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.
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.
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.
Info—yes; Logs—no