It's a little weird, but being weak makes negotiating easier. You get more bidders, more or less. Say you're in a 3 way dispute, with two stronger powers. It's real easy position them against each other and you're the obvious ally. This works well enough that even the weaker starting positions seem to be more influenced by alliance choices than by their objective positions.
Austria is second only to Italy in difficulty. The central board position is a strength, but also a weakness. I'm a firm believer that Austria needs to crush either Turkey or Russia as quickly as possible, so they can get their back to a wall somewhere and not be constantly surrounded. Turkey is a better target, because it enables naval operations later. But ultimately it depends on your opponents.
Yeah, it's just hard to make Italy-Austria work, with the neighboring centers. Plus there's the ever-popular Lepanto. I love playing Italy, but if Austria offers me a Lepanto opening, I agree to it and then stab them immediately. Lepanto is a sucker's game.
