Really? I wouldn't have guessed Turkey.

Unless turkey is pounced on by a swift Lepanto alliance, or Russia really insists on trying to attack them all game, they can generally do decently well to start the game. If they can get to the midgame with 6-7 sc's, they become very tough to knock out of their defensive position.

Russia is the most likely nation to solo.

But they are also hard to grow with. They are darn near impossible to dislodge, but they have just as hard a time growing.

Where does that stat come from goldfinger?

I forget. I think Tru Ninja did it? Check his profile, it might be there.

If I recall correctly, the order goes Russia, France, Turkey, Germany, England, Italy, Austria - in terms of winning percentages.

KingCyrus: There has been a lot compiled already in regards to Diplomacy game statistics, even from data dumps of webDiplomacy statistics. Don't waste your time working from scratch.

@JECE, I figured someone had done it, which is why I am asking

Tru Ninja did a really good analysis a while back (circa 2011, roughly three years ago now actually!). I've still got copies of it; PM me your email address and I'll send it over. Should give you a pretty good start.

From my own experience:
- Russia is the most likely country to win
- Turkey is the most likely country to win OR be involved in the final draw
- France and England aren't too far behind Turkey
- Germany has a respectable win rate but mediocre win + draw rate
- Austria and Italy are well behind the pack in terms of win rate AND win + draw rate

Countries can roughly be split into two groups: the "Sturdy" countries (England, France, Turkey) who have an elimination rate around 35% and the "Frail" countries (the rest) who have an elimination rate around 50%. Of these "Frail" ones, Russia is the only one who has a fourth center and thus compensates for its frailty with a high win rate.

The one takeaway is that corner positions = good, center positions = bad.

OK, thanks for the info!

KingCyrus: Yep, but I didn't/don't have time to do the research to be more useful. You should be able to ask for an updated data dump from somebody should you want to use updated statistics. Basic statistics are stored somewhere, although if I remember correctly from discussions about the study President Eden is sending you they can be hard to work with if you want to throw out games corrupted by banned players, 1st-turn NMR's, etc.. For statistics outside of webDiplomacy, Google searches should help you. Records of games have been kept for at least half a century and these records have been analyzed statistically for strategy articles for just as long.

Other statistics you might be interested in are here:

http://www.draugnar.com/vaftstats/

and here:

http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1176

That last link includes a link to an SQL dump of the movement from games, if that's a thing that interests you.

I haven't seen TruNinja's analysis, I'll send you a PM, PE.

Great stuff guys, thanks a bunch!

I have glanced over Tru Ninja's work, and it is really good stuff! It tracks just about everything.

If you're interested in stats on variants, vdip does a decent job of logging them:
http://vdiplomacy.net/stats.php