The map would be different, I guess? If that's your goal, airborne.

BTW, why CIV III while you can play IV (!)

1900 is a variant that changes the countries and makes them have slightly more equal chances of winning.

1900 is a well known variant. It attempts to "fix" some unbalance issues.

http://www.diplom.org/Zine/S2002M/VonPowell/1900_Intro.htm

On another note, it might be fun and relatively easy to do a winter 1900 variant.

@Xapi: That link does not work.

i don't think the game being unbalanced is a bad thing.

some players are more powerful than others; this is balanced by the fact that players tend to gang up on the most powerful player. (especially germany he gets three builds in 1901; )

I think a more even game would be less interesting.

That said i'm happy to try my hand at makng a varient. I happen to be planning on building a map based game, and this would be a good starter project...

airborne, email me.

http://www.diplom.org/Zine/S2002M/VonPowell/1900_Intro.html

No idea why this doesn't work for others, but if you type 'diplomacy 1900 variant' in google, it comes up as a link and works. Maybe diplom.org doesn't like it when you don't have a referrer?

Odd. It works now. Thanks Xapi.

airborne: what exactly needs to be done with the map still?

"On another note, it might be fun and relatively easy to do a winter 1900 variant" - yes, I'd like to add this.
How're you getting on airborne? I *could* help for a bit next week, but i think that time would probably be better spent working on the svg map or indeed the main source code...

Personally, I like winter 1900 better.

I very much would like to play the 1900 variant. I always wondered why North Africa and the Suez Canal were not included on the original map given their historical importance to European politics. Here is the 1900 map:
http://www.diplom.org/Online/maps/1900.gif

re: creating variant maps, I am new to phpdip and would like to know if any variant maps outside Europe are being scheduled for release or if there is interest in creating the basic variants, ie. youngstown, machiavelli, ancient greece, colonial, for phpdip?

just found the http://forum.phpdiplomacy.net/ where I may find answers

None are being officially added as of yet, but I started a thread explaining in rough terms how you could go about doing that yourself.
If you need a hand just start a thread over there.