Hooray! I wasn't last!
Incidentally, I've been making record of my "best guesses" for what the powers were going to do since about 1902 (though in some cases my old saves were overridden by me saving things rather than saving as... things
). If you're interested in various statistics or maps I'd be happy to provide them. Besides the good ol' Greece switcheroo, I'm particularly proud of this:
(Well, just the northern Europe part, mind)
I probably should've given Gustaf some advance warning, because at about this time I was seeing that it would be unlikely for anyone but Germany to win if I did not backstab Germany, and soon. (Incidentally, I guessed it correctly because I saw that Germany's armies basically had nowhere to do but to attack England... should've applied that logic later in the game
) However, hindsight is 20/20; even if I had told Gustaf, would he have believed me? I hadn't heard anything from Germany.
Speaking of which, I believe an explanation is deserved for why I didn't do so if I was so smart in the brain. Here's why (created contemporaneously with... whenever this was...):
That's why I was so worried about your three Fleets, Jas; it wasn't so much that I was scared of them as I understood that were I to backstab Germany it would be essentially impossible for you to assist me in any way. That means I'd have to move basically all my Armies up to attack Germany, leaving you with plenty of hard-to-resist opportunity to backstab me in turn, which would certainly have led to my collapse.
Instead, I decided to settle for second.
Also, Lewis, I only seized Venice in response to an offer from Lunar for a price for a support into Sevastopol. He suggested I support him to Venice; sensing that he merely wanted me to cut off my alliance with you, I counteroffered with him supporting me into Venice. He accepted, and thus I gained a supply center at the cost of gaining another supply center
*hughughug* Midwestern alliance in the end!