Enjoyed a Struggle of Empires rematch with the Farnborough guys last night. This time I got completely stuffed, and Keith, who played very carefully, won by a good margin. I'm not exactly sure where I went wrong this time, but here are some ideas that I have been chewing over ruefully:

- I wasn't clear in my mind about whether I was focussed on Europe or the colonies.

- I bought too many fleets and not enough armies. And I lost quite a few of the armies in battle too.

- I let my unrest situation get out of hand. This wasn't intentional, it was partly to do with the number of battles I lost.

- My idea was to let other people do the fighting, and sneak second place in as many areas as possible. I wasn't really allowed to do this, I got attacked on numerous occasions when I was just minding my own business trying to earn a few honest points. These peace-loving Euro-gamers suddenly get very aggressive when you put a few simple combat rules in their hands!

- I didn't make enough use of the tiles. At the start of the game while other players were picking up strategic advantages like Militia or Mercenaries, I was pursuing a few short-term gains.

Great game, very enjoyable even though I was losing - there's always interesting stuff going on and you can always spoil someone's fun a bit with Pirates or Slave Revolt.....