BUMP

Different maps are mods of the game.
Dip was made in 1959 and the map isn't something you can just whip together. You have to balance the land and sea and coastal areas, along with balancing the starting countries and their starting positions with the neutral positions. This isn't something you can make in an hour or two, but rather several weeks of concentration, mathematics, and playtesting...

And if its the same game, but with a different map, whats the point? The key to this game isn't the map, but the Diplomacy.

Africa seems to be pretty balanced, once you can add balanced seas/oceans....no place has less than 3 other countries bordering it (save Lesotho & Djibouti), so the current layout of africa could work...I would love to see new maps.

if you want to see variant maps, create them and code them.

or donate $5,000 to the site so someone else can do them =)

There's an africa map that is that good? where can I find it?

I am informed that its quite easy to make a new map. The coding of this site, if it is to bound on quickly, has to be done by the people on it. The fact is that a massive majority of the work on this site has been done by one man as a hobby, which is why it takes so long.

I thought the mods helped him with that?

the code for this site is open source, so you can take it, run it on your home computer and alter the map as you see fit.

you can then play with your friends to your hearts content. (and people on the internet...)

there are a lot of dip varients, or map varients. Google them.

making a map and coding it may be easy...
making a map that is balanced with good starting positions and such... that's the hard part

Recently there has been some effort at making variants. There have been gunboat and similarly simple things in the past but Sleepcap and jayp have been working on their own servers (I think both are also translations) and sharing the patches around on the dev forum:
http://dip.xbsd.kr/boards/352/
http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=319


Making a basic (same-rules) variant from webDip isn't hard technically; Sleepcap pulled it off very well without any PHP/MySQL know-how, it's mostly just updating territory records, border links, and map images, though it takes some time and effort of course

What's more exciting for us is jayp, with more tech ability, has been adding some patches to Sleepcap's new variant data and maps which let normal and South-American run on the same server, so it could come much sooner than I had planned


These are for 0.82 though, and a set of patches for a Korean(?) server don't (necessarily) mean it'd be an instant, neat extension to the official code here, but it looks well made and once you've got two variant options on one server adding more gets much easier.
So I can say webDip variants exist and they'll be here too, much sooner than I had thought :-)

I like that there is a province called "Mid Atlantic Ocean". Makes for some continuity between the classic. You can move from Caracas to Spain in one year. Nice!

Looks like he's still experimenting with the map.
http://dip.xbsd.kr/boards/352/
http://dip.xbsd.kr/boards/359/

And since the map is the 21st century, i assume fleets can pass through Panama?

Would that be instant though, or would it have to be like the straits of gibraltar in the colonial varient?
Like would the panama canal be a territory in and of itself, able to be occupied by armies as a blockade?

interesting question, would it be more like kiel/con or more like mao-wes? i guess it's pretty small really, so kiel/con is the better model

I always liked the game Machiavelli. This was the Dip variant from AH from the feudal Papal era. That game board exists and has been game tested. I would love to see that as an on-line variant some day.

I personally would like to see the ability to convoy through territories like kiel/con/denmark though, just because it greatly increases the amount of fleets that can be used in a massive convoy:]

I was reading about a new variant, "The Struggle of the Nations" which uses a modified version of the original map but with ten Great Powers (adding Spain, Norway-Sweden, and the Balkan League) and adds a handful of supply centers and neutral territories.

Apparently it's been playtested and works out quite well. I'd love to try it... it seems that the strategy required for this version is much different than for standard Diplomacy.

The game is described here: http://diplom.org/Zine/S2009R/Kyker/son.htm
The map isn't done quite right at Portugal/Sevilla/Gibraltar/MAO. The divide should make Seville border both MAO and Gibraltar, and have Portugal bordering only MAO.

I'd love to play in a game where each supply center starts in the possession of a single player for a total of 34 players at the start. Don't remember what that is called. Chaos maybe?

@Aldetian & cteno - Both great ideas I'd like to see implemented.
The south america map is cool to!

oh shit...

Struggle of Nations never exists...It's a lie

Wait...wat?

That's one of my "failure" Variant Map...along with others...

Is it really that fail? Seems like mucho diplomacy is involved, though I admit that many nations would be at huge disadvantages. Take into account the toughness to get 34 people, and.....I see. :p

I made a vastly improved version which you can see at the bottom of this post http://www.worldleadersthegame.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&p=1004&sid=7a65f678d3c65d0cd309abc1c50f387a#p1004
34 people?

Personally, I was always a fan of maps with more empty SC's, but the same number (if not less)of players. I remember seeing a WW2 map that caught my interest once, can't seem to find it online anywhere, though.

let's see here...
airborne's variant history
1350 AD (Small Following)
Modern Art (Around here somewhere)
Struggle of Nations (Finished posted in DP pouch (sigh))
Crusades Map (Canelled due to time limits)
Middle East (Help in the designing and beta tester)
WWII Europe (Still in Progress)
Rise and Fall of Empires (Finished yet to do anything with it)
Africa Colonial (Still in Progress)

Africa sounds interesting... Always fun to try new geography. Can we get a link to that one?

now that I found my flashdrive...
Modern World (Messy; but, playable)
1919 (Done? I think I am)
North America Colonial (Done)

@Onar Ok...but, it's really rough not even one playtest yet

http://www.worldleadersthegame.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=173&p=1011#p1011

I have recently drawn up a map for a school project of North and Central America. It worked well enough but could be improved. i could try to post a link with a picture. anyone could take the idea and perfect it. i would love to see the map on this sight. it was pretty fun to play. it had nine regions to play as from canada down to panama. you would travel from atlantic to pacific via panama canal. i think that this idea could work

and airborne can i get a link to north america colonial