The Italian Gunboat Solo Win Plan

Italy’s usual plan is to take over most of the South (Italy, Tunis, Austria, the Balkans neutrals, Turkey, and Sevastopol) plus Marseilles and some combination of other centers (like Spain and Portugal, or Warsaw and Moscow). Italy is special among the 3 Southern powers: once in a blue moon, Italy can advance far into the North (France and England).

Some variation on the plan

• Italy’s most common way to win the game is by conquering the entire South + Marseilles.
• However, it is possible for Italy to instead expand westward, eventually creeping far into the North. This is rare, but it does happen.

Italy should keep fleets to a minimum

• Although Italy needs fleets early on to get into position to actually start attacking other powers, once that happens Italy needs armies to follow through with those attacks. It is not possible to expand deep into the South without a huge number of armies. Usually, when Italy solo wins, it’s because Italy made really good guesses with a minimal number of fleets to get into proper positioning, and then used those fleets to convoy in army after army to the invasion points.

Both Austria and Turkey need to fall

• The most common winning strategy for Italy is to either invade Austria and then overpower and invade Turkey, or to invade Turkey (such as with a “Lepanto” invasion, which is when Italy convoys an army into Syria) and then turn back to overpower and invade Austria.

This guide is intended for beginners and is very basic. For a more advanced discussion of Italian strategy, please read my post on why I love to play as Italy in gunboat Diplomacy.

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