I know FA about diplomacy, but I'll hazard that no power could survive that.

I think if I had 12 centers or so, yes. Otherwise, probably not.

My thinking was, Turkey might be able to. There are only so many squares beside Turkey, so if there are no coin tosses (for T), he might be able to hold out quite awhile, with a couple builds.
But I'm not sure. I'm not good enough at tactics to work it out.

You could maybe actually make a fun variant.

One power is chosen to become the target after fall 1905. (Let's push it back). At the outset, only that power knows he has been chosen. After fall 05, all the powers are told the target. Whoever takes his last SC from him wins (there'd be a tiebreaker somehow in case his last two+ fell together). But the target gets to see everybody's orders before submitting his (after 1905).

(Needless to say, the target wins if he survives, which includes anybody making it to 18 centers or the game ending by agreement. There can therefore be no draws).

It's not a terribly difficult exercise to setup with Turkey. We all agree Black is a must and probably Aegean and Eastern. Bulgaria is a given, and Greece wouldn't be bad to have. In fact, Ionian would be handy to start with, but not a must for survival. Only given A Bul, F BLA, EAS, and AEG, you could hold out for a little while as Turkey. If you have F Gre and F ION instead of F EAS, then you could probably hold out a little longer. Sevastopol would be handy to begin with, ensuring no Russian fleet exists (assuming F Rum is not extant), but again, quickly lost, no deal breaker.

That's very doable, Sem. All the target has to do is form a stalemate line (any stalemate line) in ten moves. It doesn't even have to be a proper stalemate line. Just one that can be infinitely defended against a known offense.

OK, good point, Tas. Better make it earlier than 1905.

Of course, another point, Tas, is that if people saw somebody forming a stalemate line, they'd probably go after him right away.

Would they? They might go out on a limb to break the line, only to get randomly selected for elimination themselves!

Tas, that's the thing though. Everybody would know from the start whether THEY were the target or not.

Oh. I didn't realize the decision was made prior to '05.

So maybe the variant should be, no one is the target until x point in time when it is announced globally.

Sorry if I was ambiguous. Yeah, it's made before the game and everybody is told privately yes or no. So the target knows to prepare, but everybody else knows to be looking out for somebody preparing.

Maybe, dub, but I think half the fun would be pretending, as the target, not to be the target, and finessing yourself into a good situation for the reveal.

You would also have to delay the order submission deadline for the target player. Otherwise the other players could submit their orders at the last possible minute giving him no chance to consider.

If I understand correctly, the target doesn't see orders until x point in time, yes?

I agree, SunZi.
And yes, only after the target is revealed does he get to start viewing orders. (And, thus, getting extra time).

Sorry if this is highjacking your thread but in reading this I had my own take on it. No one knows until after 1904 or 1905 who the target is and someone gets randomly selected to be the target. Then as soon as he is eliminated another person is selected and so on. Being the target would be both very advantageous and not at the same time. The only problem I see with this variant would be when it got down to 2-4 players as then you would "want" to get selected as the target. I find it intriguing as it almost forces alliances rather than letting you choose them.

It would be easier to survive if this was a Gunboat game.