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I love Naples. It’s so easy to decide what to build there, and often even easier to decide where to send it. I don’t have people begging me for support, and I never have the slightest bit resistance to proposals to other powers that they keep the hell out of the Tyrhennian Sea and the Ionian Sea. Ah, the simple life. No annoying neighbors within a years move, nothing but peace and quiet. It hardly even seems worth mentioning that Naples holds a dominating position over any movement through the Mediterranean. There are few areas on a Diplomacy board easier to plug up than the Mediterranean. The east to west land route is unbelievably constricted as anyone who has tried to invade the Balkans through the Pie-Ven gap knows. And there is a reason that Turkish fleets in the Atlantic are considered a very big event. That reason is Naples. The Mediterranean occupies the entire bottom third of the board, and yet one rarely sees the kind of east-west movement from France or Turkey in this area that one sees from other powers in the other two thirds of the board. In its own way, Naples is like Gibraltar. One fleet in Naples is able to support another fleet in either the Ionian or Tyrrhenian Seas, requiring any invader to invest at least three fleets before they can even get near Italian home centers. And unless Italy is being pressed from more than one direction, the Naples support can frequently stop an attempted invasion dead in its tracks for many years and sometimes forever. And even when the outer walls are broken, Italy, unlike England, has the exposed home centers next to each other where then can give mutual support. Having extolled the defensive virtues of my beloved Napoli, one might be tempted to spend entire Diplomacy games just basking in its warm embrace. But that would be foolish, for a significant part of the known world lies at your feet. Knowing your defensive virtues, enemies often shy away, leaving vast areas of the board undefended by anything other than a promise. And there is no better place to launch expeditionary forces into an exposed underbelly than from Naples. You likely already have fleets in Ionian and Tyrrhenian; just add one more fleet and you can suddenly be in such exotic and frequently undefended locations like the Western Mediterranean, Gulf or Lyon, the Eastern Mediterranean or the Aegean Sea. And if you think Naples is just a shipyard, think again! Many a successful Balkan invasion has begun with a convoy of Naples to Albania, and what better way to exploit a surprise attack on Spain than to convoy an army from Naples to Spain. When one plays Italy, it is easy to become locked on Venice because it seems so much closer to the action than any other Italian space. But to place Italy successfully, requires both the offensive and defense use of Naples, which is Italy's most versatile center.
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