by dreadnaught
You are correct Chris in that ALL the players in VQ need to have the skill to recognize and the willingness to act on it if one player is threatening to win. In this game it turn two it was obvious that I was planning a military approach. Our English player (Mr McKenzie) was posting comments as to why I wasn't patronizing or played a card for Poland. Obviously I was going for keys. But at the start of turn 3 Diplomacy phase I still only had the four keys I started with so I did "disguise" my front runner status.French Diplo was Metz for the two ladies. They didn't know what I was discussing with the Ottoman.
Ottoman was over the barrel as Tylor describes. He and Spain nipped each other a bit in turn 2 and I zapped him w/ Army mutiny so at the start of turn three I had the 3:1 troop advantage over the Ottoman with him knowing I had the War in Persia card to make the military troop odds higher than that. So he made a deal.