Amongst other things, if you literally moved armies across the water via the convoy, then you would need to address having 2 units in a single space.

@TheGhostmaker: I what way does this improve the game, in your view?

*In what way...

for the same reason it takes it takes 1 year to march troops form Naples to Tuscany (or Long to EDI) as it does from Sevasapol to St Pete....

@Dingle: Yes I know it's all part of the game's abstract nature, but I was just wondering why the game's original creators decided it should be that way. The functioning of convoys is, in my view, a particularly absurd feature.

(What I'm really asking here is, as far as any of the more experienced people on here know, has anyone connected with the design or development of the game ever been interviewed, for instance in the gaming press, about this issue, and if so, does anyone know what their comments were?)

QUESTION :
If we attack a convoy, does it cancel the convoy?

@Squicky: Only if you displace the convoying fleet - that is, force it to retreat or disband. If you attack a fleet involved in a convoy, but fail to displace it, it can still participate in convoying.

So, for example, if you have a fleet in North Sea, and want to convoy from Edinburgh to Norway (assuming there is no unit in Norway already), and your convoying fleet does not have any support, the convoy would work unless the fleet involved was attacked with a strength of 2. (One unit moving, one giving a support move order).

That poses another question. If all armies and all fleets moved equal mileage (or kilometerage for anyone out side of the US - is there a comparable word? I can't imagine kilometerage is a word), who would win? So figure it would still take a year to get from London to EDI and Naples to Venice, but it would take 6 years to get from Sev to St Pete.

It makes the game more interesting, and also helps the likes of England and Turkey from being dull countries to play.

thx Jamiet

Are there any known variants that treat convoys differently?

There are variants for most everything, so I would expect so.

When Calhamer was designing his rules, one of his earliest versions required to load the army on the fleet.

But those rules were changed, because they made the game to slow.

each move phase is supposed to be about 4 (summerish) months, more than enough time to convoy an army from stp. to syria if you control the seas. Not too unrealistic.

I imagine that most armies have their own transport boats, but you need a naval fleet to protect the convoy, (our you'd lose the army, nad no-one in their right mind would risk that)

Also practically a really long convoy is equivalent to each unit moving one space and th fleet on the end turning into an army. (while the army at the start turns into a fleet)

@ortathaic - not really. The covoying fleets at either end can be different countries. So they'd be converting both type AND country.

The main reason I think is that teh convy move is the one move in the game that can be really surprising. When was the last time you were surprised by an army attacking a neighboring province? But the convoy - that can come out of nowhere if you're not careful.

The convoy also keeps England and Turkey (especially England) interesting and playable. If there were a limit to convoy distance, England (you can read an "and Turkey" for every "England" if you want) would have fixed points of entry onto the continent, since it wouldn't be able to go any further. Take your example of a 3-fleet length limit to convoys. England has eliminated France and builds some armies to go after Italy. Unfortunately, the best it can do with those armies going over 3 fleets is reach Tunis, then convoy to the Italian mainland the next turn. By that time, though, Italy is alerted to the attack and can respond before suddenly losing Rome or Naples in a way that doesn't really exist right now. Or, alternatively, Italy could have an army in North Africa and keep supporting Tunis to stop the first leg of the convoy. Then England is essentially kept from leaving home by this single supporting army.

Obviously there would be ways around these issues, and I'm sure that there would be plenty of online articles about how to avoid convoy blocks as England, or where to set up convoy blocks as anybody else, but at the end of the day it would still be much harder for England (and Turkey) to project their power.

If you use a fleet to convoy, you can't move it or do anything else with it, so to me its reasonable that it can enable an army to jump a space per fleet used,,

Plus it looks really fucking awesome when you pull off an 18 fleet convoy:]

Why would you add an extra arbitrary rule that limits the amount of cool moves (see: fun) a player can do? The more rules a board game has the harder it is to learn and the less likely it is to sell. Simplicity is the key. Also more fun helps games as well, just sayin'.

Essentially the player above got it right, it was tried the other way and it did not work for various reasons including i takes too long. It also
1. reduced the density of units on the board
2. caused numerous problems with fleets being dislodged with units on them
3. caused a great reduction in flexibility of a fleet if you were in the middle some where and wanted to do something other than convoy
4. caused the trapping of units at sea where they could not be off loaded nor could the move so the convoy as forever stuck in a cruise to nowhere.

Dingleberry, it's "kilometrage" if you must use a similar term, although in most circumstances "distance ratio" works just fine.

What if you went the other way with the distance?For example you could move Sevestpol to Moscow as one turn, but you could move anywhere in England in one turn.

We going to pull out the miniatures and measuring sticks now?

You have to bear in mind that the game was designed in the 50s and was intended to reflect the realities of WW-I, in which sea power was the fastest, most impressive and modern form of transportation. Mechanized infantry was experimental at best, air power was mostly theoretical, and while they had trucks for moving men and material, the roads were still rutted dirt tracks. But ships could swiftly deliver ground troops anywhere with a port.

It makes perfect sense viewed within the historical context.

(Some friends and I have been slowly designing a Dip-like game that focuses on a WW-II model and aircraft complicate things dramatically...)

Fleets can only move one unit becase a fleet presence indicates control of the respective territory. When a fleet moves this is a combat move, not a logistical one. Hence, it's slower. Convoys do not constitue a naval combat move - they are pure logistics - and faster.

Not to mention convoys would be useless if you had to make amphibious assaults each step of the way.

@NPRZ: How about railroads? Very fast way of transportation by land (probably even quicker than by sea). During WWI Germany could easily redeploy troops between eastern and western fronts using railroads.

That's a very interesting point. Railroads could almost work like land-based convoys... although I suspect they don't work with the "scale" of Diplomacy. One fleet and one army is of dramatically larger scale than what you could reasonably argue might be transported by rail (I suspect).