[SPOILERS]Rowain rules Russia

[Rowain]

Another year past and what a change in the course of the world.

In fall 03 Germany decided to get greedy and steal Norway from me despite the fact that I told him VIE will be free to take. I got BUD so I didn't lose a center. During winter I told germany that he should not build in BER and that he needs to give back Norway if he wants to keep the peace else I will bind his armies and france will steamroll him.
Apparently the centers got into the chancellors head and he told me that I have no position of power and should be happy if he lets me live.

Of course I informed France about this development and during the discussion this came up:

Scooter: he's going to build A Ber and likely try to move east with that and/or boh against you
he's expecting me to build Mar, so I'll do that molach will also likely disband his army i can have armies in bel, ruh, bur, and tyr at end of spring
so mun would be a lock to fall. possibly a second could fall if I get lucky
and he'd be way out of positoin

And so it did happen France build an Army in MAR and got Germany to believe it will be used vs Italy. The stab was successfull and caugth Germany with the pants down

Fall 04 proved to be even better. France did the right decisions in the HOL,MUN-arena and got both centers. I got into NWY and (as agreed upon before) also got SEV. Turkey gained TRI (with my support) and ION.

For the future I hope Turkey stays true and we 3 (F,T, R) can clear the board of the minor powers fast. this would lead to a 3-Nations-endgame with interesting borders (Expected centers: 14 france 11 Turkey 9 Russia).

[Rowain]

And since I have been asked about it the reasons for my moves in fall 04:

A FIN - NWY: to block a posssible retreating german fleet (F NWG) from entering it. And for the chance to get a center. Moving into SWE would be futile as I judged the chance of A NWY-SWE rather high.

A MOS - STP: To prevent a desperate A NWY - STP move and in case my move succeeds to have 2 units up there to show strangh and make it clear to France and England that Scandinavia is mine.

A UKR - SEV: Agreed with Turkey that I take SEV back this turn

A BUD S A ALB - TRI: Agreed with Turkey to help him into TRI

A GAL -VIE: Turkey asked for this move in case I didn't need GAL for something more pressing. Decided to comply to help him.

[Mardoc]

And since I have been asked about it the reasons for my moves in fall 04:

A FIN - NWY: to block a posssible retreating german fleet (F NWG) from entering it. And for the chance to get a center. Moving into SWE would be futile as I judged the chance of A NWY-SWE rather high.

Thanks. This was the one I was most curious about, I was wondering if Germany had agreed to give it to you, or if you just outguessed him. Looks like the latter.

[Rowain]

Another year gone by and we have the first casuality:

Austria no longer exists as independent state. He made an early pact with Turkey but after the attack stalled Turkey did betray him and start his annihilation. There was a small chance to turn the game around. But the difficulties for me to reach him lead to me siding with Turkey and proceed to kill him. His inclination to not follow through with agreed moves did further hamper his defense pact with Italy and speeded up his demise.

In other news: Slight pressure from my part did start a small french attack on Italy which was twarted surprisingly. The sideeffect is that Turkey has now a good position to take out Italy and will hopefully refrain from attacking me.

And an obvious drunken french captain launched an unprovoked attack on Norway which was easily repelled.

[Rowain]

So much for plans: My bigger plan was to a) keep my south weakly defended to stop France from attacking me and b) to help France to reach the most centers to keep Turkey from attacking.

That F and T had a plan to attack me once Italy is gone is not a surprise. But
I can't think for any sensible reason why scooter attacked premature when he knew that there was a T - R war coming.

Anyway scooter best hope is now that turkey gets greedy too and attacks me before harm is done to him. If this happens then he has a good position to at least reach the stalemate-line. Turkey OTOH can now wait and slowly digest Italy and then strike when and where he thinks best.

My best hope is now reaching 2nd place but even that is doubtful.

[Rowain]

So winter 07 sees the second victim. Italy leaves us. TT had bad luck in this game. At the start the Austrian-Turkish alliance gave him little room and later the Turk-Russian partnership was also not to his advantage. The one chance he had was for a A-R-I alliance but due to the difficulties to communicate with Tatan this didn't come to pass. That Austria did at least twice move differently than they had agreed must have been rather depressing for TT. Scooters stab was then the final nail in his coffin.

:wink2: TT. Hopefully till the next time


About Russia. Turkey started the eating of Russia and I missed the chance to take MUN in fall. Since my public announcement of our war there has been no real offer from scooter to smooth the relasionship or for cooperation. Maybe he hopes that Turkey is too slow to reach 18?

[Rowain]

About spring 08:

It started with a bit of whining & complaints-posts from scooter:

Glad to see you're more interested in playing out of spite than playing for yourself.

Are you complete nuts?

I helped you to gain 2 centers in Germany and your answer was a stabattack meaning that instead of building 2 new Units I stayed down.
And now you are runnig around crying about a situation you brought upon yourself with your greed.
Since your attack and my public announcement I have waited for an offer from you.
You prefered to stay silent instead of trying to come to terms.
And to top it off your single post since then is one with insults. If you have somehow missed it this game is called Diplomacy for a reason.

-Rowain

I'm not sure what you expected exactly. You stabbed/lied to me several times. I didn't want to offer you a deal because honestly, your actions have not proven to be trustworthy enough to count on them. I even warned you when you backed out on your deals that you were asking for my reaction. As you once said to me "this is a market constantly in flux"... So what would have been the point of me offering you some sort of deal when I don't trust you to keep it?

So I'd expect you to act in best interest and make at least some attempt at defending yourself. You've made no attempt to do so, rather you're going to hand Mattimeo a solo as a spite because I got pissed at you screwing with me in Germany. Saying you "helped me gain 2 centers in Germany" is nonsense. I HAD those centers until you helped Bigger keep them despite promising not to do so. No need to pretend like you gave them to me out of overwhelming generosity.
So what's your gameplan? You know you have no real chance of surviving, so what, you're going to throw the game to Mattimeo because you're mad at me? My expectation is that you'd at least attempt to defend yourself but nope, you have no interest in that. So I have no choice but to just sit and defend while Mattimeo eats up your centers.

scooter

I think you do suffer a misread of reality.
After your attack on Germany you did not have many friends leftl. I had no need to hand you those 2 centers in germany. Bigger was absolute willing to let me take them as long as I kept you out of his centers.
My helping you into them was an act of interest to get a nice interesting endplay.
You OTOH decided to botch it and you made sure that I could not build the units I needed to defend me in the south. Concerning trust and deals let me remind you about your stabattack on Norway.
Did you really expect I let you run over me in the north and keep turkey at bay so that you can get a win? Even without DEn you would have been the one wih the most centers and an easy defense in the MED. Had you for once kept your word you could have won this game.
-Rowain

Not really anything in there to change my mind and attack Turkey. To be exact after the last mail my mind was rather: 'F** you scooter you are an idiot' but short before I sent my turn and turned off I had a talk with Turkey:

Turkey: oh, sorry
was just about Tyr
scooter is pushing me to cut it and not move to Pie, wondering how strenuous your objectiosn to that would be
Russia: Very strong
Turkey: or I could just not have received his email after sending my orders in
kk
I guess the latter option it is
Russia: And i think you should move vs scooter too.
Eating only Russian centers and leaving scooter in peace is not ok in my book.
Turkey: need to balance that and getting into position to take over from you when things disband
but yes
have to try to make headway into the western med
Tun is going to be a lot easier to take than, say, Mun
also: decent chance of me only going for two of your centres, rather than three, this year, but I'll talk in more detail next season when we both have more time
Russia: You know I don'tt want to simple hand you my centers. IMO you should do something for your win. Else I have to reconsider my position towards scooter
Turkey: I'm definitely going to be doing my utmost to push the Med
Russia: Not only MED there is PIE too.
Turkey: Pie counts as Med, it's south of Swi
bouncing it this season, unless he supports it in with Lyo, hopefully can force it in autumn
Russia: Ok I have to send my turn now and go to sleep
Turkey: OK
and I should probably head to uni
thanks for sticking around to chat
Russia: bye

I have redlight the crucial points. For me my game with turkey was more on the line: He takes SEV,RUM,BUD but stays out of the rest of them letting me try to break scooter in the west. He will get his win once he gets to Iberia and I might get a second place as consolation . That he had little interest in playing it that way made me turning my forces eastward. That scooter decided to go for LVL just this turn and made sure that Turkey can get MOS is just icing on the cake . guess I will get wiped out by both (F + T) in a few turns but who knows what opportunities might come by (and if I'm able to grab them).

[Rowain]

Winter 08: Victim Nr 3 is Germany. After the forced start (england not playing during the first 2 years) he had a nice position. Sadly he got a bit Sc-fixated and opened his west where france only waited for such an opportunity.

Afterwards he defended quite well until a russian miscalculation broke him and led to his demise.

:wink2: and Thanks for playing Bigger & waterbat and sorry for the confusion in spring 08.

[waterbat]

Winter 08: Victim Nr 3 is Germany. After the forced start (england not playing during the first 2 years) he had a nice position. Sadly he got a bit Sc-fixated and opened his west where france only waited for such an opportunity.

Afterwards he defended quite well until a russian miscalculation broke him and led to his demise.

:wink2: and Thanks for playing Bigger & waterbat and sorry for the confusion in spring 08.

no need to apologize, Rowain - very nice playing with you. Indeed, we did become SC-fixated. Disregarding the name of the game and feeling like we needed to make on-board progress each season (or year) really did us in.

good luck holding off the hordes.

[Rowain]

Fall 10
Well that didn't work as planned: Hoped that scoter would like to block a move into FIN but he did the direct approach.
Not that I'm too sorry about that.

Anyway Russia survived but else I'm not too happy about my play. OTOH most of the time my moves were forced as for most of the time once one side calmed down the other started to burn. First the south was under huge pressure once that calmed down (with Turkey turning vs Austria ) Germany became dangerous. After that was settled France attacked and once I blocked him Turkey tried for Russian centers.

There were 2 points were the game could have gone differently:
1) was 1903 were I could have joinjed with TT and Austria to kill Turkey. The plan was set and would have taken out Turkeyain1904 but Tartans TZ and mine didn't really match so Idecided to gowiththe Kill Austria plan.
In hindsight I believe it would have been better to kill turkey despite the problems with Tatans trustworthiness.

2) French-Germany theater. first helping France into Munich. That was driven by fear that Turkey might start to attack me if scooter stays small. I hoped that scooter gaining that centers would tell turkey that he should not attack Russia. Then after scooters attack (on DEN) there was already a deal in place with Germany to cut done scooter a bit (He would have lost 2 centers in 1908). Here happened the talk with Mattimeo (see above) which led to me attacking turkey and the last chance to stop scototer has gone by.

All in all it was fun and I hope we don't need to wait another year for the next game .

Grats scooter for a well deserved win and a big Thank You to Mardoc for GM-ing