My first move was easy enough to decide upon, and I was eager to get the game started!
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From the desk of the Esteemed Leader of the Great Golden Empire:
We must set up a base at J7 to allow our armies to support one another.
To the Great Leader of the Orange Empire @sokoslav, this is not meant to harm you. We would like to count you as a friend to us. We eagerly await your response to your inquiry.
Next move is @martin3141, but do not take pressure from the time constraint. We are not enforcing that right now. I think we should start enforcing it after everyone makes a first move.
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I’d really love to have a symbol on the last move played, like we already have on OGS.
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The best we can do with Vsotvep’s tool is overlay the last-played stone in black or white. Since I expect black will be used to mark stones belonging to eliminated players, perhaps we could overlay the last-played stone in white.
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But that has to then be manually managed. The next player has to remove the overlay and add the overlay to their own move. That is IMHO not worth it.
I might make a more specialized tool for this game when I have time in a week or so.
(@sokoslav also mentioned looking in to adding new features to the existing tool, maybe they’ll beat me to it 
)
Also, reminder to all non-players not to comment on the game please! Perhaps this should be in bold at the top of the thread? I don’t expect casual spectators to read through everything before commenting 
(I see no harm in comments such as the above one from Lys though, which don’t relate to the game content)
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That would be nice, but don’t take any pressure to do it.
As you said, I doubt someone who posts a comment will read the top of the thread. I think a gentle reminder in response to their post as you have done is the best we can do.
Agreed, but I did explicitly state that only players should post here.
@Lys I know you meant no harm and there has been no offense taken. You are welcome to private message me if you have questions about the mechanics of the game.
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When someone opens the thread for the first time, I believe they are always brought to the top. So it’s the best place we’ve got to try to convey information to new spectators (apart from repeating it in every post)
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Good point. I add bold font to the rule about only players posting.
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Hello everybody, have an entertaining game!
Hello Cerulean,
Blue is happy that you reach out to us with friendly intent. We too believe that working together towards mutual life in the Northwest is beneficial to both of us. Blue would be happy to form an alliance with Cerulean.
Blue is truly worried about the NorthWest. The Pink (@mafidufa) and green (@yebellz) stones almost form an enclosure together. We fear that, if a fight breaks out due to the crowdedness of the area, all of us will suffer and / or miss out on the big points in other, less crowded areas. Do you believe there is a chance for a four-way ceasefire?
Hello Orange (@sokoslav),
regarding our stones in the south. Blue believes that it would be mutually beneficial to cooperate rather than compete in the local area, with the general idea to extend away from each other and work towards maintaining shared eyes.
Taking everything into consideration, Blue is contemplating playing B11 or H3. But we are open to suggestions and would like to wait a bit before making a decision.
PS: Blue will prevail 
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To My Dear Fellow Despots and Dictators of the Gridworld of Gobania,
The Glorious Green Empire will work towards peaceful development with any other peaceful and cooperative Nations. It shall be our intention to align with efforts to establish stable life for all stones that also aim towards maintaining the peace.
Red (@antonTobi), I understand your aims and hope to have further collaboration is establishing mutual safety.
Blue (@martin3141), we have no intentions to threaten you. My first move will be to try to jump out to J14, and try to establish a large eye along the top edge. I will not encroach on your top-left, and hope that you find the space to make life.
I think there will be an interesting dynamic produced by differences in the inherent security or tenuousness of the starting positions. As one of the dispersed nations, we Greens believe that security could perhaps be best achieved through mutual protection understandings among us in similar situations.
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pink is happy to see much talk of mutual goodwill and cooperation among the rainbow nations of gobania.
our first aims are to connect out with plays around g12. if we are safely able to do so, we will do our part for goban relations and withdraw from the tense northwestern corner to allow others to flourish there
green ( @yebellz ) - since we may be moving in a similar easterly direction, i hope we can come to an understanding in that direction.
cerulean ( @ArsenLapin1 ) - there is no aggression meant towards your outpost by playing in the vicinity, only connecting up.
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I hope to just make enough space along the top edge to secure the life that stone. I won’t interfere with your aims to connect or expand into the north east. I also have two other stones to worry about, so I don’t have any grand ambitions to take that much at the top. Ultimately, I’ll need to make eyes for my other stones as well.
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Although a four-way ceasefire might be desirable, the Cerulean Kingdom believes that it would be safer if Blue and Cerulean, being two shades of the same colour, could manage an alliance and make sure their groups in the Northwest could survive together without having to rely on the goodwill of other surrounding nations.
I do not mean this as an insult towards Green and Pink. The Cerulean Kingdom simply worries about its embassy in the Northwest corner and believes that an alliance of two would be more stable, and thus safer, than an alliance dependent on the agreement of four nations.
The Cerulean Kingdom completely understands Pink’s desire to assemble all your provinces into one strong connected area. The Cerulean Kingdom notes that this leaves our reconnaissance team at H11 with only one way out: towards the unexplored lands of the Northeast corner. We will thus proceed in that direction, perhaps with a first move at J11. Although this does force a close contact between your forces and ours, and removes a liberty from one of your stones, please do not see it as a sign of aggression. We only mean to move out of this dangerous area and escape towards the Northeast corner. Despite the proximity between your armies and ours, we hope to achieve a safe and peaceful passage in the Northeast direction. Specifically, the Cerulean Kingdom will not be cutting at H12.
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Blue explores B11:
We are looking to create a shared settlement together with Cerulean (@ArsenLapin1).
Next to play is Green (@yebellz).
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All good in theory. However, our ambassador at C13 has informed us that Blue is building their own independent territory on the second line, with sufficient eyespace on the first-line, all the while participating in further surrounding the very small Cerulean embassy. It doesn’t look like “mutual life” or “shared settlements”!
Our ambassador is growing anxious and has requested us to find a solution so that they might have their own eyespace!!
But where? We can envision one eye around D14, presuming Green (@yebellz) agrees. And that’s about it. One eye is not enough if no neighbours are interested in seki. The future of the Cerulean embassy looks rather grimm.
Dear Cerulean,
please be assured that Blue has no intention to hurt your stones. On the contrary, we will protect your B13 liberty against any attacker. We thought that securing B11 was necessary to prevent potentially getting enclosed in the corner. Blue highly values having an ally, please trust in this.
On the other hand, if Pink were interested in the Northeast corner territory (look at this big empty area!), and didn’t want us, the Cerulean Kingdom, to block the way to this northeast corner, then we would be more than happy to let Pink move from J12 to the Northeast corner, and instead attempt to connect our Cerulean stones C13 and H11.
To summarize, both the pink stone at J12 and the cerulean stone at H11 have to make a choice: either connect to their friends, pink E12-J12, or cerulean C13-H11, or move into the Northeast corner. I will let you choose which choice you prefer, @mafidufa, but I think it’s fair that if you choose one, I will choose the other.
I made a new tool:
I’ve opted to keep the board a small fixed size (instead of filling the window), because the image looks better when Discourse doesn’t have to rescale it.
To save the image, I right click the area to the right of the board and select “Copy image” (and then paste into forum with Ctrl+V). This may not work in every browser - if you are a player and it does not work for you, let me know and we’ll se what we can do about it.
(Edit: It seems like it doesn’t work in Safari, but should work in Chrome on Mac)
The URL updates automatically after you make a move. It contains the entire move history, so that we can replay the game afterwards (though I haven’t added the replay feature yet).
I have not yet added capture handling, but assuming there will be no captures for the next week or so I should be able to add it in time 
The plan is to automatically remove stones and eliminate players.
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