Germany

Mark,
Thanks for setting the record straight about your dropping out. I retract all of my criticisms regarding your failure to finish the game. It is easy to accept that the problem was a GM error, as our GM ran the game rather poorly. I'm sure some of the reason we had so many other dropouts was the enormous amount of down time while our GM kept granting extensions to a nonexistent Austria.

I agree with Thorsten that England's overly trusting play facilitated my victory. I offered several times to swap a center for Belgium. England should have agreed, since Belgium could not be defended. As for DMZ's, we did have extensive DMZ's. I agreed not to build a third fleet or to move a fleet to Sweden, Denmark, or Kiel. With my interior lines, this agreement was better for me than for England.

I have earned a 2-way draw in a previous game. In order to achieve it, both parties must be careful to safeguard themselves from a stab and ensure roughly equal progress to the final position. England did neither in this game. Even when our official center count was 10-10, it was really 11-9, counting Belgium as German. I could have won without stabbing England. I would have got my 17 long before England, with or without a trade for Belgium, and then I could have taken the 18th center from Turkey. Personally, I don't find it very satisfying to win by outrunning an ally. I prefer to make a move to do it on my own and then see if the rest of the world can stop me.

I also want to comment on Thorsten's statement that "RT was not able to compare with EG". A large part of the reason for this was the very passive play of Turkey. He played as though holding on to his home centers, Bulgaria, and Greece was all he had to do to win. Austria defended himself for a few turns with only minimal help from me. It was only when Italy went suicide against Austria that his position fell apart.


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