I like the random assignment right now that tries to give you countries you haven't played, but this would be an interesting option in game set-up, and valuable for those that wanted to play test-strategy games with friends from certain positions. Could be a random draw for picking order and have a first pre-phase of one turn length for picking positions.

PlayDip has three options for country selection. Random (like here), First Come/First Served (like your asking), and then Preferred Country where you can make your first three preferences and it hands out based on preference but coin flips for people who have same preferences.

I don't know if i'd say it adds or detracts anything overall, just an additional novelty option. Sometimes you get first-come/first-served games waiting in limbo as it waits for somebody willingly wishing to jump into one of the commonly less desirable nations.

Preferred Country would be an interesting addition.

If it could be linked to FCFS (i.e. allocation is be highest available preference in the order that players joined the game) might actually encourage folks to sign up to games more quickly.

Although I'm new to this site, I've been playing FTF on and off for 30 years. In my view, no countries are undesirable; just different.

Except Canada of course.

Every time I pass by this threat I think it says Site Addiction and I feel really bad because I honestly think I spend way too much time on these forums

^ lol

Double the time you spend in the forums DD. Then you can look back at the previous amount of time you spent and say "That wasn't so bad at all!" and feel better about your past.

Good Therapy!!!^ (lel)

The only cure for cocaine is more cocaine.

Of course! How else do you cure addictions. And mind you the cure isn't just more cocaine it is double the amount

How does DD always manage to make threads go to hell?

Webdip has a long history of threads going south...

@Dd, Addiction, the opposite of addiction is connection. Webdip facilitates a kind of connection... Not the deepest connection perhaps, but a connection with actual people, rather than drugs/gambling/falling off talk things.

So... There is that.

Porting variants from vdip is fairly easy. I don't know if it is desirable.

I like the idea of choosing the country, but I think FCFS will have problems to start public games. Would be interesting to know which countries are prefered.
I personly like to have a random country, at least most of the times, but if there is a hybrid system where I still get a random one and everyone who wants a specific on gets a slightly higher chance.
For example all the random countries are assigned and after that with some kind of priority matching.

I'm a little confused. Is VDip in a sort of cooperation with WebDip or are they completely separate?

Choose your country does seem pretty worthwhile. Think of how many tournaments we could do where you have to play each country once :)

Webdip is an open source project. Vdip is a sister site built on the same code-base. When new features are added to one they are often available to he ported to the other with relative ease...

Vdip exists because a decision was made to limit the number of variants in webdip, allowing vdip carbe out a noche for variants, previously there were also olidip and goondip (though i think olidip was renamed vdip, as phpdip was renamed webdip...)

And of course playdiplomacy, which has a sligthly more comicated relationship.

The problem with porting features from vDip is that quite often, the code is... not as robust as the webDip code. Oli openly admits this, and he quite often hacks the code to make things possible. Meaning that porting features over can sometimes have some unpleasant and unwanted side effects.

Mutated game maps you say? muahaha...

Look out for vDip ports creating wormholes, like that one from Syria to Clyde.

http://vdiplomacy.com/map.php?gameID=13816&turn=2

(This was the time when a vDip feature being ported created a wormhole in Wales and pulled everyone's units into it)

Photoshop or real? Wishing it was real. Also seeing a retreat from Tyrolia to Albania on there and a fleet moving from Gulf of Bothnia to Irish Sea. Best of course are those three attempts to go through the wormhole to Wales.

No, that's a regular Ankara Crescent game for you.

Where did Ankara Crescent even come from anyways? I tried googling it to find out, and only found this thread: thread=1301889, which makes absolutely no sense.

*DD comes in with crazy conspiracy*

Ankara cresent was formulated from applying the rule sets from several differet variants onto one in a forum based game. This lead to the most complicated of games possible and is effectively unplayable. I highly recommend you avoid it.

The Vdip version (ie non-forum game actual version, which the above is a screenshot of) is actually much etter, both in playtesting and in playability.

While orathaic is mostly right, you have to take into consider the Bulgarian variant form 1973, when combined with the Oxford addendums from WorldDipCon XV, that is basically when the game really came into it's own. I've never played with more than eight people, though, that ever understood the permutations in their purist form.

Thanks for the clarification :)