In my mind there were a couple of problems in this game that were unforeseeable that I want to address while its on my mind. Has nothing to do with the ass end of the raping that I have been on. Nope.
First off, I think we could really use that extra player so we could have a dedicated GM or two so if anyone not playing has been following along, please join in if and when next time rolls around. Also, a stricter schedule would be significantly more convenient, it would really help me out if I could just look at a calendar and know where we are at. In addition, changing the way diplomacy works would be great because I'd love to have a better idea if I am intentionally or unintentionally being ignored. Having something like 2 half hour diplomatic sessions on IRC would be great (though hard to coordinate). We could also go completely opposite of that and consider the telegraph lines cut and have a turn delay on communications to increase fog of war, that could be interesting.
I'm pretty sure there was one more thing I meant to mention but I had a couple drinks and now I don't remember and I'm like 20 minutes into an 8 sentence post >_>
Anon play is something that is interesting and I've done it in the past, but it would not be easy to do on here, unless you want to just create throwaway accounts, which I'm loathe to do in general, but also I don't want to use bandwidth or server space or whatever unnecessarily.
This is a meta-issue to the game, and one that deserves some attention. Because it would be unfair to me if you (or @Skyrock, for instance), refused to even deal with me in another game because of what happened in this game. Or if @Skyrock and @PMYA decided to immediately ally one another since their alliance is working good in this game, without giving other players a reasonable chance.
In general, the rules I hold myself to are -
I think these rules handle the vast majority of the problems that arise, but some more can still crop up (not necessarily with this group, but who knows). For instance, imagine two weaker and/or newer players are in the role of Austria and Turkey, and you have an extremely strong player with several solo victories playing Russia. The two weaker players might both be of the mind that they would get out-played and out-manipulated by the very strong Russia, and after their initial communications with each other, agree to ally against Russia as a way of protecting themselves.
Is that meta-gaming? Is it fair to the Russian player, who's gonna have a hard time dealing with the alliance of these two? And the answer is, I don't know. Maybe it is, but maybe it also isn't. Maybe because he is such a skilled player, he can sow discord in the alliance and get one or the other of them to flip, or maybe call in Italian support to help him out. Sometimes even in game where everyone is basically equal, people get 2v1'd like this, and there's sometimes not a lot they can do about it. Initial communications between two people go very well very quickly, and they quickly decide that an alliance (of whatever length) is a good idea. I've been bullied out of the game early plenty of times, and sometimes there's just nothing you can do.
On the one hand, that's Diplomacy. On the other hand, it's not a ton of fun for the person who gets gang-banged early on and there's just no good way to deal with it. I mean, I think I'm able to separate the games clearly enough that everyone will get their fair shake. It's a matter of how well you can kind of untangle the person from the game, in a way. And I suppose different people have different...levels of ability to differentiate, let say...when it comes to that.
But, if we played using an off-site client (such as WebDiplomacy or Backstabbr), might be a way to provide anonymity if it's something that can present a serious issue.
I recall the main time we used anonymous games. I was in a league, where there were 4 games played a round, with one player from each of 7 teams playing on each board. So for instance, I was on board 4, and I drew Italy in round 1. And one thing we did in the league was make it anonymous games; the idea being, particularly as we got later in the league, it would keep the games interesting, instead of in round 4, everyone looks which team is in the lead, and gang-bangs those players on their respective boards. There it made a lot of sense; the anonymity ensured everyone had a fair game within the context of that one board. So if that idea, where everyone can get a fair game, is in jeopardy, then having anonymous games would be worthwhile.