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)
"(....) and Austria are hard because they are truly surrounded."
"This is the only country I have never finished Top 4 with. I just can't seem to figure it out and I always get crushed by the combined forces of Japan and Russia, along with one of the minor Asian powers. I hate playing China because it has no navy and is very restricted in it's options. But I won't give up on it, I will choose it again sometime in the future because I want to figure it out like other people have."
"Needs huge gains to win, lots of units on every map to look at, has to deal with every country, doesn't have an overwhealming presence in any one area."
"I believe that this is by far the hardest country to play. Your are visible on every map and facing different foes on each front. You must make short term alliances to buy time to deal with immediate problems, but you want to keep that avenues open for future expansion. Very tough."
"it's so spread out - where does it focus?"
"everybody love to hunt England, even if they don't admit it."
"Needs to keep a lot of countries happy and needs to stab several countries throughout the game. The anti-England alliance is a big obstacle."
"This position requires a lot of diplomacy since they are a favourite target of many countries. First you must convince Spain not to attack. Then you must do the same with England, since they hardly ever can get to the British Isles. War with Germany is usually useless, but it occupies two or your armies if you have to defend against them. And Italy will usually be claimed by Austria first.so where do you go if you are France? Maybe into Spain if you can talk England into helping you. In other parts of the world (Asia, Africa, the Americas), France is always one of the smallest powers, so you must be very strong diplomatically if you want to get a fair share, and to make sure they don't go after you."
"Sandwiched between hungry foes."
"France (...) have a dispersed colonial empire like England's but without England's might."
"(...)difficult to control, lot of relations to be handled"
"you know"
"I have not played it. However A-H is a great enemy. If England and German ally with each other, Italy will lose in Africa soon."
"I know almost everyone will mention Italy, but as tough as it is I enjoy the challenge. I have actually done okay with Italy. The most important thing is to take a big piece of Africa and get AH or France on your side. Russia usually makes an excellent ally for Italy and you can do okay if they are your ally and they aren't losing. But it is very difficult because it's so hard to expand in Europe in either direction."
"It has a very small neutral area before it is knocking on its neighbours doors unfortunately the neighbours has more neutral areas to grow from. This means that tremendous diplomacy skills are needed when playing Italy. You must secure your borders fast."
"Totally weak, relies upon favours, not in a good strategic position to start."
"Italy's not necessarily hard to play, it's just impossible to win with."
"(...) Japan are the ones that I consider the hardes to play because of the major sea battles that you have to fight to do well."
"damn map edges.."
"as far as I can judge from my experience - its neighbours always choose to attack it, obviously considering it the weakest target. Russia's long border creates multiple opportunities for its enemies to strike at the proper moment."
"Must sacrifice one end of the country to favour the other, very vulnerable."
"Fame or flame, too many enemies."
"(...)Spain have a dispersed colonial empire like England's but without England's might"
"First Problem you start out of the way and not part of the main stream. Then USA and England is forced to fight since they very seldom jointly own North America when one of them wins. Second there is no easy growth for USA and his enemies are limited therefore his diplomacy skills must be great."
"it's hard to increase territory as it is challenged by England. Not many folks need the USA as an ally, but it's enemies (England) usually have allies."
There is no suprise about the 3 more hard countries in GD. Still England had a considerable amount of votes (because needs more diplomacy, and has more potential enemies).
Players do not consider the others countries as very hard.