by Pedros » 24 Oct 2012, 16:56
After the last game it was obvious to me that the four 'smaller' powers - those other than the Hunni and Gothi - were doomed unless they worked together to ensure their survival. One or two of them might get through, but there was no way of guaranteeing that any particular one would be successful. I wanted to play one of those four and try to organise a joint plan.
In the event, kidneybean and cs joined in enthusiastically (well, kb certainly did; I wasn't sure that cs was convinced at first!) dinsyfresh, playing the green Saxones, was extremely late responding and by that time the three of us had worked out how we going to play it.
It worked well. In the event yellow gained two SCs and cs and I, the blue pair, one each. Stalin had one and asudevil's pink two. stalin's grey was, it seemed to me, always going to have a difficult time. In the last game pink and grey started with the same two centres, but nobody survived near hai and I was able to take it in year two, build in Byz, and grow in two sectors at once. stalin could do nothing but keep Byz, with the two pink units breathing down his neck.
kb's yellow looked certain to dominate the west of the board, so cs and I agreed very quickly that we would sink or swim together. We would work from our base around Italy and see what could be achieved. The probvlem was always going to be that we had to look both east and west, but we were helped to start with by pink and grey slogging it out in the east, meaning we were able to concentrate on resisting kb's yellow.
But we couldn't do enough quickly enough. He was racing to ten centres, covering the whole of western Europe, from which he would probably be able to dominate all resistance without too much difficulty. We called for joint action to hold him back, and asudevil and stalin to their credit joined in willingly, although it was clear from the outset that stalin had no trust in asudevil to keep his part of the bargain. We identified the key points which had to be protected, or the lines which kb couldn't be allowed to cross, and managed to achieve that in the first year. At this point it fell apart. kb was away and there was a very long Fall phase. The alliance had the opportunity to land a unit in Sac, one of yellow's last targets in his western stronghold. It could have been attacked by fleets belonging to asudevil or cs, or by convoying an army of mine; immediately after the previous phase asudevil asked which option we should go for. I staked a claim for it on the basis that we had agreed that asudevil and cs took the first builds during the alliance, which they already had, and stalin and I would be next in line. But in order to go down that route asudevil and cs had to agree to cooperate. During the week-long pause I asked at least three times what their verdict was (with increasing desperation, flamed PSs, etc). cs responded very late on, asudevil not at all (the extended phase ran nearly 24 hours beyond the deadline, and asudevil did write about four hours after the deadline that he was going for a totally different target.) Sudden silence is one of the classic marks of a stab (in real diplomacy as well, they tell me) and I made a preemptive strike against pink, believing that he may have switched sides to working with kb. And after that, grey decided to make his own stab.
asudevil was understandably not pleased, but in our correspondence claimed that he had "answered every important communication". I still believe that this wasn't the case!
After that, cs and I needed some careful tactical play (I'm pretty proud of our actions in those last few years!) especially against yellow. kb said that he "twiddled (his) thumbs while we stalemated him." In fact we held him back very carefully, and gradually pushed him back. I was sorry that the game finished before I managed to retake at least one of the English centres - retaking Hai and getting a fleet over there had been my target for about five years; at least I was within a year of building the fleet!
I suspect this may have been one of the best games of Imperium ever played anywhere; it certainly ought to be! And one lesson I learned was the huge importance of the rivers. Previously I had seen them only as an obstacle in year one, but they became a huge factor in our struggle with yellow, causing a major blockage between France and Italy which we had to work very hard indeed to overcome.
Huge thanks to cs for the partnership - putting our heads together over the best way to deal with the problems of the map was totallly enjoyable. And especially, thanks again to Morg for a flawless game.
PS - I too was very impressed by grey's recovery from one unit.
"Sooner or later, one of us will stab the other. But for now we're both better off as allies" (kininvie)