S1901M Press from G to G

    * NZMB Diplomacy Ajudicator ** JKs Tim Miller and Mario Becroft *

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Message from [benjamin.harris_at_mindspring.com,bwarner34_at_charter.net as] Germany
to Germany in 'teachme3':

> I am lucky to have as a tutor someone with an "enviable" reputation, as the
> participants in Gutsy2 have.
  Heh. Actually I was also the one that initiated that game, so being in it is not so much of an honor. I did have the highest JDPR at the start of the game, but thats before my four recent losses.

> Good luck in Sincere - it's looking pretty bleak for you there.
  Yah, especially with Russia ending the year at 18 centers. ;-) That one was a game I was actually invited to, and put up a pretty good fight in despite running into real trouble after I took out France.

> in Gutsy2 your star is not exactly on the rise either.
  It certainly isn't. I'm hoping to stage a comeback though, I'll keep you updated.

> It's interesting to see that in each of these games Italy is courted as a
> third ally against France. Perhaps the promise of Marseilles is perfect: POR
> + SPA + BRE + PAR = 4, divided neatly by 2 yields 2 for England and Germany.
  Unfortunately, as you can see in both games, Italy is rarely satisfied to get just Marseilles. Brest often ends up on England's side too, because of its position.

> Or France + Iberia + Belgium equals 6, divided neatly by 3 gives MAR + SPA for
> Italy, POR + BRE for England, and BEL + PAR for me.
  This is a much more likely split.

> an extra ally means faster victory but an extra mouth to feed, plus I don't want to be the
> middle ally, if you know what I mean.
  Very true. And where do you go after France? Attacking Italy doesn't aim you towards the 18 centers you want. Attacking England or Russia with the other is helpful short term, but it also makes one of them stronger, and thus makes it that much harder to get the rest of the 18 that you need. You can see in Sincere that Germany kind of stalled out after he got his 8 centers, and he could never really get any bigger.

> if Italy is left out he may want to prop up a falling France to keep England out of the
> Med.
  There isn't a whole lot he can do militarily, without devoting a number of units to the cause.

> Plus an Italian who wanted to go East would have a great deal to gain by heading East
> but putting France on his guard to make the battle drag on for as long as possible.
  Very true, which is why even proposing the idea to Italy can be risky.

> What do you think? Is this where our assessment of players comes in?
  I think so. The great thing about this game is that for every action we could take, somebody else could take an action that would nullify it. We need to find the players that we think we can take advantage of, either by allying with them because we think they'll leaves themselves open later, or by attacking them because we think they'll be vulnerable, or by ignoring them because we know they won't get involved in screwing up our plans.

> Concerning the Centrifuge, I am troubled by its vulnerability to even a small
> amount of cooperation between England and Russia. Did you face that in your game?
  Not so much. I also didn't play out the entire Centrifuge, I abandoned it in Spring 1902 because I was afraid it would be too predictable. England did attack me, but eventually I convinced him to attack Russia, then stabbed him while Russia got chewed up by the other players. You can check out the history here on NZMB for the game tim23r.

> What about the Jutland Gambit?
  That's an interesting idea. It leaves you some flexibility, and it gives you the ability to "let" someone else into Belgium in exchange for future favor. You don't get to bounce Russia, but that means that you can make him happy too. Its a very nice "wait and see" plan. If we don't have any strong feelings towards one player or another, I think this would be a good way to go.

Brent
Received on Thu Nov 14 07:23:32 2002