Axum EoG
Forgive me if the years are a bit off - there was so much communication in this game that my usual way of EoG-ing (going back through the message archive to see what happened when) is practically impossible, so I'll just be writing this from the maps and memory.
This was the first KW901 I played (although it was the fourth to finish, which shows how long it went on for...) so I wasn't sure what to expect at the beginning. When I found I was Axum, I was fairly happy as it looked like a decent country. I decided to try to befriend all of my neighbours and go for neutrals to begin.
On the Bourse side, I started making correspondance with a lot of players over a buy into Falus. My initial plan was to start suggesting currencies to buy to these players, and eventually try to get everyone to invest in Bisi - which didn't work out too well, despite the message iLLuM posted at the beginning of the game stating that my survival rate was ridiculously high, so I would be a good investment (thanks btw!). Several players did buy into Bisi, but not enough to make my buy worthwhile.
Back on the board, eventually I was forced to choose between keeping Egypt or Wagadu as an ally, and since Spain had allied Wagadu and I had good relations with Spain through Bourse, I sided with Wagadu and attacked Egypt. Egypt fell fairly quickly. The only interesting thing that happened Bourse-side during this time was my missing out on the Yarmaq buy, which I think took me out of the Bourse, as I was one of (I think) only 3 or 4 players to not buy any.
At this point Spain (I think) suggested that in order to get back into the Bourse, I make a Bourse alliance of the five biggest dollar holders (myself, Turan, Khazaria, Arabia and Wagadu) and invest heavily into Egyptian currency, which was relatively cheap at this point. I contacted them all about it, and they all agreed, so we set a year to buy into it at and waited. It was a huge risk - Spain had a large degree of control over Egypt's last centre - but we decided to go all-in anyhow, notifying him of what was happening so that he could 'piggyback' from the buy and would be less inclined to kill Egypt.
Several hours before phasing on the year we were going to make our buy, Arabia contacted me telling me about the India buy and asking me to buy 60000 of Drachm, but not to tell anyone else, saying that China had given permission for me to be included in that buy as I was Arabia's ally, but that they did not want word spreading any further. I contemplated this for a while, as I had a big choice - did I not tell Wagadu and Spain, jepordising my alliances with them as they would think I had tricked them into buying a currency I had pulled out of (Mancus)? Or did I tell them, and jepordise my alliance with Arabia? Eventually, I came to a compromise - I told Khazaria, Wagadu and Spain (Turan already knew about the Drachm buy) not long after the deadline had passed, stating that Arabia had given me last minute information and I hoped they would receive it in time. I hoped that they would receive the message but too late, so they would think I hadn't betrayed them but at the same time wouldn't be able to invest in Drachm... However, Guaroz accepted Wagadu and Spain's orders (Khazaria never replied) despite it being past the deadline (Although Spain later told me he already had Drachm buy in - I am not certain if this is true or not).
Anyhow, after all of that Arabia stabbed me anyway, so I was quite glad that Wagadu and Spain's buys had gone through. I urgently discussed an attack on Arabia with Turan and China, but Turan was worried about repurcussions from China and China kept saying that he was Arabia's ally, not mine. However, I did discover that China was incredibly annoyed about the leak of the Drachm buy, so Spain and myself (with some help from Wagadu) starting trying to frame Arabia for the buy, writing up long messages that we claimed had come from Arabia, sending them to one another so we could send very similar copies to China, and making the story incredibly believable.
I can honestly say that period of trying to fool China was one of the highlights of my Diplomacy career :) Unfortunately, I ruined it all when I came on early one morning and thought the situation through. I realised that I had sent plenty of messages to Arabia in the time before he stabbed me which were easily incriminating, and I made a split-second decision which I regretted for the rest of the game. I figured, since China probably already knew that we were lying, or would do soon, I would need to find another way to convince him to attack Arabia. I remembered he was very concerned with honesty, so I decided to tell him the whole truth, hoping to get in his good books so he would at least consider attacking Arabia for me.
And lo and behold, he told me he had been about to attack Arabia with Turan and that my story had been one of the most convincing he had ever heard, with three others backing me up (Turan had been telling China about how China was excluded from the Egypt buy by Arabia too, iirc) and deliberate typos and stuff in the messages which he would never suspect in a forged one. He said he respected my honesty, but I should have kept with the story, and because I hadn't I was now going to be wiped out.
When I came back and saw this, I was incredibly annoyed that I had sent him this... Plus I wasn't sure what to tell Spain, who had also put a lot of effort into making this work. I eventually decided to try to convince China that I had been forced into saying that by Arabia in return for him not attacking me, but he wasn't convinced.
From this point, I think my fate was sealed, but I kept fighting it.
Thankfully, I had a great ally in Wagadu, who brought all his forces to my shore to help fend off Sriv and Arabia. We manage to blockade up the shoreline completely, but unfortunately Wagadu's empty SCs were too tempting and Spain went for them, forcing us to try to negotiate with Sriv (Turan and China had attacked Arabia by this point so he wasn't too much of a problem - there's a bit of a backstory there too but I'll leave that for Russia to tell as this EoG is already going to be far too long). We decided to try to form a stalemate line across Africa, as we realised we were far to badly placed to manage to sucessfully fight back. I managed to convince Sriv to support us too, with fearmongering about the western bloc (which I'm surprised he bought, but he seemed to for a long time). China jumped on the stalemate line bandwagon too as he realised he couldn't hold out without help, so together we fearmongered most of the rest of the east into a massive stalemate line in the hope I would at least have revenge on Spain for his backstab of Wagadu by forcing him to draw with as many players as possible.
The stalemate line caused an argument in Global, and held for a few years. During this time, I started to make correspondance with France, who, toward the endgame, would be my one remaining ally. The northern line fell due to a stab on China by Turan and Sriv and a stab on Turan by Arabia, so I knew it was only a matter of time until the western bloc pushed through the Middle East and dismantled our African line from behind. Also, Sriv had proved he was not entirely trustworthy from his stab on China, so I was getting more and more worried about an attack from him.
France and I started discussing a plan by which we would eliminate Wagadu and also get a large advantage on Sriv, by sliding troops around me and me helping to support Danish and Spanish troops into the Indian Ocean. He worked for a while on this, and I think it would have worked very well, but my communications with Denmark and Spain left me unconvinced, as Denmark was hardly communicating at all and Spain was not saying nearly enough to make me think he intended to follow through with this, so I told France I was not convinced that they were willing to work with me and I held the line.
At this point, the oppurtunity for taking out Sriv went as well, as he fortified himself in the Red Sea. the pause came, and France and I had plenty of time for discussion, and we both tried to do all we could negotiation-wise to secure my survival, but it wasn't really enough. Also, throughout the pause I started losing interest in the game (as I think a lot of people did) so my negotiations became few and far between. When the game restarted, I tried to talk people into drawing once Wagadu and India were eliminated, and I think it may have worked had Sriv not refused to take India out and attacked me, thus making me an easy target for elimination. Even through most of this time, France was still working with me to try to ensure my survival - I think he's definately earned my respect for his amazing dedication to this game, and to a cause which wouldn't benefit him - but it wasn't enough, so I ended up with my first non-gunboat or 1v1 defeat.
Anyhow, GG all and congratulations to the survivors. I would go on to say something about the pause itself, but I think this EoG is far too long already and I severely doubt anyone will read up to this point (well done if you have!) so I'll just end with saying a big thankyou to everyone who helped GM it - iLLuM, RUFFHAUS, Cypeg and especially Guaroz for all their dedication to the game. As I said, GG!
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