Spring 1904
I built up in the north to help deal with that front, so that left us with the following situation going into the Spring turn.
I had some concerns for this turn.
1) What if Germany does something wild like move into Galacia?
2) What if France and England make up somehow? I have good numbers in the north, but not enough to handle all 3 of them.
For #1, here's some chatting through it as we debated as a team some options.
Basically the conclusion was that if I was careful, the upside for me was arguably better if he tried it, so we should be OK.
As for France/England, you can see some of my work with England in the previous post.
I was probably overly paranoid, so I followed up a couple times to confirm. This all lead to the Spring turn.
Note on retreats: Swe -> Nwy, Eng -> Wal, Sil -> Mun
Anyway, a lot to break down here. Let's start just with the relevance to me. I didn't quite expect the Sweden capture from Germany. Obviously in the spring it's fine, and it's an easy retake in the fall, but it was mildly annoying. It's also just the cost of using Nth to support England. I did successfully take Ska, which will let me exert a lot of control over Germany going forward.
As for the center, Germany and I just did a positioning shuffle, really. The Italian army in Tyr is a bit of a nuisance, and I'll be happy to see it gone soon.
This is the situation headed into the Fall. Let's talk about the gamestate, because it's in an interesting spot. I think the TL;DR is we've been on a death march to a Russia-Turkey-France lategame, and I think everyone knows it. Italy and Germany arae working together a little bit just to prolong things, but neither are really talking a lot as best I can tell. The biggest thing is my hopes for the Western Theater have all come true. Ideally England/France/Germany want to land on a 2v1 and get a quick kill. Instead, they've stabbed each other repeatedly for limited value, and now they all distrust each other, and here at the end of the 4th year, we're still nowhere near a resolution here. It's perfect. Pindicator and I began talking again, and you can see his frustration here bubbling out.
I'm of two minds here for Pindicator. On the one hand, I think he got really unlucky. His two neighbors have been the most challenging to deal with. England was generally tough to work with for everyone it seems, and Germany has played mega cautiously and not really committed to anything. That's unfortunate. However, it's also true that he's stabbed England 1-2 times (depending on how you count) and has not a ton to show for it. He seemed to switch from an EF to an FG without the FG actually lined up properly? Either that, or his stab was simply not strong enough. I try to limit my stabs to really count. I think my only truly dastardly stab was the one on Italy, but that had massive impact for my alliance, so it was obviously worth it. (Selling out Nauf's moves to Turkey is a mild one too, but again, it got my ally an extra build in 1901 and secured our dominance.)
In any case, I've been talking to France this year, which anyone lurking will have noticed.
I imagine there's some lurkers wondering how serious I am. The funny answer: I don't know! Practically, I think some talking with France has a few effects.
1) If I think the game could devolve into Russia/Turkey/France, it's beneficial to me to be the "swing vote" on the inevitable 2v1. I'd rather them be vying for me to be on their side vs the other way around.
2) Maybe I get useful info out of him. In other words, maybe he tells me too much, and I can use it against him. This is unlikely, but you never know. This kind of fishing expedition is how the Italy stab materialized out of thin air
3) Maybe I want to stab Turkey soon and really throw in with France? Probably not. But maybe? It's good to at least check it out, even if I really do want to keep the alliance chugging.
In general I'm pretty committed to my ally here. But the truth is there's nothing to discuss with Germany/Italy for obvious reasons, and while I'm propping up Adrien, that has limited upside. France is the other remaining player with a lot of agency left, even if we're getting a wave of Pindicator Despair. So it's important to keep the phone lines warm.
I built up in the north to help deal with that front, so that left us with the following situation going into the Spring turn.
I had some concerns for this turn.
1) What if Germany does something wild like move into Galacia?
2) What if France and England make up somehow? I have good numbers in the north, but not enough to handle all 3 of them.
For #1, here's some chatting through it as we debated as a team some options.
Basically the conclusion was that if I was careful, the upside for me was arguably better if he tried it, so we should be OK.
As for France/England, you can see some of my work with England in the previous post.
I was probably overly paranoid, so I followed up a couple times to confirm. This all lead to the Spring turn.
Note on retreats: Swe -> Nwy, Eng -> Wal, Sil -> Mun
Anyway, a lot to break down here. Let's start just with the relevance to me. I didn't quite expect the Sweden capture from Germany. Obviously in the spring it's fine, and it's an easy retake in the fall, but it was mildly annoying. It's also just the cost of using Nth to support England. I did successfully take Ska, which will let me exert a lot of control over Germany going forward.
As for the center, Germany and I just did a positioning shuffle, really. The Italian army in Tyr is a bit of a nuisance, and I'll be happy to see it gone soon.
This is the situation headed into the Fall. Let's talk about the gamestate, because it's in an interesting spot. I think the TL;DR is we've been on a death march to a Russia-Turkey-France lategame, and I think everyone knows it. Italy and Germany arae working together a little bit just to prolong things, but neither are really talking a lot as best I can tell. The biggest thing is my hopes for the Western Theater have all come true. Ideally England/France/Germany want to land on a 2v1 and get a quick kill. Instead, they've stabbed each other repeatedly for limited value, and now they all distrust each other, and here at the end of the 4th year, we're still nowhere near a resolution here. It's perfect. Pindicator and I began talking again, and you can see his frustration here bubbling out.
I'm of two minds here for Pindicator. On the one hand, I think he got really unlucky. His two neighbors have been the most challenging to deal with. England was generally tough to work with for everyone it seems, and Germany has played mega cautiously and not really committed to anything. That's unfortunate. However, it's also true that he's stabbed England 1-2 times (depending on how you count) and has not a ton to show for it. He seemed to switch from an EF to an FG without the FG actually lined up properly? Either that, or his stab was simply not strong enough. I try to limit my stabs to really count. I think my only truly dastardly stab was the one on Italy, but that had massive impact for my alliance, so it was obviously worth it. (Selling out Nauf's moves to Turkey is a mild one too, but again, it got my ally an extra build in 1901 and secured our dominance.)
In any case, I've been talking to France this year, which anyone lurking will have noticed.
I imagine there's some lurkers wondering how serious I am. The funny answer: I don't know! Practically, I think some talking with France has a few effects.
1) If I think the game could devolve into Russia/Turkey/France, it's beneficial to me to be the "swing vote" on the inevitable 2v1. I'd rather them be vying for me to be on their side vs the other way around.
2) Maybe I get useful info out of him. In other words, maybe he tells me too much, and I can use it against him. This is unlikely, but you never know. This kind of fishing expedition is how the Italy stab materialized out of thin air
3) Maybe I want to stab Turkey soon and really throw in with France? Probably not. But maybe? It's good to at least check it out, even if I really do want to keep the alliance chugging.
In general I'm pretty committed to my ally here. But the truth is there's nothing to discuss with Germany/Italy for obvious reasons, and while I'm propping up Adrien, that has limited upside. France is the other remaining player with a lot of agency left, even if we're getting a wave of Pindicator Despair. So it's important to keep the phone lines warm.
