Messages - vDiplomacy

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25 Jun 18 UTC	Good game, my first win in this variant after maybe 8 attempts. I had actually voted draw a few phases ago, but someone else must have been holding out. Then it was made easy by NMRs at the end.
25 Jun 18 UTC	Grats Tantrum, well deserved. This was my first and last attempt at this variant!
25 Jun 18 UTC	Of my 8 attempts, 4 times I got East Anglia and it sucks!
25 Jun 18 UTC	Yeah, arguably one of the weakest starting positions of all powers in all variants!
25 Jun 18 UTC	East-Angelica does particularly poorly when he's bombarded by Up North in the north and decides to attack his southern neighbor London (me). That just killed me since I already was facing an alliance in the southeast. Despite multiple turns of trying to show interest in allying with E-A, he didn't get it until it was too late. Very frustrating - E-A should not have been attacking me - just a bad move to open up two fronts at once unnecessarily.
25 Jun 18 UTC	Well, to be fair EA was already lost at that point. My only chance at that point was to either 1. get another fleet (the only SC within reach was northants, which really makes more sense for EA than for London in such a game anyway, but I knew it was hoping for much that London would agree - but then again it could still have worked if Bristol saw reason to have a balanced game in the northeast. Wales intervened so that didn’t work), or 2. get help from Merseyside (the early moves did not suggest anything of the sort so I didn’t even consider that an option) and 3. convince UN that EA can be a helpful ally to point their attention elsewhere (really hard in no press)
25 Jun 18 UTC	Have to disagree with you there EA. Merseyside offered UN friendship in Autumn 2000, which UN smartly took to focus his attack on you, which he proceeded to do the next turn. Instead of acting to counter that you failed to build a fleet and then sent all your forces south in Spring 2001 - completely abdicating your chances to hold position against UN. You then proceeded to hammer futilely on me for a couple of turns in Northants when I could have really used that unit against Bristol and you could have really used that spare unit that was attacking me to defend against UN. So that's all on you. We could have had nice safe interior territory between us, and you blew that.
25 Jun 18 UTC	Of course M and UN ally immediately. That’s almost a given. Makes EAs game so hard. That’s what I was trying to say. UN can easily block the land route and dominate the ocean. There’s no way for EA to defend against that unless given more fleets. The only way to get another fleet was Northants. And the safe zone you’re talking about is south of Northants. So EAs game is impossible without it. If that means he can’t be allied with London then so be it, better cheer for Bristol then. As for pulling units away from the north, I didn’t give anything for free. Everything he took was already guaranteed. In fact my defensive moves were pretty near optimal each turn. It’s just unbalanced, that’s it. But I don’t expect you to agree. Of course you have another viewpoint. Otherwise the game would have turned out differently, not necessarily better for either of us, but differently...
25 Jun 18 UTC	No - you're wrong. You could have built a second fleet in the first year - you went with an army. And you could have helped me move west to Warwickshire from Northants, which would have given you the freedom to send all your units north for defense. Alternately, that could have gotten me in position to swap Northants to you if I could pick up W. Midlands. Also by being friendly with me I could have sent a fleet to Dutch Crossing to help you since I wouldn't need to be defending against you. But instead of looking for any of these cooperative approaches, you focused on aggression towards your one potential ally - never a good move - pretty much doomed us both.