World Influence AAR

[marsman57]

I am way behind in this AAR topic, but I wanted to make a few quick comments to vaderi:

I made a few diplomatic errors when I stabbed you. The primary one was not including Venezuela. As I recall, he'd made it clear to me earlier that if I made a move that he'd be in my corner. I felt that was probably true, but I wanted my stab to be a true surprise so I negotiated solely with Antigonos (and btw AardvarkArmy, I was being truthful, all negotiations for that stab took place in the final few hours before the deadline) at the eleventh hour. Venezuela's reaction wasn't quite what I expected. I expected the result would be that France would throw a ton of units away from South America and give Venezuela a ripe opportunity to make his own gains there and the collapse would be even quicker. I did not expect AA to be so off-put by not being initially included that he'd hold SCs in escrow for the better part of a decade propping up France. Long story short, I ultimately do think I regret the stab going off the way it did. I sometimes let myself get swept into the panic being created by my alliances and make a shift that I think will be more beneficial in the long run that torpedoes me. I should have just trusted AA and brought him in early. We'd be playing a lot different of a game that much can be said!

You kept asking why I didn't just consider your SCs as an extension of mine and questioned how I screwed myself into an even smaller size. Well there were really two factors there.
1. Allies are unreliable compared to owning the SCs yourself.
2. At this point, I still distantly had my eyes on a solo, and I'd need fuel for that.

There are some side issues that muddled the whole thing and screwed around with my long range plans prior to the stab and after.

For example, when Flatley still had Nigeria, I had a super quiet information sharing alliance with him. In fact, I was sometimes giving him information on the E/F/G triple's bids and moves in Africa and I contributed some IP for their control of Italy once if I recall I'm not surprised if everyone is surprised to find that out. Why was I doing it? I wanted to keep my allies relatively weak compared to me so that they would have a harder time stabbing.

The problem? Flatley had that emergency and left the game suddenly. I didn't even know how to approach the new player about the ongoing cooperation we had. I didn't really trust Stanislaw well enough to have the level of discretion that I knew Flatley had. Also, I wanted him to lead off on messaging me to see what his throughts were on our working together vis a vis France. I... well... I don't think I ever got anything, for like 5 years, well after the stab had occurred.

I had some similar problems when pjkon disappeared. EpicDim is a great player (and awesome GM), but I've known very few on the site that communicated and negotiated as extensively as pjkon (though I would like to say that I'm at that level myself at peak -- not lately with life kicking my butt regularly!) and so I couldn't really ever get the diplomatic help I needed to make headway in Northern Africa post-stab.

[marsman57]

I think its clear, even with the differences of opinion, approach, philosophy, and etymology,

Mega game AARs tend to bring out very interesting discussions about the philosophy of the game.

See WWIV's wonderful AAR as well.
viewtopic.php?f=323&t=35694

Edit: In fact AardvarkArmy's AAR in there was one of the reasons I felt that I needed to go for an early game solid alliance (the "Western Triple" so to speak). Too bad I screwed that up!

[Alman]

I did want to comment on the Minors discussion. I like the idea of having a limited amount of IP's. As I am GMing Ambition & Empire, I think it helps keep things balanced to not allow the big powers to get to the point where there is no hope of bidding against them. I think the 3 IP's of A&E might be too small, but an upper limit would be valuable. I also think either making minor SC's only work for minors might be a good idea, or someone further incentivizing the use of minors over to absorption of minors. Obviously at some point the minors will probably need to be eliminated, but there is so much potential unexplored in this area.

What about making minor SC's only for the minors but while you control the minor, it DOES count toward your SC count? That would mean that controlling some minors could move me closer to an end-game win as long as I can keep them alive. Perhaps limiting IP supply to minors but reducing how much you lose when it comes to what you have invested in a minor. For instance, if you have treated a minor well, you don't lose half your influence you have built up. Something along those lines.
I'm just spitballing here, but these are some thoughts.

[vaderi]

You kept asking why I didn't just consider your SCs as an extension of mine and questioned how I screwed myself into an even smaller size. Well there were really two factors there.
1. Allies are unreliable compared to owning the SCs yourself.
2. At this point, I still distantly had my eyes on a solo, and I'd need fuel for that.

I never questioned why you didn't consider my SCs as an extension of yours in terms of use(though I was extremely lax about guarding myself), I just thought you weren't silly enough to be thinking about a solo at that point (EDIT: and so would be thinking of me and my SCs as part of yours in Draw terms if at all). To use the examples that have been getting thrown around by AA and GhostEcho, Venezuela at the very end of the game was equivalent to a 11/12 SC normal diplomacy power while at the point when you stabbed me, I saw the game as exiting the early stages and entering the mid game and thought that at this point it should be obvious that without serious aid it would be impossible to solo. Then you stabbed me and in utterly botching it proved my point in my view. So I guess I understand your reasoning now, but I still think it was a dumb idea. I can appreciate a "good" stab, but a senseless stab bugs me.

EDIT:
Though I do appreciate AA's view of the European Triple alliance as antithetical to good diplomacy play, I tend to plan my strategy in Mega-Dip games around finding good allies and working with them for a long while, until I can determine if the map is over saturated with SCs and then stab.

[Stanislaw]

Wow this is one long AAR, I am sad I didn't get in on the conversation sooner. I'll be preparing my full thoughts to be posted soon.

[Flatley]

Yeah.

I'm sorry I had to vanish. This was actually an incredibly enjoyable and frustrating game all at once. But real life has to take priorities, and it was months until things got settled. By the time it did, I thought it best to keep quiet, out of respect for Stanisalw's Nigeria.

I regret having to walk away from the game, as playing Nigeria was an immense challenge. I had been able to done more with it than I had ever hoped, and I had a lot of hope that I would be able to eventually dislodge colonial France from Africa. More than that, I wanted to shake up the European Triple that I felt threatened the game with another timid demise. For those of you who played with me back in my Imperial days, you'll ll undoubtedly remember the frustration of having a game grind to a halt due because of inertia. I daresay that Stan did a tremendous job with Nigeria, and I'm thrilled that the country did ultimately place in the winner's circle.

I did want to thank everyone who got on board my Operation: European Vacation. A lot of people had to come back from war and hostility and band together against the European threat, and I really appreciated the bids supporting my control of Italy. I was hoping it would have enticed a stab in Europe, but it didn't quite work out that way. Still and all, it gave us Africans a chance to turn back the tide, and I feel it did contribute a little extra chaos to a rather ho-hum European triple.

ASU, were you happy with the conclusion? I recall our clandestine chats, and I hope that the outcome lived up to your expectations.

[asudevil]

ASU, were you happy with the conclusion? I recall our clandestine chats, and I hope that the outcome lived up to your expectations.

It was surprising as I didn't think Nigeria should have been in the end and could have easily been eliminated.

I personally hated that Germany stalled out and just turtled to the end. I get that stabbing was a risk....but who cares....no one is going to brag about the 6 way draw. Go big or go home is my thought, but everyone has their own thoughts.

It was better than imperial, but still not loved

[Flatley]

Well, you know my philosophy on that. But I can also appreciate what AA was saying; it's hard to continue to play the game when it's clear that others are losing interest (I love the Monopoly metaphor). I regret the part I played in that phenomenon, as it's clear based on other posts that joint enterprises with Nigeria and the UK may have advanced farther had I not up and vanished.

[marsman57]

Yeah. Stanislaw played a good strategic game but he had no interest in negotiating with me until the game was basically over.