Messages - webDiplomacy

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10 Jan 17 UTC	Spring, 901: Looks like everyone has their orders in. Ready up so that we can move to next phase.
10 Jan 17 UTC	Spring, 901: Oh, and good luck everyone.
10 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 901: [France]:It did not at all dawn on me that neutral SCs were occupied by armies...
10 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 901: [Khazaria]:Happens. That quirk is the main reason I'm playing this, I strongly dislike build anywhere. With the size of the map, though, build anywhere may be a necessity.
10 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 901: [Egypt]:it would certainly take forever if all builds had to be in home centers.
12 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 901: [Axum]:tbh, I think build anywhere is more realistic irl e.g when you take over a supply centre (e.g city/industrial area/resource rich zone etc.) you naturally integrate it and convert it for your own regime. The most realistic would probably be 'build anywhere, but wait one build phase and if you still have that sc, you can now build there' Lmao though France haha, yeah, should be an interesting addition. Hopefully this'll encourage more impacting game variations in the future, with their own rules (not too far off from the original though) I like this map, because again a more ancient/medieval aspect, which seems to be less of a common mod in diplomacy, and it seems well balanced, Europe is a bit tight though and Byzantium seems to be surrounded by everyone, but apart from that What IS annoying though, is the map is such a small resolution automatically, quite annoying to get a good picture of everyone's moves and to quickly come up with negotiation for powers slightly outside of your proximity
12 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 901: [Khazaria]:re: balance, it seems to me that Tang and Srivijaya are in better positions than anyone else on the map (and also better than Turkey in classic), while Byzantium, Egypt, and East Francia are in somewhat more precarious positions than the rest, but we'll see. As for realism and historicity in regards to build anywhere, I don't think those are valid arguments to be made in a game wherein Axum can plausibly mobilise to invade Srivijaya by sea. :P Also, I just like home builds only because it makes the game take a more deliberate, planned pace, with units deployed on the front line holding more value in positioning than the inherent value of a unit. That said, it wouldn't work on this map due to its size. Denmark getting to Srivijaya's home SCs would either need a convoy chain 6 boats long, or 13 land moves, so getting new units to the field would be outrageously difficult in game balance terms (but still outrageously simple in realism terms!).
13 Jan 17 UTC	Spring, 902: [Axum]:Yeah, fair enough. One thing I don't get though, is that the rules say if your newly conquered neutral state hasn't been taken over, but with none of your idle units there over winter, it'll go back as a neutral territory with a neutral army? Wtf??? That's just going to make things insanely difficult and annoying quite frankly
13 Jan 17 UTC	Spring, 902: [Egypt]:Isn't that just the same as in standard dip? You don't control a new center unless you are holding it at the end of the fall turn. If you take it in spring, but then move out in fall it isn't yours.
13 Jan 17 UTC	Spring, 902: [Turan]:That is how I read it -- so if you dislodged the unit and it died rather than retreat, but you don't stay long enough to control the center, it reappears. Not that big a deal and would be an odd circumstance.
13 Jan 17 UTC	Spring, 902: [Arabia]:Could it be useful defensively - i.e. to leave a block behind you.
13 Jan 17 UTC	Spring, 902: [Axum]:I read it as, no matter how long you've held that sc for, if you leave it unattended over winter, it respawns the neutral unit and takes it away from you? Like bandits?
13 Jan 17 UTC	Spring, 902: [Arabia]:I think only if it's unowned - once you hold it for a winter, it remains yours, and you can build there subsequently, or leave it vacant. I think the rebuild only occurs if you capture it in a spring move, and move on in the autumn, i.e. you never held it as a SC. It reverts to neutral with an army.
13 Jan 17 UTC	Spring, 902: [Axum]:oohh, they didn't detail it enough then lol. That makes a whole lot more sense. I hope you're right Arabia, don't want to have such a badly defended front because I have to permanently remain in scs outside of my home centres, top kek XD
18 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 903: [France]:Could you ready up, Egypt?
19 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 904: [Axum]:I know that Saikado is shown here (Shikkoku) but shouldn't they have had Honshu as well? Seeming that the Chinese knew of the Yamato and thus information of Japan would've also gone through the Silk Route? I can understand not putting Hokkaido in, seeming that that was indigenous and hardly known until the 19th century. Not having Java and the islands near Bali DOES piss me off though. Java was the capital of the Javanese, Srivijaya and the Majapahit, so why are they left out? anything South of modern day Mauretania, Sahara and Somalia wouldn't have been known by this time either (except for small fishing villages by Muslims in Rhapta and Madagascar)
19 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 904: [Khazaria]:Balance reasons, I assume; Japan wasn't powerful enough to be a player, and it would've been a hard nerf to China. As for Java, why have it when you can just put the SCs on Sumatra? Makassar was also a vital centre of trade at the time if I'm not terribly mistaken, and there was trade with the small island kingdoms to the east as well; it's just that putting SCs there would just be a flat buff to Srivijaya, which is arguably already OP. Same reason you can sail entire navies around the Cape of Good Hope, which was only ever apocryphally done by a single ship in this era, march entire armies through Sahara and the Sahel without suffering near absolute losses from attrition, the Suez Canal exists ~900 years early... I'd argue Mapungubwe/Zimbabwe was relevant for the Swahili coast (and, by extension, Abyssinia/Axum/Ethiopia), though I might be wrong. Most of my historical knowledge concerns the 1000s and later, and my knowledge of the Swahili coast during this period isn't great.
19 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 904: [Byzantinum]:and to be a total jerkoff, I've seen maps of the known world from the Renaissance. They don't have the accuracy that this map has. So if we are playing "known world" as of 901, shouldn't we be using the same crappy mapping dimensions that they "knew"? And more importantly, who cares? I'm not really putting on suit of armor when I play. It's the borders, and the strategy they imply, that interest me (...also, the cool functionality like transforming an army into a fleet).
19 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 904: [Khazaria]:Yeah, I'm also more interested in the dynamics of the polities than the accuracy of the map. :P
19 Jan 17 UTC	Autumn, 904: [France]:Conversations like this are why I love webdiplomacy. I also don't like how the Suez canal exists. I'd argue that with the ability to convert armies into navies , it's not even really necessary.

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