15-03-2001 04:27									#1
	Silent Dip III England EOG (slightly belated) Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Well, the EOG's from Dip22 and playing Europa Universalis has reminded me that I never wrote an EOG for Silent Diplomacy III! This was already mostly written, I just finished it now that I found the old .txt file with the half-written one from long ago. For those who have forgotten the game, the rules, opening map, and some random maps from the middle of the game to refresh your memory: http://devel.diplom.org/DipPouch/On...enaissance.html http://fp.geocities.com/TimesSquare...er/8878/ren.GIF http://fp.geocities.com/TimesSquare...78/renf1454.GIF http://fp.geocities.com/TimesSquare...78/rens1455.GIF http://fp.geocities.com/TimesSquare...78/rens1459.GIF http://fp.geocities.com/TimesSquare...78/rens1463.GIF
And of course the other EOGs written: http://apolyton.net/forums/Archives...-19-001449.html

Hmm, where to begin? Well, the beginning, of course, which is country selection. IMNSHO Rennaisance is an unbalanced map, but it's still fun. If you're not France. First choice on my list was the Ottoman Empire- it has a weakened Russia to the north, a weakened Austria (Venice) to the west, and starts out with 4 SC's- can't beat that with a stick. Second choice was England- its only opponents are a Germany more focused on the South (usually) and a France that is even deader meat than Venice, it being the natural (in other words, no other place to go) target of both England and Spain.

In any case, I got my second choice, England. I figured that priority A would be to get some armies onto the mainland. Being that 2 armies started in England and my fleet was in France, I quickly moved to reverse the situation by sending one army out to take Scotland and my fleet to the Channel to convoy my other army. In fall, I realized that the "logical" thing to do would be to cover Brest, but I wanted to build there, and didn't think that the French army in Gascony was intending to go to Brest with the Spanish to worry about. So I decided to go for the jugular and take Belgium with my convoyed army: The poor, surrounded Frenchies would surely not spare the army to go do guard duty in the first year. And sure enough I got Belgium, France was rapidly being crippled, and I had two builds, one of which was a free army on the Continent in Brest and the other a desperately needed second fleet to watch the North Sea and prevent any invasions that way.

My second year was unusually fortuitous as well. I just walked into Paris and took it. Also, I took Holland, while being incredibly amazed that the HRE didn't simply move from Mun to Belgium to break support. That would have crippled me, since it would have been nigh on impossible to take Holland then if he had simply kept on doing that. But he didn't, and I got Holland.

The third year I played much more conservatively. I basically convoyed armies and fortified my borders. The fourth year, the time had come to take on Spain. It looked like a hopeless, long struggle against Iberia, but fortunately I made some correct predictions and adapted and took it. The fact that extra Spanish units were pinned down in Italy didn't hurt either.

As Italy fell, it soon became more and more clear: I had a real shot at a solo. As my fleets converged on Tunis (which the Ottomans failed to protect, since they were my ally of sorts also fighting the Spaniards), I realized that I needed to stab the HRE to win, and luckily for me, the HRE was hideously out of position, with 75% of their forces in the Balkans. Still, I might have been stopped if it hadn't been for the "help" of the Ottomans, who stabbed the HRE in the back for me. Perfectly understandable it being a silent game and all, and besides, there aren't many easily held stalemate lines stopping me from taking Germany once I have Scandanavia and a new Switzerland province to help break Munich with, so I might have gotten the solo anyway. On the last turn of the game, the HRE, who had once been such an important central power, finished collapsing, and with the conquest of Berlin, came the world. Yay!

The great start and the ability to build armies directly on the Continent definitely helped. This went a lot smoother for me then you might expect. It was lucky that I got Tunis as well, I got stopped dead by the Italian stalemate line later but not before I made it so that I didn't have to collect Warsaw, which probably would have been impossible.

Good game all!

-King SnowFire
[This message has been edited by SnowFire (edited March 14, 2001).]