Yes, of course. This article: http://www.diplom.org/Zine/F2007R/Burton/statistician3.htm
has this map, which is pretty interesting:

http://www.diplom.org/Zine/F2007R/Burton/article3-solo-I.png

It shows the percentage of games (from 553 italian solos on a JDip dataset) that each centre is held at the time that Italy solos.

Assuming the most independently likely centres are picked up (which is of course incorrect), this means that PE's solo here: http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=88425 is the most likely Italian solo.

Step 1: Intoxicate yourself on any manner of recreational drug.
Step 2: Enjoy to live game gogogo gameID=103940
Step 3: Manipulate people into doing really stupid things.
Step 4: Flounder around not winning for way too long because step one made strategy hard.
Step 5: Man up and win the fucking game.

Works every time.

Italy has the delightful combination of being vulnerable to attack like Austria and unable to develop like the UK.

The only way Italy wins is if other players play incompetently or CD.

It's much easier to develop England than a lot of countries, Putin.

Italy generally does better in games with really tough competition and really bad competition. Anything in between and it kind of sucks.

With what neutrals? You get Norway for sure, that's it. If France wants Belgium, you're not getting it. Ditto Germany and Holland. There's nothing left. Denmark is German. Sweden is German or Russian. Iberia is French.

That's balanced by a lack of threat early though. An England that gets a foothold in Belgium in '01 is quickly overpowering tactically. The first center on the mainland is the hardest, but once you have that you're kind of hard to stop.

Sure there is a trade-off between vulnerability and early development. My point was Italy gets the worst of both.

Italy's not very vulnerable though, and England's early development isn't that difficult.

Relative to the corner powers, Italy is vulnerable. Relative to the central powers who can often gain 3 SCs after '01, England's early development is difficult. You even said getting a foothold on the mainland is difficult.

Here just to clarify what I thought was a fairly straight forward point.

Ordinal rankings of powers in terms of vulnerability (1 = most, 7 = least vulnerable)

1 = Austria
2 = Germany
3 = Italy
4 = Russia
5 = France
6 = Turkey
7 = England

Ordinal rankings of powers in terms of difficulty of early development (1=most difficult; 7=least difficult)

1 = Italy
2 = England
3 = Turkey
4 = Russia
5 = France
6 = Austria
7 = Germany

Italy is on the bad end of both scales.

How are we rating vulnerability here? Development category focuses on early game -- does vulnerability do so as well? Because if so Italy is the least vulnerable of all, if you ask me. France attacking Italy is an embarrassing luxury, and other than France coming in from behind, Italy just isn't going to be attacked.

I would agree that its midgame vulnerability tends to be somewhat high, but I think that's just because Italy is a high-variance country. If you manage to notch that crucial fifth and sixth center in the first 2-3 game years, then you can typically carve out a large enough corner of the board to expand at a reasonable rate and repel attacks. If your Lepanto stalls out and you're looking at Autumn 1904 with Tunis and your home centers, you're fucked.

I had in mind mid-game vulnerability. I especially had in mind 2-on-1 attacks. I admit that France doesn't go for this very often early on.

But at some point the French are going to build in the Mediterranean, and you have the prospect of fleet build-ups by the French and Turks, combined with having your home SCs adjacent to Austria. Compared to other powers, Italy doesn't survive a 2-on-1 for very long. I've seen Russia last years fighting two, sometimes even three powers. Ditto Turkey and England. If somebody can explain to me how Italy fares better in those scenarios, I'm willing to listen.

Germany and Russia are in that class with Italy b/c their home centers are on major stalemate lines. Italy doesn't handle 2-way attacks well, but I don't think Russia or Germany handles them well either; Russia getting hit by Turkey and England or Germany after the early game can get crunched out quick depending on the timing of the attack, and Germany getting slammed by any pairing of England or France and Russia or Austria doesn't have a prayer.

Turkey and especially England are almost invincible if they get out of the early game with a good power base somewhere. Ditto Austria. France is somewhat more vulnerable depending on what other Western power made it out of the early game and how it went down, but it's not in the same class.

I'd agree that in terms of middle game vulnerability Italy's near the top, but I think that's mainly the result of not getting a good power base in the early game.

ghug hit on a good point in high-class games, competent Italian players tend to be fairly dangerous in those imo. I think Italy tends to get misused in the early game. The prevailing strategy seems to be a wait-and-see angle, opportunistically swinging units around to affect the balance of power in the southeastern and western corners of Europe. I think that's damned from the start because Italy's problems -- early expansion and middle crunch due to it -- clearly demand an aggressive strategy in order to fix them, but most players don't pursue it.

If you want to learn how to Solo as Italy, you could do worse that looking at the recent Italian solo in the SoW. I say that only partly because I was the TA.

I have two Italian solos as Italy and 3 3way draws...it's my favorite country to play.

Do you have any French solos as Italy? Austrian?

Funny

I even gave you, ghugy poo a +1

I think it's your job as redundant head of redundancy to do so twice. :P

Italy is that bad that you have to specify that you solo'd as Italy while playing as Italy, because people don't believe you.

Although wasn't WWII an attempt at a German solo by Austria and the Napoleonic Wars were a French attempt by Italy?

Ssoren is more profound than he appears.

It was a pretty stupid game, and I manipulated Germany a lot for the end, but gameID=14083 is one of my Italian solos.

@Putin, I'd argue that it's the reverse, but then we're just getting into semantics.

Here's one mine, gameID=135720

A_Tin_Can and I have talked a lot about how to play Italy as we are Italy together in the team game (and we are doing very well). I think Italy is very strong, but it requires the ability to understand the whole flow of the game and manipulate it for your benefit. It's hard to explain exactly how, but my suggestion is to be ambitious as Italy, especially in the beginning. The beauty of Italy is that you not only start with zero enemies, even if you attack people they will just ask you to go away. Be aggressive diplomatically for sure, and if the situation calls for it, tactically.

Uclabb hit the nail on the head I think.

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=143352#gamePanel

I dont know if anyone else noticed this before, but all of those italian solos have in common that Italy got at least 18 centers at some point really close to the end of the game...

Soloing with any country is of course possible, but it's certainly a bit more challenging with Italy as it is with any of the other middle countries. With Italy you need to be a very diplomatic player just to make it to the mid-game alone, usually riding the coattails of some threesome or multiple side alliances. Three person alliances are very beneficial to Italy, especially if they're northern countries (Germany, Russia, or England) since it's very hard for them to stab Italy later on.

To have any chance you're going to need to carve yourself out a corner of the board by the time you've reached the end of the mid-game phase or you'll never stand a chance. If you can manage to get yourself into the southeast or southwest corner then you've got as good a chance as any of the other players in the game to solo.

I think that Italy has as much solo-potential as Russia/England/Turkey. It is obviously no France or Germany. Nor Austria. But I think that Russia England and Turkey have a really hard time soloing. England and Turkey have much more difficulty in the end game getting their units in position in time because they are so far away. And Russia suffers from large territory syndrome that makes other players realize that they are a solo threat long before there is an actual solo threat.

Here are some gunboat solos.
In this one I went from non-threat to suddenly unstoppable by picking up 4 centers over a 2-year span in mid-game.
http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=126690#gamePanel

Here is one with a big comeback. In Autumn '08 Germany was ahead 16-11, with the other 3 remaining countries at 3,2, and 2. I was originally just trying to salvage a draw but then got rolling and turned it into a solo for me.
http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=120750#gamePanel

I for one have 4 solos with italy out of 48 solos. Given that I have around 10 solos on other maps and that I have probably soloed with france and germany around 22 times combined, I would say Italy solos have been as frequent as those by any of the other 4 nations. I may even have more Italy solos than Russia or Austria (I think I am not the best Austria soloer, I usually get stuck near 17) solos and probably very similar amount to England and Turkey.

Gunboats not a good measuring stick, you're really not going to solo without some really incompetent neighbours or even more likely (as happened in those two examples) a few NMR's from your neighbours.

Turkey is one of my best solo rate counties, just after France.

It takes even more incompetent neighbors to allow a solo in a press game VillageIdiot.

Hmm.. I don't know if I'd go that far. You can win a press game with skill but with gunboat luck of the draw plays significantly more into your chances.

It's easier to stop a solo in a press game though. Unless it's PPSC, but that's not as much a game as a cooperative exercise in stupidity.

Sure - if you've got an idealistic game full of level headed, decently competent, conservative players then it's easy to push for a draw. But there's a lot of different personalities that can come in to play.

Perhaps there's two players who are equally aggressive towards a solo and are willing to gamble it, or one player despite being a good player still loses his cool when stabbed, or an ally who deep down believes that his partner is willing to share two-way with his (up until then) super loyal and honourable guy, or the guy who doesn't know how to effectively attempt a kingmaking strategy, or the advisaries too stubborn to bend to a kingmaking strategy. All these little nuances don't really factor as much into a gunboat game which for all intensive purposes is just a seven person game of checkers.

Intents and purposes*

Gunboat has all of those things too, they're just much more subtle and harder to resolve in an optimal fashion.

Gunboat's second biggest flaw, after the turn one lottery, is that it is effectively public press. All your subtle messages are broadcast to everyone playing the game at equal volume. Gunboaters often say the board never lies. In Diplomacy this is complete tosh as the board is the best liar in the game, but in gunboat it carries a truth as the public nature all but destroys any advantage you can gain from misleading movements.

People that equate gunboat with checkers don't understand gunboat. But back to the original point of preventing solos, even a checkers player should be able to figure out that coordinating defense to stop an attempted solo is far easier when you can send press to coordinate said defensive moves.

Italy is sneaky in gunboat because it can win without fighting over the traditional stalemate centers. IMO, its a lot more obvious to the board that you're going for a solo when you throw armies against Munich, Berlin, or Moscow. In this sense, Italy can stumble into an "under the radar" solo, especially if the Italian player secures Marseilles, Spain, and Portugal before eliminating Turkey. Without hitting Munich at all, some players may be apt to overlook the impending solo.

gameID=140096

2ndWhiteLine's example just reinforces my point since in that game Italy got to benefit from a NMR'ing France. I think you'd have a challenge finding a gunboat game where Italy soloed that didn't have any NMR's. Without the benefit of communication Italy (as well as Austria) is at a tremendous disadvantage.

This goes to show that for Italy to solo in a regular press game he really needs to leverage his diplomacy skills a lot.

My game had no nmr

Yup, you're a solid exception. It's not impossible, just 10 times more harder then somebody like a France of a Turkey.

Here's one that i won that had no nmrs: gameID=141525 , though turkey did not play very well...
Anyway, i really like italy in gunboats mainly because you get your choice of who you're at war with. In most cases no one will start out attacking you so you can choose where you want to expand to. opening ven tyr rome ven and nap ion is probably the best starting move in a gunboat for italy if you're going for austria.