A fan of this blog, Jeff, sent in a question:

[…] One thing you mention early in your journal of the greatest game was that Italy is your preferred nation in gunboat. […] [My friend and I] were talking about how difficult it feels to play [as Italy] because you always have to worry about Austria, and it’s hard to form an alliance w/ them early because both of you need each others’ sc’s for the solo. I would love to hear your thoughts on why you like playing Italy[.]

Great question, Jeff! You shall be answered.

So, what’s so great about playing as Italy in gunboat Diplomacy?

1. Italy has several viable solo-win strategies.

Unlike other powers in gunboat Diplomacy, Italy has several strategies that are viable for a solo win. Although I have written a basic guide on getting a solo win as Italy, I will go into further tactical detail with this post.

For Italy, I think there are 3 viable solo-win strategies (with some forking paths).

• Plan 1: Attack Turkey first. Begin with a “Lepanto” (put a fleet in Ionian Sea and Eastern Mediterranean Sea, then successfully double-convoy an army into Syria). With your army behind Turkey’s lines, you can hollow out all the Turkish home centers. If you succeed, there are 2 good options:
  • Plan 1-A: Backstab Austria. With the Turkish home centers under your control, other powers cannot profit from the collapse of Austria (Turkey doesn’t exist, and with your control of Turkish centers and your own Italian home centers, you will be able to push Russia or Germany back if they try to take Austrian centers). Your goal is to get all 17 southern centers + either Marseilles or Munich.^[1]To understand what I mean by “southern” and “northern” centers, please refer to my general guidance on gunboat Diplomacy solo wins.
  • Plan 1-B: Attack France, then backstab Austria for the win. If you see a better opportunity to attack France (i.e. you don’t have a good tactical position to backstab Austria, or France looks tactically vulnerable) or it seems like a better strategy to attack France (i.e. you don’t want France to come into the endgame strong, or Austria and Russia have fought to a draw), then use your builds from the Turkish centers to go after Marseilles, Spain, and Portugal. Once you have control all 3 (or think you will soon), backstab Austria for the solo win. Your goal is to get 15 southern centers + 3 of the following: Marseilles, Spain, Portugal, Moscow, Warsaw.^[2]The further you penetrate west, the more likely you will be shut out of Warsaw and Moscow by a stalemate line.

• Plan 2: Attack France first. Begin by giving Austria as much space as possible (move out of Venice in Spring 1901 and don’t move back until 1902; don’t move anything else near Austrian home centers) because Austria will likely have to fight off both Turkey and Russia. You can start attacking France in 1901 (Venice to Piedmont, Piedmont to Marseilles) or wait until 1902 or even later.^[3]If England has attacked France in 1901 by moving to English Channel, you should probably attack France immediately and relentlessly – your attacks can meet with early success if other powers help you fight France. But if England tries to play nice with France, don’t attack France by … Continue reading If you succeed in attacking France (I’ll define success here as taking at least 2 centers + France is reduced to 3 or fewer centers), then you can proceed one of two ways:
  • Plan 2-A: Turn East. Use a skeleton force to hold your gains against France, and then focus on either attacking Austria or Turkey. If Turkey has made substantial progress against Austria, then probably you are now playing for a draw because Turkey cannot likely be rolled back far enough, fast enough, for you to win. But if Austria is making progress or has stalemated Turkey (with Turkey in control of just 3 or 4 centers), then helping Austria to finish off Turkey or backstabbing Austria could be profitable. You will have to finish off both powers to solo win. Your plan is to get 15 southern centers (the south minus Moscow and Warsaw) plus Marseilles, Spain and Portugal. 
  • Plan 2-B: Roll up the west. This strategy is hard to pull off in gunboat, but boy is it fun when you can do it. If the strategic and tactical situation allows for it,^[4]For example, perhaps England and Germany started attacking each other as soon as France collapsed without consolidating any gains, and Turkey has 1 or fewer fleets that could move towards Ionian Sea, so you can block Turkey with a skeleton force of a single fleet. as Italy you can commit more and more units to the west, taking Paris and Brest while moving fleets up through Mid-Atlantic Ocean. You can build up momentum, become a sort of “fake France + Italy,” and reproduce the early part of the French solo win plan (all 17 northern centers plus Tunis), except that you don’t need Munich or Berlin (because you should have control of your 3 Italian home centers). Your goal is not so much to focus on 18 particular centers, but in building momentum in the west with your fleets without losing any of your Italian home centers. If you have the majority of the fleets in the north and a defended position with your home centers, your solo win will become inevitable.
  • Blasting France first has another advantage, which is that it increases your chances of getting into the draw in a way that destroying Austria or Turkey does not. More on that below.
  • A lot of players (new and old) tell me that attacking France first is unrealistic. To that I say, please review these three high-level games where I began by attacking France and met with success.
    • 3-way draw with Central Triple^[5]”Central Triple” is a name for the alliance of Germany, Austria and Italy.
    • 4-way draw in a tournament game
    • Solo Win (with the rare western attack strategy)
    • On webDiplomacy, you can look through old games, turn by turn, if you reset the map with the rewind button (circled in red in this screenshot) and then click the play button to see each turn like a slideshow (circled in blue in this screenshot).
• Plan 3: Fake Alliance with Austria. Begin by moving your units consistent with a naval attack on Turkey, but instead of a “Lepanto” convoy into Syria, your goal is to convoy one of your armies into Greece at the same time that you attack Austria over land with your other army. If your attack works, you’ll get several builds and have the positioning to crush Austria quickly. Unlike the other two plans, which call for a few fleet builds, this plan is extremely army-heavy. You should keep fleet builds to a minimum. Your strategy is to gain momentum over land so that you can take over the entire south as rapidly as possible. Your goal is to get all 17 southern centers + Munich or Marseilles.
  • Pay attention to this point: I strongly urge against attacking Austria in Spring 1901; feigning an alliance with Austria is far, FAR more effective than the 1901 anti-Austrian attack strategies that are popular with beginners (moving both armies against Austria in Spring 1901). If you lure Austria out of position by allowing Austria to make attacks on Russia and Turkey, Austria won’t be in a position to punish you for your treachery. Furthermore, if you begin by attacking Austria from the south (in Greece), Turkey will not be able to acquire Serbia. Once you have control of Serbia, you can shut Turkey out of any profit that can come from the collapse of Austria. Shutting out Turkey is essential. Attacking Austria in Spring 1901 often results in a Turkey that is MORE powerful than Italy, which means a solo win for Italy is out of the question (at best, you’re now playing for a draw with Turkey; at worst, you’ve signed your own death warrant).
  • Click here to review a very high-level gunboat Game I played with this strategy on webDiplomacy. As I described earlier, make sure to use the webDiplomacy controls.

I think all 3 of these plans are viable and interesting. By comparison, even though I have a very good track record with France (which I consider to be the strongest of all 7 powers in gunboat Diplomacy), I believe that France only has 1 realistic path to a solo win: crush England, then take over the entire north while sneaking into Tunis.  So even though I’d wager that I’m more likely to solo win if assigned to play France, it’s not as interesting to me as playing with Italy.

2. You can (and should) let the board develop before going to war.

Tactically, a powerful early-game attack in Diplomacy requires you to lower your defenses somewhere. That means rushing into a war against a well-defended power might get you crushed by a different neighbor who you did not defend against. Accordingly, in the high-level games of gunboat Diplomacy I play, the players tend to make noncommittal moves for the first few years. Most players prefer to wait and see who their allies and enemies might be before making a serious attack. However, each move of each piece in 1901 and 1902 (as well as the builds) gradually reveals the intentions of all the players because their choices commit them to one plan or another.

In my opinion, Italy is unique among the 7 powers in that Italy can go through 1901 and 1902, and sometimes into 1903 and beyond, without committing to anything. Italy can pick up a 1901 build by taking Tunis, which should almost always be a fleet. Then Italy can move around those two armies and two fleets for quite a while without making an all-out attack.

I think newer players are impatient and assume that because Diplomacy is a game about taking supply centers, they need to try to take supply centers as soon and as often as possible. Sometimes this is a good idea, and it is definitely true of weaker powers like Austria (who will likely perish without fighting Russia and Turkey immediately), but this is just not the case for Italy. Italy’s ability to play slowly isn’t just different; it’s an advantage.

As an experienced gunboat Diplomacy player, who is used to playing long, grinding games against other strong players (these matches can last more than 2 months!), I am in no hurry to attack. I enjoy how playing as Italy affords me several, or even many, turns to try to understand what the other players are thinking before I have to commit to an attack plan. I have the ability to read whether a player is experienced or inexperienced, patient or impatient, wise or foolish, from their initial moves. In fact, if I know who joined the match, I can typically identify all of the other players just from the first 3-4 moves.

Being able to wait until I understand something about who is piloting each power is a tremendous advantage for Italy, an advantage that is proportionate to the skill and experience of the Italian player.

3. Nobody will attack you before 1903.

In gunboat Diplomacy, the players choose their opening moves and attack plans based on a highly developed metagame. By “metagame,” I am referring to the collective ability of the players to anticipate (and counter) what their rivals will do because of their common knowledge of which strategies are popular (and how to counter those strategies). Let me explain how the gunboat Diplomacy metagame discourages any early attack on Italy.

In the fanmail that encouraged this article, I was asked about the inevitable war with Austria. While always looming, this war is not one that threatens Italy immediately — it is not the same as the inevitable war between other neighboring powers, because Austria cannot realistically attack Italy in 1901 or 1902 and survive. The gunboat Diplomacy metagame pushes Austria into war with Turkey and Russia immediately and continuing every turn after that until the powers have eliminated each other or another power threatens to solo win. If Austria commits even a single unit to attacking Italy in the first two years, the likely result is a collapse of Austria’s defenses against Turkey (and sometimes Russia).

As for France, France is in a similar situation to Austria. France cannot afford to make an early attack on Italy, even though Italy is a neighbor, because England and Germany are far more threatening and war between France and one or both of these powers is all-but-certain to begin in the first two years.

Turkey cannot make a meaningful attack on Italy unless Turkey builds and/or brings several fleets to the Mediterranean, or else first conquers Austria, either of which will take several years. Although Germany might technically be a neighbor to Italy, it is extremely rare for one of these powers to attack the other except to attempt a solo win.

So in a gunboat Diplomacy game full of beginners — players who don’t know what they’re doing and don’t know about this metagame — Italy probably seems like a poor power to be assigned. It is possible that Austria will immediately start attacking you, even though that is a terrible and foolish strategy for Austria (it will just bring you both down). Same goes for France. When that happens to you, all I can say is take your lumps. Learn some lessons. Once you are seasoned, play in games with veteran gunboat players for a better experience playing as Italy.

4. As long as you hold onto Tunis, you can get into a draw.

Germany and Russia are Italy’s natural allies, as those powers reach 18 (or threaten to reach 18) centers without taking any Italian centers (I am including Tunis as an Italian center). The other powers (England, France, Austria, and Turkey) are counting on taking Tunis to get a solo win. So in most matches, as long as you defend Tunis and hold onto it until the bitter end, you have a reasonable chance of getting into a draw.

Simply controlling Tunis can be enough to put you into the draw, even if you have none of your home centers. The other players, if they are intelligent enough to form a stalemate line, will very likely incorporate your single unit in Tunis into that stalemate line. They will defend your unit in Tunis because it will be too difficult for them to eliminate you without risking total defeat.

In fact, if you feel that you are in danger of being eliminated during a slow, grinding game, you can try one of my favorite strategies: “take yourself hostage.” Punish other players for trying to eliminate you by throwing away some of your centers to whoever is the strongest power (while holding onto the center(s) necessary to for a stalemate line). For example, if France is trying to attack you, you could give away all your centers (except Tunis) to Turkey, potentially forcing France to defend your unit in Tunis or risk Turkish victory.

5. If you get into Portugal, you’ve just bought a second insurance policy (the first is Tunis).

Everything I just said about Tunis applies also to Portugal. Portugal is a similar center to Tunis, in that it is difficult to push a defending player out of the location (Portugal is the most defensible center on the map) and sits on a key stalemate line location.

Tunis is more often the last center that England or France needs to solo win, but sometimes it is what Austria or Turkey need (if they have Munich). Portugal is a little different. It is sometimes the last center Turkey or Germany needs to solo win, but more often what is important about having a unit in Portugal is that, due to Portugal touching only two other spaces (Mid-Atlantic Ocean and Spain), your unit in Portugal cannot be dislodged without breaking up a stalemate line (one running through Portugal, Spain and maybe Marseilles). The other powers will depend on your cooperation to maintain this line, and thus cannot safely eliminate you.

If, as Italy, you control both Portugal and Tunis, you ability to “take yourself hostage” is HUGE, because you can likely help either a northern or southern power reach 17 centers, and then stop them there at 17 (with your unit(s) necessary to hold the line against that power).

Note: Conquering Turkish or Austrian centers does NOT significantly increase your ability to sneak into a draw, because none of those centers is both defensible and tactically essential to forming a stalemate line. To be clear, increasing your own count of supply centers is usually advantageous. What I’m saying is that simply controlling Portugal – alone – could be enough to get you a place in the draw. That is not true of any single Austrian or Turkish center (or those powers’ natural neutrals in the Balkans).

Conclusion

I think playing as Italy can be really fun in gunboat Diplomacy. Even though Italy is not the strongest power, and even though Italy is often playing for a draw, I think the variety of strategy and early-game breathing space more than make up for that deficiency. Furthermore, since most gunboat Diplomacy games end in a draw, and Italy is especially adroit at getting into draws, Italy is stronger than newer players realize.

Next time you are assigned Italy in a game of gunboat Diplomacy, see if you can apply my teachings here and make the most of it! Definitely do not attack Austria in Spring 1901.

Edit — Here is Jeff’s response to this post:

Thank you for your email reply and your blog post. It definitely seems like Italy is a power that scales well with one’s understanding of holistic strategy and their ability to read/gather information on the other players. It doesn’t surprise me that you enjoy it so much, it seems like a rewarding nation to play once you’ve put in the time and effort to hone those skills.