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[ghostofmars]

Game over - thanks for playing

Shameless quote from BGG:
The balance of power between the seven Great Nations of Europe teeters precariously at the dawn of the 20th Century. Take control of Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, or Turkey and lead your chosen nation to victory. You will have to balance your expansion with carefully crafted alliances, knowing when to seize the advantage through a perfectly-timed stab while avoiding being stabbed yourself.

To push players out of there comfort zone with the known stalemate lines and openings, we will play the 1900 variant designed to be more interactive than the original game. There are only small rule changes compared to the original version, so I think it is possible for new players to jump in.

Resources for the variant:
a high resolution map
Changes to the original version and their motivations
Gamers' Guide to this variant (extensive!) Discusses the motivation for the changes in a bit more detail and some ideas about the strategy in this variant.

Resources for the original game:
Diplomacy Official Rulebook
Quick Teaching Guide
jDip, a great tool for testing move ideas and making sure they're legal. You can download the variant map for jDip here

Ruler of nations:
Austria - KingZog3
Britain - liopoil
France - Jack Rudd
Germany - faust
Italy - A Drowned Kernel faust
Russia - WalrusMcFishSr
Turkey - Hydrad

Current map with latest moves:

[liopoil]

That map is great, thanks!

Gibraltar is an actual territory, but morroco and spain are adjacent? EGY and HEJ are adjacent to SAL, MOR, and MAO? Meanwhile EME is not adjacent to HEJ and ARA is landlocked? Is EGY adjacent to PAL or HEJ? All labeled territories can be occupied as well, yes?

It like how the three nations with only 3 starting SCs have advantages in other ways. How many SCs to win?

[ghostofmars]

Gibraltar is a sea spot, but armies can move into it (allowed are A Spa - Gib, A Gib - Mor). An army in Gib blocks fleets. As it is a sea spot convoy is possible F Gib C A Spa - Mor.

The only connection around Africa is Mao to Egy/Hej.
Neighbors of Egy (A) Pal, Cyr (F) Pal, Cyr, Hej, Eme, Mao
Neighbors of Hej (A) Pal, Ara (F) Egy, Mao

Here a bit more detail about the special rules for Mao - Egy, etc.
a) the attack is only half strength, so that given F Gib - Mao and F Egy - Mao, the latter will fail and the former succeed.
b) support (e.g. F Egy S F Mao) is not allowed
c) Shipping around Africa (e.g. F Egy - Mao) does not cut support (e.g. F Mao S A Gib), except if the defending unit is dislodged (e.g. F Spa S F Egy - Mao).
d) convoy is full strength if the target is directly adjacent to Mao (e.g. F Mao C A Egy - Por) and half strength if the target is Egy/Hef (e.g. F Mao C A Por - Egy).

Same number of SC for a win as in vanilla Diplomacy (i.e. 18), that means that less than half of the map is needed. Should two powers achieve 18+ in the same turn the one controlling more centers wins. If they control the same amount of centers, play continues until a single power has the most (and 18 or more) centers.

[A Drowned Kernel]

/in

[liopoil]

How will we be deciding nations? I want to be england

[ghostofmars]

How will we be deciding nations? I want to be england

Random, except if you agree on another distribution.

[faust]

Oooh, I finally get to play Diplomacy

/in

[shraeye]

I'll watch, but I'm not a huge fan of variants

[KingZog3]

/in. In about 2 weeks I'll be done term and things will be quieter. So I'd prefer to start after term is done.

[shraeye]

I'm reading about this version; could be interesting

[ghostofmars]

So two more and we could start.

[faust]

Bump!

I want to play. Come on guys, sign up!

[WalrusMcFishSr]

Yes do it! Ever so much fun.

If you enjoy Mafia and don't mind a map then you should definitely give it a try.

[KingZog3]

It's like Mafia but with territorial acquisition. How can you pass this up?!

[liopoil]

And in case you don't like mafia, it's nothing like mafia!

[pacovf]

And in case you don't like mafia, it's nothing like mafia!

I upvoted a random post of yours.

[liopoil]

And in case you don't like mafia, it's nothing like mafia!

I upvoted a random post of yours.

I'd rather you signed up.

[pacovf]

I'm starting a PhD in two weeks, might not be the best time right now...

[Jack Rudd]

Oh, whatever. Let's get killed again.

/In

[ghostofmars]

6/7

[Hydrad]

This looks super complicated... I'm kinda interested but I've never even heard of the game let alone the rules or anything. how overwhelmed would I be if I played. (I feel like some of your responses might be a bit biased though)

[WalrusMcFishSr]

Massively biased obviously...but it's really not so bad once you get the feel for it. Here's a quick rundown:

There are two types of units, armies and fleets, and only one unit may occupy a tile at a time. Each turn, there is a diplomacy phase, for general wheeling and dealing, followed by a movement phase. All moves are executed simultaneously to retain the excitement and surprise.

Every movement phase, each of your units can perform one of four actions.

Holding is self-explanatory, the unit attempts to remain in place.

The movement rules are also quite straightforward. Armies may move from one land province to another; fleets may move on ocean provinces and also coastal land provinces. Two units may not occupy the same place, so if one tries to move into another, or if two units try to move to the same location, they'll "bounce" and return to the original locations. There's some weird rules with canals and stuff but eh there's not many and they mostly make sense.

Convoying is a cool possibility but happens relatively rarely. You can use one or more fleets to convey an army across one or more sea provinces. It's always exciting when a convoy is organized between multiple nations!

Support is admittedly the most confusing part of the game, but it's really where things get interesting. It's logical and intuitive once you understand it. If a unit may move to a location, you may instead support a different unit defending that location, or alternatively support an attacker moving into that province. To figure out who occupies the province, just compare the total support for the attacking and defending units, with ties going to the defender, and the defender may retreat if dislodged. This gets more complex because support can also be "cut" under certain conditions--just bumping a supporting unit with an unsupported attack will usually cause the support to be canceled. So this can lead to intricate conditional webs of support where it's hard to tell what's going to happen...who knows if your "allies" will even act as they said they would. Sometimes you just have to try to outguess your opponents and hope for the best. But that's part of the fun!

The game is divided into "years" with a spring turn and a fall turn. At the end of the fall turn, if one of your units occupies a supply center you don't own, that supply center comes under your control. The number of supply centers you own determines the number of fleets and armies you can field, and gaining supply centers is the overall goal of the game.

However, the true soul of the game is in the diplomacy phase. I've found as a general rule: the more you communicate, the better you'll do. So even being unfamiliar with the finer points of tactics you could make a strong showing. Play your noobiness to your advantage!

[ghostofmars]

The basic rules of Diplomacy are very simple:
-You have 1 unit per center that you control, which can be either army or fleet. Adjustments for gained/lost centers are made every other round. If you gained centers you may build new units in your home centers. If you lost centers, you need to disband units.
-All spaces can be occupied by a single unit only, otherwise a conflict occurs.
-All players secretly give orders to all their units, which are revealed at the same time.
-There are four possible orders
a) hold - unit stays where it is
b) move - move unit to adjacent space (with the obvious limitations that army cannot cross sea and fleet cannot cross land)
c) support - assist another unit's move or hold order (important for conflicts). The limitation is that the supporting unit has to be able to reach the space the supported unit wants to move into (for move orders) or is in (for hold orders). The support order is cancelled if the unit is attacked by an enemy unit (exception: when the support is given to attack that enemy unit).
d) convoy - fleet transports a unit over a sea space. If the convoying fleet is forced to retreat, the convoy is aborted.
-Conflicts are resolved such that the higher number of units wins, if tied the defender wins or the space stays empty when it was empty (this is called bounce). This resolution can be a little bit convoluted if a lot of units are involved. After the conflicts all defeated units may retreat to an adjacent space, except for the one where the attacker came from or where a bounce occurred. Any unit that does not retreat is disbanded.

The important thing is that you don't win Diplomacy by being the most strategic unit mover. You win Diplomacy by making other players help you with your plans. If you struggle with the rules in the beginning there are three ways to help you i) you can talk to another player if you trust him enough ii) you can contact the moderator (that would be me ) iii) there are programs like jDip that can simulate the movement, so that you can test what works.

PS: Also what Walrus said

[Hydrad]

sure i'll

/in

to help you guys out. could be interesting.

[ghostofmars]

Ok, so we are full

As I'll go on vacation end of April till May 5th, I plan to start the game afterwards. I could however setup the game before, so that you have a week to discuss your first moves and set the first deadline after that.

Any comments on discussion time per turn? In the last game, we had 3 days (a week per year with a day for builds) and some commented that it was a bit too fast. However, towards the end I felt it almost a bit slow because there was not that much to discuss anymore. So currently I would suggest starting with a 4-5 days schedule so approximately 2 years in 3 weeks and perhaps speed up during the midgame. Do you guys prefer deadlines on weekends or during the week?

Edit: also, random nations?