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Emissary
 
Posts: 3405
Joined: 12 Jun 2006, 2:01 am

Post 16 Jul 2014, 9:33 am

First of all, thanks for Dave for running a great game. I really enjoyed this one, although that might have something to do with it being the first time in three NWOs that I've played where I didn't do really badly...

When I started out I realised that with Turkey's position right in the middle of the map, and with Russia right there on the northern border, it was going to be vitally important to have at least two rock solid allies that I could keep for as long as possible, ideally all game long. The most important question was what to do about Russia. I figured I had to be either allied with him or part of a coalition to try and take him down early. When I spoke to Leif though I soon came round to the former because he came across as a good solid player, and he was willing to be very reasonable about helping me to grow and having a long term partnership. It was an obvious choice, and I then helped convince George in Sweden to do the same. I ended up with a game long relationship with George that was really productive, one of the best things I did. Leif unfortunately grew more and more inactive as the game went on, which made it difficult to work with him. At the beginning though it was a great situation to have Russia as my ally, it gave me a huge amount of defensive cover for the very long, thin line that my units ended up in.

In the Middle East I spoke a lot to Israel, Iran, Egypt and USA. With the latter my main priority was to get USA out of Baghdad. I didn't see how a formal alliance with him could work, and I didn't want Russ to be able to build armies right in the guts of my position. Iran and I talked about an early move against him involving Israel and/or Saudi. I might have been willing to go along with this but it needed planning, and then he suddenly told me that he'd already sorted it with Saudi and my involvement wasn't required. I was happy enough to stay out of it, but a bit put off by the way that Mike had taken the idea and just run with it, without even discussing how the map would be divvied up etc or bothering to figure out the specifics of how to actually beat the American army (it would have needed more than 2 units). I didn't like the sound of this and figured he wouldn't last very long in the game, so I looked elsewhere for my long term partner in the Middle East. In the end I hit on the idea of offering to pay Russ for letting me take Baghdad. At the time I was actually in a position to take it whether he was willing to sell it or not, so I had him over a barrel really, but I knew that he wouldn't have to disband the army and there was a line of retreat right into the middle of all my centres, so it would have been stupid to do that and would have made me a powerful enemy. I did eventually pay up, shortly before the end of the game, which I suspect Russ was quite surprised about...

Meanwhile I'd had a great productive conversation with Steve and Trevor. Steve's idea from the outset was for there to be a 3-way alliance between us that would allow us all to focus outwards and would mean we could afford to bank credits rather than have to defend on a wide front with extra units. This was such an obviously good idea that it didn't need much selling, and it worked brilliantly for a long time. Too well really, because it brought down pre-emptive nuking on us, although I escaped the worst of that. I feel Trevor could have been a bit more decisive in Africa and gone for it more aggressively (in the early game he could have tipped France or China to go after the other I think, had he made the commitment), but I really enjoyed working with both him and Steve and can't have any complaints. I wasn't decisive enough myself either.

Mostly I played the politics game really. I'd set up to make incremental gains in Iran and the Balkans and did that systematically, but I wasn't growing all that quickly and never really became a serious military force. I did have all kinds of diplomatic contacts though, and spent a lot of time developiung relationships with different players all over the world. For a while this was looking pretty good for me. Lots of people seemed to want to work with me and my progress was pretty smooth. I had rock solid allies to the north and south, with weak immediate neighbours. I had good relationships with France, China, UK, USA and several other big players. I was then invited by George to join a secret alliance of smaller powers who had formed as a long term project with a view to controlling the endgame. This group mostly just served as a way of pooling information initially, we didn't actively help each other in any wars, but it was interesting to be a part of and had potential as at least 4 of us grew from E/F status to being major players. That all came to an end when I had a major falling out with Randy which ended in an angry exchange of emails and the whole thing collapsing midgame. We did sort of patch things up later but the damage had been done and that group never really got back off the ground. Randy then went on to steamroll his way to the win, and fair play to him he played brilliantly.

Where it started to go wrong for me was later in the game after George had stabbed Leif and I sat back and did nothing. This was a blunder on my part, I really should have joined in and stabbed him myself from the south. There was sound reasoning for not doing that, but ultimately it was an error. I rationalised it that Leif still had a lot of votes under his control, that China wasn't joining in and so the few extra centres that I could get would be offset by the votes that I'd lose from him. I was also tied up in the Balkans at the time and needed his help. I should really have been less sentimental and just stuck the knife in though. It would have helped me to grow much more quickly, setting me up for a bigger nuke cycle and the possibility of grabbing extra votes in Central Asia. All of Leif's votes got swallowed in the end anyway. Had I done that then I could have been a bigger player in the endgame. There are limits to how far you can go with the political game. I had a bank of votes tied up in a number of tight allies that made me really attractive as a coalition partner in round 1 and 2 of the voting, but individually the players who held those votes weren't strong enough to defend them, and so as they all got chipped away so my chances of winning drained away. I needed to be stronger at the end of the game so I could defend those votes and go and grab new ones, like Randy and Zac did. At the end of the day it was lack of ambition on my part that cost me a shot at the win. I do maintain that defending Steve was the right thing to do though, from a strategic point of view as much as anything.

I'd like to try a stronger power next time.
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Dignitary
 
Posts: 3486
Joined: 02 Oct 2000, 9:01 am

Post 16 Jul 2014, 9:49 am

Sassenach wrote:At the end of the day it was lack of ambition on my part that cost me a shot at the win.


Blame it on the World Cup starting at an unfortunate time.
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Emissary
 
Posts: 3405
Joined: 12 Jun 2006, 2:01 am

Post 16 Jul 2014, 10:07 am

Well yeah, that certainly didn't help.