OK, so a recap from my point of view. I had a lot of fun in this game even besides the final result.
In Spring '01 I decided to open with the 'Hedgehog', i.e. aggressively defending the borders with Russia and Italy while grabbing Serbia as the first build. I wasn't sure how to estimate Italy or his promise that Venice would hold. In retrospect I could have grown quicker by simply moving the fleet to Albania and taking Greece as well, as Italy was apparently determined to hold Venice but without attacking me. I wasn't sure of this, so I spent a lot of time in the early game defending Trieste instead of using the units elsewhere. I built a good working relationship with Germany, which is also conventional wisdom as Austria. I quickly assumed Germany was my old friend and adversary
Strange Fellow from the last game, so I figured at least there would be no lack of communication, no matter what else.
I was surprised to see my move to Galicia succeed. I could have gone for Warsaw, but assumed Russia would defend it. In the event, he had an NMR (no moves received) in the fall, so another missed chance for me to grow quickly (and get so scary that others would probably team up to stop me!). Instead I grabbed Rumania, and then offered it as a reward to both Turkey and Russia for allying me. In the end I decided not to let Turkey grow beyond 2 builds, so I defended my gains, moved the fleet to Albania, got help from Italy and Russia, and took Greece. Always a rough deal for the Sultan when everyone's teaming up against you and there's nothing you can do about it. Meanwhile Italy and Germany were advancing against France.
Germany to my knowledge had a good relationship with England (I only ever got one message from the English), which hit a snag when England took both Belgium and Sweden in the same turn and built fleets. This seemed to destroy Germany's chance to make a breakout, despite his success against France, taking Spain, etc. I'm not sure what happened afterwards, but in 1903 England took Brest while losing Belgium and Sweden, giving Germany the opportunity to retake the initiative while causing France to break out into hilarious but quite righteous butthurt. Yeah I probably would have had some choice words to say about that as well if I were France. Germany also turned the tide by sending a roving army eastwards that was able to take 2 out of 4 Russian home centres, which is not something you see every day. Meanwhile I was happy that I had taken all the Balkan provinces without pissing anyone off except Turkey, but I was a little bit worried about Germany blobbing all the way from Spain to Moscow.
In 1904 I decided to move a fleet to the Ionian when Italy was fully committed against Turkey, and when no protest came, I decided to grab Naples and send more units against Italy. The turn after that I decided to grab Piedmont first to have the maximum amount of units against Italy, and with a fabulously optimistic view towards Marseilles, but Italy bounced me out and my attack slowed down. But the next turn Rome, Marseilles and Venice all fell, and I was back on track. At this point I thought it would be worth it to try some "Janissary" play and offered Italy survival in exchange for disbanding his Eastern Med fleets and sending everything at Iberia, Marseilles, and the western approaches to the Med. Italy granted this, and so it was time to direct my attention to my most long-term ally this game, Germany.
The rest is pretty much recent history. I agree that I probably resumed my attack on Italy one turn too late, as Tunis was open to me at any time, but I wanted to keep him on board for a little while. I also asked France to attack towards Burgundy as his last move, as I assumed Germany would be defending Munich with as many units as possible. France fired off the desired parting shot, but in the event Germany didn't defend Munich, so I was able to get in. When I took Moscow and Tunis in 1907, I reached 17 centres and victory was near, helped by an Italian NMR in spring 1908. Italy did not team up with Germany for the anti-solo-win coalition until the final turn when it was already too late, but he did survive to see my win.
I was surprised to see that France hated Germany and Italy wasn't really prepared to go to bat for him either. From the previous game I would have expected
Strange Fellow to wrap people around his finger, but this time he was pretty much on his own against me until the last turn.
Most other players I think were a bit newer to the game or were not always able to send in orders, but hopefully the learning experience was fun, and I hope some of you guys will be back for a future game. Maybe the points above will give some idea of the massive amount of strategic considerations involved in this game.
So did you just decide super early to become Austria's junior partner and stick with it? I don't think you ever really tried to stab?
I tried to stay on friendly terms with both Germany and Austria; I was going to side with whichever one became more powerful in order to just try to survive.
My goal was to hold Italy and Iberia for the duration of the game, and I didn't quite make it (*AHEM* AUSTRIA!
) but I can't complain.
I didn't realize that back stabbing was such a prominent feature of the game (silly, in retrospect). Perhaps I will have to err more on the offensive next time.
Congrats for playing anyway! Playing for the first time is always difficult, even if you're some galaxy brain who somehow knows all the rules and has read everything on opening strategy. I know this from when I played my first game many years ago (I mentioned this, about playing Turkey and getting stuck). And Italy can be a difficult country to play because everyone usually just wants you to leave them and their buddies alone, although they generally won't attack you either, so your chances of survival are good. Usually Germany and Austria will stick together, in which case Germany/Austria/Italy can be a formidable Triple Alliance, but Italy will usually not be able to profit hugely from this.
If Germany and Austria play it this way, they will usually be happy to send Italy off on long-shot expeditions against France or Turkey but without succeeding too well. Austria will constantly be looking for opportunities to build fleets in Trieste and get over its initial naval disadvantage vis-a-vis Italy and Turkey. Otherwise there is no path to victory for him no matter how well he does on land, and he will have to settle for a draw. So for you the time to get pissed off with me would have been not when I moved into Naples, but the turn before that when I moved into the Ionian Sea. And the time to get suspicious would have been when I built two fleets.
Italy can do well in alliance with Austria, but must be vigilant for the stab as I mentioned. Otherwise Italy can do well by allying with Russia and dismantling Austria together, but that probably wasn't going to happen in this game, as Russia missed a turn in fall 1901 and didn't get a single build until 1903. So I imagine it would have been hard to organise anything with Russia in this game.
I hope you will play again next time, but then I would recommend you absolutely make sure to always send in orders. I know it's just a game and anyone can have a good reason to miss a turn, but this always distorts the game or even the final result. Even if you're not sure of your orders yet or you want to communicate with some other players before you make a decision, it's best to enter
some orders so you're at least not doing nothing.
