Olympus S1 Grand Final - Diplomacy Commentary

[@Sploack]

Look mom, I'm on TV! Oh wait, it's this game... Mom, please, look away! lol

[@ewok269]

I must say, the pinnacle of diplomacy I've witnessed all year can be succinctly encapsulated in the closing words: "Um, it was a fantastic game to witness." 😊 Great commentary guys! I laughed, I cried, and well, I shed a few more tears (the emotional scars are still a little fresh). I vividly remember hitting the halfway point in the game, right around the peak of the early chaos in the west and game morale being very deteriorated, and recalling Bob's earlier promise of a Diplostrats analysis once it all wrapped up. The thought of Meme and Ezio embarking on the Herculean task of dissecting this bewildering game and trying to bring some semblance of sense to it left me very torn between bursting into laughter or just letting out a deep sigh. But you certainly didn't disappoint, and as anticipated, did an exceptional job in keeping things captivating and enlightening. In a game filled with its fair share of missteps, you two did a fantastic job breaking down the key lessons it had to offer. You've 'almost' got me thinking that amidst all the insanity, you managed to uncover some nuggets of wisdom to make it all worthwhile. (* almost)

[@BobZeBuilder]

Amazing video and review as always thank you for this was an excellent watch. Yeah this was one of the craziest games I have ever GMed and I highly recommend the diplomats interviews for it cleared a lot up for me for I had not clue what was going on, all communication was through discord and to add to it the finalists voluntarily did voice calls some ranging up to four hours. These guys were absolute mad lads. A few other things to note: This was a DBNI tournament so there were a few outside motivations that being that if you place high in this tournament you get points to qualify for the DBNI which is a virtual tournament that invites the top players from all diplomacy formats based on a point system and because Olympus was the largest extended deadline tournament of the year, a lot of points were in play so even if you did not get the top board a lot was at stake to get 2nd 3rd etc. places. An example of this playing out was Turkey's play. He admitted that he agreed to a second place finish with Austria in Fall 1902 out of the principle that he was targeted by everyone and doing well in other tournaments Austria from what I understand had legitimate reason to believe him hence the AT that forms, but also Turkey was exaggerating a little as you can see by his saying I will give the game to Austria and tries to win by stabbing in Spring 1907 with the movement of the west, but that fails and by the end of 1909 everyone had given up hence the draw you see in 1910. This was England's first tournament hence perhaps some of the questionable flip flopping between Germany and France, he admitted that this final game was only his 21st game he had ever played and before having played in Olympus his best games he had played were random backstabbr games so unlike the other players he cannot be characterized too badly for he was a lot more inexperienced than the others but still did amazingly for his level. He is though something too look out for for being a rookie everyone was still shocked by his play and he is a great guy, but like Ed Sullivan in Season 2 of Nexus he just needs some more experience reading and understanding the board even though he is much better than myself LOL I highly recommend his and other interviews on the diplomats. Italy was in the finals of Nexus and ODC so was suffering from just mental exhaustion and we were all shocked he even accepted his position in this final but his play was characterized by exhaustion as you can see. He is an excellent player but three finals in three different tournaments all of which had preliminary and semifinal games in one year really does something to a man and there were a lot of shall I say complaints that he wasn't active as much, but honestly I don't blame him I mean the guy was playing three extended deadline tournaments at once and got into the finals of them all. The guy is an insane mad lad who was just exhausted. In addition exhaustion did not just apply to Italy, these players have since October played non stop diplomacy with the finals only having ended around 3 weeks ago so 11 months straight they were at it in four games in all the prelims and semifinals and then the finals. Extended deadline has an effect on you when you play for that long and people get very tired very fast so especially the end was characterized by exhaustion. This wasn't helped by the fact that being played during the summer there were three consecutive long pauses for the last year of play, Turkey had a camping trip, Austria went to world champions in Bangkok for diplomacy and France was taking a vacation. All of these interruptions greatly interrupted the flow of the game and when we reconvened in the Winter of 1910 it was too jagged by then, the second season was going to start, and no one thought they could challenge Austria so they all agreed to a draw given all of these factors. One week after they took the draw Season 2 started, luckily for all these players having gotten to the finals they get an automatic pass to the semifinals as a reward and break. Besides all of that this was still an amazing first season and a huge congratulations to Grayson winning it and once again thank you for covering it.

[@DiploStrats]

Ezio got a new microphone and we're still getting used to that, so the audio levels dip and dive a bit this video - apologies for that! Olympus is a really promising new tournament on the scene, with S2 currently ongoing; if you're interested you can join their discord server here: discord.gg/2d3bcT7S2N

[@repmel]

Stabs clenching defeat from the jaws of victory? In *my* stop-the-leader coalition? It's more likely than you think.

[@Aiden-og6ty]

Incredible performance by Austria, their moves impressed me over and over. Couldnt believe how well they survived the entire board deciding to work against them. Very well deserved win

[@bradleygrace7783]

❤

[@Aiden-og6ty]

@@bradleygrace7783 congrats!

[@johnnygillam3975]

F01 - these are pretty standard Turkish moves in vFTF for RT. Turkey taps Rum to force Sev to support Ukr-Rum, meaning they can’t drop into the Black (unless some shenanigans like this happen) and Smy-Arm is some harmless added security to make the stab less enticing for Russia

[@misimaromemes5172]

I was thinking it would be great to have sections for these videos but i also Figured that would be too much to ask for auch a long vidro but you actually did it what a legend 👏

[@wistlov9248]

Been a while since the last commentary, so this was a nice surprise to see in my notifications!

[@SolarFlareAmerica]

What a goofy ah game. Fav moment was Germany handing England 3 centers in one turn sending themselves all the way back to turn 2. Absolutely Iconic.

[@Erevant]

In the Fall 04 turn you gave a shoutout to another channel that goes into more detail on these games. I could not understand what channel that was. Could you tag them in your description or in a reply?

[@-vz-]

@DiploStrats

[@DiploStrats]

Sorry that it took me so long to respond to this! The channel is www.youtube.com/@thediplomatspod

[@markusschwein3895]

So, I'm about 20 minutes into the video. Even considering what you said about keeping the army in Smyrna at the start, I don't understand the potential and/or actual benefit of keeping 1/3 of your military resources in reserve without any gain, be that diplomatic capital, insurance against or in case of attack. Can you link me some videos where you discussed this, as you referenced in the beginning? Perhaps an explanation of the calculation and the scenarios, in which this move pays off, or perhaps what benefit I missed here. I'd really appreciate it.

[@oliviapg]

They've discussed it several times, if you go back to older videos and just look for ones with the same move they talk about it. The basic idea is that you don't really gain anything from moving Smy-Con in spring 1901. Turkey's front army rarely gets farther than Bul in 1901, so an army in Con is going to have nothing to do but just sit there. Might as well leave it in Smy for the spring to keep your options open, then in fall after seeing other players' opening moves you can decide what you want to do with it and where you want to leave open to build a fleet.

[@markusschwein3895]

@@oliviapg Thanks for the reply. What I'm wondering is, what options would you have that are 1) better than those afforded to Turkey by moving to Con and 2) unaccessible by moving to Con. So, my question is, what this reserve is for and what value does it create. I figured, it may be because of a specific and/or frequent opening against Turkey by Italy, for example. But I am not aware of such an opening sequence of moves. Am I missing something here?

[@bradleygrace7783]

​@@markusschwein3895The idea is to leave yourself the option of moving the fleet out to Con in the fall assuming an AI alliance which is really common. As Turkey you then build a fleet in Smy and its just more efficient, in this case Russia stabbed hence the fleet being built in Ank.

[@markusschwein3895]

@@bradleygrace7783 I see. Thanks.

[@DiploStrats]

I think I'm going to make a brief video about this rather than answer in a comment, because it definitely deserved more attention than I gave it here. The other commenters are correct (thank you Olivia and Bradley!) but I imagine people will have the same question in future and a video for them to find is better than a youtube comment reply. Thank you for bringing it up!

[@gabrielesalera7088]

looking at the map in W02, if Austria manages to get all the Balkans it just means there's a severe skill issue on the part of the Italian, Russian and Turkish player especially the Italian player like, in F01 at least taking Triest should be obvious, at least to have a bargain chip over Austria and to slow them down once they turn on you I mean, it's not like Austria can afford to take back Triest without having Russia and Turkey dogpile on them