Report Turecka - hráč Bernardo (anglický originál)

Here goes my report:

It was my first live game, so it took a while for me to optimize my negotiating time, boon soon i got the hang of it. Also I soon learned that the time you spend negotiating with a player is a time you don't spend with another, and this can be used against you. For instance, sometimes I had the impression Austria was trying to stall me, holding me in conversation to make me have less time forging an alliance against him. Which was quite an impressive strategy if it really happened.

But anyway, in the beginning I started slow, studying the other players to see whom I could trust and work together with. But then Austria helped Russia into Rum even though he had promised it to me, so it immediately set the tone of the early game. Having to defend myself, I managed to get Italy into the fray and bait Austria into Rum in order to anger Russia and disrupt their incipient alliance. It was successful, and Austria was out of the picture.

Then came my really big mistake. Italy asked for my help in convoying an army into Albania. The idea of another Italian army in the Balkans really freaked me out, and even though he promised to go after France if he had my help and I attacked Russia, I decided not to do that and stick with Russia instead. Behind this decision was my feeling that Russia was easy to manipulate and that I didn't have anything to fear from him. Italy, on the other hand, was obviously a very skilled player who could easily cause me troubles in the Mediterranean.

So I openly refused to help Italy into Serbia and counted on Russia's help to win that war. But I missed the fact that a player that you think is easy to manipulate might not be so easy as you think, or, even worse, can also be manipulated by others as much as by you. And in the end the result was that Russia was a very unreliable and unstable partner, and I even had problems understanding what he had to say (blame it on my Czech skills). In the end, Italy proved to be more efficient in dealing with the Russian and secured some key victories which made Russia irrelevant in the southern front, and he was able to steamroll over me.

All the while I was trying to get France to come south, but he was having such an easy time up north that I understand that, in a 7-year game, he wouldn't risk it all by biting more than he could chew. So in the end I was lucky to even stay alive, and paid the price of my own strategic mistakes.