Mini Lecture time! Let's talk solos. I'm not exactly a solo artist (9% isn't bad but it isn't that great), but I've done it enough times that I think I can talk about it without looking too stupid.
A lot of games that end in a solo happen because a combination of two things happen. Firstly, the player who solos plans it out, understands what his targets are, and reaches his targets quickly and without compromising his overall position. Secondly, the players around the person who solo fail to come together quickly enough to stop him, sometimes because they are simply unlucky, sometimes because they make tactical mistakes, and sometimes because the person who solos simply beats them to the punch.
Every player wants to be the person who solos. Play enough games and every player gets that chance. One of the things that separates good players from great players, though, is not their ability to get within reach of a solo but to actually get over the hump and do it. I'll briefly expand upon this and show some examples.
In order to understand your targets - where you have to get in order to solo - you have to understand stalemate points. On the classic map, there are a ton of stalemate points, which, when properly defended, are completely impossible to cross. Some common stalemates that can both help and hinder solos are Moscow and Warsaw, Munich and Berlin, and Iberia. In the majority of solo bids, the player attempting to solo will have to cross at least two of these points in order to gain the necessary amount of centers (though there are plenty of exceptions). This is an example of each of these three stalemates:
gameID=145971.
(Obviously, your actual targets may vary depending on what country you are and how the board has progressed around you. Occasionally, you'll look toward other stalemates than those three. For example, another common stalemate is the Tunisian stalemate, a common target for England and sometimes Turkey. Other times, St. Petersburg is the target from the north, typically for a power like France. Each of these lines can be valuable and each of them are worth knowing about.)
Crossing these stalemate lines is one of the most difficult tasks in this game, largely because everyone else also knows where they are and takes notice when someone crosses them. It often comes down to one simple thing: timing. If you're too late, you might have missed your only opening. If you're too early, you jumped the gun and get pushed back because you haven't built up enough strength to keep on pushing past the line.
In order to time your attack, consider how strong you are. Do you have a strong offensive front and a solid group of defensive support units following that front? Can you take a shot at soloing without compromising yourself defensively on the home front? If the answers to both of these questions are yes, you should consider making your move, but before you do, also consider how strong the resisting powers are. Are they fighting? If they are, it will probably take them some time, maybe more than one phase, to regroup and position themselves to resist your advance. If they aren't, can you get them to fight? If not, can you take them on and win? Remember that it is much easier to defend a stalemate line than it is to cross one. How strong are the resisting powers in the first place? If your units plainly outnumber theirs, be it with fleets, armies, or both, you might not want to wait around to make your move because all that time waiting is time they spend trying to coordinate and reinforcing themselves.
An example of a poorly timed and poorly executed solo attempt:
gameID=123629While Austria did well to expand and make himself a feasible solo threat by 1906, his resources were bottled up in back-and-forth battles with Italy and Turkey. He had chances in 1908 and 1909 to go for Munich and Berlin and chose not to, clearly worried about whether or not he could defend against Italy. He compounded his problems in 1910 when he finally made his move. Tactically speaking, it is almost impossible to take and hold Scandinavia from the position that he did, but he saw that England and Germany were fighting, so he decided to try it. In doing so, he used up two armies that would have been useful attacking the German home centers and defending himself against Italy on centers that he didn't need and couldn't hold onto. This turned out to be a huge mistake, leaving him without any flexibility, so when Italy attacked and forced him to use the units he planned on using as offense in order to defend, his attack on Germany was spoiled despite his unlikely gains in Scandinavia. Had he had those armies positioned properly, he might have had the capacity to both defend himself from Italy and attack Germany simultaneously.
An example of a well-timed and well-executed solo attempt:
gameID=122769In this game, Turkey grew quickly (partly due to CD powers), but the most important move he made all game was in Spring of 1908. Realizing his solo potential and understanding where his empire had to reach in order for him to win, he made a mad dash for Iberia, which was left completely undefended (by yours truly). Because France and Germany were already fighting, neither power had an opportunity to contest Turkey in Iberia, allowing him to bring two more fleets over as reinforcements by 1911 to secure Spain. At this point, all he needed was to break another stalemate line for a few more centers. He managed to outguess both Russia and Germany in order to take Warsaw and then Moscow, cleaning up the Italian centers that he hadn't yet taken to secure the win.
Had he decided not to go for Iberia when he saw this opening and instead taken the two Italian centers that were dangling like bait on a hook in front of him, he may not have been able to solo. He recognized, though, that those Italian centers were not his target; rather, they were simply centers that he could take later on with units he didn't need on his front line.
There are some instances where stalemate lines don't play as big of a role in solos as they do in the examples I picked out, but there's not a ton of them. Occasionally, though, a solo will fall into your lap, either by way of someone throwing a game to you or because someone defending doesn't know how to stop you. My only advice when something like that occurs is to humbly take the solo being gifted to you and don't complain. If you can convince someone to hand you a solo, more power to you - it's their loss, not yours.
My last bit of advice when attempting to solo is to be persistent. Even if you make a mistake and mistime your move, don't concede until the rest of the board stops you. People defending against you will try to convince you to draw and wear you down, but often times, there's still openings there that you just don't see because you think you've been defeated. I'll use this game as an example:
gameID=150344In this game, France made a couple of mistakes that put his solo run at risk. The resisting powers defended fairly well, and he decided to draw when, at 16 centers, he was going to have to disband two centers and drop back to 14. A tough blow, certainly, but had he disbanded units like Tuscany and Rome, he would have had the chance to keep working on soloing in the north, surrendering the Italian peninsula in the south and retreating to the Tunisian stalemate line (Tunis/Piedmont/North Af./GoL/WMed/etc) in the process. He could have taken Norway, Sweden, St. Petersburg, and Kiel without a doubt at some point in the north despite disbanding in the south. Are his odds of a solo diminished? Absolutely. Are they dead? No. He could target Munich and Berlin or Warsaw and Moscow, forcing Russia and Turkey to come together and defend both - certainly a difficult task to coordinate. In the time it takes them to realign their defenses, a lot of things could happen in that time that allow you to take the advantage back again.
I'm tired of writing, so I'll leave you with the best thing you'll see all day:
http://tinyurl.com/hnw2to4
US bombs Syrian army positions surrounded by ISIS
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