The start date is Spring 1201.

Powers can build on any vacant supply center they own.
The Sahara desert is impassable.
Movement is allowed between Cordoba (Cor) and Morocco (Mor).
Denmark (Den) and Constantinople (Con) are canal spaces that allow fleet and army movement.
Starting Positions:

Castille, Fleet Valladolid (Vld), Army Toledo (Tol)

Almohad Caliphate, Army Cordoba (Cor), Fleet Tunis (Tun)

England , Fleet England (Eng), Army Guyenne (Guy)

France, Army Paris (Par), Army Auvergne (Auv)

Holy Roman Empire, Army Hesse (Hes), Army Bavaria (Bav)

Denmark , Fleet Denmark (Den), Fleet Scania (Sca)

Papal States, Army Rome (Rom), Army Ravenna (Rav)

Hungary, Army Buda (Bud), Army Pest (Pes)

Rus, Fleet Novgorod (F Nov), Army Kiev (Kie)

Byzantine Empire, Army Constantinople (Con), Fleet Athens (Ath)

Egypt, Fleet Egypt (Egy), Army Jerusalem (Jer)

Sweet! Thank you!!

Why not just draw each of the African territories all the way out to the perimeter and eliminate the grey blob eyesore though?

You can check the preview on the variant page too: http://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=114

Very intriguing. I can't wait. Thanks for all you do.

@G-Man

I don't know. I considered throwing a dragon around but it didn't work well. I kinda like the grey and the map's round form.

@ScubaSteve

I hope you will enjoy it!

Love the round form, just don't like the big grey blob on the map itself. Looks like a fun variant though, will have to move it up in my queue.

Turned the grey into black. =P

'Crusades 1201' should launch next week.

http://vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=114

Moving this to the top of the queue in my Cloak & Dagger series (where we continually play new 6+ power variants each time out, with only an occasional return to a previous strong variant).

But are you talking a black blob that extends into the circular map? (I don't see anything different on the vDip map). I suggest just drawing MOR, TUN, LIB, and EGY all the way out to the circular edge, as that will play the same. Or if historical accuracy is super important to you, I would develop a new standard that looks better for impassible territories, e.g., use one of the more appropriate and less used colors from one of the states in the Divided States map (50 powers) for impassible areas, along with leaving it unnammed and explaining that it's impassible in the rules. E.g., the colors for any of Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, or Kansas. IMO, Black (and dark grey, which is near to black) has always been hard to look at for impassible areas.

I am talking about the blob, yes.

I tried different colors in different shades, but none worked right - it ended up pulling attention from the map itself.

I went for gray but it got weird with the Saharan wasteland. So I went for neutral black. I think it looks better now.

I wanted some dragons around. =(

P.S.: Black isn't shown of course. I like the round map bettter!

Make the blob a dragon ;)

Jokes aside, looks like a fun (and somewhat chaotic) map! Rus seems a tad weak to me since they can easily be denied a build if the Holy Roman Empire forces them out of Poland...

I knew you would like it! =)
Rus & Hungary was incredibly hard to balance.

Originally Rus had Army Novgorod. However, it made Hungary far too exposed as Rus could take Poland *and* bully Hungary; couple that with a possible Byzantine bounce on Serbia and hostility from either HRE or Papacy and Hungary is history.

F Novgorod gives the highly besieged Hungary some breathing room, and as a bonus forces Denmark out of its comfort zone. I agree that Rus might be way weaker, but 1) they got a corner position to work with and 2) Hungary has plenty to worry about.

With just 2-units to work with, balance is a very touchy thing to tinker with.

The HRE can settle the fate of Provence, take Bohemia/Netherlands/Pomerania, and possibly annoy France/Papacy by moving for Burgundy or Venice.

Reasonable Rus'sian diplomacy should push the HRE away from Poland a bit, don't you think?

Well, that's certainly true. Rus does have a far more secure position than pretty much any other nation.

Oooh nice to see a variant with powers starting with two units! That will make for some fast and tense play.

Wait a minute.

"SCs required for solo win: 14 (of 39)"

I'd suggest to change the SCs required for solo win to 20. If players want to make the victory condition lower than half of the SCs, they can.

Hey @Mercy, I am glad you liked this little aspect of the variant. The idea is Larsson's and absolutely fun. Every unit counts! Besides, it enables a large number of players (11!) without cluttering the map with dozens and dozens of extra provinces.

On the victory criteria: given how this is a 11-player variant where everyone has only 2 SCs at start, 1/2 of centers (20) felt a little too cumbersome. 1/3 of SCs (14) will still require a ton of growth - the winner will have to grow 7 times its own starting size. For comparision, a winner in Classic needs to grow 6 times over. If the victory criteria was 20, they would need to grow a whopping 10 times to win!

As you noted, any player can tweak the required number of SCs to any number they want to. Blessed be who invented this!

Yes, I like that little aspect of the variant indeed. I like variants for more than 7 players too, but most variants creators have the tendency to create a higher number of supply centers per player than in Classic, and that usually causes the game to become quite sluggish and not as tactical as it should be in the endgame. By having just 3.5 supply centers per player, you can still see big surprises in the endgame, and the early game doesn't become less interesting from it either.

This could easily become my new favorite variant, were it not for the very weird win condition. More than half of the supply centers for a win is standard and I would say that there are good reasons for that. If someone is on the verge of winning, you want every player on the board to have some direct influence on whether or not this player will achieve a solo. In Classic this is virtually always the case; even if for example England is on the verge of winning, Turkey can help defend the stalemate line, or just help by not attacking players who are holding it. But if the victory condition is lower than half of the supply centers, then it will happen too often that you will lose a game because someone on the other side of the board won and you had no influence on it.
Secondly, I see the win condition as an extra pity because it kinda defeats the benefits of starting with less supply centers. Starting with less supply centers makes the endgame faster and more interesting, but if you lower the win condition, you won't even have an endgame. Most games will likely end in large draws because everyone will be wary of anyone who grows too close to 1/3 of the supply centers. A nice, clean 3-way draw is practically impossible.
Lastly, I don't understand why your statements are arguments in favor of having a lower victory condition. Did anyone ever say that a solo should be easy to achieve? What is wrong with having to work for it? Also, it is not like growing to 10 times your original size to win a game is outright impossible. (gameID=33308 ;-) )
In summary, a low victory condition makes draws large & victories lame.

A small bug report by the way: on the small map, the supply center symbol of Ravenna is missing.

Another bug: the sea north of Adriatic Sea is not named. On the large map, the name of the land province Venice is on top of the sea province.

Yet another bug: Skagerrak is spelled "Skagerrrak" on the large map.

I keep posting here, am I not?

Two posts earlier, I said that the sea province north of Adriatic Sea is not named. But by looking at the map info, I discovered that Adriatic Sea borders Venice and that there is no extra sea province between them.

This is the most serious bug as the connections on the map are not what they appear to be.

Hey @Mercy, thanks for the bug reports. I will add the dot on Ravenna and remove the extra letter in SKA.

The sea space north of ADR is considered part of Venice, like in Classic's Denmark. The Venice dot is on the water itself... hmm, I will look into it.

> if the victory condition is lower than half of the supply centers, then it will happen too often that you will lose a game because someone on the other side of the board won and you had no influence on it.<

Oh, I don't think so. While the risk of such a thing happening is obviously greater than in Classic, by the time a power reaches anywhere close to 14 SCs there will be plenty of opportunities for some of the other 10 (!) powers to intervene. You can influence it all the same by either directly joining the coalition against the would-be winner, or as you said, not attacking the ones closer to the action.

> Starting with less supply centers makes the endgame faster and more interesting, but if you lower the win condition, you won't even have an endgame<

The endgame shouldn't be radically different; remember when I said that a victory in Classic requires one to grow over 6 times its own size? In 'Crusades 1201' it wil take 7 times, and you should consider that there are more players on the board - and thus an increased chance of someone engineering a stop-the-leader coalition. I believe that, while the scale is different, proportionally it's pretty much the same. I dare say it will be actually more dynamic due to the Build Anywhere rule spicing up the endgame.

>Most games will likely end in large draws because everyone will be wary of anyone who grows too close to 1/3 of the supply centers<

But that's the case with many variants with a 50%+1 victory criteria... in 'Crusades 1201' it will also be nigh impossible to hold a (land-based) stalemate line. Arguably, the highly fluid positions on the board should make it non-issue.

>Did anyone ever say that a solo should be easy to achieve? <

I am somewhat confused; will victories be harder to achieve (as you said, "most games will end in draw") or actually easier? Anyway, personally I don't think a win should be "easy" or "hard" to get. I only believe that a 11-player variant, where everyone starts with lowly 2 SCs, shouldn't be dragged to a slugfest - besides, England having to reach reach Eastern Europe to win in the middle of the 13th century is disturbing!.

> it is not like growing to 10 times your original size to win a game is outright impossible<

Not impossible; just way harder than it should be. It's quite a feat, but how many will pull that off? To paraphrase you: in summary, a high victory condition makes very rare victories & lame draws happen all the time.

I greatly appreciate your feedback (as always); I will keep an eye out for how the games will flow out. If need be, I shall modify the victory criteria up to 20.

@Enriador somehow I still don't see the Ravenna dot on small map.

Thanks in advance

I no longer have direct access to edit the variant. I already sent Oli the new files, so I guess he is pretty busy.

Patience, please! And sorry for the mistake.

Ravenna has its dot, finally. =)

Yay! And Skagerrrrrak is spelled right, too! If, on both the small map and the large map, the name of Venice would partly be on the land and partly be on the water, indicating that this is regarded as one province, or alternatively, the water part would just be removed, I would be even more happy than I already am. =)

Hmm, I will think over Venice. Putting the name in the middle shouldn't be hard.

Guys, what do you think about the country names? I kinda considered calling the Ayyubid Sultanate just "Egypt" and calling the Byzantine Empire by its proper name, "Roman Empire". Not sure why I didn't do that.

Thoughts?

The Roman Empire would be technically correct, but then the Ayyubid Sultanate would also be technically correct. So, I would go with both of those. Nice to have the names relevant to the period the map represents.

'Ayyubid Sultanate' is a term much like "Byzantium", no? Their rulers styled themselves "Sultans of Egypt & Damascus".

The Almohads are also a curious case. "Morocco" would most appropriate, yet MOR is not even a home SC. =P

I thought Byzantium was endowed by Historians after the fact, with the locals viewing themselves as Romans, whereas control of Egypt and beyond was recognized as an Ayyubid Sultanate at the time?

As for the Almohads, they may have referred to themselves as the Almohad Dynasty or State, but since they are a Caliphate, I think that's fair and still true to the spirit of the time.

The expression "Byzantine Empire" was coined in 1557 by the German Hieronymus Wolf in order to make the history of the Eastern Roman Empire distinct from that of the Western Roman Empire, of which Europe claimed to assume the inheritance.

In 330 (i.e. 65 years before the empire was divided in two in 395), Constantinople already became the capital city of the Roman Empire. Hence, the people living in Constantinople considered themselves as Romans.

As a consequence, in any Diplomacy variant that depicts an era before the year 1453, the name "Roman Empire" is certainly much more appropriate for the country controlling Constantinople.

I'm participating in 2 games and have skimmed the archive of the other running games, and one alarming trend is that Rus is really terribly off. If Hungary comes for Kiev, the fleet can do nothing at all to help. If Denmark comes for Novgorod, the army is only of help if it goes north _away_ from the neutral centers. - And strategically, it is a highly favourable strategy for Denmark to take out Novgorod early, as then it enjoys the safe corner position.

Diplomatically, Rus is the B in an A <> B <> C triangle. Denmark can affect Rus (and vice versa), and Hungary can affect Rus (and vice versa), but Denmark and Hungary can do nothing to each other. The result is a relationship net where it is highly favourable if DM and HU agree to do a coordinated attack on Rus, but where Rus can offer nothing of value to instigate a stab between DM and HU. In practice, this means it is the best move for DM and HU to gang up on Rus, and this is what I have seen happen in most games.

Some ideas for solutions:
a.) Creating a way for Denmark and Hungary to stab each other would be the best way from a pure game POV, but would require extreme distortion of the map and historical liberties.
b.) Giving Rus two coastal home centers in the Baltic would greatly improve it abilities to have its units support each other and be a great deterrent for Denmark to focus on Rus early, but would greatly change the dynamics as Denmark would now have three pressing relations in need of quick resolution (England, HRE, Rus), while Rus would only have one pressing relation (Denmark). Obviously this would make Rus very boring to play and make Denmark nearly as vulnerable as Calhamer-Austria, which is both not desirable.
c.) Beef up Rus by giving them a guaranteed 1st year extra center (Crimea, Smolensk and Finland would be likely candidates). While not ideal, it would deter a Den-Hun team-up, as it would take a lot of more time for both of them together to dismantle Rus, time that center powers could use against them as they turn their back.
d.) Just eliminate Rus as a player power. This is probably the most elegant solution, and one that won't affect dynamics much as of currently, Rus is a punching bag that won't matter past the early game.

Hey @SkyRock, once again big thanks for your thoughtful feedback. You clearly know the game you play!

>one alarming trend is that Rus is really terribly off<

But these Rus'sians are kicking ass here! (http://vdiplomacy.com/board.php?gameID=35030). They migh as well solo if the Byzantines do their job on Hungary right and England proceeds with their invasion of the HRE.

>Diplomatically, Rus is the B in an A <> B <> C triangle<

I see the area as a quadrangle: Denmark/Rus/Hungary/Holy Roman Empire. One cannot disregard easily how heavily the HRE interacts with all three powers.

I find your suggestion (especially b) and d)) interesting... However, what do you think of simply changing Fleet Novgorod for Army Novgorod? Rus would then be able to not go into "automatic" conflict with Denmark, and would be more capable of resisting a daring Hungary.

In any case, remember the HRE (and to a minor extent Byzantium) are strongly attached to Rus!

The last podcast of DiplomacyGames.com touched upon this variant, and suggestions were made about how to improve crusading in the variant.

I really enjoyed @kaner's idea of a "race track" to the Holy Land. Perhaps it could work like in the Economic variant, with a separate box containing a "home SC" for each Catholic power - building there means "mounting an army for the crusade". A few moves in and you could move to either Smyrna (Byzantine Anatolia, where most crusaders went first in the early crusades) or Libya (towards Egypt, target of the latter crusades).

That could be potentially overpowered though, so perhaps we should also think if buffing the Islamic powers is necessary.

What do you think?

What countries would be the Islamic powers to be buffed ?

I thought after recording that you could always extend the map further east to "buff" up the Islamic powers to give them more SCs. But then I thought the risk could be overbuffing, in which case do you add the Monguls!

@Skyrock, Enriador: I agree that Rus is too weak. Its two problems are
1) HRE can prevent Russia from gaining a build, while getting two builds himself, by rushing Poland. That is very tempting for him to do.
2) Russia's lone fleet encourages Denmark to go after him.
Also, I see Denmark as the strongest nation, because of the fact that he is almost certain to gain two builds (Sweden and either Netherlands or Pomerania, which can be negotiated with HRE) and because of his secure position (the lone fleet of Rus threatens him, but Rus is weak and other than that he is quite secure).

I don't think that specific game examples are a good indicator of the balance of the map, due to the small sample size.

My solution would be the following:
1) Make Norway a supply center instead of Sweden.
2) Make Norway and Finland border each other.
3) Let Rus start with an army in Novgorod instead of a fleet.
This will accomplish a couple of things. First of all, Rus can potentially get Norway as a build, and Denmark no longer is almost guaranteed to gain two builds, which strengthens Rus and weakens Den. Secondly, since Rus can choose to send its army south, a rush on Poland from HRE can be countered. Thirdly, if Rus starts with two armies, that will give him more flexibility in his diplomacy. Peace with Denmark is easier to negotiate if he doesn't have a fleet that can only threaten Denmark. Lastly, if Norway is a supply center, England has to travel a slightly shorter distance to reach Scandinavia and vice versa, which is good for the interactions on the map.

I have the impression that these changes would weaken Denmark, but not HRE. If Rus and Denmark fight in this scenario, he could do very well for himself. I think this is a good thing, because HRE isn't too strong in the current map and should not be weakened.

@Retillion: The Islamic powers are the caliphate and the sultanate.

@Mercy : thank you for your answer. Please note that I have studied History. You and I know that Constantinople was Christian (but not Catholic of course) but many people believe that it was Muslim. Hence my question, especially since some players have suggested that the "Islamic powers" should be buffed in order to compensate some option given to the Catholic powers. That suggestion indicating that these players apparently tought that Constantinople was Muslim.

@Retillion, I have a degree in History myself (though my specialty is the interwar period) and I teach History for a living. Rest assured I didn't include the goddamn Eastern Roman Empire among the Islamic powers, hehehe.

A buff to both the Almohads and the Ayyubids is necessary IF we apply the crusade mechanic I proposed. How strong a buff they receive - if it's ever needed - will depend on how will crusading happen - again, if we think it would actually improve the variant.

Regarding Rus: I think @Mercy gave a really, really interesting solution that wouldn't screw up the map's balance by much. @Skyrock, what do you think of it?

Do note that we cannot make non-cosmetic changes to variants while they are in play (as we risk bugging them and screwing people's games). We *can*, though, design a subvariant off it with all kinds of improvements we can think of (as the 1066 variant did).

+1 Mercy. The solution addresses the premise and improves playability between all of Russia, Denmark, England, the Holy Roman Empire, and Hungary.

If the proposed crusade mechanism is applied for the Catholic powers and if, as a consequence, both Islamic powers are buffed, I suppose that Constantinople should be buffed too. Also, what happens to Russia ?

I like Mercy's suggestions. There is still the diplomatic issue of the lopsided Hun<>Rus<>Den triangle, but the Danish need to take out Rus early is greatly reduced while Den<>England becomes a more pressing relation. It is definitively a great improvement over the current situation.

Also Rus is now able to launch an effective defense against either Den or Hun when they gun for it. Having more say over Poland in case of a strong HRE offense is a good side bonus.