Austria or Russia. Either I get wiped out quickly, or I end up having many expansion options.

Strangely the "random" country assignment seems to favour giving me Austria/Germany/Russia a lot. I can't remember the time I played france or england. Ever.

Well, it would be pretty remarkable if it didn't seem favour certain countries, wouldn't it?

why? its not really random?

Germany is my favourite, you get a lot more influence over everyone and can control the flow of the game. Austria is good too and it gave me my first victory, but you have to have a reliable Italy, to stave of RT.

digitsu:
Because you've only played 15 games.

The odds on you not getting one country at all are about 10%.

The odds of not playing a particular country more than once are over a third.

btw, there is now a country balancing system with the update, which means that new games you play are more likely to be with the countries you haven't had much.

russia cause i win (4 out of 10 times so far)
germany cause you can easily win if you ally with england and/or russia

@ digitsu with computers, nothing is "random", its really pseudo-random. theres a formula it uses with a variable that it takes from the internal clock of a computer in most cases. thus if you use the "random" number generator at exactly the same time each day, youll come up with the same result.

in general, i like playing turkey or italy the most. both have strong defensive positions and in many cases are difficult to play. its hard for italy to get a foot-hold outside of tunis and turkey is in a similar boat. they start off stronger but a lot of times get crushed later.

"Strangely the "random" country assignment seems to favour giving me Austria/Germany/Russia a lot. I can't remember the time I played france or england. Ever."

Perhaps the FYI should include an explanation of statistics. We get this question quite frequently. Rather than an explanation (which I don't feel I am qualified for - its been a long time since college), here's an example.

If you flipped a coin 2 times and it ended up tails 2 times, would you say it wasn't random? How about 3 times? Of course its random. The more times you flip it, the closer you will get to a 50/50 split, but when you first being flipping, it would not be unusual for a 66.6/33.3 or 60/40 split. With 15 games, its not surprising that you haven't played one country one time. Over time, it will even out (especially now that the evil country balancing is in place).

(Anyone picturing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead?)

that's the theory anyway. in practise i have played about 35 games without ever taking england and then i took england 5 times in a row...
you call that random?

"that's the theory anyway. in practise i have played about 35 games without ever taking england and then i took england 5 times in a row...
you call that random?"

Well, looking at your history, you are exaggerating quite a bit, but yes, I call that random.

hellalt, if you got England 5 times in a row after the update, that's the country balancing, which, according to Kestas, is retrospective. If before, then yes, its random.

Italy - I've won 3/4 games (that have finished) as Italy, and I'm winning the 5th one now :)

it was before the update. but it really didn't seem random. it probably was but didn't seem like random :P

Yes, if you use a statistical sample of *1* user, it may seem un-random. But if you flip a quarter 25 times, would it surprise you got a 4 in a row streak? And yes, 5 in a row for England would be very unusual (though you didn't have 5 in a row, might have seemed that way at the time), but that's why people play slot machines. Eventually, someone gets three bars and wins 5 million.

My favourite has to be Italy, first turn is a little blah, but generally, if you play your cards right, you can manipulate people without saying a word.

However, I have to nominate russia for worst. country. ever. I'm lucky to make it past 1903.

Russia? I like to think as I play as Russia
1. Shoot first ask questions later
2. All (a Win) or Nothing (Elim.)
3. Octupus A Mos-StP A War-Gal F Sev-Bls F StP-GoB

But an opening to StP is more-or-less doom for russiain the south. From what I can tell, As russia, your best bet is to play kingmaker.

Are you kidding? How would Turkey attack? F Ank-Bls; blocked
and also you got to sell A War-Gal right. "Why should I go for a 50-50 for Bud or Vie when I could take Rumania w/out annoying anyone?"

to borrow words (Richard Sharp)...The Octopus combines the powerful A(Mos)—StP with the most violent defence possible in the south. If the very worst happens and Austria and Turkey both attack you, you have saved all your home centres, and the northern powers are likely to take fright and allow you at least one of the Scandinavian centres if not both. In autumn you ignore Rumania again, ordering A(War)—Ukr, F(Sev)—B LA, build A(War) and A(Mos), if you’re lucky, giving you a pretty solid defence.

That’s the defeatist view — preparing for the worst. In fact the real advantage of the Octopus is that neither Turkey nor Austria should take too much offence at those southern moves, as in combination they don’t represent an attack on anyone. And there are many diplomatic possibilities open.

Ideally, you would persuade both Turkey and Austria to allow the moves to succeed. Turkey in particular may as well allow you into the Black Sea, because once he knows you are going there it becomes much less attractive for him to try to attack you (a similar situation arises between France and England over the English Channel — see the Openings section of the England chapter). A stupid Turkey will argue thus: if I let you into the Black Sea and order A(Con)—Bul, F(Ank)—Con, A(Smy) stands I won’t dare to order F(Con)—AES in the autumn because that will give you a fifty-fifty chance of taking Smyrna or Ankara.’ There are two answers to this. The first is quite a nice try-on: ‘If you feel like that, why not order A(Smy)—Ank in the spring, then you can work a self-stand-off in Constantinople in the autumn.’ If Turkey says, 'Yes, fine, why didn’t I think of that?’ you’ve got him cold; you order in the autumn F(BLA) S TURKISH A(Bul)—Con (1) while Austria moves into Bulgaria and you take Rumania ; this is much better than annihilating the Turkish army in Bulgaria, which would allow him to build F(Con). The more sensible answer to Turkey’s whining, however, is, Why would I go for a fifty-fifty guess at one of your centres when I can just take Rumania without annoying anyone?’, to which there is no answer...

At what point did I say anything about Turkey being the one to doom russia?
Unless the octopus is accompanied by some rediculous press, you're going to get a lot of angry people on your end.
But I may try that next time I get russia. Who knows? I might even make it to '04!

I manage

i don't know - russia really doesn't seem like that hard of a country to play...maybe that's just me.

now austria on the other hand - ewww...

and my favorite is Italy - people usually aren't gunning for you right off the bat and you've got so many creative options.

I'm surprised Onar views Italy as his best and Russia as his worst. I've found them as my 2 worst and I'm getting better at both of them because they require similar strategies based on multiple fronts.

England or France
@ ghostmaker will the new program taking played countries into account also include CD takeovers? I hope not because that would suck.

Germany or Austria. I am big fan of the Deutschland and Österreich Empires. Also, there are a lot of good opening moves you can pull off as either of these. Being Deutsch myself, Germany is my number one favorite.

People tend to think "random" means "predictable and balanced" when it means nothing of the sort. If you give people a set of strings of numbers, one made by a human and the rest by, say, random.org, and ask which was produced by the human, most people will get it wrong. Generally, the human-made string will be very structured to a human concept of randomness, with little repetition, numbers nicely spaced away from each other, etc. Meanwhile the actual random strings will very often have clumps or strings of the same number that people look at and think "that can't possibly be random!" But true random sequences have a good chance to contain such clumps just as much as any other type of sequence.

On the original topic, my favorites are England and Italy. For whatever reason I like fleets, and those tend to be the strongest naval powers.

Favourite has to be Germany, simply for the fact that winning is a fun experience, with a flurried exchange of messages to literally everyone. Contrast that to France; what do you say to Turkey and Russia other than 'good luck'? Austria is the same as Germany, but less fun as you are at the mercy of others to a greater extent.

As far as this discussion of randomness goes, I remember a program in the UK starring a psychological magician called Derren Brown. In a single shot, he flipped a coin and it came up heads ten times in a row. It looked remarkable, but later in the program he showed how he did it - he flipped a coin in front of a camera for about 8 hours before it finally came up heads 10 times in a row. Macavenger is spot on in his above post in this regard.

as for me, Germany or France. germany is more expressionistic, at the cost of more borders. france is less expansionistic, but with fewer borders.

Italy. When I draw Italy, I know that the odds are against me. I kick back my chair, watch a comedy, and play the game in the same style. It's more fun, I get less wins, but it's way more fun.

Italy, followed by Germany. I'm least excited by the corner countries... Turkey and England. I am awful as Austria, but generally enjoy playing it for the same reason as my first two picks: as noted by others, winning as Germany or Italy requires actual diplomacy, superb timing, or both, where it's occasionally possible to do well as, say, Turkey without even really talking to anyone.

turkey, juggernaut ftw. also hard to get taken out early on.

@ dingleberry from near the beggining.

i havnt been following this thread so its a bit late but last week i was bored so i started flipping a coing and got 37 heads in a row.

Whichever country I'm winning with...

im definitely not a fan of austria. havent played it yet on this site but its always rough going and youre always a target of someone at the beginning. as austria, it seems your best hope is a turkish ally.

italy! go for a country really early and team up with someone. :)

I like Austria. Played it once and won, its makes for the real diplomat to work hard at pressing everyone to get a fair chance of getting anywhere. I had a very good Italy behind me as well which helps of course but winning with Austria seemed like more of a victory worth smiling about.

France and England are good for me as ive had some decent games with both of them. I enjoyed the tactics of the English fleets and the dual land and naval tactics of France. I have never started as Italy or Germany so ill be getting them from now on!

Switzerland. Never lost a game as them yet, and I've been playing for a while...

Germany rocks bigtime: with HOL, DEN and SWE you are a six-center power without annoying anyone. I like Austria too, because of the precise tactics you need on the Balkans and the strong defensive position (if you are not being carved up by three to four other powers) and ofcourse both because of the amount of diplomacy.

I really hate being Russia because I always end up being screwed or all out attacked from the beginning.

I would have to say...Morocco. Always win

Friendlysword has a point :)

Ursa, if you've been taking Sweden as Germany all this time and believed you weren't annoying anyone when you did, I've got a revelation for you... :-)

I also like playing Austria a lot. But that's because I'm a fanatic for taking over the Balkan territories.

@ Richard III: everyone annoys Russia :)

If turkey juggernauts against Austria and then turns on Russia turkey will almost always destroy russia as well

There is no way to distinguish between a CD takeover and a game played from the start at present, so the country balancing will take them into account.