I've found winning with Italy to be almost absurdly easy (though admittedly a small sample size) - just don't attack Austria in 1901 and he'll roll over for you, plus the computer seems to suck at recognizing critical stalemate positions, so getting into and past MAO when you start growing is much e...

Some of it depends on the situational details. If you and an ally can obliterate a 3rd power by getting them to incorrectly trust at the wrong time, then it's often worth the effort. But you have to have that relationship whereby you'll have a friend to absorb the hate and blowback from an early bet...

'in every situation' I said time and time again, if everyone agrees to kill France, and they SHOULD because its in their interest This take is objectively wrong. France is a strong power, but its downfall helps some powers and hurts others. Even if France does well early game, it's by no means guar...

In general, power attitudes towards France in press games (some credit to swordsman, in particular his gunboat solo win guide maps, https://brotherbored.com/diplomacy/gunboat-solo-win-intro/ ) England IN GENERAL, would rather see France dead than alive Pushing a lot of resources towards killing Fran...

For both better and worse, I tend to take the attitude that the harder I have to try and the more hours in a game I'm forced to put in, the better of a result I demand. I'm happy enough to take a very easy 3wd, and sometimes even a very easy 4wd, but if it's a brutal slog that takes huge effort, I'm...

I think I'd also argue that Austria tends to benefit from France surviving to create problems for Germany at the least, though I'm not 100% on the point (I'd probably guess that the real benefit for Austria is the west being divided, so there's more time to grow and eventually try for a solo run, as...

No one benefits less from France's demise than Russia (a strong England can spam fleet builds and become a big hassle; a strong Germany can spam fleet OR eastern army builds and become a deadly threat; etc). Also, as Russia, as long as you have 3 or so fleets up north, then you can hold off France m...

For Russia in particular, I'd dispute that a dead France is helpful (Russia and France are strong natural allies for the most part). As Russia, I'd certainly agree that it helps to have England moving towards France instead of towards you, but I'd generally prefer England to be UNSUCCESSFUL in this ...

I think there are some levels of it... Like if you're England, you're either opening LON-ENG and EDI-NTH, or LON-NTH and EDI-NWG. The first is anti-France, the second anti-Russia (if you open to Yorkshire, the channel move isn't THAT hostile to France but it's still obviously not friendly). You can ...

I think Russia in particular is fairly difficult against bots. Some of the logic may have been that England was busy fighting France (which Germany was also fighting) and some of it may have been some kind of weird assessment off of your spring 1901 moves (fleet Rum is a strange move imo; you likely...

I admit to being mildly surprised that, at the least, you've never eaten a France solo in a league gunboat game where you randed Turkey. Feels like even a very good Turkey player will suffer that outcome from time to time...

Game doesn't really tell you as you go, it's assumed that you know. But basically at the bottom of the game page you have options for what to do with your units in a given turn (move, hold, support, retreat, disband, [or in the build phase only] build in an open home supply center). You enter your o...

It's also really nice to see the bots do this when you rand Turkey (and sometimes Russia) so it's not ALL loss...

Southern Hedgehog can sort of work as Austria if you're in alliance with Turkey, but it's still somewhat difficult to effectively work it through and Turkey will typically have the upper hand in the alliance for quite a while. Otherwise, yeah, better to have an alliance w/ Italy and/or Russia and mo...

did i win?

oh good, a loss, an loltier 7wd and an loltier 6wd. MUCH more respectable, definitely not trying to salvage the tiniest little bit of ego there on my end

looking like i'll be 2 losses and a loltier 7wd
I actually HAVE solo'd as Austria and England against the bots, but twas not meant to be THIS time

A/R can be an extremely effective alliance for both Austria and Russia. Why would you *always* want to throw that away? Under what conditions would I in 1901S, value an alliance with Austria over one with Turkey? As Russia? Probably a few things could be relevant off the cuff... 1) You pick up that...

I'm assuming that it's ok for non profs to post more stuff now that it's post game so... I kind of want to talk more about that Turkish stab of Russia and why I didn't think it was an effective stab despite gaining a decent # of dots... As of fall 1904, the board state was fairly unorganized in a lo...

That's sort of my guess too? Maybe the expectation was that a huge swath of people would tie at 400, and then yeah having something extra to slice it out is probably ok. Instead the top 20 included one person at 360 (xorxes i presume) and then they added hte other two people at that score, possibly ...