Trieste - The worst place on the board for a fleet!

Maybe a slight exaggeration. Maybe.

Let's have a look at Trieste.


Things a fleet can do in Trieste.

  1. Attack Venice
  2. Move to/Support Adriatic
  3. Move to/Support Albania
  4. Hold
An Army can also do 1, 3, and 4. Adriatic is of niche importance as far as sea territories go, but moving there is at least something unique to fleets. I can count the times I've seen Trieste supports Adriatic on my pinkies. There are a few other things a fleet could do, like support someone else into Albania or support someone else into Venice, but the above four are your bread-and-butter.

Now: fairly standard things an army can do in Trieste.
  1. Attack Venice
  2. Support Vienna to Tyrolia or Budapest
  3. Move to/Support Tyrolia
  4. Move to/Support Vienna
  5. Move to/Support Budapest
  6. Move to/Support Serbia
  7. Support Budapest to Vienna or Serbia
Oh, and also move to Albania and Hold.

So in short, not only is a fleet vastly inferior to an army, a fleet also has another negative consequence: a fleet in Trieste prevents an army being in Trieste. Trieste is one of the most valuable army territories in the entire game.

I cannot stress how big of a problem this is, and why every single game the advantage starts out on the Italian side of the board: because Venice has access to Tyrolia and Trieste does not. Trieste relies on Vienna to defend its flank, and Trieste cannot attack Venice's flank in kind.

99.99% of the time, the only order you want to ever give that results in a fleet in Trieste is if you're playing Austria and the order is:

Build (F) Trieste. And that's still usually a bad move.

And the reason I bring this up as an article in its own right is because no matter how bad of a move it is, inexperienced players feel the need to make it.

The below position is not uncommon for a slightly lucky, slightly well played Austrian player going into 1902. A bounce in Galicia perhaps followed by a bounce in Trieste, with both Italy and Russia fairly friendly towards Austria and willing to focus on the Turk.


Austria goes up +2. Neither Italy nor Russia are hostile. Gal and Tyr are empty and a Russian fleet NOT army is in Rum. Turkey is penned in, all is good in the world. It is incredibly tempting to order (A) Budapest, (F) Trieste. If you're not an experienced Austrian player, you should almost certainly not do this!

A friendly Russia will pounce on you, even with being out-of-position (fleet Rum). A neutral or hostile Turkey is laughing. Italy is licking his chops. Without army Trieste the front line of Vienna-Budapest-Serbia has no depth whatsoever. Even before Russian reinforcements arrive, you cannot bounce let alone move Gal and threaten either Rum or Bul. You cannot hold Gal and defend Tyr. You are vulnerable to a convoy into Albania. You cannot move into the one territory that Fleet Trieste has advantage over Army Trieste, the Adriatic, without opening up Trieste anyway. Despite your compact size you are effectively fighting a two front war, because Trieste is incapable of supporting any other territory of consequence (as is Greece for that matter, but at least Greece gains you a dot).

Army Trieste on the other hand forces others to guess if they wish to attack you. Everything in your core can defend everything else, and this adds guesswork to enemy calculations when thinking of making a stab. You can hold off either Italy or Russia indefinitely and so play them off against each other should they try anything. As long as one stays focused on Turkey, you have very little to fear.

So when should you build a fleet Trieste? Frank answer: maybe never. Assuming you're trying for a solo, Austria can plausibly have Vie, Bud, Tri, Ser, Gre, Ven, Bul, Rum, Sev, War, Mos, Mun without any use of its sole initial fleet. That's 12. Turkey is very tough to crack without fleets and with French assistance to Italy (or France just grabbing for itself, the greedy bugger) you may have a hard time taking southern Italy/Tunis, but the rest of the Southeast from Bulgaria to Munich can be done with good tactics and great diplomacy. If Russia/Italy/Turkey/France have bad wars, you could still pick up Con, Ank, Smy, Nap, Mar either by acting as a vulture or through assistance of someone else's fleets. That's 17. Berlin wins you the game.

Yes, maybe you need a second fleet at some point, either to crack Turkey or take Tun... but the point is a savvy Austria is more than capable of topping the board, forming a coalition stalemate line as a leader, or even soloing without a navy. It's not always easy, but it's in the realm of realistic possibility.

But if you insist on building a second fleet and don't have the experience yet to treat it more of an art than a science, here's what I would suggest. It's going to take two turns to get (F) Trieste anywhere that could even considerably be useful (Ionian or Greece). Therefore, you should only even consider (F) Trieste when you have no use for an army within three moves of Trieste. If you have a stable frontline running from Piedmont, Munich, Warsaw, and Cons... then okay, build a fleet. Maybe. Short of that, (A) Trieste every time.

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