It will be a few days before I can write out a full EoG, but it's coming.

I also add my thanks to my 2WL for putting up with me as my TA, the other players, and the profs behind this project. Special thanks to Mr PeterWiggin for making this all happen.

oh, and BUMP.

bump for dem EoGs

Bump for more EoGs.

COMING THIS WEEKEND - "The Legend of Tsar Sultan"

Listen to the all-new EoG that has far less to do with Tsars than it does with Sultans, written by DEATHLLAMA9, that one guy who soloed a game that one time which is good I guess?

I think I'll do this in two parts. Why post once when you can double your +1s?

England's EoG part one: The bit where England isn't telling everyone (except maybe Russia) about Italy's solo threat.

My TA (the tactical genius Mendax) asks if I want to try something particular or go with fairly standard. I'd say that I'd like to try to win, which apparently goes without saying. Mendax informs me there is only one moveset that guarantees an English build in 1901. Tactics for 1901 are sorted then.

Onto diplomacy. I spin some tale to Germany about how with England being a fleet power and Germany being a land power, we can totally work together. Mendax has already told me not to build too many fleets, but Germany doesn't know that.

Last time I played as France it ended in a bitter mutually assured destruction with Perfidious Albion. I'm determined not to be that guy, and to actually work with France this time. I tell France that EF can be much more formidable than the dreaded juggernaut. I'm sure it's probably true sometimes.

Unknowingly at the time, I also lied to Russia in 1901. I got a southern Russian opening out of it, so it seemed worthwhile. At the time I genuinely wanted to stick to our agreement of splitting Scandinavia. I take Norway with a fleet instead of army in exchange for no build in St P. That way both of us can focus on the south. With a planned EF stab of Germany, I didn't really want conflict with Russia too. What I did want though, was for Germany to bounce Sweden. I've since discovered (thanks prof commentary!) that this benefits England a lot more than Germany. So far so good.

Mendax tells me England has the advantage of sitting back and seeing how things feel before committing to a particular plan (but that it is definitely important to have a plan). Certainly with our opening, that's the way it played out. At the last minute France demands Belgium, which resulted in me bouncing it in order to prevent the dreaded six centre France. This gains favour with basically everyone else on the board except France. Not entirely as planned, but I'm sure I'll be able to use the favour in the coming year.

In 1902, Germany is accusing me of not picking sides (so true!) and I'm rethinking any alliance that doesn't get me an army on the mainland. Turns out neither side is super keen on that convoy to Belgium, even though I'm promising it will only be used against the other side. Finally we negotiate a Western Triple (perfect, I still don't have to pick sides) with Germany taking Bel and France moving towards Italy (also perfect for me).

Meanwhile Russia has opened aggressively south with two fleets against Turkey while also assisting Italy against Austria. It's pretty clear it'll be light work to invade the Russian north. I ask Germany to let Russia into Sweden, that way St P will be completely defenseless in fall. We then pop Sweden with Germany's support, netting me two centres and a rather upset Russia. Best 1902 ever.

Looking at the rest of the board, it was clear 1903 wasn't going to be so smooth. Miscommunication between Germany and France resulted in the Triple breaking down (probably because Germany never really wants to be in a WT). Now they're asking me to pick sides again. I'd swung support to Sweden in exchange for Belgium (I think I'd probably promised to support to Belgium but failed to enter the order when it clearly wasn't needed). Anyway, Germany had read the prof commentary (maybe SoW isn't the best place to try to solo, people keep pointing out my plans!) and built a much needed 2nd fleet for the likely event that I decide to stab.

When discussing stabbing Germany with Mendax, and two things he said stood out. 1) It won't succeed if Germany sees it coming. 2) I can't solo if I don't stab. I'm sure I'm over simplifying the advice, but a graphic like this (http://diplom.org/Zine/F2007R/Burton/article3-solo-E.png) paints a pretty clear picture.

Still, I didn't really want to stab. I later told Germany this, though I don't think he ever believed it. Other than never letting me convoy an army to the mainland (would I actually have used it against France? Who knows!) Germany had been a good ally. I reckoned we could probably get a good draw without a stab. But this was SoW, I wasn't here to play for the draw anymore, I was here to learn to win!

End of part one.

Oh look, somebody other than me wrote a long-form post! Keep them coming!

So . . . where's the rest of these EoGs?

I'm writing up one as Italy's TA, but I'm hoping that Code Bomb beats me to it :)

Bump

This was a very interesting game! Many thanks to all the TAs and students for all their hard work. It's great to see a SoW game make it through to the conclusion with attention from almost all players right through to the end. Only needing one replacement is impressive.

I was the Italian TA, and I want to thank Code Bomb for being an enthusiastic and attentive student. I think he'll go on to play some very solid games this year. Look out :)

Although I think a four way draw is a good result (though obviously not better than a three way), I'm disappointed that we didn't solo this game. My EoG is going to focus on where I think we went wrong.

1) We played too safe. I think we had a strong early lead, but we squandered it by not taking risks. This was bad advice on my part- code bomb wanted to push Russia a bit harder, but I convinced him not to. Sorry!

A good example pointed out by a spectator was in the early/mid game: In 1905 Russia was boxed up in Turkey, and we had an incredible position over him. We had arranged with him that we would take Budapest in the fall (a fairly thinly disguised lead-up to a stab, I thought), but we unnecessarily forced the move with Vie. It would have been far better to move vie to Gal, especially as we were fairly sure than England and Germany were going to continue fighting, and that Bud was ensured anyway.

As it was, it took us too long to get up to the eastern half of the stalemate line that eventually stopped us, and allowed England time to rally the troops against us.

2) We didn't pay enough attention to late game press. In Diplomacy, alliances (and the board) can shift very quickly, and we didn't do enough to ensure that things shifted in our favour in the late game.

A critical point in the game was where England was trying to convince the others that we were a solo threat, and needed to be stopped. It was clear that he was working against us in press, and it was also clear that he'd need to put his units in positions that could be threatening to his allies. This was a great time for us to capitalise on any paranoia that the allies had, and to (try to) break up the alliance before it could form.

Unfortunately, it coincided with an incredibly busy time of year for code bomb (and everyone, really), so we didn't do enough. And, we were against some really well written press from England. I think not replying to his message in global was the final nail in the coffin.

By the time that we had time for detailed press again, England had already moved his units through threatening positions without incident. By that time, "look out! He'll betray you!" is not a very effective argument.

I think PW was expecting us to pull back from the line to allow someone to be eliminated, but #2 was a big part of why we didn't go for that.

If you want to win games, I think it's important to not take on more games than you actually have time for. Especially as real life will (almost) always come before Diplomacy. It's hard though- I appreciate that most of us want to play more games :)

I have a bit more to say, but I want to wait until more students post first..

I'd love to hear from the other students too!

Bump!

Somewhat related: Are there ongoing plans for a SOW Spring 2015?

You definatly need two committed professors. Its hard on one person to carry the burden and its real interesting to see different viewpoints.

At least two professors is a must. Just as important is dedicated players. Getting a group of 7 committed new players who aren't going to drop out is always difficult. Professors aren't too difficult to come by.

Also, its pretty optimistic of you to be talking about "spring" right now Valis ;)

Sorry, I've been playing too much Diplomacy. I assume there are only Spring and Fall SOW sessions.

I think we had a Winter SOW last year, now that I think of it. The seasons don't really matter as long as there is interest. Go ahead and start a thread to see if you can't get a full roster

This SOW we had alot of TAs and pretty stable players. But Peterwiggin did all of the professoring.

While it's apparently possible to do SoW with just one professor (I think uclabb wrote one lecture, and tru may have written something as well, but apart from that, it was just me . . .), I think it would have been a better experience for the readers with another professor contributing regularly. Most of the good players also have lives off the site, and it takes a surprising amount of time to write a good commentary. For me, that meant I could manage a commentary about once a week, or every game year. With another professor, you would have gotten twice the commentaries and a different perspective. I approach the game a certain way, and while it obviously works well, it's not perfect, and when other experienced players have commented, they've pointed out aspects that I've either missed or chose not to emphasize in the interest of time. Also, I've actually learned quite a bit from reading commentaries by other professors in the past!

FWIW, I did not volunteer to be a professor. abge asked me, and I said that if I had something to say I would post as I have in past games.

On a separate note, I've always thought it would be fun to run a SOW type game with 7 of the best players on the site, then with open commentary and analysis of the game by others on the site. A fundamental problem that I have trying to write commentary is that I feel like I can't really say what I think/mean because we aren't supposed to impact the game too much. In this set up, the commentators could say whatever they wanted as, at least theoretically, the players would already have a strong enough grasp of the game/scenarios that the commentary wouldn't be disrupting anything

That would be awesome. As a mid level player, would love to watch a high end game.

^ I absolutely agree with dyager!

I'd also be up for playing in a "no holds barred" SoW, where there'd be mid level players and profs just called it like they saw it. Although, if our problem is not enough profs with enough time to comment, then this suggestion has the same problem.

Both good ideas. I'd like to freshen up the SOW to generate more interest anyway.

Does anyone have a list of SOW players/TAs/profs/commentators going back to when the idea was started? I don't know how many of them are still around

uclabb keeps the links for previous threads of sows, you can look through them.

threadID=1141098
threadID=1054331
threadID=1010911
threadID=672851
threadID=738795
threadID=739795
threadID=884531
threadID=940795
threadID=501033
threadID=474841

It seems there is a great amount of interest! Excellent.

Drumming up 7 experts and then a teaching staff might be harder than 7 knew player's, 7 mid-level TAs, and then a teaching staff. However I don't feel like they have to be too expert. I think that any of the TA's, at least in this SOW which is the only one I've personally participated in, see most if not all the technical possibilities, it's merely weighting each one and then choosing based on press and personal values. And like many abstract/war games Diplomacy relies on the fact that even though there may be a best move, your opponent could count on that and make a counter-move expecting that, but you could expect that, etc, etc, etc.

Especially without access to press, I don't think the commentator-ness presents that much of a moral dilemma. I especially feel that in online play (i.e. not live) where you have double-digit hours to think and read and test-out-theoretically and you get the idea. Really I would expect the biggest problem is if a player's play-style or strategy severely deviates from the teaching staffs' thoughts it would be annoying or demoralizing to constantly have people saying your power is doing it wrong! But (maybe you are doing it wrong!) that's another beauty of the game that there can be so many different styles of play. If it's late-game and lessor powers are scrambling to build a stalemate line and the major power has a chance to solo but only if they don't notice a lie he made? Maybe that would be game-changing to have a bunch of people going over all the possibilities, but while the game should be realistic as possible, it's also for teaching and maybe some concessions should be made. [and if it sucks we don't do it again].

Somewhat related: I'd like to get another "reveal all press at the end" game going which (IIRC) Tru Ninja once did.