It really sucks bad, & won't ever.
BTW, it should be kept with
the load of some great / some sucky variants in vdiplomacy.com

It's handy when you can't get 7 people for a game here, since no one plays live games of more than 3 people on vdip... I'm increasingly coming to dislike it for the exact reason you started, Dharm, but it's not worth taking it off the site!

'catch-22'

https://kaosradioaustin.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=10584&g2_serialNumber=1

or you can say, if this varient is played in the form of no-txt-msg, there is no problem as long as no cheatings there

anyway, diplomacy is always unfair according to your words, but to win you need tactics (allying/stab-at-the-back-etc...)

Diplomacy is a stupid game! It should be taken off this site!

YES!

but abge, then the site would just be web.net...and that doesn't make a lot of sense :)

Tell that to Wizards Of The Coast that bought up this game ! ;)P

Lovely map - but too few players to make it "even" in any possible way...

the game we played sucked due to noncompetitive play, not the variant. when you have countries next to each other that leave half their units doing nothing because they've pre-arranged a draw, the game will suck. that applies to any variant.

persia carthage and rome agreed early on to just eliminate the two of us and declare a 3-way draw. so it was never really a game. makes me wonder why they even played it. maybe after the game they went down to a daycare to beat young children at checkers or something.

Same thing could be said of the world varient. Hell, the same thing could be said of the regular game (it's hard to defend the R/T and E/F alliances). Breaking a 2 on 1 requires... you guessed it... DIPLOMACY!

But, failing all else, do what everyone else suggested and stop playing it if you don't like it.

The World IX variant is dubious & can be long winded...
In std.Dip. the 2 player strong alliances mentioned can be broken or at worst 'drawn', and this is not the case in Med...

@bolshoi: yeah, it seemed very very phishy that game ;/

What everybody else said.

What nobody stressed is the importance of that first turn's diplomacy. Make sure you are on the winning side of these early alliances and you'll be a lot less unhappy with the idea of them.

hahaha. if people think it's valid to declare permanent alliances on the first turn this site should start a "who is cool" variant. in that game there is no map, but each turn you vote who you want to win. if a group is formed of a majority of the players, the game ends, and those players all split the pot, otherwise you move to the next turn! that is the kind of diplomatic excitement i'm sure you will enjoy yellowjacket. why waste time with all this thinking when it can be simply a popularity contest, isn't that what we all want anyway?

and saying that a R/T or E/F alliance is the same as a 3-way alliance in AM is ridiculous. that's 2 out of 7 players. the proper analogy might be an R/T/E/F alliance. that's 4 out of 7, so closer to what we're talking about which is 3 out of 5.

I just realized that perhaps one day, we'll have here one of many variants from King Atom...

@bolshoi: check out the 'pure' variant in vdiplomacy.com . . . . . ..

:P I don't like the variant either, for much the same reason you've both suggested (it goes from 5 to 3 and then stops) but that's no reason to just throw it out.