in order to help him survive since I didn't need him dead, but giving me Mid-Atlantic sealed the board's fate unless everyone could perfectly co-ordinate at a minimum, which did not happen (and rarely does in my experience) because Russia broke ranks. I believe that starting in Spring 1908 Turkey probably does have an eventual forced win because he can hold Portugal for years via support cuts but it took me a long time to see it.

The biggest thing that I think is worth noting is that I made painstaking efforts to be friendly and helpful to all players in-game and not to break my word unless absolutely necessary. Early on I couldn't have kept my word to both Austria and Russia if they had both played along, but it never became an issue, then I lied once to Austria, arguably once to France and then once to Russia, and in two of the three cases presumed total war would be the result. I'm curious what other things that came up are considered by others to be worthy of discussion/exploration, and to see the after action reports from the other survivors.

We have five people from the NYC division of LW.  We need two more players

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=42765

passcode: streetlight