interesting yes, but that would mean during the orders putting in not only regular orders, but also retreats, something that only the most organized person will mess up at least once (seeing how units can move and retreat to the same place, they may have a mix-up)

Yeah, that would be part of what makes it interesting. If you order a retreat to a place the ended up contested, your unit would disband. The idea is that, in disarray, a unit may well try to retreat to a somewhere it wasn't able and be destroyed.

Interesting indeed. When I first played in high school we played 2 turns a year, not 5 like this site and most places do. The spring turn you put moves and retreats (if no retreat is given, a unit is supposed to disband) The fall turn had both of the above and builds/disbands listed too. (You would write down the builds you would want in order, then disbands in order. If you didn't give enough, you either didn't get the builds or your units were disbanded semi-randomly.) I would definitely be interested!

A variation on your variation:
The board game rules specify that no diplomacy is allowed to take place after the autumn moves are revealed and before the builds are ordered. To emulate that, full press games here could switch to no-press after the autumn of each year executes, and could switch back to full-press once entering the next year's spring Diplomacy phase.

On the other hand, perhaps that rule is in place for the board game to keep things moving along, but it does add an extra element of negotiating for builds and such before the autumn turn executes.

i'd like to see pre-ordered orders.

where you enter the orders for your next turn instead of the current turn (there is a special rule which does this in memoir '44, where the russians have commissars and are therefore slower to respond to high command...)

but it would make sending in orders (or guessing what your opponents have entered) more difficult...

@orathaic: It's called Crystal Ball diplomacy.
http://www.diplom.org/Online/variants/crystalball.html

Hey Drag I actually had an idea for that after reading the convoy retreat thread. Change retreats to a move that is part of the fall phase.

It would work so you temporarily had two units occupying the one square. It would also make retreats to where the enemy attacked from possible. Or convoyed retreats.

I think it would be a cool concept. Though hard to work in practice especially for the autumn phase. Maybe you'd have to have units in flux until the next spring. o.O

All new tactic. Take the enemy unit out then make them disband it in the spring.

@ Dan i Am: "When I first played in high school we played 2 turns a year, not 5 like this site and most places do..."

Why did you do it like that? Was it a house rule, or had you just failed to understand the rules properly?

I don't mean that to sound insulting - it's genuine question, because it would be interesting if you had chosen to introduce this kind of customisation to the rules.

Draugnar, I'm afraid that, if I'm honest, I don't see the point in this variation. Sorry.

isn't this how people used to do it when they played by snail mail?

@Jamie: Call it a customization. One of the teachers played the game with students who were interested. Orders would be due usually once a day (M/W/F for beginners, etc.) In order to keep the pace of the games up, and to kind of simplify things that's how he did it.

To keep it simpler (there were 9th and 10th graders playing and such) there were certain house rules. If a disband happened, unless you specified it it would happen with the unit farthest from your home centers, fleets first then armies. If there was a retreat, he would roll a dice to determine where the unit would retreat to. Again, it simplified things for students who at times could only talk during recess and in between classes and such.

I like MKE's idea. but it could be annual, or even random! imagine after 1 set of orders go through, your communications with other are randomly cut off!

@omg: yes, this is exactly how some people used to play when using snail mail. Provisional retreats/builds are basically just as the OP described, that is, players submit a list of retreat orders and build orders for every scenario that they could or wished to cover. The judge would have to work out what the orders should be depending on what happened and what the player had requested. If something was ambiguous or not specified, then it would default to disband/no build/remove furthest from home, depending on the situation. A primary motivation was simply to keep games moving along quickly, with 2 phases per year instead of 5, since with things needing to be mailed out a phase could typically be around a few weeks.

@MKE: what you are suggesting is not really a variation of the "variant" suggested by Draug, but rather simply suggesting that the website should properly implement the "no talking during retreats and builds" rule.

Personally, I don't really mind that the website implements the "house rule" of allowing talking (in press games) during retreats and builds. It gives some more time to talk during live games at least.