I've been told that taking Turkey away is a great option. Ankara, Smyrna and Constantinople become a single province that counts for 1 centre (except for solo purposes, where they still count as 3).

You could get away with 6 players and no Italy. If you were down to five I'd go down the ancient med route. It's easy enough to print off a map to keep as a standby option.

The normal view is that it is possible to have a 5-player game without Germany or Italy.

if you play face to face diplomacy and you don't have enough players and cant add anyone, what countries should you throw out in what order and why?
i got an idea but i really need feedback on that.
ok do i think that Italy would be the first to be thrown out, because it would be contested by 2 countries considering turkey wouldn't send a fleet, wich they can.
after that England because it would be heavily contested by at least two countries if not 3 (germany france and maybe russia). however that is less good than italy bcz russia is already relatively powerful. after that everything is a bit bad but if you absolutely have to cut further then russia bcz that would not be automatically part of anyone. however, france would be very disfavored.
so what do you think?