Interesting. A while ago, I was also thinking about making a 'physical' World Diplomacy map, and I now plan to try to rebalance the current World Diplomacy map in the summer, but just for purposes of online play.

I agree that the world map has problems, but to be fair, I don't think there are any easy fixes. Your example in which you would remove South-Africa from Antarctica but won't change anything else on the map wouldn't make sense; not only Frozen, but also Argentina would be too strong if you did that. If you want to make changes, many different changes at once need to be made, and not just changes regarding supply centers. Most of what's wrong with the world map is due to powers having too few attackable neighbours, and to fix that, huge changes to neutral areas need to be made.

Let me give you one specific example. Pacific-Russia borders Russia, but doesn't have a large front with him, which makes war between these two unlikely in the early game. Pacific-Russia and India should border, but there is a ridiculous amount of neutral supply centers between them, so war between them is unlikely in the early game, too. Pacific-Russia should also border Western-Canada, but doesn't, which makes war between these too also unlikely in the early game. This leaves China as the only real viable option for Pacific-Russia to attack. Guaranteed enemies are bad for the balance of the game and this is why China is the worst country on the board. You could fix the situation by significantly reducing the number of areas in central Asia, or just create an entirely new central Asian power, and by making a water territory that borders both Pacific-Russia and Western-Canada.

But these kind of changes require a lot of time and skill to do properly, and they need to be done all over the map. It is for this reason that I delay this project for myself until the summer. It's also why I would suggest that if you are not willing to spend a lot of time on the map, I suggest changing nothing at all - for there are no easy changes. Or, if this project of yours is in no rush,you could wait and we could look to it together. :p

For your interest, here are some statistics about the world map: http://webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?viewthread=1460060#1460060

Similarly, Antarctica and Oz almost always have to attack each other in WorldDip. Even if they want to work together, it's difficult to make it work in a way that helps both of them.

I only somewhat agree. Oz and Frozen can work together well, but it is too favorable for Frozen to stab Oz immediately if Oz trusts him in the early game.

The biggest example of two countries that have to attack each other are Brazil and Argentina I think. I have literally seen no single game in which they were peaceful to each other in the early game.

Europe is crap. Europe can't get builds and just waits for Russia to kill him, or ineffectually fights off Russia until Ghana kills him.

make a land bridge from germany to skandinavia, like in classic. simple.

I think the most balanced continent is NA in world. I've seen games go many different ways there.

I think the best way to balance world would be to balance each continent independently and then balance the ability for continents to fight each other. Effectively it would mean the game would be played in 3 phases : continental dominance/stability, hemispherical dominance/stability , global dominance/stability.

Example if you split the board into regions (Oceania, Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America) you can then use neutral territories densely packed to represent mountain ranges as natural boundaries making cross continental conflict difficult until continental stability is achieved. i.e by making the Ural Mountains very hard to overcome you can separate Europe and Asia. Make the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East similarity difficult to overcome. Make the large stretches of water between Asia and the Americas hard to overcome. Keep repeating this and you have in theory 7 small games of diplomacy that combine in the late game.

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for a brazil/argentina alliance example @Mercy

@swordsman I've seen Europe solo

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@mitomon Most of the players in that game were novice players, so I am not persuaded.

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@swordsman3003 Maybe statistics can convince you? Europe isn't so bad statistically: thread=1460060. Europe can gain a lot from an alliance with Near-East against Russia, and Europe can ally with either Libya or Ghana against the other.

@CommanderByron I don't like your idea at all. For me, a map with 17 players is fun because there are so many different people influencing you (directly or indirectly) and because of the endless possibilities. If you just create smaller games inside the larger game, you ruin that.
Also, while I think North America is balanced if you would only look at the continent itself, I don't think it is balanced in the bigger picture. The American continent is very isolated from the rest of the world, meaning that Western-Canada and Quebec don't really have neighbours from other parts of the world that could pose an early threat to them. But USA is likely to be attacked from South-Africa as soon as one of the two powers gets the upper edge there. This makes USA a worse country than Western-Canada and Quebec.
Also, I really don't like that in the very early game, virtually always (when messaging is allowed) two of the powers in North America unite against the third. If you are the third country in this, you have basically no chance of recovery because there is no one else that you could convince to attack your enemies in the very early game: Brazil will be occupied with Argentina and like previously stated, Western-Canada and Quebec aren't really theretened by any non-American power in the early game. So I'd say that there are too few options for this part of the world.

@y2kjbk Interesting example. If one of them would have stabbed the other at turn one, the other would have been dead, though (especially Brazil), so they took a great risk.

@swordsman0303 I meant viewthread=1460060

@ tobyjoey
You might consider asking on vDip as well. They're much more used to creating balanced variants than we are.

Will this work as a link to the statistics? threadID=1462734

Sorry for the spam. This link will lead to the statistics => threadID=1460060

I mean in a way the game already kind of plays out as several smaller games. There are regional splits and even Classic has this functionality as for the most part you have an eastern and western theater. It's not that the split would be obvious but it should exist. You still have the option of a continent saying "let's not fight let's work together and attack X area. I think this could encourage interesting alliances while stabilizing the game to not benefit any one country.