I love Italy. You just have to wait it out and play smart, not switching sides every two minutes.

So, if you like being Italy, what do you do about so that you're not always the slowest antelope in the herd?

Being Russia rocks. As long as you can keep AH and Turkey from allying up, or you can get Italy to go East, you are always a player in the midgame.

Sure. But Russia also has too many fronts. As Italy you go for Tunis, and then pick either France or Turkey and keep hammering them (and keep the other one happy so they don't send fleets after you). Allying with Austria is easy because they always want friends and so long as you do this you're a midgame player.

Yeah, I don't really switch sides every couple of turns. What I hate about Italy is that you're always the junior partner in any coalition you're in. If Russia and Turkey run together to smack Austria, you're next for Turkey and the best you can do is stalemate Turkey at the Ionian, at least until they get fleets in the Aegean, Greece, and East Med. Or until France or occasionally England decides to break into the West Med. If you go west, there's some growth potential, but Germany and England are always going to get the choice bits of France wreckage unless one of them teams with France, in which case the westward move is stymied.

Italy sucks. Give me any other power on the board, and any of the Scandinavian players twice on Sundays.

I totally agree with centurion1.

I LOVE ITALY!

What you have to do with Italy is 1. Make sure you play it like a naval nation, Italy's great srengths are its right in the middle so you get a good amount of offers and almost always someone always wants to have Italy as a friend because he can be a difference maker in so many natural conflicts (Austria-Turkey, England, France...) and 2. Make sure you talk talk talk talk talk.

I love Italy, just do...I generally get a good number of fleets, diplome, and while I don't ever win (I don't win period, not yet anyway, so I don't blame Italy) I do get a lot of draws and survives, and a lot more than I get as Germany or Russia or Turkey or France.

Also- the Lepanto. Learn it, love it, and use it as a bargaining chip, for and against Turkey.

Also- the "France's Underbelly Sea Stab." Learn it, love it- and, again, England and France will bargain for your help (that's a key, really, with Italy, you have to make folks really want you as that extra couple fleets or armies to help them defeat their foe, and then you just have to stay strong enough to stand up to your allies and you've got some good hope.)

And finally- the Eastern Triangle:

-Turkey/Italy almost never works, at least not for me
-Obviously you have to decide what to do about Austria right away, but either a qucik/allied win over Austria or an agreement between you two to DMZ Venice and Trieste and Austia/Italy can be a mean force
-When all else fails, the Russo-Italian Alliance is usually a good and viable option...assuming Russia doesn't get killed so easily, of course (really just as much as you hate Italy, and as a part Russian/Pole I'm kind of sad to say this, liking Anton Chekhov and Tchaikovsky and, yeah, Mr. Chekov on Star Trek- but I just can't stand Russia, I just can't play it! I need my fleets, I really do well with fleet protection and then, if all crumbles, I have a getaway ship, so I love playing as Italy and England, and then after that Germany and Austria since while both are more land-based they have plenty of room to manuvuer and assuming there's a standard German/Austrian alliance you have at least a quiet front and potentially an ally if you really need help- Russia doesn't have the naval power I like and is so open to attack as a target...!)

Obi I want to see you use J.S. Mill's tyranny of the majority concept in your post on Italy. NOW. Otherwise it's not legit.

Obi-

Unfortunately, your advice seems predicated on Italy in a non-gunboat game. Which, frankly, I prefer. Sadly, I've been playing more gunboat lately, and that's when I seem to get Italy.

Ah, but Russia has places to develop, and most axes of attack against it are relatively easily defended, so long as you don't have 3 border powers gunning for you right away (which is an almost insurmountable problem no matter what country you start out in). I acknowledge that Russia's midgame is difficult, but by that point, you should have built at least one if not two fleets in St. Pete, and you can either go for the Baltic cruise which totaly screws Germany, or the polar rute, which screws England.

Gunboat I recently played as Italy - the strategy I outlined above was kind of based on this:

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=32327#gamePanel

lol ava...

And yeah, I refer to Italy in the non-gunboat sense, I don't care much for gunboating, I think there's definitely some skill, but maybe some more luck than I would like, and the precise problem you raise, it's really unfair to some countries...France and Russia have places to go and so they have their natural advantages, but nations like Italy and Austria, who use verbal diplomacy often as a key staple in their game, do seem to get the shaft quite a bit...

this is how you do work as italy

http://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=29265#gamePanel

That's not gunboat, but good game

@Agent K, you have to get to page 11 of completed games to find that Italy win. No other country is nearly as hard to find completed-game win for.

Italy is a very nice country to play.

I hate playing Italy

@ava
"Gunboat I recently played as Italy - the strategy I outlined above was kind of based on this:"
In this game you just had luck ava, France wasn´t able to give a simple support and let you in marseille without reason and didn´t push you out wit a bounce? in Marseille...

It does tend to help Italy out when France drops the ball something fierce in year 2.

I've never got even a draw with Italy, this is my current goal in Diplomacy.

What's the best alliance structure for Italy? I'd imagine it would involve going in on a Lepanto with Austria to take out Turkey (perhaps with Russian help), followed by a quick stab of Austria with help from Russia. At this point, one would need to pray that he hasn't upset an Anschluss enough that Germany will retaliate (German cooperation in the Austria stab seems very unlikely), and that France and England will be too embroiled with one another for France to begin controlling the Mediterranean. Once Turkey and Austria have been divided up, Italy would then have to rush to Iberia and take control of the MAO, lest England create a stalemate line, while Russia distracts Germany. Finally, Italy needs to find a way to gain the upper hand on Russia to contend for a win.

The amount of thought that I just had to put into finding a scenario in which Italy MIGHT prevail proves better than anything Italy's disadvantage. In a gunboat, where no negotiations can take place, I can't imagine any reasonable scenario where Italy wins.

Have the mods indicated any possibility of putting the South American pirated variant up, wherein Italy has a fleet in Rome and another SC in N. Africa?

The best alliance for Italy depends, as with every other nation, largely on the other people in the game you happen to be playing. Finding a strategy that seems to work in one game and then sticking to it like glue in every game you play is among the fastest of routes to defeat.

Best pro Italian variant is splitting n Italy to three an putting the SC in the middle.

Oh and your better off staying with austria

Italy is my second least favorite, next to the evil England.