Question #5

In our game of diplomatic risk my objective was to control 14 territories. I was aligned with the global hegemon Rachel at the start of the game. I saw this as fortuitous because of the inherent strength of Rachel's faction. She could support and protect the interests of my much meager faction. And since our objectives didn't directly conflict it seemed the best course of action to stay aligned with her. I started out by trying to conquer any territories I could get since they were all equally useful in regards to my objective. When Rachel and i welcomed Nicole into our alliance I was not as supportive of it as I was at first being aligned with just Rachel, since that meant one less player I could take territories from but I figured three was better than two, and if World War Two was any indication of which side would win I was happy with it. That's of course me putting my alliances interests before my own. And I was increasingly growing concerned with Rachel's rapid expansion in the Americas. My hope was that I could conquer my 14 territories before Rachel won, which seemed doable at my rate of territorial acquisition. But then Ben started to focus his attacks on me, and was quite successful. The last few turns before Rachel won, I wanted to position my forces in Africa so I could invade Brazil and stop her advance. However I was nervous to break my alliance with her due to our alliances strength and my increasingly weak position due to Ben. After Rachel's victory, I just wanted to kill as many of her troops as possible and maybe take a few territories. Didn't work as planned due to my already weakened state, and my inability to appease Ben enough to sign a truce.

In retrospect I probably should have broken my alliance with Rachel at the outset, which would have given me the ability to side with whoever would benefit me the most later on in the games as conditions changed. Another issue that hindered me was how spread out I was. I had no strong base, as did Rachel, and Nicole. This was a condition of my objective however, that I just need 14 territories anywhere. Rachel was cincerned about the Americas, Nicole with Russia, Ben with Russia, And even Nicolle need 10 or so contiguous territories so her focus would have naturally been wherever she already had several territories together. And because of my territorial spread. Ben was able to take several of my territories and I had no forces close enough to retake them.