I think this'll make life a lot worse for Russia if Turkey is aggressive. Sevastopol has more bordering territories so forcing it will be easier, and Siberia just lets enemy armies out-flank his SCs. It should weaken France and strengthen Italy, though, so it might actually provide a bit more balance. Austria probably suffers the most, though, since Italy and Turkey both have more chances for greater strength. Not sure how I would counteract that, besides maybe giving Italy the lay-out for the Milan variant, so at least Austria doesn't have to fear Venice every turn. I would definitely be interested in playing.

I think the map makes Russia very weak in the North and the South. Also, with those added centers, Italy have to chose between attacking France (allowing Turkey to do what he will) or letting France get many more builds. I like the idea of adding more centers, but I think it is a bit unbalanced as is.

Maybe if you had Siberia cut down to Turkey with Sevastopol, then each would have an equal attack. Though that still wouldn't solve the unbalance SC's that you can go to from Siberia though once Turkey achieved the spot.

looks really good. id only suggest that Persia should have an sc so that Russia's slightly better off-( you could have say a sev west and east coast., with russia maybe starting with an army at sev rather than a fleet, or an east coast fleet). Also, I think that only having the mid atalntic is a good thing- it's a key region because it's the link between the south and the north.

also, have you seen the map where you have milan? with an exxtended tuscany to the west, in place of pie, and a no-sc venice to the east, separating austria and italy. I think it'd work on the map.

Persia seems an extremely unnecessary territory, it's even more useless than Syria because you can't convoy to it, so all it can ever be used for from Turkey's perspective is defense, which Turkey already has to begin with. The fact that it gives Turkey a leg up in taking Sevastopol makes it unfair in my mind, but I do like the idea of giving Russia a bit of a fallback in Siberia.

I wonder how the map would be if you extended the Eastern med up behind Russia to join the Barents. I know it would be against common Geography, but it would give Russia & Turkey the same naval fear France & England have, and surely break down stalemates also

I don't like the name persia, also why is ireland Dublin but Iceland is not rejkiavick (sp?)

I think there is a convention to name non-SC centres after region, but SCs after cities. (of course Spain and Portugal are named after countries not cities so this convention is plainly not used throughout, or maybe i misunderstood it) Why did you turn clyde and edi into scotland? is it to encourage england to go south for the spannish builds (england now loses his one guarenteed SC, norway, but gains instead a SC in iceland)

i'd like to see how it plays, i'm sure it will be easy to port to goondip... there are threads on the dev forum for how to make a variant. Also you need a name.

Giving Russia an army in St. Pete would give him a chance at becoming a stronger northern power (the chance to take Norway and Sweden the first round). It puts him at odds with England early on though and weakens England. But with Turkey having more options in the south it might balance out.

I wonder how an aggressive Italian player would do in an invasion of France. France can no longer slip Spain to Marseilles in one turn. The Bay of Biscay weakens his automatic hold on the MAO as well. It does make playing France more troublesome. With Russia and France having to look to the defense of their own borders, it makes the central powers more viable. A Germany-Austria alliance is a lot stronger, and a Germany, Italy, Austria alliance would be a monster.

@ figle

You could include the Caspian Sea (another one for Turkey and Russia to squabble over). It would allow Turkey to sail a fleet into Moscow (the way the map is drawn). It would bring in the naval complexities that you suggest without changing the accuracy of the map. Nobody seems to care that the Barents is impassable in the Autumn (late Autumn anyway), so the Caspian being frozen over at times shouldn't be a problem either. Of course TUrkey would need an Sc on the coast of that Sea (which I do not think it borders anyway). We would perhaps have to assume Turkish control of Azerbaijan and an sc there due to oil production in the region. A four sc TUrky would definitely add to Russia woes. Perhaps a fifth sc, in Georgia, for Russia would balance things out?

That would make a Juggernaut quite impressive though Nine sc's to start. Giving all of the powers four initial sc's? At least making Serbia an official part of Austria?

Hmm, giving Austria serbia to start would be an interesting change.
Maybe, although I was thinking of making it such that England could get a navy down to Turkey. As it is the only way is past Gibralter which is relatively easy to block.

I must admit I'd still prefer the standard map though!

Talking about the orginal suggestion: Dublin would really hurt England. He would no longer be able to get two fleets against Norway (should be choose), and as such your map would surely lead to war with France on almost every occasion.

but france can't guarentee two SC anymore, weakening him. While england is more interested in going north to iceland... making russia a more important part of what happen in scandanavia. Meanwhile Italy can't afford to let France take those three African SC, so Austria will have an easier time...

Marsielles-Piedmont, is a more useful Army marsielles, (while fleet brest can aim for castile and paris head to bel) I like how similar this map is yet how different the meta-game is likely to be..

It seems that Morroco would be a possible English objective (if Italy and France were to become entangled over Marseilles & the GoL). That would allow the Western Med. to be opened more easily for England. Would it be a fleet or army in Dublin? I would think that Liverpool and London would be fleets and Dublin an army in this variant to allow the convoy to Iceland (much like Italy and Tunis on the current map, once you have an army there you can convoy it elsewhere and protect the sc with fleets in most cases).

i'm assuming it is fleet Dublin, Army Liverpool (which can be convoyed through NAO straight to iceland) and from there lepanto like over to norway/siberia.

True, I went back and looked at that again. If Russia and Germany team up, England is in serious trouble as they can't have both the North Sea and the English Channel in that first year.

I agree that this would take the game in a different direction; that would be interesting.

I was thinking you could have swapped out Liverpool for Dublin, and left Edinburgh as-is.

Wow, I'm amazed at the feedback. I'd debated cutting Italy up differently in the Po Valley area, but decided to not go too crazy with changes. I also debated making Persia a SC for turkey and adding in the Caspian Sea as a playable naval space.

@Stukus: I like the idea of adding in the Milan variant… I'll work on that. One thought I had would be to give Italy one army and two navies, but I'm not sure how well that would work.

@Rule Britannia: I also like the idea of cutting Sevastopol in half; maybe adding a "Caucasus" province between Armenia, Persia, Siberia and Sevastopol wouldn't be a bad idea. My only beef with the MAO being so large is that it effectively acts as a bottleneck… I wanted to make it harder for MAO to be an anchor for the southwest corner of the stalemate line.

@Vamosrammstein & figle: I thought about making the Caspian Sea a naval space, but the only way to do that would be to set up a "Caucasus" or "Tsaritsyn" (Volgograd/Stalingrad) province/SC that could function the way Denmark & Constantinople do.

@Orathaic: I called it Persia because it wasn't known as Iran in the west until 1935. On my 1915 map of Europe, it's called Persia. I called Ireland "Dublin" because of the game convention of naming home SCs after cities. Iceland is called Iceland for the same reason Serbia isn't called Belgrade and Greece isn't called Athens. Neutral SCs are named after countries. I created Scotland to keep England from having 4 SCs.

Trouble with giving Italy two navies is that Austria can then generally force Venice.

I think that sort of a map would really focus your diplomacy abilities. Tactically I expect it would be simpler than the current one, where as you said you have to be wary of stalemate lines forming.

I've tweaked it a bit to change Italy to match the Milan variant and fix some of the Russian/Turkish issues in the east... the blue line connecting the Black and Caspian seas should be treated as a coast.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4039/4263892446_8fc5812a06_o.jpg

@figle: Would giving Italy an army at Milan and navies at Rome and Naples, with Venice becoming Venezia solve that problem?

Oh, in the new map, I also had to fix the 'wrong colors for Corsica and Sardinia' thing, that's always bugged me. Tie Corsica's color to whoever controls Marseilles and Sardinia's to whoever controls Rome. :)

Another idea - why not move the Turkish SC in Ankara to Armenia instead? It would present the Turkish player with a different set of options at the beginning, and having the "dead space" in the center of Turkey would make taking Turkey more interesting. Any thoughts, guys?

looks good, but i reckon it'd be even better with Persia and Siberia as Neutral scs. That way it could be interesting to see which unit Russia would sacrafice to take serbia ( could be the sev fleet in autumn, or the moscow army in spring) and it would mean that Turkey wouldn't have too many troops to take on Austria/Italy with ( if they went for Persia).

Variants within variants... I like it.

I think this whole effort stems from a subconscious frustration of mine at always drawing Italy or Turkey. ;)

So, how would I get the ball rolling on having this made playable over at GoonDip (or here?)

I'd debated cutting Italy up differently in the Po Valley area, but decided to not go too "crazy" with changes.

Hey, should I take offense at that remark ;-)

Ah, Milan might help - I'm not sure what that varients like for starting.
Your river: so those are both coastal territories? I think I'd just go for putting it across transcaucasia, and calling that a canal territory like Kiel

Seriously though, I'd wondered how geographically sound the canal across the Caucasus mountains would be, but the Volga river system does provide a connection between the two. Whaddaya know?

Crazy Anglican: European Russia has a really surprising network of canals in the interior; the Volga-Don Canal is one of the largest.

@figle: That's a good point; I'd intended for it to work that way and then realized my "treat it as a coast" comment would mean being able to move a navy directly from Sevastopol to Siberia (SC) without going through the Caspian. Still, in the spirit of "more options are better" do you think it would make things too complicated?

I'd say treat a canal like a canal. You can occupy TransCauscasus with a fleet, just like Kiel, and it borders the Caspian and Black Seas.

Yep, canal is Canal life!

Join this game:::

gameID=18748

I like these changes a lot! Should definitely make things more interesting. This might be a good map to start at the end of 1899 and let everyone choose their units. In that case, I might recommend making Persia a neutral SC. Making Albania a neutral SC might benefit Austria a bit, to make up for Italy's new power, too. I kind of wish there were more neutral countries near Germany. I feel like he doesn't gain any options like everyone else does. Liechtenstein? Luxembourg?

Overall though, I think you fixed a lot of the problems with the first design, lifein2x3. Great job!

Alright, take 3: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2763/4264635746_af9e9f00d5_o.jpg

Added Persia as a neutral SC; removed the canal thingy (it'll have to be explained that Transcaucasia works like Kiel). Opted not to make Albania a neutral SC because it's the only space down there that isn't already one.

I contemplated making a "Luxembourg" neutral SC (it'd have to be about the size of the Saar on the map, but what can you do?) Germany's one of the few countries that has 3 pickup possibilities in 1901 (Belgium/Holland/Denmark or Holland/Denmark/Sweden, depending), so I left it alone. Germany's internal borders have always irritated the hell out of me, but I tried to keep the map as unchanged as possible.

I do like the idea of starting in 1899, it would add a lot of variation and would make opening moves pretty unpredictable.

Anyone know how to get a playable version up?

try: http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=362

and some stuff around that forum.

Austria and Germany are fine, especailly since italy is more likely to be fight france, thus pushing it out of the eastern/southern triple and into the western. Also russia being able to stop england from getting norway pushs him further into the western/northern triple. Leaving austria sound. France and England undr more pressure leaves germany effectively stronger, Turkey heading to persia probably weakens Austria and Russia (while not affecting Italy, except that weakening Austria strengthens italy...)

I still question three SCs in Africa, does italy really need Algeria? Morocco is cool because it gives somewhere to go and the changes to spain mean you could afford to put a land bridge in between Morocco and Andalusia (though Liverpool to Dublin would also make some sense... or scotland to dublin, you can swim that actually...) I'm just not sure about adding land bridges because of the topological issue. (what difference would it make for a fleet to be able to move from Morroco straight to Andalusia?)

I was thinking of a crazy variant where EVERY region (include seas/oceans) have an SC and you have to get 25 or so to win...

England...would be able to pick up a lot of the seas and be able to hold them pretty easily I think as France can only build one a at a time in Brest (Mar is too far away). Germany/Russia would have similar problems.

France...would be able to pick up quite a few but then there would be bottlenecks on all the sides

Germany/Austria would probably be the best as they wouldn't need to bother with fleets and could just keep pumping out armies.

Italy would still be the most closed of I think.

Turkey...ditto

I think Russia would benefit the most as it starts with 4 and it would double it and thereby have two more than all the other countries.

that might be an interesting game from the prespective of working out stalemates, but otherwise you end up with too many units on the board and the game would become very slow and annoying very fast. Might be a good gunboat... but i dislike gunboat to begin with so. m'eh

@orathaic: I couldn't really come up with another way to add a SC than to break up North Africa. The alternatives would be to put a second SC in Spain (Andalusia or Catalonia), and I think this would make it a little more interesting in terms of a scramble for SCs down there between France, England and Italy. I also wanted to avoid adding land bridges where there weren't any to avoid making it overly complicated.

I do like the break up of north africa.
Maybe i should have been clearer, why not make Algeria a normal trritory while keeping Morocco as a neutral SC - i do like the ensueing scramble - i think 3 SCs are perhaps too much.

The denmark canals make the whole baltic region more interesting (as having a fleet/army really matters) perhaps having a territory which acted like constantinople would make things more interesting (call it gibralta, and give it one coast, bordering West med, MAO, Morocco and Andalusia) not a supply centre - of course i fail at seeing stalemate lines by eye, so i don't know how this would affect the med-atlantic stalemates...

@orathaic: That's certainly an idea; in this case I deliberately wanted to avoid chokepoints like that.

Now I just need for goonDip to come back up. Harumph.

If not you can always host your own server with it. If you do that then (whilst I suggest you use the propper code utils) you can take liberties and just modify the default settings. As yours is 7 players and based on the standard map this might be the easiest to do - it doesn't require any rules changes after all and if it turns out suitable it won't be hard to write a little script to take your changes out and put them into the correct form.

Yeah, we're gonna have to go the Variants for Dummies route... me and code don't get along too well. Yay, liberal arts degree.