Modern Extended Diplomacy - Design Thread

[Pedros]

Incidentally Joe - don't apologise for the time it's taking. More imortant to be good than quick. Calhammer seems to have taken about ten/fifteen years from first thoughts to publishing original dip! (The history experts will correct me on that stat, but it was a long time!

[joe92]

I'm still not 100% convinced on the benefits of extending the map southwards. The main problem I see is that the map would become even bigger resulting in more disused space and may result in two games happening, the game in Europe and the game in Africa

That said, if South Africa became a playable nation in this area and some countries were left out a squeezed version of the south of Africa could be implemented, maybe resulting in better competition to WAA and Iran.

Having a look at the geography of the area I'm thinking that perhaps a fictional waterway could be added too:

southern-extension-canal-idea-compressed-b.png (76.11 KiB) Viewed 2995 times

(mind the messiness of it, I'm at work)

A - River Congo
B - Fictional waterway connecting the several lakes of the area to the Congo river and White Nile
C - White Nile
D - Blue Nile
E - Nile

The blue line is the Congo river and the red line represents the 3 Nile's, nothing fictional.
The black line could be a new fictional waterway system which connects the several lakes in the areas and also the river Congo to the lakes and the Nile to the lakes. Ships could enter the Congo and make their way toward Egypt and vice versa.

In terms of compressing the map, I think a smaller version of DR Congo would be needed and most of everything below Congo removed meaning the Congo or a small version of Angola/Zambia borders South Africa.

Thoughts?

[ferdy0]

Thats why I am saying DONT extent the map, instead have a inset with Cape point (move able by land from CAM, Ken & CAR) with a single water way (moveable from GOG, CAM, Ken & Ind)

ablit I have reworded it from before the insert is what I meant the entire time (just with more empty land earlier).

[joe92]

So I finally got to play around with redesigning this map again and have uploaded it for all to see!

The main changes on the map are:

• New power, East Africa
• Sevastopol split into two territories, Kherson and Sevastopol
• New canal added allowing fleet movement from EBS to SOA through Kherson
• Now 89 total supply centres, 45 required for a solo
• Reducing the number of territories within Iran
• Cosmetic changes improving the text and boundaries

New power - 14 powers in total now
The main critique I felt there was, was to balance out the advantage Iran had by being able to control the bottom right quadrant with relative ease. I tried out a few ideas for balancing Iran, including extending the map south to create South Africa or adding an inset for Cape Town to allow better movement, but have settled on adding a new country, or rather alliance, called East Africa. This new power starts with the supply centres of Kenya (F), Ethiopia (A) and Djibouti (A).

Splitting up Sevastopol
I did this for two reasons. The first was that with Ukraine being the smaller nation I wanted to give it the option to avoid direct conflict with Russia and also with a bit of negotiation to gain an easy supply centre to beef up the units in the first year. The second reason was that it corresponds with what is happening in real life. The region is currently in a state of conflict with both nations claiming it as their own and I felt this could be displayed in a map created during this time period.

New canal
I added a new canal between these two new territories. It acts exactly the same as the Kiel canal, allowing a fleet to travel from EBS to Kherson and to SOA or vice versa. This is a completely fictional canal as in real life there is actually a canal that travels south from Ukraine into Crimea which would make this new canal fairly hard to construct (I imagine an artificial lake would have to be dug out to create a crossway for the canals?).

89 Supply Centres - 45 to solo
The new country has added 3 new centres and splitting Sevastopol has added 1 new centres. 4 new centres were added in total increasing the count from 85 to 89.

Iranian territories
To allow better movement I have merged Isfahan and Avaz into 1 territory named Isfahan and I have merged Yazd and Kerman into 1 territory named Kerman. It also looks a bit nicer / less crowded

Cosmetic changes
I have updated the text. I feel it is much more readable but if there are any complaints about the text please let me know. Also I have tried to neaten the boundaries between several territories to look less jarred.

Play test?
I would really like to give this map a play test now. I'm going to apply to become a GM and hopefully can run a play test for this map in a few weeks time. That should hopefully give me enough time to become accredited and make any more small changes that people might put forwards. I would like to run a play test for 3 - 4 years after which making any changes (if needed) before running an official full game.

Feedback
The good, the bad, the ugly, please let me know your thoughts!

[ferdy0]

If you need someone to play or help out give me a yell

[Antigonos]

Interested in playing.

[joe92]

If you need someone to play or help out give me a yell

Interested in playing.

Thanks for the interest in playing!

I'm on the way to becoming an accredited GM and will hopefully be running this variant in a few weeks time. I'll put you straight on the list of players when it goes up.

[ferdy0]

If you need someone to play or help out give me a yell

Interested in playing.

Thanks for the interest in playing!

I'm on the way to becoming an accredited GM and will hopefully be running this variant in a few weeks time. I'll put you straight on the list of players when it goes up.

Good luck with that it's lots of fun

[joe92]

Thanks for your patience. I've just made a final small alteration to the map merging two territories into a single one within Algeria. Will now be looking to give this map a run through and will post a recruitment thread up! I've changed my mind on the play test though and will just go straight for a full length game.

[joe92]

Full list of territories / abbreviations added to OP.