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VillageIdiot wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 16, 2019 10:04 pm

I've not bounced Gal a few times playing as Russia if I have good relationships with both Italy and Turkey.

By agreeing to a Gal bounce you can be relatively confident in Austria's moves being to Gal, Serbia, and Albania which when tipped off to Italy allows him to walk right into Trieste with Rome to Venice.
...

I've seen this used effectively at the WDC this year, but in Autumn. Italy opened to Tyrolia and Venice. Austria still proposed a bounce in Gal to Russia. Italy took both Vienna and Trieste.

Claesar wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 17, 2019 6:40 am

VillageIdiot wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 16, 2019 10:04 pm

I've not bounced Gal a few times playing as Russia if I have good relationships with both Italy and Turkey.

By agreeing to a Gal bounce you can be relatively confident in Austria's moves being to Gal, Serbia, and Albania which when tipped off to Italy allows him to walk right into Trieste with Rome to Venice.
...

I've seen this used effectively at the WDC this year, but in Autumn. Italy opened to Tyrolia and Venice. Austria still proposed a bounce in Gal to Russia. Italy took both Vienna and Trieste.

Well played!

VillageIdiot wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 16, 2019 10:04 pm

I've not bounced Gal a few times playing as Russia if I have good relationships with both Italy and Turkey.

By agreeing to a Gal bounce you can be relatively confident in Austria's moves being to Gal, Serbia, and Albania which when tipped off to Italy allows him to walk right into Trieste with Rome to Venice.

Has the Southern Hedgehog fallen out of favor these days?

DougJoe wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 18, 2019 11:05 am

Has the Southern Hedgehog fallen out of favor these days?

Yes, it has. Most people nowadays think taking Greece is necessary for Austrian survival. I am one of those. The Hedgehog is just a slow death.

Especially when you play online, shooting for the stars is usually more preferred. There's always next game, if you crash and burn.

If you just drove 3 hours to play F2F, then maybe. If you really can't intimidate Italy nor Russia, postpone your demise.

Southern Hedgehog can sort of work as Austria if you're in alliance with Turkey, but it's still somewhat difficult to effectively work it through and Turkey will typically have the upper hand in the alliance for quite a while. Otherwise, yeah, better to have an alliance w/ Italy and/or Russia and move accordingly in spring 1901.

I strongly disfavor the Hedgehog because I think it hedges in a spot where hedging doesn't actually help you. Austria's problem is not that it is temporarily tactically impaired and just needs to buy time to get set up against Italy. If that were the case, then the Hedgehog would be a much better opening, since it ensures you get that time. Austria's problem is that it is dependent upon the goodwill of Italy or Russia to survive the early game. It can generally fight R/T to a tactical stalemate if Italy is at least neutral, although it will eventually lose to R/T without help (either England and/or Germany relieving pressure from Russia or Italy attacking Turkey), and sometimes it can fight Italy and Turkey to one as well, depending on the situation (this is harder but possible). But if both Italy and Russia want you dead, no amount of cheeky pokes at Venice or Galicia will save you.

I would argue that an Austrian fleet in Greece is a good argument of allying Austria.
If Turkey gets Greece (and thus 5 builds) it is usually > Russia unless crazy stuff happens in the north. Esspecially since Serbia is immediately under pressure.
Austrias problem is that Turkey actually profits from Austrias demise too. Since Greece (and Serbia) are up for grasp.
Seen multiple games where Austria just surrendered both to fight vs either I or R. So Turkey is not too incentivized to ally Austria.