They are currently done from Top-left across the board and down to bottom right, in a shame kinda like this: \ / - \ Surely that's not too surprising

yes, it's how programers work

The order of Italy and Germany has always bothered me; I think they should be the way around.

I went ahead and changed it to EFIGATR for you Edi - Hope that's more to your liking.

Out of curiosity, I understand alphabetical, but why do you think that EFGIART would have been the norm? - Is there some Diplostorical reason for that ordering?

The hobby started as a postal (snail mail) hobby with amateur magazines done on Mimeo or Ditto repoduction (xerox was not available and then was too rare and expensive). There were no maps only text ((which is why I like to see full text reporting of results)) and countries in North America were displayed in the order of West/Center/East so it was
EFGIART.
When you play from text, and most of the veteran players did, having things in order by EFGIART made it easier from the start of the game.

When the French came on line they tended to put things in alphabetical by the French language so that Germany came in first.

As I said in a visual map world where people ignore the text it is only a very minor comment, but I am always curious as to why things come out one way and not another.

blah blah...

alamothe - are you celebrating the 21st ammendment anniversary or something?

Not sure why, that was just the order that I entered the territories into the database from my map (then entering each of the border relationships between the two territories and whether armies and/or fleets could cross. those were some fun hours)