Really KA, a lot of these variants are not possible in the real world, even the maps that you make are not all based in reality. When would England and Turkey ever square off without encountering a third party? Like most of the classic variants it would make for a more interesting game.

There's a difference between something not following a geopolitical or economic reality (for instance, Elsaß-Lothringen is French even in the standard board) and something not following the laws of physics. The latter is a far more egregious error.

The Korean War (either 1950s or present-day) board is interesting. I'd also be interested in seeing a Cold War European map or especially a global Cold War map. The former would naturally be two-player, whereas the latter could be two-player (capitalist vs. communist nations), three-player (add the Non-Aligned Movement), or even four-player (capitalist states, Soviet bloc, Chinese bloc, and NAM).

Bump

@KA: cool SA map, but without Germany?

Convoying fleets across land via armies only works on very very old school maps (like Ancient Egypt/Near East old school), back when a "navy" consisted of a bunch of dudes on wooden boats shooting bows and arrows at each other and boarding one another. For an industrialized state like all the states we see in Diplomacy games, that's just not feasible.

Why not?
industrialised sates have railways and like the fleets also put the army into smaller pieces and convoy them part by part, the sips can also be madeinto smaller parts and tsansported on the railway...
(really bad english, but i gave my best)

:))

Aside from the fact that one can't just disassemble and reassemble ships like that, even if one could, this would necessitate railways being built on each province in question. It's just not practical to include modern fleets being convoyed over land.

Like I said, if you want this kind of feature, your best bet is some kind of Ancient Egyptian/Ancient Near East variant.

Of course you can?
They even set whole HOUSES like that from one place to another...
^.^

...you didn't seriously just compare transporting a house across a highway to transporting a battleship across a railroad...

wait

The statue of Liberty was transported too!

...that still doesn't mean you can disassemble battleships, transport them hundreds of miles, and rebuild them with a single army regiment in a few months' time.

Let's use history as a guide somewhat:

The USS Iowa was laid down on the 27th of June, 1940. It was launched on August 27, 1942. That's 2 years and 2 months just to build a single battleship. The time required to disassemble a ship and transport it cross-country and then rebuild it? Surely much longer.

Analysis: President Eden is correct. If on any sort of a modern map (WWI included), this type of transport simply isn't anywhere close to realistic to perform in a single turn.

Now on the older map dating hundreds and thousands of years ago? This might be feasible. There is historical evidence for armies carrying small (and I mean like canoe small) boats across land. It's called portage. As for larger ships? I don't know if it's ever been done. That's not to say it's not feasible, but one turn might not have been. If there's a wish for it to be implemented, perhaps it's a year long project?

New concept: someone makes a star wars map so you have big battleshps able to go everywhere...
^.^

Now THAT, I can support! : )

so: who wants to make a star wars map?
any volunteers?

:))

on the issue of convoying... just for completeness. I believe the idea is that you have actual transport ships in place to move the armies, which consist entirely of men (and maybe some horses) it is 1901 after all, the first tank has not yet been invented.

The fleets invovled in the convoy spend their time protecting it, and thus are unable to provide support for their neighbours nor attack neighbouring enemies.

There is no hoping from one fleet to the next for an entire army of men, and this also goes some way to explain why the convoyed units move so fast (but not why fleets can't move faster... the normal convoy ship was able to travel from barents sea to east med in under 4-6 months (assuming that's the amount of time a turn takes)

Marching men across enemy terrain would take much longer.

I'm thinking of developing a few 5 player unbalanced maps (based on the classic map, and with the same home center if i can swing it)

I was thinking of a 12 center russia, with 4 3/4 center opponents.

One idea is to create a game with automatic alliances/teams, which of course the players can feel free to ignore.

Alternatively (and this will take longer, and i'm less inclined to write the code) is to create scenarios where each player has different goals/missions.

For example, the 12 center player would be aiming for a solo, meanwhile the other major powers would be hoping for a draw, and at the bottom of the heap, the minor powers consider even a survival as a major miracle (and thus earn points from surviving)

differing victory conditions to match the unfairness of the setup.

This has gotten out of hand.....

Now back to the original topic:

Not really KA, orathaic is most definitely talking about variant ideas.

On topic, I've always thought that a particularly interesting period to make a variant/map about would the the Collapse of the Khmer Empire in south-east Asia. Complete with impassable terrain, and quasi inland lakes/rivers/sea regions, it would provide quite a canvas for the intrepid designer...

back to my statement, just tie a couple of ropes to the front of the ship, like Jack Sparrow, and pull! He made it over land. I understand, realisticly, it would be hard to dissassemble then reassemble a ship in a few months time, but, it might be posible to do so. Convoying a fleet from Venice to Rome would save lots of time. I understand your concerns that it wouldn't be posible. Also, so variant ideas, a better WWII map(not that i hate the new one, haven't played it yet) and posibly a space map, could or could not be a Star Wars theme, be like planetary battles, like small islands (planets) and then use space battleships to convoy armies from planet to planet? It would definatly emphasize the convoying section, but it could be like a world map scale w/ lots of players SC's and "planets".

I think if there's ever an outer space variant, it needs some way to represent a three-dimensional field.

I have an interplanetary variant in the works, and if you would like to contribute (more hands the better & more likely it will be released later this year), please feel free to do so. I'm happy'ish with Mars, but any/all work on Venus, Pluto and Luna would be greatly appreciated.

(of course everyone who works on & assists in this project will be acknowledged)

here's the link:
http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=751

way more randomness: you have a risk board and every players get's 3 or 4 territories randomly which would be his SCs, maybe some neutrals also randomly...
would make every game truly different...
and i've been thinking about this one:
every SC has a resource, either for normal units (no fleets, but army includes tanks so didn't want to say that...), tank divisions or missiles, so 3 resources, spread over the SCs and every turn you get one resource of the one displayed by the SCs you're in, when you ahve enough resources you could build the units, normal units 1 resource, tanks 5, missiles 10 (of their own resource of course), then, there's no supporting thing, and when 2 infantry divisions (just thought of that, instead of normal units) face eachother they both die, same counts for 2 tank divisions, for inf. vs tank tank wins, and missiles could be fired one time and kill all units on 1 territory...

all numbers i just made up and might not be balanced yet...

few extra rules not mentioned yet:
more units are allowed on the same territory
units that die obviously get disbanded, no retreating in this game...

taking all SCs seems perfectly fine to me since then you could change the tide near the end when you finally get that missile...

draws are still a possibility...


so, that was it, it's not diplomacy anymore really but it's a nice and diplomatic game to me and it shouldn't be extermely hard to change, the resources might be but then you could decide you can't stock them and/or there is only one resource...
or inf has to be placed immediatly...
or everything as soon as you get it, missiles being stand-by i guess...

i've made it for risk-board with random start but again don't know wether that's fair or anything...

other ideas: involve planes, they move faster, they are maybe stronger but can't take SCs, or they can only support, and of course they can fly above both land and sea... could be added to above or just this variant...

i think that was all, if it's too hard for this site or something then i would still like maps and additional/different rules, to play with friends...

if anyone knows another place to say this tell...

Solar 3901 is a space Variant I have found, but have been unable to locate the rules. but it involves the motion of the planets through their orbits, and there are four moves per year to go with the seasons of Terra.

and i can't wait for the one with 4 planets...

though maybe it should be considered to make lots of more differences between the planets, pluto gets less countries, such things...
it's way to hard to make an account on that forum :)

@steephie22- first of all, 3 units is not currently possible... second- don't you think that may take away from Diplomacy a little bit?