"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?