Diplomacy! The world explodes

[Ditocoaf]

WELP. Aposke was temp-banned, and probably staying away from the forums, but I talked with him and he said he'd stick around for Diplomacy.

But then I just found out he's apparently been perma-banned? He asked to have his profile deleted or something? Anyway, he's gone. And we need a new player to replace him, learn how to play, and catch up on the first 12 turns.

So... fuck.

In other news, the first post of this thread now features links to the profile of every player in the game. That should make it easier to PM them without digging around for one of their posts or messages.

[Dizzybelle]

Well... Shit.
Without Aposke my entire everything goes down the toilet. :/

[Ditocoaf]

Okay: I'm pretty sure we aren't going to find a replacement. I'm not willing to wait around for a week or two while we try to find one.

The rules say we should do with Germany the same thing we did with Russia: have all those units hold indefinitely. This is unfair, though: to Austria, whose main asset is that alliance, and to England, who has the least chance to take Germany's derelict supply centers. It's also pretty boring.

So here's what I'm going to do:
(1) Each remaining country has three spies. Send those spies (via order, like usual) to a Supply Center city that Germany currently owns, or to one of Germany's military units. You may not send a spy to Sweden or Moscow, which have both.
(2) If you are the only country that sends a spy there, you take over that unit or supply center.
(3) If there are multiple spies sent to the same place, you get the prize if you sent more spies to that place than any other country. If there is a tie, nobody gets it.
(4) Germany's remaining units and cities will follow the standard "government collapse" rules.
(5) We will re-do our Spring 1907 turn, then play 1907 as normal. You don't get another build phase until Winter 1907, so any German cities you take over might need protecting.


This is really fucking weird, but it honestly feels better to me than just letting Germany's units go dormant. If you have any objections, go ahead and speak up.

[Doctor Shemp]

As much as I appreciate you trying Ditocoaf, I really don't see any way this game can go now besides Elgadika winning. The only other remotely possibly outcome that I can see - a tie between me & Elgadika - would require my spies to be placed perfectly, everyone else's to be placed terribly, and Elgadika to suddenly lose most to all of his strategic talent, which is just wishful thinking.

As second-place holder, I would be prepared to concede this game and have the joint winners declared as Elgadika and the Talkhaus moderation team. Furthermore, if it turns out that Elgadika manipulated the Talkhaus moderation team to get Aposke banned, then I nominate him for Greatest Diplomacy Player of All Time.

[Ditocoaf]

Ugh, really? Fine.



I can't blame the moderation team; Aposke apparently asked to be banned.

I can't really be mad at anyone. There's no obligation to play a game. I'm just frustrated. This sucks.

[Doctor Shemp]

I'm prepared to continue playing if everyone else wants to. I'm just saying it won't be as fun or interesting when it's a foregone conclusion.

[july]

Furthermore, if it turns out that Elgadika manipulated the Talkhaus moderation team to get Aposke banned, then I nominate him for Greatest Diplomacy Player of All Time.

hehehehehe
Yes, I manipulated talkhaus to ban Aposke so that I could win a Diplomacy game. Diplomacy is serious business y'all

In all seriousness though, I really hope that someone, anyone, will step in to play as Germany. If not, I'm willing to not send spies anywhere if that keeps people playing. I don't want to see the game end like this.

[O-Card]

I wouldnt be against the spy thing, and am willing to keep playing

not like I'd be able to do much at this point, shemp and elgadika really are the only contestants at this point

[Jesuiscontent]

I know you guys were joking but just to clear things up, Aposke was actually banned for only 1 day, and then requested for his account to be deleted

[Sorel]

I know you guys were joking but just to clear things up, Aposke was actually banned for only 1 day, and then requested for his account to be deleted

Well it was his decision, so we cant really blame

If I was a bit better at strategy games, I would have taken over for Aposki.

[Ditocoaf]

Okay, I'll make it official now: this thing is dead.

Aposke has offered to give his orders via skype, others are willing to try the spies thing, and Elgakida's even willing to lose at the spies thing to give everyone else a fighting chance. So there are good options for me to take. But...

I don't know. I lost the momentum. Back when I had 16 hours of free time most days, I would have kept on doing this for the sake of not giving up, but now I'm exhausted whenever I'm home, and it just isn't worth the effort to resurrect. Sorry guys.

[july]

And the winner is: outside forces

That's a shame. Oh well.

[O-Card]

good game, was fun regardless!!!!

[Doctor Shemp]

It was definitely a fun game. Now that it's over, if you have the time Ditocoaf, could you post a rough timeline of all the major events in private negotiations since you were CCd to all of them? I'd love to hear what the rest of you were talking about. If you don't have the time, I'm happy to provide a timeline of my negotiations and, if anyone's interested, answer any questions about my actions with complete honesty.

[july]

Okay, I'll ask: were you in cahoots with Germany the entire time?

[O-Card]

I can answer that

who knows

the generally understood situation for everyone but you was that there was to be a total ceasefire to counter the threat of your expansion, although I'm pretty sure england was planning to take advantage of the whole situation by absorbing me and probably germany afterwards once they were occupied with you

thats also why at one point we all seemed to forget france even existed and shifted our attention on the east (england also wanted france still standing for some reason)

also, to clarify on my own actions, I had talks of ceasefire with turkey, and tried to coax their movements to an extent so I'd have an easier time around them, but I was planning to backstab them once I was better set up (telling shemp to move into tunisia the first time was a success, I was hoping turkey would attempt the same thing and they did)

and then the retreat thing happened

[Bryux]

Aww... I wanted to see how it turned out... You know it could easily go either way, England or Turkey, maybe even Germany, could have won. France, Austria and Italy, not likely, but maybe if they backstabbed at the right moment.

[Doctor Shemp]

Okay, I'll ask: were you in cahoots with Germany the entire time?

In 1901, Aposke and I negotiated this agreement:

Restrictions on both countries
Neither country may launch a deliberate attack on the other.
Both countries must warn the other of their movements if an accidental attack may occur.
The Helgoland Bight is to become a demilitarised zone that neither country may enter.

Restrictions on British behaviour
Britain cannot move fleets into the Skaggerak, the Baltic Sea or the Gulf of Bothnia.
Britain cannot enter Austria-Hungary, the Baltic States, Germany, Russia or Scandinavia.

Restrictions on German behaviour
Germany cannot move fleets west of Kiel.
Germany cannot enter Belgium, Britain, Holland or Italy.

With regards to France, it has been agreed upon that France shall, in the case of their defeat, be divided as follows:

Marseilles, Brest and Picardy to England
Gascony, Paris and Burgundy to Germany

With regards to Denmark, Germany is free to take it, but vows to defend England from any Italian threat that may arise in southern france in return.

This was coupled with negotiations with France for me to take the low countries and the English Channel, which I represented as me acting as a shield between them and Germany. Zyglrox agreed on the basis that he could take Spain & Portugal as SCs instead. I viewed France as a more immediate threat than Germany and had no intention of keeping a peace deal with France unless Aposke backstabbed me.

However, I was prepared to covertly work against Aposke's interests where possible and subtle, which meant making it harder for him to get the territories I left to him. Before the first turn, I encouraged Fluffi-dono to move his armies northwards into Scandinavia. I figured that would slow down Aposke and hurt Fluffi as well when I told you that Russia's south would be free for you to move into (which I did). Unfortunately for me, Fluffi didn't really take the advice, and I didn't expect him to play so badly and for you to play so well.

Also, when I attacked France, I encouraged Italy to attack them as well, and offered O-Card much the same French territories I offered Aposke (plus Marseilles), figuring that Aposke wouldn't be prepared to fight O-Card for them.

I was planning to backstab Aposke at some point. Realistically I couldn't win otherwise: O-Card didn't have enough SCs for me to take, bkamakaze was under Aposke's protection (even if it looked to me like Aposke was planning to shank him), and your SCs were too far away and required too much supply chain fiddling, and would leave me too divided to defend them. The two problems that I couldn't solve, however, were a) how to position myself for a blitzkrieg attack, which I deemed necessary following the fizzled-out attack on France, without Aposke noticing and b) whether the attack on Aposke would cause the frontline with you to collapse so quickly that you'd win before me.

I've got a question for you now: was another player secretly feeding information to you? I wasn't lying when I said to Aposke that some of your moves looked like they were based on insider information, although it did make a good pretext for taking Portugal from O-Card. It was either that or you were very good at predicting us. EDIT: Just saw O-Card's post. Was he the only one?

england also wanted france still standing for some reason

I couldn't take France out without concentrating all my resources there, which didn't seem worth it to me. France, left as it was, could do sweet FA. I figured that it was safer to leave France as it was then leave myself out of position for one or two more SCs or, even worse, give Germany another SC and you another SC. Lastly, the deal I cut with France meant that Zyglrox agreed to take orders directly from me, so I essentially got extra units for no cost. I was considering even letting France take an SC from you if I went ahead with a full-scale invasion.

[Zygl]

By the way, Shemp, that move from Paris to Burgundy on the last turn that I "couldn't remember why I did" was part of a plan to backstab you with help from Germany and Italy. Problem being in hindsight Italy had like two units and couldn't actually contribute anything to the plan, Germany's half-dozen armies were all too busy keeping Turkey from winning the game, and I completely forgot my own plan and was too lazy to actually execute it in the first place.
tl;dr I am really, really bad at Diplomacy.

[Ditocoaf]

I don't think I can sort through my PMs to produce any sort of timeline of events (I have 258 diplomacy-related messages saved). Plus, I think I only got about 70% of inter-country messages. But I can post the impressions I had from my perspective. Here's what I remember at the moment:

In the early game, I thought Germany was running away with it, simply because he had an alliance of some sort with just about every other country but Turkey, and multiple of them seemed to consider themselves the "strongest" tie with Germany. His alliance was Austria was, in retrospect, the only true alliance that I'd see lasting to the endgame. Which is fitting, I think a Germany-Austria alliance is pretty fundamental strategy in Diplomacy.

But as the game went on, and Turkey outmaneuvered Austria and Russia a several times for an early lead, everyone banded together to fight Turkey, which was actually a key advantage for England, the only country not immediately threatened by Turkey. He got France as a protectorate, essentially giving himself control over both those supply centers. Even with the weirdness happening down around Italy , England could have swallowed Germany whole if he'd wanted to. (Italy and Turkey weren't really ever allied, but Turkey suddenly wanted to shift focus elsewhere, and Italy almost took advantage of that. It was funny seeing England fret about that.)

Italy starts in the worst position in this game. I kept hoping he'd band together with someone to take parts of Austria or France, but that didn't work out too well. His move getting both Turkey and England to clash in Tunisia was pretty clever way to delay them.

When France was about to die, he was about to quit, but he had a second wind and sent off a few messages messing with people and looking for outs, which was pretty fun, but he ended up being an extension of England for a few years, which was probably the best way to survive. I hadn't heard anything about his plan to backstab.

There's more stuff I might remember later? Go ahead and ask questions.

[july]

Oh man explanatory post time, settle in

At the start of the game, my main plan was to try and at least weaken, if not take out, Russia early on, 'cause I was paranoid about them. I negotiated an early truce with Austria to split the Balkans, intending to appease them until Russia was no longer a threat, then turn on them later. However, Russia did next to nothing in Spring 1901 (did Fluffi misread the rules or something?), so taking the Black Sea was much easier than expected. Then Russia tried to negotiate for Rumania in return for Greece and support attacking Austria; I was a deceiving bastard and said yes, then attacked Sevastopol and kept Russia out of Rumania instead.
I expected to have my hands full against Russia trying to take Sevastopol and Rumania; instead, Fluffi sent no orders the next turn and quit shortly after, pretty much gifting me Moscow. I didn't bother negotiating for a while after that, because I was worried everyone else would band together against me because of my early gains. (Seems I was sort-of right there.) I focussed on attacking Austria, but I was pretty much taking it turn-by-turn after that and being opportunistic, trying to make sure I had enough Supply Centres at each winter so as to not lose any units ; hence the move from Moscow to Warsaw when I figured I couldn't fend of Germany, and then the attack on Napoli when I thought I would lose Warsaw.
I tried to convince the Germans to backstab the Austrians by saying I'd support an attack on Vienna, fully intending not to keep my word, so that Austria's army in Vienna wouldn't be able to support their fleet in Trieste, my true target. Aposke refused, so that didn't work. I then tried negotiating a peace with Italy, who suggested letting my armies in Napoli and Apulia be destroyed so that they could be rebuilt on the mainland; I agreed, but realized I'd be one Supply Centre short of keeping my current forces; luckily Italy moved out of Roma, so I retreated there. Trieste was still my main target the whole time; I intended to take it, then focus more on Italy. Apart from that, most of my moves were just digging in and defending, expecting a whole bunch of attacks, only some of which actually came.
Then Aposke died and the world exploded

So there you go, an improbable tale of luck and sorcery.

I've got a question for you now: was another player secretly feeding information to you? I wasn't lying when I said to Aposke that some of your moves looked like they were based on insider information, although it did make a good pretext for taking Portugal from O-Card. It was either that or you were very good at predicting us. EDIT: Just saw O-Card's post. Was he the only one?

No. All my defensive moves were paranoia; all my offensive moves were either blind opportunism or an obsessive desire to take Trieste. My dealing with O-Card was mainly in the hope that I'd have a peaceful western frontier, at least for a short while; I didn't really trust him though (again: paranoid), so when the opportunity to take Roma via retreat order came up, I took it. After Fluffi dropped out, the only other person I contacted was Aposke, which led absolutely nowhere and had no benefit.