Well, if you're familiar with Canada, you will know why Russia has "only" 4 SCs.
Some people quote the statistic that 80% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border. Surprisingly enough, that is true for Russians, but on the western border.

Some resources are being tapped now, but in 1900, it cost as much to live in Siberia as it did to get resources from Siberia - they do not produce "supply" enough to build armies in the game.

Well, they had enough to lose the Russio-Japanese war. They did manage to fight a long time. And regardless, I understand that Siberia is all tundra (arctic desert) and that their greatest resources that far east actually came from Alaska until they got rid of it.

And Manchuria - which was lost in the Russian-Japanese war. Really, there's very, very little up there that they actually use.

Still, it would make an interesting variant to have to deal with those to the East and the West, making Russia quite difficult to win as. It would also open up even more SC's in the West, like Stalingrad and the likes.

@Rommel, for a second I thought you were going to suggest that Canada invaded Russia :(

However Atom, if you include the rest of Russia you have to include India and Australia and Canada the British colonies, and if you do that you have to include America and Mexico, soon you'll have a massive world variant that is unnecessarily complex.

No, you don't need all of that. Just make Eurasia accesible to all. You could even include a larger area of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). That way, you limit it to Five in Europe, Russia, Turkey, and five in Asia. I don't know, Japan, China, India, Korea? And another...

Ah, Russia, Russia, from my beautiful home in a strange land I can still see you! In you everything is poor and disordered and unhomely; in you the eye is neither cheered nor dismayed by temerities of nature which a yet more temerarious art has conquered; in you one beholds no cities with lofty, many-windowed mansions, lofty as crags, no picturesque trees, no ivy-clad ruins, no waterfalls with their everlasting spray and roar, no beetling precipices which confuse the brain with their stony immensity, no vistas of vines and ivy and millions of wild roses and ageless lines of blue hills which look almost unreal against the clear, silvery background of the sky. In you everything is flat and open; your towns project like points or signals from smooth levels of plain, and nothing whatsoever enchants or deludes the eye.

From my homeland, I'd see Russia. Granted it would be behind the biggest waste of space in history...

Don't think in real world terms. Russia is the way it is for game balance. More starting armies, but harder to defend and a bit spread out.

@King Atom: India was controlled by England in 1901. Vietnam was controlled by France. This is what I am saying, if your going to include all of Asia to satisfy Russia your going to have to include the entire world. The current map makes sense...

Yes, Fasces, I took AP Euro. Do not think that you can outwit my Euro skills. I would not want the game to start out with colonies, I would simply want a type of thing that...you know what, nevermind. I had an idea and you all shot it down. Good for you!

cause your idea didn't make sense

And taking an AP course proves that your a mushroom.

Mushroom?

You had an idea and nothing else. Try coding something to prove you are capable of doing more than spitting random ideas here and there while hoping that someone will see your brilliance and do all the actual work for you. It's also hard to take you seriously when you believe your variant will put a stop to Russian victories as if it was going to be considered THE Diplomacy game. Not to mention the fact that you somehow missed the point that Diplomacy emulates WWI in European theatre, the only theatre that actually mattered, and still aims at evening the ground between the Great Powers. Russia was number 4 in terms of power among those 7 and it still has more SCs than Germany or France. Giving it more to simulate the supposed advantage of being huge is about as weak an idea as is your knowledge of the timeline. Stalingrad, seriously?

Way to pull a krellin. You're just talking just to talk.

Sounds more like you, TC or even obi than krellin.