I've been seeing a lot of posts on the forum referencing the "stalemate line," and I have some questions around it. I understand the general concept of a stalemate line, that a group of self-supporting units can defend a cluster of SC's forever from an attacking force, even if the attacking force knows exactly what the defense's orders are.
When I read it in AAR's or other active game discussions, it sounds like a line that just developed naturally, a dynamic line that is only true for that one game (meaning this game may involve a stalemate line of Berlin and Munich on one side of the line, but another game may put Berlin/Munich on opposite sides). However, there are other posts (like Zosimus' recent A Workable Plan post) that make it sound like there is a specific, general line that you must get across if you hope to solo. The inference I'm making is that you can (should?) know when you crossed the stalemate line, even if it isn't close to being set up yet?
When I googled for the stalemate line, I found this link on dipwiki which lists a dozen different stalemate lines, but none of which really fit the 17-17 stalemate that I've seen referenced. The most any of these lines can defend is 15 centers, which isn't enough to prevent a solo by itself, and none of them seem that great at defending against an aggressive France like in Zosimus' post (unless I'm just misunderstanding something).
So is there a "main" stalemate line that everyone is referencing when I see it referenced in the forums? Or is it just a theoretical "we won't know where the stalemate line will be until at least the mid-game" type of thing, but then how would you know if you crossed it? To me, it would seem like if I'm trying to go from mid-game to end-game, my number one short term goal should be to break through a weak point in the stalemate line before the others can adequately set it up (or vice versa if I'm trying to prevent a solo). But I'm not sure how to do that because I'm not sure which spaces are on which side of the stalemate line.
If this question was asked/answered before, can you point out where that is because I couldn't find anything during my searching of the forums (likely just my lack of searching skills)? I appreciate your patience as I try to wrap my head around this.