Subject to debate some would say but I agree with you, so clearly the card is wrong. On a side note, I had no idea that a snail's reproductive organs was in its head.

I'd go with Turkey as well.

That's amazing. But completely wrong.
Turkey > France > England

I hadn't considered France, but that seems like a fair assertion jmeyer.

I'm sorry, the card says "Moops!"

Russia.




Okay, just kidding.

Austro-Hungary. Never. let them. cross. that. line.

It's obviously "slime dick"

It's a stupid question because there is no absolute right answer. Trivial Pursuit does that, though. The people who write those things don't always know what they are talking about.

But, really, from the small amount I've played, I have a better feel for France defensively than England. But Turkey is head and shoulders above.

There's always an absolute right answer, Draug, or have you been skipping out on the religion threads recently?

So what does Gawd say is the best, most defensible position?

Vaft could answer this with stats for win+draw+survived for each country.

Oh I dunno. I've been skipping out too!

I've PM'd Vaft, hold onto your hats. I would have guessed Turkey, but I could see how it could be Britain. Liverpool is a hard nut.

win+draw+survived /= good defence

Due to some issues I won't discuss here, I still haven't been able to exclude games with CDs or NMRs from the database search yet. The best I can do to limit the data to games with some quality is to adjust which pot size I search for. For games where the pot >= 700, the country with the lowest defeat is France, at 29.96%, Turkey second with 36.94% and England third with 38.3%. If we go by gunboats, which would take only pure tactics into account, France is still by far the most defensible country with 20.34% defeats. Turkey has 29.24% and England has a whopping 44.49% defeat chance in gunboats, only second to Russia with 47.88% defeats.

This is also true for games with lower pots, although I do not trust that data, but it seems that in almost all cases, no matter what press rules or point rules, France has the lowest number of defeats.

Thanks Vaft! I would never have guessed that.

I think Yonni is correct that survival is not indicative of defensibility. How long it takes to defeat England or Turkey or France would indicate better how defensible they are. We would need to measure when the final assault began and ended to get a real measure of defensibility.

It makes a lot of sense if you look at the game dynamics as well as the territories of the board. First of all, France is all but guaranteed two builds, giving the country early strength. There is a narrow land opening into France due to Switzerland being neutral. To invade France properly, you need to surround her with fleets. Both England and Italy, her immediate neighbours by sea, need to commit most of their resources to the front in order to get into France, leaving them open to a German attack or Turkish control of the Mediterranean. I've seen countless attacks on France being cancelled due to Juggernauts forming, Austria attacking Italy, Germany attacking France, etc. etc. It takes a determined England and/or Italy coupled with Germany to wipe out France.

The question might be based on this passage from Richard Sharp:

http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/god/four.htm

Although he also calls Turkey "the most indestructible country."

http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/god/seven.htm

dubmdell, if I could isolate what moves constitute an attack on a country, I could run that. But there are so many other factors at play. I think the best bet in this question is to simply hear the views of experienced players. Don't underestimate the brain of intelligent humans, they are pretty good computing devices!

In my experience, from a purely tactical point of view, as Turkey and England I can defend myself for a long time even when there is a determined attack. Turkey is probably easier in its corner position, England does have plenty of sea zones around her, so it takes a lot of guesswork.

It's an interesting question - what metric best shows the defensibility of a country?

I'd suggest that average year defeated would be a good measure but I don't have too much to back that up on.

I would add that although Turkey and England both have easily defendable territory and can hold out for a long time on two or three centers, I think England would be more likely to survive on a single neutral center or two (say, Sweden or Portugal) where Turkey would have less opportunity for a straggler center.

That being said, the only way Turkey will be eliminated quickly is a three headed attack from R-I-A; if Russia isn't involved, Turkey can hold out for quite a while. Case in point, gameID=85009. The Black Sea makes a world of difference for Turkish survival. For England, he can more easily be eliminated by a single country, usually a determined France in the early game if Russia isn't agreeable.

Yonni, I initially thought of that metric also before deleting it. The problem there is, Germany may live well into the game on average, Austria too! Many an Austria outlives the successful Sealion or Lepanto. But none of us would content either are "most defensible."

I agree with dub et al. Defensible means how you survive when you're under attack. I might be that Turkey doesn't come under strenuous attack as often as some other power (or vice versa).

I know this is digging a little deeper than our stats probably allow but try indulge my rambling here...

I imagine that when someone is eliminated there is some point where they start losing centres. I'd hazard a guess that there you can measure a fairly definite slope with which someone loses centres until they're defeated. That, would be the measure that I'd go by. I don't know what (if any) value it'd add by knowing that though...

Semck raises an interesting dynamic to the defensibility question: how defensible are you per enemy? So anyone could defend on enemy right? So how many enemies must coordinate to ensure your downfall? Interesting...