Worldleaders.com does a colonial variant which has all of Asia.

If you set up your own server, the phpdiplomacy code is able to support a world varient, but you would have to set up the map yourself

I'd love to be able to gather 18 of us and implement this map:

http://www.diplom.org/Online/maps/world-v2.gif

That would be fun!!

Is this 1840-1850 or something?(The map)
And also, how can Antarctica have supply centers? =/

http://www.diplom.org/Online/maps/imperial-small.gif
http://www.diplom.org/Online/variants/imperial.html

I think that this is a better 'world' map.The idea of being able to play this map on a site like this makes my mouth water.

Is there anyone able and willing to attempt to 'code' the map? I'm not very programming savvy but I'd be willing to devote some time if someone would tell me what I need to do.

That makes my mouth water, but my god, surely it would be complicated to code? I would also be keen to help out, but my knowledge of coding is non-existent - if it was a case of simple writing it out in a set format, I could probably handle it?

Actually it would be cool to have other maps available, I realize this is easier said than done :)

is it just my impression, or does the russia in archonix post have way to many home supply centers ?

Thank you. I think I like most what Archonix mentioned. It is interesting because there unbalance in the powers which is more realistic.
I would like to see if there is any possibility to play that mega-diplomacy!

I hear ya Fidobot...I like Archonix's examples as well. But given the choice between more players with less SC's and less players with more SC's, I think I'd take the former. SC's in Antarctica be damned!! :)

I'd love to attempt to do this, but I have only a limited knowledge of php...enough to recognize variables, functions, etc...to tailor basic pre-written code to my needs.

However, I have a feeling this is beyond me. =/ I'll take a look and see what I can come up with though, if no one else is willing to make an attempt. No promises or deadlines...

haha, imagine the amount of orders you'd need to enter if you actually get to 70 SC's!! @.@

http://www.freewebs.com/tomahaha/newworldorder.htm

These are the rules, you need to scroll down to see the starting map.

I've been playing this variant (I'm Colombia) for the past six months by email and it has been by far the most intense game I've ever been in. Its the modern world with 49 available countries and rules for nukes, UN peacekeepers, Terrorism etc. The countries aren't balanced and obviously the smaller countries get eliminated early in large numbers, however, to win you need to form a UN voting coalition of three members and the smaller powers require less votes to win. So all countries are given ranks with A (US) being the highest and F (Zimbabwe) being the lowest. This means that smaller countries that grow to be powerful are very important.

The map setup is designed to encourage cross-continent exchanges (with islands like Tahiti recieveing centres) and the UN voting system is designed to encourage cross-continent communication.

It may seem unwieldy at first but its been quite the success and has had relatively few NMRs. Players known to be committed and high communicators were given priority for larger countries. It comes highly recommended from me!

Holy cow! It looks daunting...but fun.

woohoo this looks like fun.

would be great to play on that world map.right now im on an old work pc that is running windows 98 i think, its the dusty one in the corner so i cant quite make out the countries in that world map archonix posted the link to. setting it in 2008 in this unipolar world would make the usa too strong or have an implausible scenario of breaking the usa up into regional groups. However thinking about what the world might be if regional groupings quikened their pace we could have
Eu, USA, China, ASEAN, Japan,Afriacan Union,Russia,OIS(? the islamic grouping?or split it in two, sunni and shia) and a south american body..whats it called again?

to get the ball rolling on a new map we should start a thread about it on the developers thread. i will when i get home today(or just check that there isnt one there already, i dont have it bookmarked at work and i dont know of any link from this forum to that on)
1st we need to decide which map, really i guess that is a question of practicality meets interest. there is no point making some wonderful huge map with 20 plus players to be the 1st non standard map on this site if it is too difficult to round up 20 players or the system cannot handle a 200 plus province list. kestas are there any limitations that we need to be aware of when considering a new map?
then once we have decided which map i guess 2nd is getting some people to write the code. sadly i am like CGwhite, all interest and no ability.
ok shall we move this across to the developers thread 1st?

sean...keep us posted on this....I would like to try other scenarios

Honestly on the 'imperial' diplomacy map I posted it isn't that unbalanced. France, England and Russia (possibly Holland too) the countries with immense amounts of SCs would be fighting on multiple fronts almost immediately.

Russia would probably be in conflict with Japan, China, Prussia or Austria and the Ottoman empire almost immediately if it doesn't concede many of the possible gains. The lack of more than one navy in the east puts Russia at a serious disadvantage against Japan as well.

England could easily lose the Falklands, Singapore, Hong Kong and possibly Gibraltar by the end of the first year. The Canadian territories would also be under serious threat if the USA and the CSA made peace. If that does happen all England has is his/her Europe SCs, India SCs and Australia/New Zealand (which are isolated enough to protect pretty easily). If you really think about it you probably wouldn't be fighting the entirety of any sides forces either - you'd probably end up fighting British India or British America rather than facing of against the entire British empire.

France isn't quite as fragile as Britain but it isn't hard to imagine France losing all South American, all Indochinese or all African SCs with some applied effort. Ultimately ending up a little weaker than Britain without the large and secure possible gains in India and Oceania.

Finally, Holland only really has an SC in South America, and two sizeable colonies South Africa and Indonesia. It is diverse but its European SC could easily vanish without support from one of the other three neighbouring powers.

I personally believe that the smaller powers are not that disadvantaged in relation to the bigger ones either as the bigger ones will simply be fighting more wars.

I also think the map I posted is actually comparable to playing multiple diplomacy games within a larger game. North America is arguably a 4-man individual diplomacy game. Russia-China-Japan is a three-man diplomacy game. Europe is a 6-man diplomacy game and Africa a 3-man. Once the 'hot' areas are resolved you then begin to see inter-continental exchanges China-British India maybe, Australia-Indonesia, Brazil-CSA or Mexico and so on.

If it isn't obvious yet I really enjoyed that forty-five minutes analyzing possible strategies within that map :P

sean, I think the easiest variant to implement here would be Edi's suggestion in the Neutrals Variant thread...Crowded Diplomacy.

Plus it looks fun. :) I looked at the code and it's beyond me. :(

here's the link for the lazy people: ;)

http://www.variantbank.org/results/rules/c/crowded.htm

@Centurian - btw that 'New World Order' thing looks awesome. Do you think another one might be started sometime soon? I'd love to get in on a play-by-email like that -who would I need to talk to?

Its on Redscape.com. It was one of the sites I signed up for when I was looking for a good diplomacy site (this is where I ended up) but I stuck around because of the cool variants they play. I'll post on here next time it starts up.

Heh, I'd never even seen the site before.

Is there any interest in starting an 'Imperial' game on Redscape? Perhaps maybe starting two so that I could GM one and play in another.

http://www.dipbounced.com
I found this a while ago, but have never played on it since phpDiplomacy is so much more pleasing to the eye ;-)
But there seems to be a lot of variants on this site.

Yeah if you start a Imperial I would like to play

figlesquide showed me an example of the code. its pretty long but doable for no programmers. just requires a fair bit of typing. im keen to try it with others if anyone is interested. but 1st we need to decide which map to make.

I'd be willing to help sean...but I'm at a loss of where to start.

I didn't have an extensive look at it, but I'm not clear on how the territories are assigned. Via a database no doubt, but there's got to be a function that handles the assignment.

I think the first map to start with would be something simple...like the one we already have! If we implemented the crowded diplomacy variant, I think it would be much easier. Everything is already there. We'd only need to assign a few more SC's and add a few more players.

Whatcha think?

We have a variant we're playing in my Diplomacy club that only requires 8 players, it has a lot more centers, but larger terrritories.

Well, if you were feeling ambitious, you could do this:
http://web.telia.com/~u87734465/stabbed/rules/colonial.html

Colonial diplomacy looks to be the best variant out there. Just a new map essentially - same rules etc.

If we are doing any variant, I think it would be easiest to do when just changing the map - changing rules would be difficult to code perhaps?

http://www.amarriner.com/dip/variants.php?variants_id=3

Another example of the same map.

Within the colonial variant it should be noted that Hong Kong doesn't count as an SC for China and there is a Trans-Siberian-Railroad. If those rules are left out of the variant Russia will be crippled and China in a very good position that is counter-productive to negotiation and alliances.

Well, with the China Hong Kong issue it is simple - although they can take it over, you would state at the beginning of the game that whoever has China cannot build there - honour rules like we do in other variants.

Secondly, with the TSRailroad, could you set it up as a 'land convoy' system?