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ROCKET KILLIFISH END-GAME STATEMENTS
GM:
Ally Bain [EGS]
Started: 29th November 2006
Finished: 4th September 2007
Result: G/R two-way draw
| Country | Player | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | Result | | Austria | Tasha Rissling | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 5 | Survived | | England | Paul Waterman | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Anarchy | | France | Nicholas Urie | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | Survived | | Germany | Manfred Pade | 5 | 6 | 7 | 9 | 10 | Draw | | Italy | Trygve Leivestad | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | Survived | | Russia | Gary Boyes | 6 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 10 | Draw | | Turkey | Tom Hollis | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Anarchy |
GERMANY (Manfred Pade) Where to begin... Rocket Killifish was definately one of the most peculiar games I have played, and in fact it was probably the most disappointing. Two NMR's, one long-term proxy, and a general lack of commitment throughout really doomed this game to a lacklustre result. When the game ended in Fall 1906, there were still five major powers in the game, and yet a 2-way draw was accepted. I think that more than anything speaks volumes about the game.
Unfortunately, I have to take some of the blame for this game's poor showing, as my normal playing style of prolific communications and e-mails did not really last very long in this game. Part of the problem was that at the time I signed up for this game, I had also signed up for and was playing in two other games, both with 1-week deadlines. Therefore, this game took somewhat of a back seat to those other two. Even after my two one-week games were finished, I didn't put much more effort in this game. Having played in a number of one-week games now, I really think that the 3-week deadline games are just too long, and when you feel you have so much time between deadlines, you end up just letting that time slip away, and then you find yourself trying to do everything last minute. I often found the deadline would sneak up on me, and then I'd be in a mad rush to organize some kind of diplomacy and strategy at the last minute.
The next major problem was my past history in other games. Playing Germany turned out to be a poor choice for me this game, as I had already played a game before as Germany, it was my first game ever on this site, and it was also with Ally Bain. This created a very ackward coincidence. In my first game, Chocolate Gourami, I played Germany, and ended up allying with a very solid France player, and together we played in an alliance to the very end and settled for a 17/17 draw. In this game, I was again Germany, and as it turned out, my French neighbour was a very reasonable fellow who had many things in common with me - We were both Canadian, and both engineers from the same school even! Maybe fate was telling me that I should just repeat the Chocolate Gourami game all over again, but I was determined to try something different in this game. As a result, I found myself forced into a position where I really only wanted to work with England against France. This was against my normally better judgement, as it was clear from the start that France (Nick) was the better player and diplomat who I could have had a far better alliance with.
In the East, Gary playing Russia was a prolific diplomat, and initially it looked like my alliance with Austria would be even better, so things looked great.
Once the game began, things got ugly really fast. For one thing, it seems England had his mind set on the outset to attack me. His communications were incredibly sparse early on, and so I never really knew what he was doing. It was clear I wouldn't really be able to work with him, so instead I just opted to continue to try to convince him to attack France, while I did the same and hopefully he would come onside.
What saved me from an early exit in this game was that fact that France (Nick) was a faithful ally, even though I stabbed him in the back. I conspired with him to convince him to attack France, and then repeatedly broke my word again and again. By the time he gave up on me as an ally, he had already landed forces in Wales, and I had stolen Belgium, and then Burgundy. By this point, I was feeling pretty confident that France would fall quickly, as England would be forced to defend his home, and France could not fight both of us at once.
At this point, however, England first NMR'd, and then anarchied. I was extremely disappointed with this because I had tried so hard to work with England, and it seems he gave up on the game the minute the French landed in Wales. I even offered to take his proxy to prevent him from greylisting if he had lost interest in the game, but I never received a response.
The end result was that now I was alone in fighting France, and although I had made some inroads into Burgundy, I was for the most part stuck in place, and France had managed to establish a foothold in England, and I was now forced to contend with the English isle before being able to take anything of value from France proper.
Meanwhile, in the South and east, things started off so well, but it wasn't long before disaster occured there as well. Initially, I had a fantastic alliance with austria, and a fairly solid alliance with Russia. I figured that inevitably they would come to blows, and I might have to take sides, but early on they seemed on good terms and worked together quite well. Austria got Italy to work with her, and all together, the attack on Turkey was begun. Had the alliance held, Turkey was doomed, but I guess the Turk didn't bother to stick around and find out, as he NMR'd and then anarchied even faster than England.
The vacuum created by the Turk's cowardice changed the dynamic in the south much faster than I expected. In 1903, the Austrian's adopted a Hitler-esque strategy and decided that the best type of war is one that is fought on all fronts. Austrians greedily attacked both Italy and Russia simultaneously, and by the end of 1903 it had even somewhat paid off. The italians were caught unprepared and lost a home SC, but while the Russians lost a SC in the spring, they recovered another in the fall, and now the real war was on. In fact, the Russia/Austria situation wasn't quite so clear-cut, and I think both Austria and Russia were initially co-ordinating their moves, but at some point, both decided that the time was ripe to attack the other, with Turkey ineffectual.
Thus we came to 1904, which was certainly for me the point when the game got the goofiest. My war against France had been an utter failure, this despite the fact that by random chance, both Italy and I had decided to attack France at the same time. Italy had managed to take Marseilles, but that was the full extent of our uncoordinated incursion. I was at one point able to sneak an army from Burgundy to Gascony, which usually spells the death of France, but France was able through some brilliant generalship and lucky guessing to counter my move and ultimately force me to disband the unit.
Over time, my correspondence with Austria had gotten weaker. Then in early 1904, Austria (Tasha) indicated that she could no longer play the game, and was proxying to me. I guess at that point, she was pretty much at war with all her neighbours, and I was her best, and perhaps only remaining ally, so she felt she could trust me more than anyone else. This put me in an incredibly difficult position though. I was not at war with either Russia or Italy, and was still trying to work with them, but now I had to control Austria's forces as well, and she was stuck fighting a losing war against Italy and Russia combined. This no doubt led me to develop a split-personality disorder, as I was now ordering my German forces in ways that were friendly to both Italy and Russia, while I ordered Austrian forces to attack Russia and Italy without them knowing I had Austria's proxy.
In fact, it was downright stupid, the orders I made for Austria were poor, and Russia, who already had the upper hand on Austria when I took the proxy made major gains and it started to look like Austria would be crushed. My control of Austrian forces only lasted for two turns, and during those two turns I also moved a German unit down to enter the fray, and in the fall it captured Venice, which fortunately did not offend the Italians much since Venice had already fallen to Austria.
Although I never heard a word from Austria again, I believe this move must have pissed her off, as in 1905 I found that my proxy no longer worked, and later learned that Austria had passed the proxy over to Italy.
In the North, the battle continued, and I finally started making more progress, but only against english SC's. The western front remained total gridlock. The Russians started behaving in a threatening manner by building 3 fleets in the North, and told me this was because they wanted to assist me in the battle against France and ultimately send Russian fleets south into the MAO and then western med (what?!?! why?!?!), so I my suspicions of Russian intentions began to increase. Unfortunately, there was not much I could do about it. Then, in the Spring or 1905, the Russians moved on Silesia. Personally, I think this was the beginning of a concerted Russian effort to move against me, but events elsewhere came to my rescue, as with Italy securing Austria's proxy, he was able to move both nations armies in a way that effectively stymied Russia and created a stalemate line. With Russia no longer making progress in the south, Gary realized he could ill afford another war with Germany at that time, and declared that the move to Silesia was a misunderstanding, that Italy had passed him some misinformation and made him paranoid, and so he withdrew the following season.
Thus the game continued so that by the end of 1905, I finally had secured all of England, and had some additional units that would finally be able to start putting pressure on France. In Spring of 1906, Russia agreed to allow one of his fleets to be disbanded, and I guess I will never know if he stuck to that agreement in the fall as the moves did not come out before the game ended. France would have lost his final unit on the shores of England that season, and if I had finally gotten some luck, I might even have nabbed a french home SC that year, we'll never know.
In playing Diplomacy, my strategy has always been to find one reliable ally to go from start to finish with and play for a 2-way draw, and this is the first game where I feel that strategy almost failed. Still, it worked in the end, and I am now 5/5 in 2-way draw victories. I believe that's a much better outcome than the perhaps one solo victory I may have achieved had I always been playing for solos.
In this game, the person who I wanted to go for the 2-way draw with changed throughout, however. Early on, I thought it could be Austria, then later, Russia became the likely candidate. After the abortive stab from Gary though, I never completely trusted him, and if this game had continued on longer I probably would have chosen to side with Italy rather than Russia in the long run. I guess Italy (Trygve) grew impatient with my neutrality by 1906 though, and maybe feeling that a stalemate was the best he could ever achieve in the game, just accepted the 2-way G/R draw. I'm surprised that France (Nick) allowed the game to end, but perhaps by that point he had grown tired of fighting over 6 years of a defensive war against Germany, with no real prospects of growth.
In hindsight, this game probably would have been much cleaner and easier if I had just trusted my original instincts and strategy and gone with a G/F alliance. I'm curious to hear what Nick would have though of that, and if our alliance could have held out to the end.
In closing, here are my final thoughts on the players:
- Austria (Tasha): You started off so strong, what happened? When you left the game, was it due to personal commitments, or because your strategy had backfired and you were under attack from all sides? Even so, it's too bad you proxied, as I think at that point you still had a legitimate shot of salvageing the game and being one of the final winners.
- England (Paul): You singlehandedly almost ruined this game for me. If you had done so by attacking and defeating me, I would have respected it, but an Anarchy just sucks for everyone involved. The whole point of playing in an experienced players game is to avoid an anarchy, players are expected to be more experienced and responsible. I'm glad you've been greylisted.
- France (Nick): I feel I owe you an apology. You played a good game, and didn't deserve the outcome you got. You gave me your trust, and I betrayed it - several times. But in the end, you stuck it out, never NMR'd, and held in there, even if there wasn't much hope. Thanks for sticking around.
- Italy (Trygve): Playing Italy always sucks. You have to pick a target, take a chance, and hope others don't exploit the fact that you are the weakest nation in the game early on. You were a good player, and had Austria not stabbed you, I think you would have been a world power in this game. You stuck it out, and in the end with Austria's units managed to hold the mighty bear back. I'm mystified why you accepted the 2-way G/R draw, was it because I was taking to long to come over to your side?
- Russia (Gary): You are a skilled and wily player, whether as an ally or adversary. I don't think playing for a2-way draw was really ever your style or goal, so maybe you were disappointed with the outcome, but I'm glad you were one of the ultimate winners, and yet not a soloist :) You should never have moved against the Kaiser though, even if it was an abortive strike! Hehehe. Still, a well played game, and congrats.
- Turkey (Tom): See my England comments. Otherwise, I have little to say. 2 experienced players both going into Anarchy in the same game is really unfortunate. Even if you give up on the game, how hard is it to submit some orders? Really. Your Anarchy only affected me indirectly, but it surely had big effects on Russia, Austria and Italy.
Thanks to everyone who played out and finished this game. Best of luck in all your future Diplomacy conquests!
ManfredReturn to Top
ITALY (Trygve Leivestad) Bringing with me the heritage from the Norwegian PBM Diplomacy community back in the early nineties I’ve got a tendency to think I/A-alliance, and so I hoped for that in this game as well. Still, there’s no reason for not having all options open, so I tried to communicate all around. I’d just finished a game playing against Paul Waterman (England) and even though we’d been at war since he attacked me early in that game we’d had a good communication and I looked forward to play with him again.
What I dicovered shortly after this game started was that 2 gunboat games and 2 ordinary diplomacy games was a bit too much to handle, especially since suddenly things got pretty busy both at work and at home at the same time. It cost me several NMR’s in my gunboat games, and I guess it influenced on my communication in this game.( I’m not sure if that was part of the reason why Tasha decided to join Russia instead of me, but it could have been.)
Everybody except Turkey, who never replied, seemed to be interested in cooperating (what a surprise), and even though Tasha had played Austria twice, and in both games attacked Italy from the start I decided to go for a Lepanto opening with her.
The total Turkish silence worried me a bit, but nobody else seemed to have heard from him either, so I hoped it wasn’t a bad sign. I took the time to tell Ally that I was concerned that he’d drop out from the beginning, not answering any mail.
1901 worked out OK. Turkey was in BLA and France going north against England. England had mentioned that he was a bit worried that he might face a E/G alliance since they were living in the same town, and since I thought that if E/G took out England early I’d probably get unwanted French visitors in the Med, thus I decided to move to Pie, if nothing else, to make sure that France got something to think about. To my surprise Germany invaded Bur at the same time.
Austria ordered Vie-Tri, which I didn’t really like, but since I’d had a unit in Ven I understood that she might worry about an Italian stab.
A02, and I managed to grab Mar since France didn’t defend it. At the same time I convoyed to Syr, putting me in position to attack Turkey who’d NMR’ed. I discovered that England had done that as well which really surprised me. I didn’t have that impression of him from our previous game, and also France was under attack from both Germany and me, so his situation wasn’t hopeless. I tried to ask for his proxy if he didn’t plan to enter his orders himself, but I never heard from him again. I just hope it wasn’t something serious.
I guess I made my big error when building F Rom instead of A Ven. That left me open for an Austrian attack, but I needed another unit in the west, and being a bit naive I hoped that she’d try for something different this time.
S03, and Austria attacked me. In addition she made sure to keep me out of Smy. I guess I’d asked for it, and the stab was well performed, but I guess she might actually have lost the game at that time, since Russia turned against her in A03. I had every intention to go for an I/A alliance all the way, and I tried the best I could to persuade her to change her mind and go against Russia instead. I guess she didn’t believe that I’d be willing to leave history behind and be a trustworthy ally. (I would have, but since she didn’t try me I can’t prove it.)
Since Austria decided to go against me I had to hope for Russia, and I think Gary saw the possibility in actually getting me to do quite a lot of the job, and then just pick my centers as I moved against Austria. I was better positioned to grab them, and as long as I kept at least the same number of units I was content.
Being under attack in the east made me try to reach an agreement in the west. France seemed willing, but whether he’d trust me was another question. Somehow neither France or Germany gave me an answer to what they wanted so I just stood in Mar in A03.
04 and I still tried to persuade Austria to turn around, but it didn’t work. It still wouldn’t be too late to stop Russia, but I feared that it would soon be too late and that with Austria gone I’d probably the next Russian target. I later found that she mush have proxied to Germany, and I wouldn’t say that it did her much good.
I guess that’s what she saw as well since in S05 she asked me if I’d want her proxy. It was a bit late, but after all I considered it to still be possible for A/I working together to stop Russia, so I thanked her and promised to do as good as I could.
I’m pretty sure it surprised Russia, who’d actually moved against Germany in S05. I suppose Germany was surprised as well since I don’t think he’d ordered the Austrian units the way I did. At the same time I supported France into Gas. I clearly thought that it would be R/G against the rest, and not knowing that Russia moved against Germany it was the only logical thing to do.
A05 and Germany got in touch with both Austria and me, assuming Tasha was back in the game. He suggested a GAI alliance, going for a 3-way since Russia had broken their DMZ. Both Austria and I thought it would be OK, so I tried to support Germany in France, but this time I got kicked out. At the same time we reorganized the troops in Italy. Germany moved out, but as long at neither Austria nor Italy could get any immediate gain by grabbing Ven, Germany was allowed to keep it for a while.
My attack on Russia made him redraw from Germany, but Germany was a bit unwilling to move against him, and quite logically he’d probably not have gained too much until he’d gotten untied his units in England. Just as he did I forgot to vote No to the EGP, and thus the game ended.
I was pretty annoyed with myself, forgetting to block the EGP ending the game, but unless Germany was actually preparing to move against Russia I guess I’d voted Yes next time, so it might not have done any difference.
I’ll start by congratulating Manfred and Gary with a well played game. I had some good discussions with both of you.
Tasha, as I said earlier. I think you might have lost the game when you stabbed me. On the other hand, I guess I shouldn’t have tempted you by leaving Ven undefended, but I tried to show you that I’d be a trustworthy ally. Italy actually can be a very god ally for Austria, and if you haven’t tried I’d recommend that you do sometime.
Nicolas. You looked like the dangerous guy early on, which made me move against you. If I’d know that Germany would move to Bur I’d stayed in the east (at least for a while). I never really gave you a chance, and I just hope that if we meet in another game this game won’t make cooperating difficult.
Paul, I really hope that it wasn’t something serious that made you NMR, but that you’ve been able to give Ally a good explanation so that you’re not gray listed and we can hopefully me again later.
Tom. Why did you sign up when you never communicated?
Ally. Thanks for running this game. You did a great job as usual, and I really appreciate it. I’d love to be in another of your smooth running games sometime, but then I’ll make sure not to over commit myself. (You saw it in both my gunboat games where I NMR’ed, since you GM’ed those as well.)
TrygveReturn to Top
RUSSIA (Gary Boyes) Thanks to Ally for adjudicating – excellent job. And thanks to Tasha (A), Paul (E), Nicholas (F), Manfred (G) and Trygve (I) for making this an enjoyable game to play. Sad to see two anarchies but that’s the way it goes sometimes.
This was my second time as Russia, the last being over 20 years ago in a PBM game. In the three games I’ve played so far in this club, R has been eliminated twice and survived once which represented the worst record of all the countries. This seemed to be at odds with the Eagle Points data which has R vying with F at the top of the countries league table. Potential was obviously there but I was yet to see it materialise.
The game got off to a mixed start for me. Communications with the others was at either end of the spectrum; Tasha (A) and Manfred (G) were very chatty, Nicholas (F) was ok, Trygve (It) and Paul (E) was minimal, Tom (T) was non-existent. This put me in a rather awkward situation – I feared an A / G alliance more than anything else but they were the clearly the most active. This led me to adopt a really conservative strategy, effectively just sitting on the fence in the early part of the game picking up neutrals. Tasha (A), Nicholas (F) and Trygve (I) were all busy with exams and work so Dippy was probably not number one on their agenda.
Things got worse as both E and T went into anarchy in 1903. T’s total silence had already pretty much ruined my game and when E went into anarchy I was well hacked off.
Fortunately for me, Tasha (A) stabbed Trygve (I). I then attacked Tasha (A) and by that time had agreed a 2-way draw with Manfred (G).
S1905 was the season of my worst move in this game. In F1904, I slipped an army into Arm hoping to persuade Trygve (I) to let me take a couple of centres in Turkey as reward for saving his life from Tasha (A). I already stuck the knife in Trygve (I) but failed to twist it and backed off. Trygve (I) buried the hatchet with Tasha (A) and stabbed me. In addition, I foolishly slipped a unit into Sil for no good reason. What a shambles.
After this, with comms being virtually non-existent apart from Manfred (G) I decide to start to propose the 2-way R / G draw we agreed upon earlier. First time round it failed but to mine and Manfred’s (G) surprise it gets voted through.
So, a short game spoilt by two anarchies. Still a 2-way isn’t a bad result.
Thanks again to all. Look forward to crossing swords again.
Cheers.
GaryReturn to Top
GM (Ally Bain) It's quite nice to see a good number of EGS, so thanks. Regarding the game, sadly Anarchies are part of the game & even though I didn't want them, losing the Wicked Witches should have evened it out.
As perhaps mentioned before I do keep stats & the Opening moves (S01 moves) & the result of this game have been added to their respective stats. This link will take you to the right page:
http://mysite.orange.co.uk/alb_gsb/diplomacy/stats/stats.htm
See you on the boards.
AllyReturn to Top
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