Get inside the mind of Larry Harris!
To speculate on the Italian moves in the sample round one:
Italy can reinforce Venice with enough units to achieve parity with Austria 8 inf & 4 art each. Is it worth attacking with these odds? Not really, let Austria throw its infantry against your machine-guns next round.
So, to divert Austria away from the northern front:
Your transport picks up the Libyan garrison and dumps it into Albania, where it is joined by 4 reluctant local conscripts. Austria has landed itself with war on three fronts, and now bitterly regrets that cretinous and unnecessary attack on Serbia.
The Rome garrison moves up into Tuscany ready to reinforce Venice again next turn.
The Somalian infantry moves into BEA, since it cannot march though Ethiopia.
You place 2 inf and 2 art in Rome.
This would be the standard move given the circumstances.
Alternatives?
Attacking the Austrian fleet is too risky, even if you build a sub or 2 Austria will probably counter-build.
Because of this, its a slow process to move new units up to the Venice front; it may even be worth considering abandoning Venice for this reason. Better to hold a line you can reinforce immediately (Piedmont-Tuscany).
Albania becomes more attractive as you can ship units there from anywhere in Italy bar Venice.
A surprise for the Austrians would be a transport build, allowing you to send 4 units to Albania a turn, or even switch the Albanian army to defend the Piedmont-Tuscany line.
For me the bottom line is that, without rail movement, the critical 2 turns it takes to move new units to Venice means that this tt is best held with minimum force while you build up strong defences in P & T.
I like your Italy moves. I for one feel like Italy has few options if Austria hits it hard. Maybe it would have been better to combine the Italian and French fleets to ensure the Austrian fleet doesn’t get any funny ideas.
Every turn is a week, and thus there is rail movement in the game (The US comes into the war way too early).
Italy could easily rail an entire army the length of the county in a week.
Albania may become a key tt in the game, as Italy, France and Britain can reinforce it in a single turn, while it’s still two moves away from Vienna and Constantinople.
From there, the western Allies can expand into Serbia and Romania, linking up with the Russians to create a Balkan wedge between Turkey and Austria.
In essence it can play the part Greece fulfilled in the real war, but without the cost of invading it.
It may well pay Austria to invade it t1 and leave Romania for later; if only they didn’t have to make that silly attack on Serbia…
How can Britain and France reinforce Albania in a single turn? Their units are built several territories away. If you mean on the first turn, then yeah I suppose they have units in range to be landed by sea in one turn. Otherwise, Britain and France have to plan a couple turns in advance if they want to reinforce Albania (building in India/Paris/London and then moving them).
It may take a week to gather a WWI Infantry division, load them up on a train, move them, unload them, reorganize them so they are ready to fight, and then go fight. You not only have to rail the men, but their weapons, food, and other supplies as well. This is with early 20th century railroads, well in Italy maybe 19th century. I don’t know, I’m no rail expert.
Britain can funnel the India troops there in two turns, after the considerable middle eastern army is used.
Perhaps it would be better to have the B & F fleets sack themselves destroying the Austrian navy.
The point is, the initiative of movement is very much with the Allies via sea power. Since overland movement is slower, the Allies should be able to use this to their advantage in a way that they could not in the real war due to the internal (rail) lines of the Central Powers.
If the Allies work together they could have Austria begging for German help to defend Vienna before the Germans get close to taking Paris.
