Order Deadlines

[These are the rules, currently, for the deadlines for orders. If you feel they are lacking, please do not hesitate to suggest ammendments. I am all ears.]

For each phase in which orders are submitted, a will declare

• an initial deadline, a time when orders are sort of due,
  
• an initial quorum, a number of teams whose orders I sort of need to resolve the turn,
  
• a slacker pressure rate (see below),
  
• and will use these three things, plus information from my mailbox about when your orders were sent, to decide when the end of turn is.

Here's how it will work:

1. At the initial deadline (e.g., 11:59 pm on Tuesday), the quorum will be set to the initial quorum. (e.g, 55 teams)
   
2. The quorum will then decrease in discretely according to the slacker pressure rate (e.g., 1 team/3 hours. So, if the initial deadline is 11:59 pm on Tuesday and initial quorum is 55, then at 3:14 pm on Wednesday, quorum will be 50 teams).
   
3. For the phase in question, there will be a first time when the number of teams who have submitted orders is equal or greater to the quorum. Thattime will be the end of turn.
   
4. If a teams has not submitted orders by the end of turn, that team's orders for the turn will revert to the defaults:
   
   • In the standard Order Writing phase, the default orders are holds for all units. This is also known as civil disorder.
     
   • For Retreat Order Writing phases, the default order for each unit required to retreat or be disbanded is a retreat to the alphabetically first territory that would provide a legal retreat, if one exists, or a disbandment otherwise.
     
   • For a Building and Disbanding Order Writing phase, the default orders are the disbandment of as many units as necessary in alphabetical order, and the building of as many units as possible in alphabetical order of home center, should such legal builds be available.
   
   
5. Fpr teams who have submitted orders by the end of turn, I will use the last set of orders dated before the end of turn that has been sent from any team member.
   
6. I will inform you all of the end of turn as soon as I know it has occurred, along with a list of any teams whose orders were defaulted, for the purpose of public shaming. Otherwise, the only information I will reveal will be clarifications of the fact that the end of turn has not yet occurred.

Please don't hesitate to ask questions.

Information about turns and phases in PBEM Diplomacy

Some of this information will be of no surprise to experienced Diplomacy players. I would advise you to look it over, but not let it confuse you—I think the way I’m managing things is pretty intuitive. For those of you who are new to the game and are really learning this straight from the manual, this might be helpful

Those of you who are particularly attentive to the manual will notice that a game of Diplomacy is officially broken down into turns, and subdivided into phases:

Spring four-phase turn:

1. Diplomatic phase
2. Order Writing phase
3. Order Resolution phase
4. Retreat and Disbanding phase

Fall five-phase turn:

1. Diplomatic phase
2. Order Writing phase
3. Order Resolution phase
4. Retreat and Disbanding phase
5. Gaining and Losing Units phase

For the purposes of our game, we are collapsing the first two phases of each turn into one. Also, I have a habit of referring to the Gaining and Losing Units phase as either the Build Turn or the Winter Turn. So, it might be helpful if you think about it like this:

Spring and Fall turns:

1. Order Writing phase, during which you should write and submit orders to me.
2. Order Resolution phase, during which I’ll read and post your orders and get information back to you about how the turn went.
3. Retreat and Disbanding Order Writing phase, during which you should send me your retreat orders.
4. Retreat Resolution phase, during which I’ll read and post the retreat orders and their results.

Winter turn (occurs once after each fall turn):

1. Building and Disbanding Units Order Writing phase, during which you should write you build, disband, assimilate, abandon orders.
2. Building and Disbanding Resolution phase, during which I read those orders and post the results.

SPRING 1901: The game begins.

Spring 1901 has begun. This is the starting map. Team assignments have been mailed and may eventually be posted.

North America

Made some changes to the North American setup. Give me feedback SOON, since we're going to official start tomorrow night.

There were some pretty significant shifts in North America.


Chill out--I'll color the units as soon as I have time.

Balkans.

Scharf complained, rightfully, about the Balkans. How is this?



Oh yeah. I've added color. Units will be colored as well soon.

I fixed Africa

Africa should suck less now. Do you agree?

Redoing Europe

Europe is problematic. I got some feedback on it, and made some changes. Please take note. If nobody complains, I'll keep this setup. Otherwise, your feedback is very welcome.

More details on starting locations

These are more detail pictures of the starting locations. They are not perfect--please take the time to look them over (even just a couple!) to see if there's any glaring unfairness and if so how I should fix it. After nations have been assigned to teams of players, for obvious reasons I will no longer be able to respond to complaints.

Details: Closer look at EUROPE, Canals and Straits, Hordes

Three things:


First, Europe is small but packed with centers--I thought you might want a closer look at what's currently set for starting locations. This is a detail of the area, populated with units--hopefully it will make things clearer. Clicking on the image should allow you to zoom in. (I'll fix up colors on the territories and color-code the units later, when things are being finalized and it's worth the extra time.)

Please let me know if you think I ought to make any changes to this setup in the interest of fairness and interesting gameplay.


Second, I'v added canals and straights to the map in Constantinople, Panama, and Cairo. The weird Bosphorus rule from the description of the Imperial Diplomacy map is now canceled. Instead, each of these territories now functions like Constantinople in standard diplomacy: it's considered just like any other coastal territory, and there is no restriction on fleets being on one coast or the other.

Third, I realized that in my original formulation (see below)of the starting locations, I did not assign the center STP (St. Petersburg)! I think I found a decent solution. In the original formulation there is a nation that extends across Scandanavia. I added STP to this nation, making it (for now) the only nation that starts with 4 centers. I think it's justified in the sense that Russia's position is justified in the standard game--it has more borders to cover. If you have a better solution, let me know, please.

"House" Rule specifics: Changing home centers.

In one of the emails I mentioned having special rules for changing home supply centers--I thought I'd lay them out specifically here. Ammendments are possible.

Recall that a home supply center for a country/player/team X is a supply center on which it is legal to build units during the build phase. In standard diplomacy, a nation's home centers are those centers which one controls at the beginning of the game, and this "home" designation does not change, regardless of who controls those centers during the game.

We are changing these rules a little for (a) fun, and (b) for the benefit of landlocked players so that at some point they may have a coastal home center with which to build fleets.

1. Each nation's starting centers are its initial home centers, with exceptions specified by rule 6, below. Let N be the number of initial home centers for this nation.


2. At no point may a nation have more than N + 1 home centers.


3. If ever a nation has N + 1 home centers, it may not further alter its home centers in any way. (All assimilation and abandonment orders are from that time on invalid.


4. Making a new home center:
   
   1. During the build phase/"Winter", a nation may make a center a home center with with an order of the form assimilated. Example: ATL assimilated. (If you can think of a better word that invokes the Borg less, let me know.)
   
   
   2. This move, if legal, will change the status of that center so that it will be a home center of said nation.
   
   
   3. Supply centers may, as consequence of this rule, be the home centers of more than one nation. (Making a center that is home to nation A into a center that is home to nation B does not change the center's status relative to nation A.)
   
   
   4. An assimilation order is legal only if:
      
      
      
      1. The nation issuing the order does not have N + 1 home centers.
      
      
      2. The ordering nation has controlled the center since the previous build phase. (N.B.: Recall that control of centers does not change hands in the Spring.)
      
      
   
   
   5. A nation cannot build in and assimilate a territory at the same time. If a build order and a legal assimilation order for the same territory are issued on the same turn, then the build order is invalid.


5. Abandoning an old supply center:
   
   
   1. During the build phase/"Winter", a nation may relinquish relinquish home status over one of its home centers with with an order of the form abandoned. Example: ATL abandoned.
   
   
   2. An abandonment order is legal only if:
      
      
      1. The number of supply centers currently in control of the nation is less than the number of home centers of that nation.
      
      
      2. The ordering nation has not controlled the center since the previous build phase.
   
   
6. Should there be nations that begin the game with an "extra" center located far away from the builk of their centers, note this special case: The "extra" center, while beginning in a nation's control, will not be an initial home center for the purpose of calculating N. It may at some later time be assimilated, as per the rules above.

Any questions, comments, or votes of no confidence?

First draft of start locations

This is the first draft of the start locations. Be prepared to test your ability to differentiate shades of gray.

There are a few problems. There turn out to be exactly 171 supply centers, which means it's just right for 57 3-center starting positions. Currently I've got 49 teams listed on the roster. So we need to either

• recruit more players, or


• redistribute some of the center distributions below by assigning some players extra centers. Along these lines, we could
  • give some countries fourth supply centers in remote places on the board, which would give areas near those units the advantage of having a relatively easy-to-get-at center, or
  • we would assign a fourth, more relevant center nearby to a nation that currently looks underpowered

Unfortunately, the way I went about populating this map means that any changes we make at all are going to involve a lot of shifting of other stuff around--so I'm not going to work on it any more tonight.

However, you can help me by giving me feedback about where you think the problematic areas of this setup are, or giving advice about which centers should become single-unit desperados and how to reorganize the other nations around it, or which centers are unpowered.

Important note: I think that I'm going to preset starting units in addition to starting locations (rather than beginning with a build phase) because I don't want there to be any diplomacy before those builds, for game balance reasons (I think we might be able to prevent too-early screwings-over and encourage interesting play by objectively choosing whether coastal territories start with fleets or armies beforehand).

Here's the map in its current incarnation. It might take some clicking to see a larger version of it, but even that isn't as large as we will need it to be later (especially for Europe, which is tiny but packed with centers.) Anybody know if there's a way to get blogspot to stop shrinking the picture?

Nations are indicated by same-colored centers in close proximity. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

The third map wins!

We are using the third map of the ones listed below. Here is a thumbnail of the larger map I've got in which I've blanked out all the national borders of the map. Keep in mind that there are some map-specific rules listed here. Most of it is pretty intuitive, but please take care to note that the map is, naturally, wraparound (the ocean territories on either side of the "board" are the same territory as the ones of identical name on the opposite side) and also note the non-intuitive, non-standard Bosphorous rule mentioned on the linked site.

I'm sure that's going to trip somebody up at some point.

Is anybody going to have a problem with there not being canals in Panama and/or Egypt?

Soon I will post a more finalized, precise list of rule changes and outline the some PBEM procedure. But in the meantime, please consider what your nation's name and flag will be.

Right now it looks like we'll have about 44 teams unless more people tem up. These are the most appropriate maps I could find. Most likely I'd be stripping them of their national borders, but I'm open to suggestions of all kinds.

This map has a little over 80 centers. We could squeeze into this map with 2 centers per player if a few more people joined together.



This map has more like 200 centers. If we could find a way to use it it might be cool, but it also might be overwhelming.


This one I think has fewer centers--maybe 160.


If you know of any others that would be appropriate, let me know--they don't necessarily have to be "world" maps. Otherwise, feedback on which map you would prefer would be great.

The first post, in the passive voice.

Diplomacy will be played. It will be epic. It will also, incidentally, be international. It may violate trademark law at some point, but surely it won't be prosecuted, because Hasbro seems to be chill like that.

More updates to come--I have to find a good map.