I believe it is time to continue the long standing tradition of us bay12ers meddling in european politics. Let us forge alliances, and break them with little hesitation, until we all go at eachothers throat in a bloodbath that will be a strong enough deterent should aliens ever have to make the decision wether to contact us or avoid us!
While there are many seasoned veterans of the game among us, here a short summary on the rules for all the fresh blood that longs to
be spilled in vain have a good time
The game mechanics are simple.
Each player starts, randomly chosen, as one of the 7 powers of WWI. The map is made of various regions, 36 of which are marked as supply-centers - gaining control of 18 of them is your objective.
To do so, you have 2 types of units - armies and fleets. What armies do and where they can go is pretty much self-explanatory. Fleets, as should be obvious, can only move on water tiles, and land tiles that border a watertile. Additionaly they are able to convoy armies across water.
The moves:
Hold: this army stays where it is, and does nothing. Usualy, this is not a good choice, as I said, it does nothing, simply standing there and having the strength of 1 against potential attackers.
Support Hold: a neighbouring unit supports a unit that is not moving. This raises the Strength of the defended territory by 1. Note, this only works if the unit could *potentialy* move to the territory it is defending, so armies can not support hold sea territories, and fleets can not support landlocked territories. they can however support hold land territories bordering water.
Note, the unit you are supporting doesnt have to be one of your own.
VERY IMPORTANT: this does not work on units that are moving, even their move should fail. Only works on hold, supporthold, supportmove or convoy.
A common beginner mistake.
Move: attempt to move to a neighbouring territory. If unchallenged, you go there. If there is another unit already in the territory, wether hostile or one of your own, you need to be stronger than it (via support move). If it also has units supporting its hold, you will need even more units supporting your move.
If there are 2 or more units trying to move to a territory, the one that is the most supported gets in, the weaker one stays where it's at, if there is a draw, both stay where they are.
Note, it is not possible to *swap* units. If a unit in A moves to B, and a unit in B moves to A, both will stay where they are.
Important, a move towards a region, wether you manage to move there or not, will cancel any support that the unit in that region is doing. This does NOT cancel convoys. To cancel a convoy, the attack must be strong enough to move into that territory
Support Move: increase the strength of a move. You have to be potentialy able to move to the target region for this to work.
Convoy: set one, or multiple fleets to move a unit from A to B. Note, for this to work all fleets involved must be set to convoy from A to B, and of course the unit has to be set to "move from A to B via convoy".
examples with pictures can be seen here:
[size=78%]http://webdiplomacy.net/intro.php[/size]The turns:
each year is split into 2 turns, spring and autumn.
In the beginning of spring, if you own more supply centers than you have units, you may chose where to build a new unit. Note, you may only build in the regions you started in. Of course, if you have more units than supply centers, you have to choose which units to disband. Then you enter your first moves, while franticaly trying to make alliances with everyone. Once everyone has entered their move, they resolve.
After a short bout of rage about being betrayed by everyone, you now realize that some of your units where kicked out of their territory by enemy movement. They count as dislodged, and my now retreat into any accessible territory next to their ex-home. If there is no avaiable region, it gets disbanded.
In autumn, you again make moves, and again may or may not be dislodged. If at the end of autumn, you have a unit in a supply center that is not yours, it belongs to you now.
Very important: It is only possible to capture a center in autumn. In spring, you can safely walk through and nothing happens.
Note, while strategy in this game is immensely important, you are all equal in strength. This is why it's called diplomacy. Alliances and concerted movement is needed to progress. So talk, talk, talk. Silent players are not welcome, nor will they have much fun.
Also note, there can be only one winner. Draws are reserved to resolve stalemates, or in case some scumbag players decided to just ragequit early and with their absence ruin game balance. I am hoping for some very ambitious, flexible players, that all want to win, and will do all it takes to win. Being happy with second place, or just supporting the enemy of your former ally to get revenge on him is childish, and ruins the game. Ambition people. Ambition.
Format:
for the game, we will use webdiplomacy.net
signing up is free, and there is no spam emails involved.
Once 6 interested players have asked for a spot in this thread, I will create the game and send a link around so you can join.
We will play on the standard european map (lets face it, the other maps are horrible unbalanced), and the turn time is 24 hours.
Note, this is the time after which turns automaticaly resolve. If everyone finalizses their moves sooner than that, the game progresses quicker, which would be very welcome.
If there are a big interest in increasing the time to 48 hours, for the busy ones, that's fine too. Though in this case, seriously, finalize your movements when you are done. Nobody wants to wait 48 hours in a suspenseful part of the game.
so
interested? Question?