Apologies for my laziness here, I'm going to copy/paste a reddit post I made ages ago instead of writing a new one. It's about why Italy is better than stats make out, not why Italy is fun to play, but it gives a decent overview of why newer players find Italy less fun and why, to top level players, it's one of the most interesting positions on the board...
If you want a more detailed post, await the A_Tin_Can followup that I'm sure will be coming to this thread when he wakes up :D
[...] not only did Chris Brand top the final board at the World Championships last year with Italy (giving him the title of World Champion), there were also three other Italian solos in the tournament. Consider that there were only five solos over the entire thing, and you can see that Italy is not as weak as a lot of people make it out to be.
The thing about Italy is that it's incredibly well positioned, but its starting position is also misleading to less experienced players, because it's so easily defensible - but if you play defensively, you're never going to win. Italy's strength lies both in its ability to easily cross the stalemate line, and its ability to control the tempo on both sides of the board.
It's pretty common knowledge that, as an Eastern power, you want to keep the West in disarray for as long as possible, and as a Western power you want to do the same to the East. EFG are usually labelled as the 'Western Powers' and ART as the 'Eastern Powers', leaving Italy out. Since Austria and Germany both cannot cross the stalemate line early without essentially guaranteeing their own elimination, that leaves Russia and Italy as the only powers who can effectively control the tempo of both sides through their actions rather than just their words, and Italy can do it with minimal effort. A move to Piedmont in S01 hurts France's momentum and makes an E/G much more likely. Move that army to Tyrolia in F01 or S02 and you can aid the Frenchman against the German and the Englishman, balancing out that side of the board. Think that an EF is forming? Move that army back to Piedmont again and tie down a French unit and their southern build spot. Think an FG is forming? Send up another army and fill in Tyrolia and Piedmont to tie down at least two of their units.
The idea is that you keep the west balanced like this until you've made enough gains in the east (from Austria or Turkey, or both) to be able to launch an assault on Iberia or Germany. You can do this the other way around - try to balance the East with movements while you take Iberia - but that tends to fail against a Juggernaut, so I'd recommend doing it the way I talked about above.
That ability makes Italy one of the strongest, if not the strongest, soloing power. However, it requires a ton of knowledge about the game, judging board dynamics, and various other things which tend to require a good amount of experience. The country doesn't need a buff - the player just needs to be playing at a high level :)
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Mini-Tourney - Fast Game until Fall 1907!
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