that should read "the fifth installment"

i did not use the following game types:

games that ended before 1904
7-way draws
games with clear indications of multi-accounting
games in which 3 or more players resigned:

When Italy draws, who else draws?
England: 63%
Turkey: 57%
France: 47%
Germany: 46%
Russia: 44%
Austria: 30%

When Italy is eliminated, who solos?
Turkey: 40%
Austria: 17%
Russia: 17%
England: 11%
France: 11%
Germany: 4%

When Italy solos, who's eliminated?
Austria: 80%
Turkey: 57%
Germany: 38%
France: 37%
England: 31%
Russia: 31%

Best Ally: Germany, England
Greatest Adversary: Austria, Turkey
Average Year of Victory: 1910

First, to comment on what i saw in the statistics above: clearly italian victory must go through austria (80% austrian elimination and thats not including any austrian survivals with less than 3 centers remaining!). additionally, austria gained the second most out of italian elimination and this spread was even more when you include the fact that austria had the second-to-least amount of solos in general!

concerning turkey, turkey is also a clear threat and must also be dealt with. the T/I alliance is always a tentative one and clearly one of the least stable alliances in the game. to my recollection, i think there may have been 1 T/I 2-way draw out of the 100 i looked.

another thing to examine is that there are 2 major triangles in the game. the western (E/F/G) and the eastern (R/A/T) and the question is typically: "Where does Italy stand?"
based on what we observed here, italy has much more to gain by influencing the eastern circle and leaving the west to its own. the whole of the western solos when italy is defeated is only 1/3 that of the eastern circle and less than turkey's tally of solos alone! this makes sense since italy lacks the ability to directly affect most of the west but can directly affect 2/3 of the eastern countries.

the most shocking thing is the huge drop in german solos when italy is eliminated! again, this makes sense since most of the power affecting italian defeat comes from the east and 2 of those 3 powers (russia and austria) are also likely to affect germany later on in the game. thus, germany has much to gain in seeing italy on the board and more to gain when italy is focused on turkey initially.

lol, no prob TGM. youre probably right. next time ill type it in another document so that i just have to copy paste.

Just one 2 way draw between Turkey and Italy is hardly proof its a bad alliance. 2 way draws are massively unnatural, and for them to do that properly they would somehow have to split scandanavia between them.

A far better indication is the draw percentages, which puts Turkey very high up on the list. Especially among neighbouring countries.

weird, I have always had the best luck with an Italian-Turkish alliance. Especially since it tends to led to an overly strong England. This has happened to me 3 different times.

i agree that they can make really great allies, the problem comes to later in the game. out of the common 2-way draws, this was seen near the bottom of the list and likely leads to a turkish solo. keep in mind that the draw count only tabulates when turkey didnt take the stab. clearly there is a war there and that mistrust is at least equally as high as it is for the A/G alliance and even more high than the R/T

the best means for them to ally is when there is another dominating power. if not, then there will typically be war between them.

Two way draws are unnatural. If you could not include them in the stats you would probably get a better picture of what would happen in a competitive game with veterans. You give two way draws far too much credit.

im not trying to say that 2-ways have any real strength, because they dont. im simply stating that the number of turkish eliminations coupled with the number of turkish draws and the number of turkish solos all lead to tentative alliances between I/T. this makes a little sense since there isnt a real stalemate area forcing them to be friends except in the event that the two of them are working to prevent a third country from soloing.

i hope this makes a little more sense. i wasnt really attempting to draw any real further conclusions based on 2-way draws other than if you were to look ONLY at 2-way draws, this wouldnt really score high on the list.