"Fleet Rome" makes Italy much harder to play, and it makes Austria much easier.

In the first seven player game I ever played in, we actually decided to start Italy with four units, giving Italy its fleet in Tunis to start with... We also did a "draft", so the highest number got to pick which great power he wanted first and Italy was selected last, though we had a rule that if you didn't make your pick within 24 hours you were given whatever great power was alphabetically first of the remaining great powers and the guy picking stick was givien Austria, so Italy may have gone 6th... Anyway, I also remember drawing France and Italy blitzing me straight out of the gate, but something quickly came up in the east and he ended up backing off just as quickly... and then quit and someone else took over that was an arrogant SOB and was eliminated pretty quickly... It was an interesting experiment though!

One of the pirated versions of Diplomacy in Brazil had Fleet Rome as a standard. The result was that Italy was crushed repeatedly and that Austria became a top tier country. Most common openings were with France or Germany sending one army down to team up with Austria and take out Venice automatically.

Fleet Rome is a horrible alternative as I see it.

I agree with EdiBirsan: Fleet Rome makes Italy much more susceptible to an early death via attack from Austria, France, Germany, or some combination thereof.

Perhaps a better alternative would be making the Italian home supply centers Venice, Apulia, and Rome-Naples (combined to form one province). With an army in Venice and fleets in both Apulia and Rome-Naples, Italy would have the flexibility to attack Austria in 1901 (F APU-ADR), to fully defend against an Austro-French attack (A VEN-TRI, F APU-ADR, F ROMNAP-ION), or to even set up defensively for a Lepanto-style attack on Turkey (F APU-VEN, A VEN-ROMNAP, F ROMNAP-ION).

That alternative was something I just pulled out of my arse so go ahead and rip it apart if you like :)