The Grand Alliance gambit pretty much forced the hand of the RG. I think that you did the right thing in attacking me, given the ranking system. The convoy was in your self-interest and I don't begrudge it too much, in retrospect. If you had succeeded I could see you as being the third party to the draw instead of me.

Small chat played an important part in the my relations with both you and Italy. It formed a bond strong enough that I chose to continue to support Italy for a while longer even after Hugh signaled strongly that he wanted to ally. This was an early handicap of Hugh's in his communication with me early game, but the handicap lessened as I became more comfortable with the medium later in the game.

At the time of our conversation, though, the prospect of a Grand Alliance was quite frightening. I still have the draft of an angry e-mail to Hugh telling him that I wasn't going to stop the Western Alliance and that he'd better stop talking to my enemies and act like a real ally! Fortunately, I saved the draft, slept on it, and woke up the next morning and realized how stupid it was.

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 wanted to signal accordingly. Self-deception is a wonderful signalling tool sometimes, except when you actually succeed in deceiving yourself.

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?

I know France and I were pretty closely allied until England resigned, and Germany has talked about her take on your e-mails, but I don't know why England didn't take you up on the offer.

In 1906 I wrote a note to myself to remind me to ask if you had leaked our chat logs from that year to Germany. This was around mid-January.

Part II

In the South, my general plan had been to ally with Turkey until Italy was reduced to four or five centers and then offer to save him from the Juggernaut by offering him a place as a junior partner in a Russian-Italian alliance.

This was a strategy that I had used often in my high school, where the players are generally of lower caliber and don’t use TDT. Once I have reduced an enemy to the size when he can no-longer fight as an independent power, I offer him survival in return for the use of his units. In our group we call this “puppeting”. This offer is always accompanied by a promise not to eliminate him unless he stabs me, unless I need his center to win. Using this strategy I have, as Austria, fielded a navy out of St Petersburg. I have a perfect record for survival of loyal puppets.

So when I approached Italy, who I had been on good terms with before the stab and to whom I had sent an e-mail after the stab acknowledging my betrayal, I expected to explain to him that I was still open to allying with him in the future. I didn’t expect him to throw himself into his arms, but at least to establish a dialogue again. At the very worst I hoped that by making overtures to Italy I could pressure Turkey into giving me more control in the alliance.

I was mistaken. Italy had no interest in allying with me unless I burned all of my bridges with Turkey, and then would only consider my alliance. I decided that it wouldn’t even be possible to pretend to have an Italian option against Turkey and dropped the idea entirely.

The only option that remained in the South was to loyally support Turkey forward while making sure that I had a strong enough frontier that he couldn’t stab me. Hugh would occasionally make a reference to how he was considering betraying me but didn’t, which I mostly assumed to be him trying to extort concessions from me. We made lip service to demilitarizing the Black Sea and talked about a two-way draw in passing, but I was always doubtful that we would be able to pull it off.

In the North I was worried by England’s deployment to the Norwegian Sea in Fall 1903. Because of this I supported my move from Sweden to Norway in Spring 1905, so that if Denmark tapped me I could still prevent the British from taking Norway.

As I was still ostensibly at peace with Britain, I apologized for the incursion and promised to move out. However, now having a stronger position in the South and with the British stabbing the Germans yet again, I now had enough independent strength that I felt comfortable challenging Britain. I conspired with France to move out to the North Sea, which would make a French attack on Belgium more likely to succeed.

To my surprise, and slight disappointment, I got into the North Sea and as a result didn’t get a build from Norway.

The important work of breaking into the British position had been accomplished, though, and with France’s shiny new fleet and the Germans eager to avenge Denmark and Holland we were able to make pretty quick work of the British supply centers in 1905.

As England quickly fell, however, it became difficult to maintain the Russian-German-French alliance. I suggested that the Germans be given the North Sea and an English supply center, partly to keep them from attacking me and partly as a shield from France’s burgeoning strength. This was rendered a moot point though by the Grand Alliance of 1906.

The strength of the Grand Alliance wasn’t in its operational security. I repeatedly pressed Alex Mennen to discuss his future plans with me, but he coyly avoided the topic and talked about “mopping up the rest of Britain.” Furthermore, I began hearing less details about Hugh’s press to the West, which worried me. When I offered Germany help against France she responded strangely, pointing out for the first time that it would be difficult for her to help me against either France or Italy. Then Hugh sent me an e-mail with the plans he had proposed to the Western players. While I was impressed with the speed with which the alliance formed and the cleverness of the moves (they would have utterly crippled me if I had not tapped Denmark) the element of surprise was not on their side.

What the Grand Alliance did accomplish was the destruction of my hopes of keeping the board divided long enough to pull out a win. If I had been able to stay allied with Germany longer I would have been able to pick up Edinburgh and possibly Liverpool before I activated the Polish front, placing me in an excellent position to solo. Unfortunately, German hostility forced me to rush armies into Poland and cede England to France.

The last touch that finally made the three-way draw inevitable was a phone call that I made to France urging him not to do a two-way draw with Turkey. I pointed out how difficult it would be to precisely balance the fall of my centers so that each player ended up with 17.

From there on, it was merely the formality of completely eliminating Germany and Italy.

I'd like to thank Randaly for being the gamemaster and patiently adjudicating all of the moves.