Hello everyone.
I was the TA for Austria. I tried to have a hands off approach and only give advice to him about strategic advice given his reads of players with regards to what he should be recommending as deals and what he should be looking to accomplish, rather than specific tactical advice. If he said he wanted to do something but suggested strictly worse moves to accomplish the same thing, I told him better moves that did the same thing.
He ignored essentially all of my advice and insulted me before he was actually eliminated. The only turn he did something resembling what I suggested was, in fact, 1902 with the move to ION from ALB while SER supports TUN to GRE (I thought that was happening, but either I'm misremembering what we discussed or Austria decided to do a moveset I didn't recommend again).
I'm going to say the advice I gave Austria as well as I can remember. I didn't log our conversations, so there's a real chance I'm going to get something wrong.
Spring 1901:
Austra says he's super frightened of an Italian attack. I want to be certain he has reason to suspect Italy is attacking him, and he says he does.
I tell him in that case, he should tell Italy he's moving TRI into VEN. This way Italy knows Austria bears him no ill will, but it simply concerned about a possible Italian stab. It doesn't seem like he did that.
Fall 1901: I try to convince him it doesn't look like Italy has any ill will towards him so he should be free to do whatever he wants.
Builds 1901: I tell him he needs to be worried about Russia and Turkey, not Italy, and so he should build an army in VIE to help deal with army GAL.
Spring 1902: He's still scared of Italy, but we have a good way to handle it by the moves previously discussed.
Fall 1902: I have no clue what he was doing this turn. It was all about being defensive but in the most useless of fashions (What on earth was RUM-BUD?)
It really seems like Austria gives up around here, just just makes some moves for the rest of the game for shits.
Spring 1903: He decided to make his bed with Turkey. I tried convincing him that Italy was a better partner who needed to work with him, but I think we’ve seen how effective I’ve been so far.
I don’t remember the advice I give for the rest of the game. I stopped caring after Austria took so long to reply to any of my messages.
I agree completely with Goldfinger's analysis about Italy being suicidal by attacking Austria, but frankly I can't blame him much after having to communicate with Austria for any period of time.