Lepanto (including the Key Lepanto) is a very effective opening. It almost always forces a Juggernaut.

The only problem with it is, Italy is usually under-rewarded for his participation.

I am a huge fan of the Lepanto.... when I'm playing Russia or France. They typically don't work well and either leave Italy wide open to an attack from the western Med or leave Austria open to press encouraging an attack by ITaly that surrounds Austria, or Austria on an Italy that is over extended. It takes turkey largely out of the action so that even if the Lepanto survives only a turn or two, Turkish growth is stunted by a protracted fight over Greece. (which can serve Austria well if played right.)

The Lepanto is a very good opening, though I don't really believe that Austria should be happy with a key variant. I do, however, think it is overused on here.

In my opinion, the best option as Italy is the Russian alliance where we both handle Austria and Turkey and then go our separate ways. Or stab one another. Especially if the west is tied up with one another. Then Italy and Russia rain supreme.

My most successful Italy games are when a Lepanto works. It's important to have a back-up plan if Turkey adequately defends from it. If the opening presents itself though, Lepanto is how Italy becomes a superpower fast.

I'm with y2k on this one. Italy needs to keep its options open. You can open for a Lepanto, then if Turkey doesn't defend see it through, otherwise turn it into a Stab Lepanto, i.e. convoy to Alb or Gre instead of Smy or Syr.

The French attack is a bad opening IMO. It opens you up to attacks from Austria and/or Turkey while you're hardly going to get anywhere against France unless both Germany and England cooperate.

For what it's worth, in both of the last two SoW games Italy has not gone through with a Lepanto, and there is of course plenty of discussion about that in the respective threads.

I hate the French attack opening. What I like doing is slipping an army up through Tyrolia, over to Bohemia and then Silesia so I can help Austria out :)

And I only like doing Blue Water Lepantos or Key Lepantos. Anything else is just too slow to work. You either gotta be in Aegean by fall 1901 or you gotta have enough armies to dislodge Bulgaria in spring 1902

The lepanto is not a great opening, but it's the best Italian opening available. It promises an alley to Turkey if he leaves himself open, therefore eliminating your second-biggest threat in the game early, and it also leaves an alley to Austria if you manage to break up the juggernaut through your talking or if they fight off the bat. If all goes wrong, you can still compensate with Turkey, ideally turning him against the purple, and move west to France, who has hopefully considered a sea lion by then.

No other opening has so many options, and any other Italian opening leaves him over-extended and vulnerable from either side. Even though he might often sit at 4 centers for years and years, something will open up later, and if you stay alive long enough, you'll get a big break.

I find the Lepanto invites a quick Austrian stab, ditto the French opening.

If coordinated properly, the Koniggratz Freakout is actually also a very powerful option. I've been meaning to want to try this for a while, and still haven't gotten an Italian or German player bold enough to do it. If you don't know what it is, here's a link: http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/strategy/articles/koniggratz.htm

i like the Rocky lepanto,just tried it for the first time and has woken out nicely, it leaves options to go east or west

"Please" lol

Discuss PLEASE. That's a new one. :-)

As with all openings it is only as good as your read of your neighbours.

I love that Koniggratz kne

Also, keep in mind that the arguments for a lepanto in press vs. gunboat are very different, and it's very likely that people's points here are crossing each other because they're addressing very different types of play.

^bingo, y2k.
It's very seldom that I enter a game with any sort of idea of how I actually want to open as the power. Gunboaters, however, tend to 'do' and 'do not' openings. The Lepanto can be done effectively and not effectively.

The opening of Naple-Ionian, Rome-Naples definitely affords Italy a ton of flexibility which is, I think, why it's played so often. It doesn't really say that much about the Lepanto in the classic sense.

I only just played my first ever press game as Italy recently (crazy that it took so long!) but I definitely thing that combining that opening with Tyrolia is a very strong choice as it immediately makes you an important player all across the board. Strangely, I think I got that advice from something Lando said about a GB game.

looks like the konnig is OK, but it's a very pro-Italian opening. Even after Austria is crushed, if T/R are friendly Germany is going to have to keep a few units in the east to ensure Italy can hold. To be successful G needs to be confident in a western ally, and 9 times out of 10 it's going to be better to NA with austria and encourage an IA.

Yes, the Lepanto sucks. The basic premise of the Lepanto is that if
- Turkey doesn't move to Aeg in F1901, and
- Turkey doesn't move to Eas in S1902, and
- Turkey doesn't move to Syr in F1902, and
then you have a good shot at gaining a second center past Tunis in 1903. Of course, you still need Austria to cut Con for you, and by that time he owns Greece and Bul (and maybe Rum if he's lucky) and has a beautiful opportunity to grab Trieste from you. Those units in Eas and Syr start looking pretty hopeless.

In the current meta-game, the Lepanto is considered the standard Italian plan, up to a point that moving Rom-Apu is often interpreted by Turkey as an aggressive move towards him. The chance that Turkey doesn't see the Lepanto coming is zero. And if he does bounce you out of Eas, there is a significant chance you'll never see a 5th center at all.

Yes, you can use the Lepanto to stab Austria, but why stab him in 1902, when he's got 5 units, and the juggernaut has stabilised if you can also do it in 1901? You can end the turn with 5 units, Turkey/Russia still in confusion over the Black Sea, and Austria at a huge disadvantage.

In my opinion, the best opening for Italy is Rom-Apu, Nap-Ion and Ven-Tri (with or without Austria's consent). In fact, I don't think there are any other options that even come close. I intend to write a longer essay about the qualities of this opening when I get around to it. I'm surprised it isn't played more often.

It's about as overrated as opening EC as any power.

It's utterly predictable what the next move will be and it is easily countered.

why does noone ever really consider italy taking munich in year 1? i have tried it a few times with varying success, but i think it's a nice start, and coupled with a delayed stab on austria (who should be attacked by a jug), can put you in a good position if you have cultivated a good relationship with russia as well as the french

Italy is built to go ham 25/8/367, no immediate worthwhile avenues to attack it and no serious way to victory once it falls behind the others

Don't pussyfoot around with the Lepanto

" Italy is built to go ham 25/8/367"

I haven't the foggiest idea what that means. Still, Italy is an excellent slow burner. You can generally get into the midgame on good terms with every significant power with just a little effort, and then the world is your mollusc.

I will note that, contrary to PE's beliefs, I've won more as Italy than any other nation. Italy can be very powerful, but it requires a great deal of patience to play them effectively.

Depends live or by e-mail. Live it can be very effective, especially the Blue-water variant, as if diplomacy is done well it can come completely unexpected and without enough time to create a juggernaut. However it is true that it favors Austria more then Italy in general, but usually Austria will have little chances to backstab you advantageously.

I've had some success with Italy and the key is to make yourself relevant. Grab Trieste or Munich in 1901, and see where it gets you. If everything fails, you can always give the center back in exchange for peace :) And then you're on the baseline performance for a Lepanto.

Italy does tend to do well in games where Russia or Germany (or even Austria) take an early lead. You often see Italy suddenly gaining strength out of nowhere in the midgame.

sigh

Italy is meant to go hard as fuck all the time since no one can realistically attack it early and its prospects for expansion tend to wane significantly as time goes on -- France, Austria and Turkey all are at their weakest in the early game and continue to strengthen the longer they're in the game (as opposed to, say, Germany, which starts out fairly strong but has a nasty tendency to get squeezed out as time goes on). Italy has no reason to be passive and should absolutely try to drive discussion and action

Fuck Lepanto. Take Marseilles and Trieste in 1901. Win game.

I don't completely agree with PE that Italy should go after someone immediately in Spring 1901 (although in his defense, the last three times I have played Italy in a press game I went straight for France). The way I see it is that Italy is unique in that you aren't really even trying to make friends- you are just trying to screw with everyone else, basically for the reasons PE said. Some powers get stronger when the game "consolidates," namely Austria because of the bountiful Balkans, as well as the corner powers France, England, and Turkey. The way Germany usually fights this is he gets his own corner, usually through Scandinavia. The way Russia fights it is essentially to take advantage of its incredible growth potential and, if that fails, to try to turn the north east into a corner as much as possible. Italy, on the other hand, (at least how I see it) generally tries to keep the game from progressing and consolidating, as Italy is never anyone's first target. If the first battle never gets resolved, Italy never gets attacked.

That's basically why the Lepanto is pretty good. It makes sure Turkey gets all jammed up. It becomes bad if the West resolves too quickly and France comes and takes Italy out. So that's why you have to do your best to make sure the West gets jammed up as well.

PE didn't say to go after someone in 1901. He basically said you can't afford to wait.

By the way, people in the "best Austrian opening" thread seem to be convinced that the Austrian fleet should always go to Albania, so why not grab that free center when it's offered to you? ;)

I'm ultimately just unconvinced that any one power can dictate the diplomatic flow of events so completely as to prevent all theaters from resolving themselves. If you miscalculate your diplomacy with a single power the whole thing falls apart. Better to take initiative and get after early growth so that you can face your inevitable attack with the strength necessary to repel it.