Diplomacy, the board game - Page 11

I decided to open much riskier than I had in game 1 by going for Serbia and Rumania and having a fleet in Albania so I could decide who got Greece. I also tried to get Germany to play the most Austrian friendly opening he could do which succeeded. Both Italy and Turkey also opened Austrian friendly which caused me to choose Turkey as my first victim, because keeping him in the game long term forces me to either put a load of trust in him or to keep half my army guarding my back. I would have liked to be more subtle when going against Turkey but Italy insisted that I should just assume Turkey knows that I am not his friend. Eventually it turned out that Italy left me stranded in the east after promising to help carve the Turkey. I also used whatever diplomacy I had to pit the English and the Germans against Russia. I ended up revealing some plans that Germany had given me in confidence to England in order to keep me a little stronger than my German neighbour. I underestimated how fast France would fall though so it proved to be a bad decision. Germany and I had some miscommunication that ended up hurting him pretty bad. Still, he stayed loyal to our alliance. I made a deal with Russia that he would get a chunk of Turkey if I let him have 2 of the Turk SCs. I intended to actually go through with it but after negotiating it, however I decided that if he actually trusted me, it would be better for me to just kill Russia. In retrospect it might have been smart to have kept my end of the bargain in order to get Turkey out of the game early. At this stage of the game I had been making as many fleets as my one port SC allows, both because it would speed up things against Turkey and because I needed them in case of an Italian attack which seemed more and more likely looking at how England seemed more geared towards taking Germany instead of pushing forward or even holding France. The Italian army in Venice made it a certainty and even though I was half-prepared, I was still half-unprepared. Through some luck I managed to hold him off for a while, but my defenses were spread thin because I still had a raging Turkey at my back. As England's success became more and more apparent, I increased my diplomatic efforts with Italy. Surely he would prefer a draw than to have England win. I drew my forces away from Italy in order to try to spark some will to kill the English. So that is how a 10 SC Austria becomes an irrelevant 2 SC nation holding Portugal and Moscow. On the bright side, Turkey's rage was quelled, so he proved that he wasn't a completely unreasonable player.

(Editted out some bad grammar)