I used to think FG was the ideal alliance, but I'm starting to believe that it is far too favourable to Germany (France does most of the work to destroy England, but this gives Germany Scandinavia on a plate and in order to get English gains France will eventually need German help, so Edi has to be given to Germany as well. Then France is faced by the Italian bottleneck, which means Germany gets an even further advantage in centre count. The stab is just a matter of technique).

Now my prefered alliance is AR which has good stab opportunities for both A and R keeping them more honest. I don't think the Italian bottleneck is so destructive to Austria as it is to France and Turkey because Austria can support himself to Tyrolia which ought to be enough to win Venice.

I can't see an early IAT working in a million years. Italy has to work out another alliance in order to attack France, and Turkey gets crammed in by Austria and Italy since StP is so easily held from the north. Kudos akilies if you really did make one work.

here is the link to the IAT game gameID=9325

it was working great and we could have probably gone three way draw, but turkey stabbed austria, which opened up the door for germany, who started getting stronger. it was early in my Diplomacy career so i made some dumb moves and i should have gotten more of austria's SC's but didn't. eventually turkey decided to go CD and germany and i teamed up on turkey, don't know why i did that, and then germany won because i was totally oblivious to his moves.

though it would have worked a lot better if turkey had stuck to the plan.

i've never tried it again, it can go wrong extremely quick.
sorry for any bad grammar or spelling errors.

EG is probably my favourite, whilst it's mirror, ie RA is also very good. How they both work is quite clear I think, and they depend on taking control of the corner early on, and demilitarizing it to ensure faithfulness. In the EG case this is rather easier to do by sending Germany by land and England by sea.

The best alliance is the juggernaut. People will try to say others will work just as well. Nu-uh. Sorry. Juggernauts are the strongest bond one can make.

re: Juggernaut is too powerful
Really? I can't remember seeing a successful juggernaut, because you can see it forming far too early, so everyone else tends to ally against it...

You have to play around with it until the map is broke. It's a common mistake for Turkey and Russia to jump into it. Everyone is watching for it at the start because it's so common at the start.

Yes, whereas you can often run EG through the entire game

Until they get greedy and stab each other. They're too open for stabs against each other. It's too risky for Germany to allow England to grow strong because England can just create a standoff elsewhere while he picks of Germany's unprotected SC's.

Just my thoughts on it. I know it works if there's complete trust. It usually only happens in PPSC.

I will tell you something about Juggernauts.
If you play Russia and England doesn't start aggressively against your chance to win is at least 50%.
So if you are England and you see a juggernaut forming attack Scandinavia with full power!

@hellalt
If Turkey or England start aggressively its crippling.
Even Germany can cause some damage.
I'd say for 50%, you need NAPs from G and E to begin with and a friendly Turkey

If supply centers are traded off to keep builds equal, then just about any alliance will work, if stabs are out of course. EG has worked really well for me, especially after we disbanded his fleet. I took Britain he took scandinvia and with his fleet gone I head for the west med whole hog. I ran a key lepanto that washed the board and we would have run Germany out of town had I not agreed to a 3 way win.
I am very interested in distant alliances like F/R or E/T. In E/T for instance if you can finish Russia quickly then you are a juggernaut that builds in the atlantic!

Whoops I meant FG above and disbanded the German fleet

I agree with you Dave Bishop but those conditions are not that hard to meet.

Dave and Doofman made a disgusting team on that board

Doofman, I don't think that's technically a textbook lepanto, but it did work well. Normally for a lepanto the army in apulia gets convoyed to tunis while the fleet stays in ionian so that you get to turkey faster. Blue water is my favorite lepanto style where austria gets his fleet to the ionian quickly and inserts it into the convoy chain, i have a game where i'm doing that and so far it's awesome.

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=11534#gamePanel
This is My solo win as Austria in an A/I/R alliance.

You may ask yourself why wasn't austria squashed?
simply put I started out in an A/I alliance which freed up the burden of defending tri and allowing my armies to open up diplomatic options with russia.
At this point England was pressuring Russia because he was free from worrying about France while France fought Italy.
So while italy and russia are tied down by a possible E/F alliance out of necessity, I was allowed to drive through Germany while keeping russia in check by keeping him supporting me, and surrounded england with the help of italy witch kept him honest through his support.
I was most impressed with this solo win.

Austria and Germany. They stick together until the bitter end. I have never been stabbed by Austria as Germany, and vice versa. In terms of integrity, you can't argue with A/G

It's entirely situational. Any two countries with the right players can be tough.

Russia and turkey usually russia wins in this allaince but near the end turkey if he plays it right can get a really good stab for the win.

I love turkey so yea.

just ask hellalt hahahaha

gameID=15818