Does Harry know how to use the killing curse? I assumed he didn't. Why else wouldn't he have used it first?

For the record, the "strangeness" of my responses around that time was really more my rather frantic recognition that, oh god, oh god, the alliance structure with Russia is falling apart, I have nowhere left to go, who will I be able to call dearest and darling now, France is a sweetheart but it's ~not the same~ not to mention that it would be impossible for him and I to actually work together in any meaningful fashion. So I was trying to... transition into the end of the alliance with you smoothly? I don't even know. As I've mentioned elsewhere, one of my key problems in this game was/is a reluctance to properly lie. So basically I didn't want to say "yeaaaaaah stabbing you now sorry baby" but I wanted to have meaningful conversations about strategy because, really, you were much more pleasant to talk to than almost any other player in the game. England counteracted it with his actions, France was the chatspeaking one (not that I hold this against him! It has its uses in many contexts and I am perfectly prone to slip into it myself), Italy played angry birds and valued getting revenge against alliance-breakers more than supply centers, Turkey was eloquent and nice enough except for the inconvenience that he communicated solely through emails, and Austria never really talked to me except in rejection of the Anschluss.

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?

Czar Thausler and I know each other in real life. We didn't have a metagame commitment to cooperate (in fact, I stabbed him briefly, to little effect), but it did help us coordinate.

Now, a chronological summary of the game from my perspective. I'm sure I've left out something important, but here goes.

I've played France several times before, and always opened by taking the Iberian centers and pretty much ignoring everything else until 1902. I decided to mix things up a bit and go for Belgium in 1901 instead. However, Kaiserin Tenshiko decided that Belgium should go to Britain, which made any attempt on it by me pretty much impossible, so I reverted to the more usual strategy. Tenshiko then further decided that her opening strategy would be to invade France, and she loudly broadcast this desire. This allowed Prime Minister Kevin to play us off against each other, and made life rather frustrating for me for the first three years, during which I had a continuous standoff against Germany in Burgundy, and Britain kept switching sides between us.

I made the mistake of not building a fleet in 1901 in order to appease Britain. Since I had no further room for expansion, I could not build a fleet, and, since it's pretty much impossible to invade Britain with only one fleet, I had no leverage against Britain until I got into Burgundy in 1904, allowing me to build another fleet and crush Britain. Instead of occasionally switching sides between me and Germany without any gain, Kevin should have allied with Germany and crushed me. This is because Germany actually had a possible path of expansion other than towards Britain, meaning that such an alliance would be stable and they could split my supply centers. I, on the other hand, had no possibility of gaining supply centers from Germany unless Britain conquered a large portion of Germany first and decided to hand me the leftovers. This meant that I had great incentive to stab Britain as soon as I got the chance, which he made the mistake of giving me.

Britain was quickly shut out of the continent by a French-German-Russian coalition. We initially planned to split Britain evenly, with each of us getting one British home supply center, but by the time we got to the taking-over-Britain stage, I had the ability to take two British supply centers on my own, aided by Prime Minister Kevin's resignation. So of course I did so.

At that point, Russia was frighteningly large, and I had started taking steps to slow its growth. Czar Thausler had been consulting me on strategy in the South, and I started leaking information to Sultan Hugh Ristik and Kind Alexandros. Additionally, I started coordinating with Germany against Russia. I convinced her to forgo Edinburgh (which I probably would have given her if she insisted on it) so she would have more units to move against Russia.

Eventually, it became evident that my backing of Germany would ultimately have no effect whatsoever on Russia's expansion, so I stabbed Germany, and divided up her supply centers with Russia. Thausler was concerned that I was gaining supply centers earlier than he was, so he supported Edinburgh hold, which I was not terribly concerned about, given that he could not take Edinburgh without my consent either. Russia and I took down Germany before Turkey took down Italy, so we then started arranging a stalemate while we waited.

Sultan Hugh Ristik and I briefly discussed attempting a two-way draw along the diagonal from North Africa to northern Russia, but I was inclined to try to bring the game to an end with three players. Two-way draws are tough to pull off, and it looked like Turkey would be more likely to be able to stab me and turn it into a win than I would. Additionally, I was in a tedious position because Russia had several fleets in the North, but few in the South, and Turkey had several fleets in the Mediterranean, meaning they could each deploy their fleets against me, but not against each other.