at the moment i seem to always be one of the southern countries it is really annoying

god give me russia! always

I'm sick of Turkey. Useless, useless country.

It's so easy to win as Turkey. It's hardly even fair for the other players. Unless they all kill him in the beginning he has every chance of winning.

I'm tired of never being France or Germany or Austria. Ever. I just want to try them out. =(

Turkey has the fewest options for an opening of any country in the game! Couple that with being almost assured no allies (Austria prefers Russia, and an alliance with Russia brings a swift beatdown for both players) and you've got a recipe for the (second?) worst country in the game.

No England and Austria are the two worst countries. I would rather be Italy!

Italy? Italy's easily the worst. Turkey at least has growth potential, but Italy has to become Russia's slave to get anything out of Austria and ends up getting stabbed by France along the way.

And then there're those two to three rounds where all you have is Tunis and the only thing you can do is keep getting bounced back from the Ionian or go on one last adventure to North Africa. Unless you're very lucky Italy's really, really not good.

I disagree. I find you have a lot of options when playing Italy. In addition, everyone else is usually too busy attacking other people so you usually have enough time to plan a defense/stab.

Yep, quite a few on here have better records with Italy than any other country and certainly better than with Russia.

Russia is always a double-edge sword.... no country has a greater influence on the board from the start. But it is a difficult country to play and conversely every other alliance/stab on the board has direct ramifications for the motherland. So if you love the art of diploming then Russia is probably one of the most fun nations to play.

If you like playing safe and secure countries and forming one strong early alliance to see you through most of the game, then you will be in trouble.

Italy - I have had a lot of fun with in some games; but also had others games where I have been largely ignored and have ended up having to potter around waiting for an opportunity to grab a 5th centre.

russia is the weakest mid-game power. the secret to russia is basically a slow expansion until 1904-ish. italy is best played as a defensive/friendly country, and just needs to wait for opportunities to present themselves. an early aggressive italy is hard to win with (not impossible, just hard). england is one of my favorites, because it has the potential to simply grab for centers in most of the early game. with most other countries this would result in a quick backlash/elimination, but if you play it smart with england, you can pull off an early lead without drawing a slew of enemies.

alamothe its funny you should say that bc you have more wins as turkey than you do with russia

But alamothe is that geezer in the famous logic puzzle, you know, the one where one guy never tells a lie, the other never tells the truth... ; )

i despise being austria. Austria has the greatest chance of being ganged up on than any other country. They always get the butt-end of alliance, be it between him and russia, or him and turkey, or him and italy. And there is always the chance that germany will go south, rare as it may be.
England is NOT the worst player by far. It is easy for england to make alliances, and any backstabs on his allies' parts would require at least 3 fleets or more, and by that time england can see it coming and prepare himself.

This statement is a lie!

Back on topic, I had the thought that country choices could possibly be weighted to give players a more evenly distributed draw of countries as opposed to the current (albeit truly random) system - It's funny how what our brains think is random really isn't random at all. It could be something like the last 7 drawn countries will be weighted less or keep a complete running tally of all your games. I think with a small enough weight it would be slightly noticeable to the player but shouldn't affect any meta-gaming situations much at all. Besides, as long as each player is getting each country at a 1/7 chance over their entire play history it shouldn't matter for stats and the like.

This could even be weighted higher for beginners so that they don't get stuck with Austria 3 out of their first 7 games (we don't want to scare them all away ;)) - how do you do a smiley inside parenthesis?

You don't.


Anyway, I apologize for the gripe, I just don't like being Russia because you are next to everyone except France. Now, I love diplomasizing, but not when you're trying to make sure not everyone teams up on you.

what varient have you been playing?
last time i checked italy was a ways from russia ;)