Now what are the main reasons that make players consider a country to be easy?
(After every map there will be Citations from the players)
"It has many neutral point around. If A-H is peace with German, it can war with all the others neighbours. Italy is a favourite target. Ottoman will lose capital easily if it's off guard. Russia is too weak if it is busy in Asia."
"Austria only need one map and can focus their strategy, working from a tight and coherent geographical base."
"It's a great giant in mainland. With two armies at initial setup, it can break Russia easily. If you decide to go for Japan, it's easy to defend at start. South Asia is a piece of cake for China."
"Because of its condensed area its move are pretty much set. China is a easy game if you can get a long term alliance with Japan or Russia, need one of those sides locked down."
"England, coz from the very start it has an opportunity to obtain more SPs than any other country. Besides the most of its numerous neighbours have contradictory interests which makes it easier to persuade them to join your camp bringing them against each other."
"My impression is that it's generally easier to play the larger countries - with the smaller countries it's more difficult to recover from a mistake early on. So I'll say, England."
"It has a lot of neutral point to get at start. France and England are not strong enough to compete with German if they do not ally together. In Africa, German force are easy to join together. Pacific Ocean maybe the only weak point for German. However it's not important."
"Compared to any other country, this one is by FAR the easiest. The main advantage is that if you can survive the first 8 turns or so, you are probably not only going to play til the end, but you're almost surely going to make Top 4. Germany can expand in the late stages of the game when other countries have run out of options. They are spread around the world enough that they always have opportunities, but they are not spread so thin that they have too much trouble defending it. And there are many different strategies that work when playing Germany, whereas with other countries there may only be one or two good strategies which consistently work."
"People try very hard to ally with you because they are scared. Many continents to spur on constant growth."
"Virtually impossible to conquer if J concentrate on its navy."
"If played right, the game will be over quickly before anyone knows what happened. Small size makes victory requirements easy to reach. Large navy can quickly overwhelm enemies."
"Coz it has a rather strong position strategically thinking and - to my mind - its neighbours, at least most of them, normally would prefer to have it as ally rather than foe and this gives a good opportunity."
"Only one major power (Russia) is in your area. Easy to eliminate the smaller enemies around you (England/Austria/Italy)."
"Because they are mainly land locked and land wars are more simple then amphibious and sea wars."
"Spain is a personal favourite of mine because with just one ally they can usually eliminate France. If that ally is England or the USA, they can also rule a large portion of the Americas, and I've even seen them move as far as Australia and Japan. Spain is a fun position to play because of it's flexibility and mix of land and sea units."
"Only needs two good allies for the game to do well. Other countries require much more diplomacy!"
"No one ever want to kill spain in the beginning."
"Few initial units, most secure capital (Other than japan), usually only gets total wiped out if everyone allies against him."
"USA's biggest advantage is that once England is gone they have a whole continent to themselves with only the Japanese as a serious threat. I have come first twice and second once in my three games as USA and I've always found it to be fairly easy to play without having to pay a lot of attention to it."
Germany and Austria-Hungary are considered the easiest country to play with, as expected. And Italy and France had not a single vote from the players. More interesting is that few people consider Japan to be easy.
Like in the next questions concerning countries you will see that the concept of easy/hard/fun changes from country to country. This is what makes GD so interesting.