I thought you were leaving?

It sends crazy signals for sure. Turkey could kill you but you get a fleet in Ionian. Turkey in 3 tries has allowed me into Serbia and the 1 build ends up making the usual mouth breathers around you hesitate.

Sounds interesting in press games (esp. for an A/T alliance), but in gunboat I see it as highly risky. F Adr & A Tri will almost certainly enrage Italy, and it would take an equally intelligent (reckless?) Italian player to look favorably upon Austrian F ION. if the move to Galicia success, you've have both pissed off a potential Russian friend and damaged your chances of gaining Serbia in fall.

I like unconventional openings, but Austria is probably the worst country to employ them. If your neighbors catch any whiff that you don't know what you're doing then they'll fall upon you like a famished pack of hyenas.

I feel like Austria is the least likely to survive if they deviate from standard moves. Ive seen so many people try to take Rumania and greece and defend trieste in phase 1. so basically your signaling 3 people to come kill you lol.

A Vie-Tyr seems smarter lately than bouncing in gal. more trends point to early Italian stabs. So vie-tri or vie-tyr

I don't understand what the goal is here.

A good principle when quickly evaluating a position in Diplomacy is to compare how many centers you have with how many units you need to defend those centers. The more "spare" units you have, the more scope for attacking. If you have no attacking power, you end up sitting there waiting to be torn apart when somebody gets around to it.

The key problem that Austria faces in gunboat is that the Balkans are so dense in centers that typically everything except their northern border will be militarized. Thus, a common Austrian problem is that even when not threatened with imminent harm, it costs 4 units to hold 4 centers or 5 units to hold 5 centers (add Greece), which means you end up having to sit there and watch others grow.

So, if you're going to take chances to improve the situation, the goal should be to grow in a direction that lets you add more centers than it costs units to hold them.

If you take Venice, that's certainly not true; unless you're at war with Italy, it costs at most one unit to hold Tri. If you take Venice, it will cost you at least two units to hold it. If you can get to Rome,then often two armies will hold Ven/Rom, so at that point you've gained something. But that's not very likely with this sort of attack, is it?

In the meantime, this leaves you with too few units to hold Vie/Bud/Ser. So, that's always going to be a tempting target, and you never really get to repair the problem, because you're permanently a unit short.

In a press game, you can negotiate your way around this, of course; perhaps R or T will agree to demilitarize to your mutual benefit. But in gunboat? Not likely.

A similar argument should explain why Italy doesn't want to, say, stab for Munich [although it often does in gunboat, hurting both G and I]. You get one build but it costs you a lot more than one unit to keep that build.

What are some good early expansions for Austria? Adding both Gal and Rum (with nothing in Boh) lets you hold a line with as many units as Vie/Bud/Ser, so it adds attacking power. In many cases, adding Bul will free up a unit. For the most part, other expansions will cost units rather than freeing them up, so you'd want to know enough about the other players' intentions to be sure that's a good decision.

http://tinyurl.com/lqrjp8s

Bo that is an exceptional contribution.

what about this:
A Bud-Gal
F Tri-Alb
A Vie-Tri

Fall: A Bud -Ser
F Alb- Gre or Ionian ( depending on Italy)
A Tri- Vie

then build your 2nd fleet signal Italy to move West. if Leponto stance go to Greece instead.

That's very dependent on Italy playing nice.

I got draws 2/3

Building a second fleet is unlikely to signal Italy to go West in a gunboat game. It may well signal Russia and Turkey to go West.

True.

Russia and Turkey almost always go West unless they are too busy fighting each other.

That second Austrian fleet can hurt your defense against them unless you can get one of them to not attack you full force.

A Bud-Gal, F Tri-Alb, A Vie-Tri seems very confusing. It's essentially the same as the standard Albanian Gambit A Vie-Gal, F Tri-Alb, A Bud-Ser but with the move Bud-Ser replaced by Bud-Tri.

I'm not sure what you gain by this. Italy rarely attacks through Tri (although in my opinion he should!). You give up control over Serbia and Greece, making it easy for Turkey to deny you a 5th center. And you're sending a signal that you distrust both Russia and Italy but somehow you completely trust Turkey.

I'm thinking of trying army Budapest to Rumania, army Vienna to Galicia and fleet Trieste to Albania next time. I'm somewhat disenchanted with Austria & being stabbed by Russia & or Italy, so I figure I might, repeat might try a " cause Russia maximum problems and encourage the Turkey monster" strategy with a quick defeat & exit .

My favourite ally when I have Austria is Italy, as imho, we've both got the dud nations & it's worked OK a few times.

I've seen that opening from Austria. Honestly, as long as Russia doesn't open to Rum himself, you can get by. Best would be either Russia opening north or Turkey opening to Armenia, but even without that you can negotiate support for Rum in exchange for Ser next year. If Turkey allies with anyone but you, though, you're up the creek.

I always say that if Italy and Austria fight, the game is over for both of them. It seems that Italy can get away with it given subpar play from Turkey and Russia, but assuming that they know to take advantage and leave Italy with only Trieste when he attacks Austria, Italy won't come out ahead.

Everyone is so hungry to kill Austria; but as soon as they die Russia, Turkey, or Italy have already broken free and become monstrous

Italy's best way to win is to remove Turkey and bother France in Piedmont simultaneously, which keeps the board fairly balanced since Turkey and France are the two powers most likely to grow quicker than they should. By bothering France, Italy prevents France from growing too much. Once Turkey is out, Italy can focus his naval power on either taking out Austria and growing that way or moving on France and then taking on Austria - his choice. Other powers are restricted to winning through German centers, but if Italy breaks France quickly enough or gets into Russia, he can win without ever having to break the German stalemate.