Postgame thoughts:
On the map:
Really, really enjoyed this map. Probably to the extent that I will not go back to playing classic again. This one is just so much more intricate and detailed, and adds an enormous additional level of complexity to the game from both a diplomatic and a tactical perspective that going back would feel like playing Checkers when you once got to play Chess. Really hope that this becomes the norm rather than the exception.
On the draw meta:
I won't beat a dead horse on this (see what I did there LN), but the draw meta really makes Diplomacy unengaging. Giving people incentive to shut down and not play the game the moment someone else pulls ahead is just incredibly lame and makes you wonder why people even play. DIAS helps a little bit but I really do think we need to create a points system that doesn't incentivize stopping a solo at literally all other costs. The system I proposed privately was to have games be draw-sized scoring, with 50% of the pot going to a solo. I.e. if someone solos in classic with 18/34, then they would get 50% + 18/34 * 50% = 76.4% of the final points. This would mean that people would still be incentivized to fight for a draw (lest they lose half of their points from the draw), but not at the expense of over half of their centers. Similarly, people are incentivized to look for weaknesses as long as they can at least double their center counts. This will encourage people continuing to play the game and jockey for position while incentivizing fighting off a solo to a reasonable extent.
Either way, we definitely should start tracking points since Diplomacy is now a regular thing on this forum. It would give people a lot more incentive to play hard every game and to not NMR.
On how the game progressed (from the French perspective):
At a high level, the game had five distinct stages from an French alliance perspective:
1. Early game (Spring 1993 through Fall 1996): allied with England and Italy. Jointly attacked Germany with both, and Spain with England. Italy largely did its' own thing in the East. Overall this setup was mutually beneficial for all, I think that England probably should have opened harder to the North and given up on the Med ambitions (there's just no world where you can ally with either France or Spain long-term and have fleets on both sides of GIB, nor do you need to have that in this map). I think Italy should've insisted we add someone else to the alliance to help them in the East, maybe Ukraine or Poland (or Russia). Italy ended up having a very strong start that never really went anywhere due to lack of allies, while England and I carved up the entirety of Germany and completely encircled Spain by Fall 1997.
2. England gets stabbed + Russia and Egypt Triple (Fall 1996 through Spring 1999): In Fall 1996, I saw an opportunity to hard-stab England and convinced Poland and Russia to go with it. In my opinion Poland should have been reticent to help a Russian + French alliance since they were in the middle and likely to get sandwiched, but given their relative lack of other allies I don't think they had better options. Part of the reason for this (and the controversial portion of it) was that LN had stabbed Alice in Space War 3 and so we felt it was at least moderately earned, though he contests that perspective and I think that it is fair to consider that to be undeserved. What is clear, however, is that stabbing England there was clearly the best option for France from a board perspective - once England get's an extra two builds it becomes almost impossible to ever attack them as France, and in one turn we reduced them from 7 (what they would have had, had we supported them to Berlin as promised) to 4 (losing Denmark, Hamburg, and Holland, as well as possible Seville had Spain made alternate moves in the South). This meant that carving England up was infinitely easier / faster, and allowed us to established the northern fleet presence that we needed to have any hope of soloing.
In the aftermath, I allied with Russia and Egypt in a triple alliance that had much more long-term growth opportunities for everyone involved. This alliance caused all three of us to explode in growth over the next several years, but I grew faster than the others. This caused some awkward situations specifically as related to Russia, and I'll admit I was constantly paranoid that Russia would stab throughout this period. Eventually Russia asked to be let into North in Spring 1999, which I considered an absurd and unnecessary request and a clear sign that they would stab soon. As such, I took the opportunity to convoy into Norway and to retake the rest of Britain. I figured that Russia would finish the clean-up of Poland and that we would likely stalemate in the North but that I may have some opportunities in the South. I was wrong.
3. The Stalemate Era (Fall 1999 to Spring 2001): For these several turns, literally nobody was working with or coordinating with me. I was essentially playing 1v6, with four large powers actively attacking me (Poland, Russia, Italy, and Egypt) and the two smaller / weaker powers largely idling (Ukraine and Turkey). I slowly lost ground, some of it due to tactical mistakes (and some really good guesses / play on their part), losing several centers in the North and the South and seeing the German front become the most vicious guessing game / trench fight I've seen in a Diplomacy game, ever.
This cycle of slow loss ended when I rallied Turkey and Ukraine into an alliance to take back some of the territory they lost from the others. In the case of Ukraine this was an obvious call, because they were going to eliminate Ukraine from the draw regardless. In the case of Turkey Egypt likely would have convinced the others to keep them alive, but I would argue that playing the game and trying to actually make gains should be rewarded, not punished (especially when the players you are taking the dots from either pushed you to the brink of elimination or were treating you like their loyal pet, as Egypt was). This also highlights a key overarching point:
if you're going to stab someone, it is almost always better to make sure that you finish the job. In general people will not let you have another opportunity, so if you're going to stab you need to make sure that it is fatal. This was the difference between my position and that in the East - I was able to coordinate the complete elimination of Germany, Spain, and England, while all of the Eastern powers survived essentially until the end of the game, with only Poland being eliminated right at the end.
4. Ukraine + Turkey + France triple (later adding Egypt, Spring 2001 to Spring 2002): Turkey opted not to cleanly kill Egypt, and to instead add Egypt back to the alliance. While I understand the inclination, I do think that if you're going to go for your own growth here, you have to be willing to finish the job (or to at least put Egypt on the same 2-3 centers that they had kept you on, likely Tunis + Morocco so that they could hold the Western Med against me while you clean up in the East). I think Turkey easily could've grown to 10+ centers here AND held the draw if AG had been a little more cutthroat. I did love to see the character development from him this game, just think he needs to be willing to take the extra step and fight for his own interests a tiny bit more.
In any case, Ukraine opted to stab and ally with Russia at an opportune time, respect to Twin for pulling this off cleanly. He would've gotten away with the whole operation too if Poland hadn't hard thrown to me over Russia taking Lithuania. However, Poland got so mad at this stage that he simply hard threw to me and let me request whatever orders I asked for. I largely just had him submit the worst possible moves to remove the Polish units from the board ASAP, as his units were the ones by far in the best position to stop me soloing. I probably could have kept Poland alive or used his help more proactively, but any chance at trusting him was destroyed years earlier after he stabbed me multiple times by offering to 'throw'.
5. France + Turkey + Egypt triple (Spring 2002 to end game, Fall 2005): At this stage the game was basically Turkey and Egypt being willing to continue fighting Russia + Ukraine in the East so long as I never took any of their centers (they were ok with me soloing), and that is exactly what happened. I made slow progress against Russia + Ukraine (with Poland's help, although I generally didn't rely on Poland for anything due to not trusting them after the attacks they had made earlier on).
This part of the game was the least interesting diplomatically, and tactically I had improved significantly from the practice I got during the Stalemate Era - I made significantly more gains than I otherwise would have with a series of good guesses and solid tactical decisions. By the end of the game I was guaranteed multiple contested spaces (Murmansk, Krakow, and the not-a-center-but-even-better Baltic Sea) as well as having Rome and Naples in my back pocket in case Turkey + Egypt ever turned on me, so Flandrs opted to call it.
On the players:
Germany (CK and Neon): Didn't discuss much with you honestly, and pretty much had you as an easy target as soon as I allied with LN + Sunny. Sorry that we never really got to work together, hope you keep playing.
Spain (Skipper and later Duskfall / Tommy): Alice wanted to ally with Tommy once Tommy subbed in, but the truth is that Spain is simply France's worst enemy on this map. If France turns its' back on Spain at any point then it becomes completely impossible to ever eliminate them, much less solo. By the time Tommy had subbed in I had already done all of the groundwork necessary to get a successful attack going, and it didn't make any sense not to follow through. I did hold true to my final promise to him to let Egypt have Morocco right through the end of the game, though. Thanks for subbing in in a tough position, sorry that the board made us such hard enemies.
England (LN and Jalmont): I actually disagreed with your postmortem take that you 'should've insisted on more Spanish territory'. I think your problem was that you misdiagnosed where your best build options were - in Scandanavia. Regardless of who you support between France and Spain (and both are reasonable options), neither one of them can reasonably allow you to control Gibraltr, and fighting for that from the get-go is a little silly imo. If I were in your shoes I would have tried to negotiate to get to stay in Morocco while France and Spain fight it out, and whichever one you want to ally / help against the other you can do so but just don't commit more than one unit to helping them. Then you focus your resources on your real power base: Scandanavia + the lowlands. I think that giving up Belgium to France probably isn't something England should be doing on reflection, it is just such a natural English center that can be fairly easily defended, unlike any gains you make from Spain or from interior France (in the cases where you support Spain).
On play, I thought our alliance was very mutually beneficial and that you got a bit unlucky with how the moves in Spain played out. You probably should've consolidated power in the North and not left Holland open, but I understand why you did it and it's not your fault that both in Spain (thanks to Tommy favoring losing centers to me rather than to you) and in Scandanavia (where Bluedoom and Poland kept stabbing you) people kept screwing you over. The stab was just a culmination of bad luck leaving you open and you needing to trust somebody, so you trusted the person who had allied you from the start of the game. In most cases this is a reasonable strategy.
Poland (Lechen and M2H): Easily the most vicious tactical duo I had to fight this game, as well as the only ones who ever really truly surprised me with a stab (me supporting them into Austria that one turn was pure hubris on my part, and a huge missed opportunity to consolidate my power before the others could move into position against me). Highly respect their play, just think that they need to finish the job when they stab in the early game next time. It doesn't really matter whether you stab Russia or Ukraine, but stabbing both and killing neither means that in the long term you probably will not have a good time. Personally I'd have stabbed Russia and fought my way to the corner, but that's just me.
Italy (Sunny and DBD): We had a good partnership through the early game, but never really got to fight together on anything past the first year or two (with me helping them into Austria and them helping me into Munich the following year). This felt similar to the mutual defense pacts that France and Italy often make in classic diplomacy, where you largely ignore each other until one or the other gets big enough to be able to turn around, at which point the smaller one is screwed. That being said, you put up a really, really strong defense for years, and only lost due to multiple people stabbing you from behind. Respect all around, only comment is that I think you needed to get some additional help in the East into the alliance (Russia probably would have been the logical choice in this regard).
Turkey (AG and Pulsar): Loved the initiative you showed this game, you wrote orders for yourself + Egypt for the entire latter part of the game after a really tough start. Only comment is that I think you should fight for your own interests in negotiations more, especially if you are taking the initiative to write orders (for example, if it is 50/50 on who should take a center and ESPECIALLY if you are smaller than your ally, you should be taking it, not Egypt).
Egypt (Yoru and TheIronPikachu): I am glad that we could close the game as allies, if I'm being honest I do think you should try to look for more openings to be aggressive next game but as a new player simply solidifying your position and then holding to it with your strongest allies is a very reasonable strategy.
Ukraine (Twin): Very well played all around, I think maybe next game just be a little more careful about who might stab you. You fought back from multiple near-impossible situations and had some really well-timed stabs near the end, if Poland hadn't thrown then you probably would've gotten out with a five-man draw and a third place finish on SCs, which would have been an absolute coup given how the early game went.
Russia (Bluedoom): Well, well, well...the wells being a well-deserved second place in my book, quite possibly a performance worthy of first. You played spectacularly from start to finish in both tactical decisions and in your diplomacy with the entire board. I'm glad that we got to work together for a period of time, although we ended up coming to blows for much of the latter half of the game. Really, really well played.
Finally, a big thank-you to
StupidFlandrs48 for hosting, and thanks to everyone for keeping the Diplomacy scene going here! While I personally am likely not going to play Classical again after this game, I think that for some players the simplicity is nice and probably preferable, and it's not as though every game needs to be of this heightened level of complexity to be interesting and engaging. I had a lot of fun this game (even when things weren't going my way).
In all honesty, I entered the game thinking I was some amazing Diplomacy player (s/o to Dunning-Krueger), and was quickly and repeatedly humbled by the surprising stabs / alliance forging of the rest of the board + being tactically outplayed several turns in a row in the middlegame. This forced me to humble myself, improve my tactics, forge new alliances, and come back stronger. In that respect thank you to all of the rest of the players, and I hope that others had a similar experience of feeling like they actively improved as a result of this game.
