roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (06/24/85)
The tradition in PBM Dippy is for the GM to publish final statements from all the players at the end of a game. I guess the way to do this in PBEM is to just have the players post their statements to the net. So, here goes. Well, this game certainly was a strange one. With a plague of dropouts, this is about the fastest game I've ever been in. At first, I tried to round up interest for an EFG 3-way alliance. The idea was that I would go after Italy, while Germany headed East and South into Austria and England went North into Scandinavia and Russia. Since Germany wasn't talking to anybody, this never came off. Failing that, I tried to rouse interest in a EFI alliance, but didn't get anywhere with that either. I suppose in the long run I would have done better going after Germany first, I put this option last in my mind. Instead, I went for the 2 Iberian builds and bided my time in S'01. In F'01 I was planning on something like FMao-Wes, ASpa-Por, AGas-Spa, building 2 fleets in W'01. For some reason, I decided at the last minute to go for England, moving into Iri. This turned out not to be such a wise move. After 1901, it was all fairly absurd. Austria, after his colossal reaming by Italy in S'01, dropped out in the fall. At this point, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that network problems are what caused him to leave the game. However, a replacement should have been found to try and salvage the position. Things got worse when Turkey dropped out a year latter for the same reason. Since his was a perfectly viable position, the fact that no replacement was found just made no sense at all, and made the rest of the game totally meaningless. By about 1903 or so, Russia had stabbed everybody in sight and was growing at an alarming rate. Germany was running around like a chicken without a head. After being attacked by Russia, Germany turned around and attacked me. I still don't understand why. I was just starting to get the upper hand on England (I think) when all of a sudden, there was a German army in Bur! He agreed to call off his attack on me (and did partially), so I was able to go back to work on England. Russia had repeatedly refused my requests that he help me against England, insisting that the 2 of them were allied for life. I was starting to believe this when Russia finally attacked England, but only after Italy had come to England's aid by attacking me. At this point, it became painfully obvious that unless we all did something soon, Russia was going to win. In one of the most amazing quick-form alliances I have ever seen, Italy, England, and myself banded together to beat back the Russian. The degree of cooperation between England and myself must have had the Russian staring shitfaced at his map. The endless succession of supply-center trades and foreign supports, with 100% trust on both sides was a wonder to behold. By 1905 or so, Germany was defeated, and Russia was on his last legs. I had just started to bring up the fact that Italy was becoming the next Russia with England, when Russia decided to throw in the towel, and we voted the 3-way draw. Quite frankly, it would have been tough for England and myself to keep Italy from getting 18 SC's, but I guess everyone was just so tired of the game that nobody had the energy to continue. And now, a few comments about procedure. In addition to the problems with the network, this game was also plagued by a GM (Jeff Myers) who seems to delight in altering the rules in all sorts of strange ways. For example, the idea of making retreats/builds/removals conditional on moves instead of the other way around is bizarre. It doesn't speed the game up any, and it makes things far more confusing. Jeff also wanted to make it mandatory for all the players to send copies of all their diplomatic communications to him, so he could keep track of what is going on. I don't know how other people feel about this, but I flatly refused. At one point in the game, it wasn't clear who all the players were. One of the turns included a note to the effect that the GM wasn't even sure himself who was playing Turkey! It seems obvious from this experience, that the oddities of the network have to be taken into account in a PBEM game. Lip service was paid to checking all the mail paths before the game started, but I don't think I ever got confirmation of 2-way communication between Austria or Turkey and myself before the game started. Jeff kept making references to 'the fog of war', but that's not the way Dippy is played. If I wanted a game where I had to guess what was going on, I would play something with hidden movement. As in regular PBM games, I think it is a bad idea to have more than one person playing from the same area. In PBM, this usually means state or province. In PBEM, this would probably mean site or group of closely related sites on a campus. In this game, we had 2 players from pur-ee and two players (and the GM) from uwvax. Oddly enough, with all the strange things that went on in this game, the 3-way draw that I ended up with is the best I've ever placed. To top it off (and not unexpectedly, given everything else that has gone on in this game), it is not even 100% clear if the final result was a draw! As far as I can tell, all the surviving players agreed to it, but from reading the last move report, it sounds like Jeff is trying to either declare Italy the winner or declare the game over with no official conclusion one way or the other. -- allegra!phri!roy (Roy Smith) System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute