Exhausting indeed - but congrats to PolarBear!!

Game 1 - very much looking forward to hearing Flashman's account of events. I stabbed MadMarx under the assumption that this would be sufficient for Germany to stand up to France, it quickly became apparent that this would not materialise so MadMarx to his credit agreed to take me back and we worked like hell to form a stalemate line that had to include Russia. After all that Sean decided that a chance of sharing a 4-way draw was worth giving up in order to definitely secure a 1 SC survival.... that decision i still find baffling!! Fair play for TMG for persuading Germany and Russia to sacrifice themselves for his solo though - in the end you cruised to victory and i am not sure you even had to stab anyone to achieve it. (Games 2, 3 and 4 will have to comment on later - as I need to look up).

Game 2 - I played as England; 3-way draw with England 15SCs; Russia (madmarx) 8 SCs and Turkey (PB) 11 SCs.

Started with a strong alliance with France (Flashman) and we quickly destroyed Germany. As the game entered the mid-game I sensed an unwillingness for Flashman to make his move on Italy (partly due to events in game 1) and therefore took the decision to stab France and work with Russia/Turkey. I looked for ways to solo but fighting on 2 fronts against Russia/Turkey meant that would not be possible so settled for an amicable draw. Relief at getting some points on the board, tappered by getting within 3 SCs of a solo.

Game 3 - at this point the meta-gaming accussations were flying and it all got a big nasty for a while. As France i formed a good alliance with PB early on - quite a few leaps of faith were made and we pushed Germany (Flashman) back quickly then combined to push Russia (Sean) to the bring, while Italy (MadMarx) turned on Austria. At this stage the game was heading for a 4 way draw, so I had to decide whether to stab an ally for a 3-way or accept the 4-way draw.... with only one more game to come I decided an ally had to fall. So the big play was engineered with Russia in 1914 and saw Austria wiped out and Italy surrounded. After a fair bit of jostling for position (SC count) we wrapped up the draw and everything turned to the final game where I had a 3 SC lead over PB and TMG was already looking like falling.

A general point was that the outer powers flourished and the central powers almost always took an early bath throughout the league play.

yes i think Austria died in every game while england was always a part of the draw.

As for game 1 and helping TMG win, i felt that flash was quite strong (around 8sc?) and could have joined BraveH and company in stopping TMG from winning while i was on a single SC, Flash and BraveH were fighting BUT if BraveH or Madmarx had managed to convince Flash to stop helping TMG and join the "stop the biggest nation" alliance then i felt they could have safely taken me and my single SC out of the picture without too much of a risk to any stalemate line

Thanks for the congrats! This was a real marathon and took a pretty single-minded approach to win. Actually, it's exactly what I did in the last league season.... get wiped out in the first game, then bully my way into every draw after that, with the maximum possible SC count. Winning these things is like cycling in the Tour de France. If you push out ahead with a big lead, you get caught up by the pack and disappear. You need to stay in the group until the end and then sprint for the finish line.

I hear several people saying they will not participate next season. I kind of sympathise with this, because some of the players are a little familiar now and this run of games is exhausting. But I will be hanging around to defend my title. The people need a target! :-)

Sean I hope you stick around for next season; I think you were probably the most impressive opponent of the other six. Despite your middle points total, I really thought you got a bad deal in some of the games, but I was well impressed by your hard work and tenacity. No tantrums but constant hard work to stay alive.

Hurraahhh!

League page updated

When will the next season start?

I know it seems like I might be jumping the gun, but we've been done for a while. I also hope that those players dropping to A division won't quit because I'm coming up to meet them. :)

Can you link us to the league page here please Ghostmaker?

Centurian, welcome to my world :-) Prepare yourself for the ultimate test, etc etc

http://phpdiplomacy.tournaments.googlepages.com/

yes ill play next season, would like to have a long thread soon about what everyone thought about the games re metagaming and how we can improve it. i would like games not to run concurrently actually - i felt constrained not to stab in one game because i knew i needed that players help in another game. I did enjoy the last game because i was looking like not surviving but due to Brave and PB needed to beat the sc count of each other i find a way to grow back between them.

Centurian is moving into League A, Polar

http://phpdiplomacy.tournaments.googlepages.com/

Hang on Centurian, I misread. Looks like when you win League A I will probably pass you on the way down :-)

What's the ruling, TGM, if some of the four Premier League survivors quit? Fewer relegated or more promoted? I would argue that maybe MM and Flash should survive if (for example) BH and TMG drop out. Having said that, I think we're all keen to play different people, so maybe four could come up from League A and three stay? Although that's less fun for the League A guys..... but I guess this will end with four from one and three from the other in any case.

Haha, lets not get ahead of ourselves Polar...

Although this doesn't effect me, why not have all of B (and C and D) divisions pool. So for me instead of playing the same 6 people 4 times, I could play a mix of 13 people in 4 games. Or is that too hard to organise/go against the nature of the leagues?

Oops, posts crossed there.....found it myself.

I think we shouldn't change the League format greatly. It's not to everyone's liking, but no-one is forced to play it. By introducing a campaign element, there's a whole extra dimension to the game. I prefer it to one off games. One off games simply increase your meaningless points total or slightly more meaningful (but not officially recongnised) Ghost rating.

What I like about the leagues is that you cannot avoid facing the best players. Whereas it might be possible to achieve a high points total or Ghost rating simply by being very effective in choosing which games to play in. In the leagues, you must face the best, and you are tested to the limit. It's not enough to just do well in one game or get lucky/unlucky with country selection. Things that you do (stabs, lies, dishonesty, success even) have ramifications in other games - and I don't mean directly, I mean indirectly in terms of the opinion others form of you. Therefore the quality of play is actually higher because short-termism doesn't work.

People may moan that the game of Diplomacy isn't about that, and they may be right; if that's their view they should stick to one-off games. But for me the leagues have really added something extra; great work by Ghostmaker and I will defend the current concept against moaning. Much of the complaints seem to come from those who are not successful at adapting their gameplay to a longer, more strategic format.

About games overlapping - yes, this is unfortunate, especially when an early game is kept open suspiciously long by player(s) seeing what result they might need, based on subsequent games. However, we face a time constraint, 4 games is better than 2 or 3, indeed I would prefer 5 or 6 if we just had time.... in the hope that we all get the chance to play both strong and weak nations fairly evenly.

One reason why overlapping is good, is that a player who is quickly eliminated in Game One (like I was) doesn't get to sit around for 1-2 months, possibly losing interest, while it's finished. It's good to get these guys straight into game two.

Yes, I'm confident that overlapping does act to reduced CD, particularly in the lower and newer leagues.

I think overlap is only a serious problem if you have two games in the early stages happening at once, because in the mid or late game everyone just realises things are more unforgiving.

I'm withdrawing and I really hope it does not come across as sour grapes. It's an interesting format, with a different skill set required to succeed. But I really don't have time to play more than 2 games at a time and playing the same people (often with same country) gets a bit monotonous. Good luck to all next season!!

I will be commenting on this particular set of game, but in private to the players involved and to TGM for reference... I need time to sit down and write though.