[Spoilers] MJW, the King of Italy BLACK BOOTS (Merovech lurks)

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well my orders have been finalized.

I've not been posting in order to not draw attention. I will be thread spamming like crazy.

I'm pretty sure that Scooter will not attack NAP. I'm doing that to make france happy.

Edit: If I try and deal with TT I have to inform france of this and say it's a trap. And say what I dislike TT so much. Otherwise TT would leak to france to screw him over. Maybe I should ask for permission from france first? I also have to info france why I supported rowain in VIE. Maybe say TT will never stop stabbing too? And I can mess him up by showing some fake orders? Maybe I should threaten TT with saying that he leaked it to France if france defends munich?

Edit2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPp4qb-phrA
Random Black Dude: Me
The Police: Everyone Else (other than mattimeo and Dtay)

[MJW (ya that one)]

Okay...

If someone doesn't react to my e-mails I would assume that they have the ability to change the orders after the deadline or mardoc is going to cause them to "NMR".

[MJW (ya that one)]

In case in one wonders TT is the bad boy who didn't submit orders. It cannot be me or mattimeo for obvious reasons. I caught Cyneheard and Scooter online looking at this. Dtay and Rowain were talking to me near the deadline. So has to be TT. If he rage quit I can think of two reasons but I'll let TT speak first if that happened.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Oh okay. It looks like cyneheard talked to Scooter and Rowain. If mattimeo's internet connection didn't go out at the wrong time I might have turned things around. Oh well, I can now focus on screwing over TT and scooter(?) as much as possible now.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Sorry for spamming my thread but I should say what probably would have happened, if mattimeo's internet connection didn't went down, before I go to bed.

Well I didn't get Rowain's information, about Russia being hostile and scooter attacking SER, before Mattimeo went to work and closed the door against me fighting against France Turkey and Russia (with England and Germany). So I'm corrupted by spoiler information anyway so take this a grain of salt. It would probably hinge if I thought Cyneheard was talking to other people a lot or not. If I think he doesn't he would buy my story so I would stay the course. If I think it's plausible he talks to other people I would pin everything on scooter attacking SER unsupported and just not defend GRE with ALB. I would move my fleet in TYS to TUN because scooter still has a chance of going to ADR (or even just holding so I'm stuck in NAP not TYS) so I have the chance of not losing a SC and actually getting a build.

I think there's around an 80% chance that I wouldn't respect cyneheard. So this probably didn't matter.

Edit: Supporting GRE if scooter attacks SER is a total waste. If I realized this I wouldn't have supported it and went to TRI. However, I was very tried and burned out so I would put my chances of seeing that at around 10%(this would be much higher if I didn't miss it later). So it would have around a 70% chance of not mattering. (I'm not going to write down something silly like 72%)

[MJW (ya that one)]

Okay. Only my “talks” with rowain and TT are interesting enough to be worth posting. First up Rowain. This is after Rowain helped France against me and was hostile. He became unhostile after TT stopped talking to him so it became obvious that he would attack. By not lying to Rowain TT threw away a totally free city center. No one would care he lied to Rowain at this point. Rowain figuring out that scooter would attack SER could have been very important… The last thing I want to comment on is that Rowain really believes stabbing him was a bad idea. This is much different from Scooter. There both good players but I feel the most likely cause is the bias of being on the other side—not style. If I play again I would have to consider this… Note that my reference to Ponzi scheme comes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCmZS_b8LuU @26:55—27:35.

Hi MJW
It is nice that you want to outlast me but you could have a comfortable position right now had you not stabbed me.
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So are you working with TT or France? So your reaction would be different. The stab is so good that it's the best play unless there are extenuating cirmstances . For example Italy not being able to work with Russia and turkey. Or Italy wanting to play the key lepanto and not being able to if you always stab. http://www.diplom.org/Zine/S2007R/Burton...ician2.htm
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Sorry to say so but going after statistic what is the maybe best is stupid. Italy stabbing Austria is only good if a) he has a partnership with Russia (lesser extent Turkey) from T1 on and b) France is under (heavy) pressure from Germany and England.

Else it happens as it happened here. You do gain some SC from Austria and destroy Austria but end up getting killed by Russia and France.

In this game you would have fared better if you had honoured our deal until Turkey is dead. Then you partner with Russia and kill Austria (or stay allied with Austria and concentrate on the west).

You obviously missed the most important l9je in the article you just linked:

To win a Diplomacy game, you have to convince other players to trust you and cooperate with you.
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Well Richard Sharp, whose pretty good at this game, said that Italy should always stab in key lepento. And my version were the ALB army gets involved is even better. If you didn't trick me you would be down to 1SC and the standard version is not as good as that.

You and Austria entered into screw you mode as soon as the stab hit. It's not possible to do diplomacy after that. However, TT was not capable of trusting me. So the best move would be to not work with him. Or try and build up trust.

I don't think diplomacy is about trust...It's like saying that a Ponzi Scheme is about trust because it relies on the trust of friends and family to work. I'll leave it at that.

At least your condescending reaction gave away your working with turkey and russia. You would be a bit more respectful if you were trying to work with me.

P.S. Oh and that book also said that squatting in TRI is three times more common than going to SER.
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MJW
Stabbing yes. If you want to win sooner or later you have to stab your friend. So saying XY should always stab AB is useless because plain simple sooner or later a stab has to happen if you want to win.

But in this game once TT made his stupid move you should have stayed true because otherwise you end up without any friends at all.

Your mistake was your timing. Italy either stabs right at the start of the Lepanto (=winter 01) or after the job (remove turkey/weaken Russia) is finished. Otherwise you end up between 2 strong powers with your units most likely out of position.

I have tried to work with you. But I do have a difficulty to see any advantage in working with you now. I don't see a way for it. I have not heard any offer from you that gives me any incentive.

BTW as I'm down to 1 SC and am playing Austria I don't know what you mean insome parts of your post.
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Well the only offer I can think of is that I support you to BUD. I would guess your not interested in that for some reason... Can you think of anything else?
Oh I didn't make an offer before. I'm was just chit-chating seeing how you would react to me.

There’s much more after this but it’s not as interesting. Rowain saw that Scooter would attack SER but I don’t know how. I guessed at first it’s indirectly Austria because it cuts a possible support but now I’m not so sure. We agreed that he would squat (he couldn’t do anything thing else) and I would support him. After that we agreed to work together to attack TT as we have nothing better to do.
I think my biggest mistake in this game was not thinking for myself and seeing that an Italy-Russian Alliance would not be stable because the damage to the relationship with TT was just too great. TT emotional freakout proved he was sincere at the time but that isn’t good enough. Now it might have been possible for me to get away with it with better tactics but that was only because TT made the egregious error of ditching the sea so it really doesn’t count. If I could go back to that point I would make TT waste his turn and stick with Rowain (TT would go nuclear anyway if I didn’t lie and just told him I’m sticking with Austria. So it would just be free SCs.)
I also made the stray comment, in this e-mail chain, that I’m not playing other one of these games because of the possibility of someone (mattimeo here) not being able to submit orders and ruining my hard work is not acceptable. Extending the deadline won’t help as, just like werewolf, everything happens in the last day. I might feel differently about this later though. (-:

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well the TT thing was not as interesting as I thought expect for the outrageous ending. So I'll just surmise it expect for that e-mail.

I told TT that I was going nuclear and would give my cities to france if he didn't stop attacking me. However, he was not reading my e-mails so he missed that. He could have picked up two cities centers easily if he read my e-mails by saying he would not attack me and doing it anyway. That's what I expected to happen.

However, because he missed the nuclear meltdown threat* he just proposed swapping VIE and BUD. I totally believed him because if he was still hostile he would react with the meltdown threat with anger. This didn't happen and it made think he was telling the truth. I was going to do what he said. Then TT blew it all by saying that Scooter would stop me from getting AEG and not saying that I had to support GRE.

*After Rowain gave that Cyneheard e-mail (were I said 'nuclear meltdown mode') were I explained what I was going to do to TT--TT acted like that was some big reveal. Lame.

I looked at the board and saw Scooter could hold AEG against anything and double-attack GRE for free. So I had to support it. I asked for the conversation between Scooter and TT to see what scooter really said. And then TT gave me this:

Sent two minutes after the deadline:

Just finished compiling it now, hope its all pasted onto the attached doc

Of course there was no attachment. I fell for this totally which is quite pathetic. You should just attach a corrupted file next time TT. I responded and asked for the transcript but TT didn't show up of course. I thought about it and determined the most likely case that Scooter just told TT that he was holding the AEG and didn't brother to mention that he was attacking GRE because it was implicit. TT also made the mistake of not seeing I had to go to TRI with my army if I took VIE because otherwise the Austrian army could retreat to VIE. So I made the choice of making my orders assuming that and waiting for TT to show up.

However, Mardoc came in and told me that TT submit orders then I suddenly realized that TT was lying otherwise he wouldn't have screwed himself by sending in orders (instead he would have asked for extra time to computer issues). I choose to be a good boy and use my orders I had in mind in case TT went to bed (instead of making up new ones knowing he's lying).

I didn't submit orders because TT and I came close to running out of time so I wanted to make sure that we could talk about everything. And we would have a great excuse in that TT had computer problems (he told me that--it might be a lie though) It might have been TT's intent to use the deadline fluster me and that worked. I might have not seen the tactical issues if I felt I was under pressure to make the choice right at that time. But that didn't happen.

If you want to lower your IQ I give post the whole thing. The ending was clearly the worst but there were other dumb things like me still believing TT after he ask me to move to PIE and convey my ALB out. I'm pretty sure he was angling for me to waste my turn from the start from not starting this earlier so this is just a failed stab and nothing more...

Anyway after that stunt (faking an attachment) I cannot believe anything TT says until he stops attacking me or helps me out by taking out Turkey. (The Turkish units are much more threating them his).

Edit: Just fixed the embedded quote I used for this.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Okay now time to talk about Dtay and mattimeo.

I talked to Dtay the turn before my meltdown and explained I could get POR for free. He declined. (-: . So I had to go all out to make him stab France. So I choose the Nuclear Option. However, Dtay was busy so didn't responded. I thought he was just ignoring me but he was busy.

I talked to mattimeo and we worked out an agreement were I would support him in to MUN if he used that unit to attack France. It depended on Dtay stabbing France so we would focus on TT instead if he didn't show up. It was kind of pointless if Dtay didn't stab (I'm screwed anyway so I might as well go though the nuclear threat) so I also told him that he should attack MUN anyway if Dtay didn't show up because he's screwed anyway. However, mattimeo internet went out so he never heard that.

Then Dtay showed up and agreed to stab France if mattimeo and I took MUN. However, that wasn't possible anymore due to bad internet. So I panicked, explained what happened to dtay and Mattimeo and went with the nuclear plan hoping for the best.

However, Cyneheard talked to Austria and Russia and learned that there was no attack on TRI. So he could just walk into VEN. He did. This probably would have won him the game anyway. It would have been possible for me to think Cyneheard was talking to Austria and Russia or realize that defending Greece was pointless if Scooter attacks SER. So it was not guaranteed. I looked at the map and saw that England Germany and I would have 18 SCs while Russia, Turkey and France would have 16. However, there units are much better place so it would have been an uphill battle for us to win but not impossible. (Austria would no longer exist here as I couldn't save him and help Germany take MUN at the same time).

TT not talking/lying to Austria basically threw away a free SC because otherwise Austria would still be hostile to me. No one would care at this point that TT lied to Austria and he could take the SC by telling Austria that he would support him in to TRI.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Oh okay, guys I'm all caught up. Feel free to ask me anything. I'll edit in my reaction below when the turn flips:

Dtay sent me this 15 minutes before deadline.

Hey, sorry, tournaments are basically all-day affairs and i just plopped and went to sleep last night.

Don't really see how stabbing france right now gets me anything besides an incentive for a Russia/France alliance against me in the near future. Realize this is very late, but i don't think changes much for you if you going to meltdown anyway. If you have args why i'm wrong in my game analysis then i'm all years, but that's my thought process right now.

Do you mean Chess tournaments Dtay? Anyway I like this because it proves my nuclear threat would have made Dtay stab. The best play for me would have been assume that mattimeo didn't send in his orders but there's no way of expecting someone to do that unless they are physic.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well TT sent me this e-mail: I'll comment on it later.

Subject line: Game Over

Just so you know, I'm officially quitting this game now.

Over the last few turns, you have completely ruined any kind of enjoyment or integrity that this game ever had. Throwing away a strong empire so pathetically is completely unsporting and gives me no inclination to bother doing anything when the game result is so monumentally swayed by one person being a douche.

The other turn when I just sold you a pack of lies and then didn't attach a document was my own little attempt at some cathartic vengeance but to be honest with you it was a waste of time.

It was bad enough when you brought your own personal grudges into this game before it had even begun and for the first few turns you exhausted and exasperated me with your ridiculous diplo. I could never really trust you.

I want nothing to do with you in any game of any kind from this point, you've ruined what was a good game with pettiness and I have little doubt that you would gladly do it again.

I'm just glad you can't win either, that would be the ultimate joke.

TT