African Diplomacy PbF (Filled—need reserves)

[TTBen]

African Diplomacy A Variant for Six Players
This game will be held over Discord with all results posted there. I will strive to get all results to the forum as quickly as possible. If you would like to join the server to look around or observe even if you don’t wind up playing feel free. This will be my first attempt to GM a PbF game so be gentle. Aeschines has agreed to be a mentor GM so he is there too if you have questions or concerns.



Introduction
Starting in early April, I'm looking to GM another game of African Diplomacy. This will be the fifth session of this variant played on the forum so far (see ​​prior games in the archive). The variant was last run by Joe92 and he was gracious enough to share his map files with me. The rules and map will be the same as those used for his game unless otherwise noted:
African Diplomacy Variant Bank Page
A few center names were changed from this page when Joe92 recreated the map. I changed the colors of the map slightly for personal preferences. If the colors aren’t working for you let me know, I am certainly not married to them. I renamed Zaire as Congo since that happened in 1997 and this variant is starting in the year 2000. I have also enlarged Djibouti and realigned text inside of Senegal to make it more easily readable.

Powers and their starting centres:
Congo - F (Kin), A (Lu​b), A (Kis)
Ethiopia - A (AAb), A (Dji), F (Mog)
Ivory Coast - F (Abi), A (Fre), A (Oua)
Libya - A (Tri), A (Ben), F (Tun)
Saudi Arabia - A (Riy), F (Mec), F (Dam)
South Africa - A (Pre), F (PEl), F (Cap)

Territory names
All shorthand versions of the territory names are the first 3 letters of the territory unless otherwise denoted on the map. If you aren’t sure ASK.

Map notes as written by the creator
- The Suez Canal through Egypt is like the Kiel canal through Kiel. - Greece borders Turkey but NOT Italy
- Mauritania does border Western Sahara Desert
- Djibouti does border Addis Ababa, Eritrea, Mogadishu and GOA
- Addis Ababa does NOT border GOA
- Tanzania does NOT border Mitumba Mountains
- Mozambique does border Orange Free State
- Uganda does *not* border Zambia. Thus, there is a narrow impassable area along the border between Mitumba Mountains and Tanzania (where the skinny part of Uganda now extends south to connect to Zambia) and Uganda then ends up only bordering Mitumba Mountains, Kisangani, Sudan, Kenya, and Tanzania.

Players interested:
1)AKFD
2)StarkAdder
3)Elric Hazard
4)sleepyjim
5)Wobbly
6)patatevolante4

Reserves:
1)Don Juan of Austria
2)

[TTBen]

House Rules
Recruitment
I'm welcoming to new players, but this being my first game I prefer some experience. I’d love to have some with players experience playing this variant and some who are new to it. I will attempt to pick players with some known reliable track-record in forum or site games. Newer players are welcome to join my reserves list; there's probably going to be at least one replacement needed.

Assignments
Country selection will be via my own modified version of silent auction. All players are given 200 total points with which to bid. Deadlines in this auction will be 24 hours and will always end at 9:00pm New York Time as stated with turn deadlines. These bids will be submitted in Discord in a private channel between you and the GM(s). Day 1 players will place a 5 point “entry” bid on any (and all) country they want to be able to bid on which which will be subtracted from their 200 point total. If you do not place the entry bid on a country you are ineligible to bid on them later even if you are eliminated from the countries you did bid on. Since the max bid will be 100 there is no reason to entry bid on less than 2 countries. The country receiving the most entry bids will go up for auction first, in the event of a tie then countries will go up for bid alphabetically. Who bid on each country will not be revealed until that country is up for auction. Individual country auctions remain private bid not to be revealed until the deadline.Bids should not be discussed among active players.

If you have no countries left you are eligible to bid on then you will take whatever is left. This may result in a coin flip among remaining countries even if you have “leftover” money.

Deadlines/Delays
The game begins in the Spring 2000. Deadlines will be: 2/1/1. My deadlines will always be at 9:00 pm New York time without exception. I may process retreat or build phases earlier if they are ready (remaining time added to next phase), but I will never post a spring or fall early. First year will have an extended Spring and Fall of 4 days each. I will aim to send out a 24 hour reminder and possibly more reminders if I do not have orders since I believe that NMRs ruin the game for everyone. The reminders are not a guarantee and not getting a reminder is not an excuse for an extension.
All reasonable requests for delays will be accepted if proposed BEFORE a turn begins, including requests to skip weekend processing. This means requesting a delay for Fall 2002 in the Spring of 2002 for example (earlier is even better). Requests for delays after a turn has begun will only be granted in an emergency. However, I reserve the right to grant a grace period delay for the competitiveness of the game when orders are missing (see NMRs/Players Leaving Section).
Orders should be submitted through DISCORD ONLY. Provisional orders are encouraged and you may change orders as many times as you want before the deadline. I will only look at this last order submitted, so all order sets must be complete. For clarity sake I encourage you to label each order with the appropriate season (not required) and to write out the full name of the provinces as much as possible. If orders cannot be determined from context then they will be modified to HOLD orders.

As an experiment, once the deadline for orders has passed (assuming no grace period is needed) I will immediately post the text file of all orders before proceeding to adjudication. Full maps and results will be posted shortly thereafter. I reserve the right to end this experiment if it becomes problematic.

Once maps and adjudication are posted I encourage all players to review them and let me know as soon as possible if you see an error, I am only human and subject to making errors. Once the next spring/fall turn has been processed any error will stand as processed. In the event of conflict between the written adjudication and the map, the written adjudication will take precedent and the map will be corrected. I may grant an extension of the deadline for the current turn if errors are discovered but this is not guaranteed.

NMRs/Players Leaving
● A player who NMRs on the first turn will be replaced.
● A total of 2 NMRs will result in a player being replaced.
● NMRs in build or retreat phases will result in 1⁄2 NMR.
● You will automatically receive a grace period of 24 hours for missing orders after year 1 for up to 2 times, which will only result in 1⁄2 NMR if orders are received within that 24 hours.
● If a player leaves or NMRs out of the game, I will pause the game in order to find a replacement
● It is not my responsibility to find you a sub if you will be away. I will do all that I can to help in order to keep the game moving, but if the task is left entirely to me then the player will not be a sub but instead a permanent replacement.

Game Endings
There are 36 total centers, 19 are required to solo. I will however allow a solo concession but it must be accepted by all active players. All draws must include all survivors and are voted on secretly. In the event of a solo, there will be one winner and five losers. In the event of a draw, I will ​rank​ all surviving and eliminated players by total SC count or year of elimination. The size of the draw will be irrelevant. As this isn't an a scored game in actuality, there are no points attached to that rank; it's listed instead for posterity (and to discourage draw-whittling). Draw proposals will expire after one full movement phase from the time proposed (not counting the phase in which it is proposed)

GMs Decisions
All GM decisions are FINAL, however I will agree to consult with other PbF GMs to settle any issues that are unclear by my rules.

[AKFD]

I'm interested! Count me in!

Also, Goodluck TTBen on your first GM!

[StarkAdder]

Awesome map and format. Count me in.

I lived in South Africa for three years so nice to see the Oldest Continent get the same attention as Europe.

Good luck with your first GMing efforts, TTBen. We will be forgiving....

StarkAdder

[TTBen]

I’m running this on discord so I’m inviting all interested people to the Discord server for this game. I won’t update the list to reflect interested players until they have actually joined the Discord server.

[NoPunIn10Did]

“with all results posted there”

TTBen, to clarify, you will be also posting adjudication and maps to the forum each turn, right? So that there’s a more public semi-permanent record of play?

[TTBen]

“with all results posted there”

TTBen, to clarify, you will be also posting adjudication and maps to the forum each turn, right? So that there’s a more public semi-permanent record of play?

I’ll reword this later if I need to....

I certainly understand the desire to keep a public record of the games if we are to further develop these games and I will strive to get all results to the forum eventually. My priority will be to the Discord maps and logs while the game is ongoing as I anticipate most players playing from that info and in situations of a time crunch postings to the forum may be delayed.

[NoPunIn10Did]

“with all results posted there”

TTBen, to clarify, you will be also posting adjudication and maps to the forum each turn, right? So that there’s a more public semi-permanent record of play?

I’ll reword this later if I need to....

I certainly understand the desire to keep a public record of the games if we are to further develop these games and I will strive to get all results to the forum eventually. My priority will be to the Discord maps and logs while the game is ongoing as I anticipate most players playing from that info and in situations of a time crunch postings to the forum may be delayed.

If you're truly in a rush, that's understandable, but that should be a rare instance. Part of training to be a Play-by-Forum GM is learning the ropes of how to post adjudication to the Forum. If at all possible, you need to post to both Discord and the Forum simultaneously.

[sleepyjim]

Will give it a try....

Know zero about discord.

Are the oceans connected say MAO to NIO?


Jim

[TTBen]

Will give it a try....

Know zero about discord.

Are the oceans connected say MAO to NIO?


Jim

No the oceans are not connected from edge to edge like that, only by going around the bottom of Africa. I’d be happy to have you play though and I’ll go over whatever you want on Discord. The main site has a Discord server attached to its chat tab, but my game will have a separate server to make conversations cleaner. Anyone wishing to check it out can find us here: https://discord.gg/4ssShkM