Poland will start with 1 supply center, which will be adjacent to two of Germany's.

I didn't mean Israel, sorry, but the British-occupied Middle-East.

I will work on making the gameplay fair as time goes on and the map is developed. I'm just trying to gauge whether you would all be interested in a WW2 variant?

Pray to the laud that you ain't Poland.

Interested.

Thing is . . . there are few variants on this site, unfortunately.
Maybe better try http://www.vdiplomacy.com/index.php

British supply centres - London, Cardiff, Liverpool, Newcastle, Scapa Flow, Alexandria, Jerusalem

German supply centres - Munich, Berlin, E. Prussia, Kiel, Breslau, Cologne, Essen

French supply centres - Paris, Marseilles, Brest, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Calais, Algeria

Russian supply centres - Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Minsk, Kiev, St Petersburg, Baku

Italian supply centres - Rome, Trieste, Tripoli, Genoa, Florence, Naples, Sardinia


I'm wondering whether to get rid of Poland and have Spain as a power, although it ruins historically accurate if spain dont stay neutral

There is already a very good WW2 variant.

http://vdiplomacy.com/variants.php?variantID=72

Sorry.

Best of luck, SY.

To be honest what I've got in mind will be way better than that

http://s13.postimage.org/5snqlarae/preview.jpg an idea of the kind of scale I'm working on

the variant Europe 1939 (8 players) is very good,but the one SYnapse is making looks super nice.
gl SYnapse!
let me know when its ready,i will gladly try it.

only two things,if you are making so many land zones you should make more sea zones to make it more balanced,and swiss is neutral don't forget .

http://s2.postimage.org/j3j2o2brc/preview.jpg Another preview

Some questions for you guys:

Do you prefer the provinces to be named after regions ie. Rheinland, Cote D'Azure or cities Frankfurt, Marseilles?

Out of the following minor powers I am consider implementing: Turkey, Nationalist Spain and Poland. Do you think any of these are worth playing?

Should neutral countries be blocked out like Switzerland in the classic game? Should this include countries like Turkey, Portugal for example?

Should the Maginot line be implemented? It's easy to create a barrier on the South German-Franc border requiring an invasion of the Low Countries. Just make a small impenetrable province. But do you think it would ruin game play?

Any other suggestions?

Vdiplomacy.net already has all the good variants currently out there including a 1939 variant for ww2. I usually play there instead of here actually. The only thing I do here is live games.

@SYnapse you doing a very good job on the variant
i think is better to use city names and best will be if the names are common known,it makes it easier for players to identify zones and comunicate.
if i wanted to play fantasy games i have risk or d&d,the reason i like diplomacy is that it is more realistic than other games and no luck involved,try to make it as real as posible specially if you are trying to recreate ww2.
who was neutral in ww2 must be here and Maginot line is a great idea.

No America? No Japan? No Eastern front? Aww

Also careful it doesn't get too clumsy. IMO this game doesn't scale all that well to massive army sizes.

Also are you considering the adoption of units outside of the normal armies/fleets setup? Not that I necessarily endorse complicating the game, but could be a good idea due to the more complex nature of WW2 compared to WW1. In addition, due to the faster pace of WW2, perhaps more seasons are needed? And/or a defense bonus to units during winter to represent the difficulties of attacking during that season?

Some examples:
>Submarines (invisible, able to attack without revealing their nationality)
>Air units (able to support allied units from several spaces away, cannot attack on their own)
>Armoured Divisions (stronger and/or faster, but perhaps unable to capture centers. Also suffer some kind of penalty in Autumn and/or Winter due to being more susceptible to poor weather)
>A difference between Mechanized and foot slogging armies
>Convoys (transport only naval units for if theres alot of ocean territory)
>Spies (no idea how this works, but god damn they were important. Perhaps they could move regardless of if a territory is occupied, and relay the orders given to that unit to their owner?)

Anyway, just an idea. Feel free to disregard. I'm sure every user and their dog has proposed "new stuff" for diplomacy

I do think you should get rid of Poland as a power. I don't see how it could be relevantly connected to WWII if Poland is a great power.

I actually think WWII is challenging -- the political geography wasn't as straightforwardly interesting as in WWI. Still, I'll be interested to see it if you get it done (though I agree American involvement of some kind could be cool. Maybe England gets to deploy American troups in Africa a few years in if some condition is met).

Why not just play Axis and Allies...several versions to pick from.

If you go for a historical setup, you need post-Munich borders, not the actual HoI 1936 setup. Austria anschlussed, Czechoslovakia absorbed in the Reich. Don't forget about Estonia. And make sure your sea areas are scaled to the SC count as well so you don't create naval bottlenecks everywhere the big maps have problem with.

Make neutral Spain support holding its units in Pyrenees so it isn't just a French backyard but something it has to divert resources to if it wants it.

I like the idea of Spain support holding units. Switzerland should be impassable, as German units mostly went through Austria. All other countries should be passable.
And yes, make sure you scale the sea spaces! Navies are just as important as armies!

Don't mess with other units, and don't include the Americans. If you want to introduce another power, one which has a chance to succeed, introduce Greece. It wasn't a major power, but it was big enough to kick the shit out of the Italians. Poland I fear would be in a worse situation than Austria is in the regular map.

Perhaps you also want to consider with nations starting with less than 7 units, but still have all the SC's you mentioned there. 7 at the beginning seems ungainly. I would think 4 is more appropriate, and make sure 1 of the 4 for E and F is in Africa. It sorta sets off the imbalance against Germany from the beginning (maybe G and R could start with 5?)

I still think including Japan and the Eastern front would be awesome. A Russia forced to focus on two fronts is a Russia that is more historically accurate. As for America, perhaps give it less cities than one would expect? Perhaps America has to miss out early turns / cannot move beyond it's borders for the first few years? Perhaps most of America is neutral centers, with 'conquering' them representing the fact that the American people were rather reluctant to enter the war? Perhaps America has very, very few 'home centers' capable of building units (one on each coast?) - so despite a high center count, they build up military strength very slowly? Perhaps Cuba is a Russian home center? Perhaps Japan starts off with a stronger military than America, necessitating a lengthy struggle in the Pacific?

No need to just ignore an entire theatre of the war if it can be incorporated effectively. Just think of all the possibilities it brings to the table.

This would also allow Nationalist and/or Socialist China as playable factions (the other may be a neutral power), which is more interesting than Greece IMO, and adds SE Asia as almost a second balkans, as well as colonies of the various powers in Vietnam, AUS and NZ that help balance them against Germany.

Neutral armies are a great idea. Absolutely golden. Though Poland as a single center player... not sure about that one lol. Could make for interesting negotiations, but that has to be weighed against fairness for whoever 'lucks out' with it.

Check over at vdip, thats where variants are made and we have over 90 variants including at least 2 WW2 maps.

Soviet Union forced to focus on two fronts isn't historically accurate, it upheld the NAP with Japan for the entire duration of the war in Europe and it's Far East garrison was minuscule in the meantime, all the forces were concentrated in the Eastern Front (which was in Europe). Of course that falls within diplomacy and would very well go differently in the variant, but expanding the map several times to accomodate an ahistoric scenario is a pretty steep price. Limiting the scope of the variant is not a bad thing, not at all.

Also, Cuba under SU in WW2? You might brush up on your history, Commander ;)

Hey man, it doesn't have to be completely historically accurate.

Also I'll take a look at vdip. But why are there two sites?

Hi guys. I don't really think I'll be doing Japan/China/USA as it really deserves a map of it's own. I'm glad to see so much enthusiasm for my variant which is in the early stages.

I suppose I could make a few unit types, but keep it simple. For example, tanks beat infantry, artillery beat tanks, infantry beat artillery.

I will already be giving Britain 2 supply centres in Egypt/Middle-East, Italy 1 in tripoli and french one in algiers. I'm also going to make lots of supply centres in these regions to give players something to fight for in Africa.

Anyway keep hitting me up with the suggestions, once I've finished the map and brushed it up a little I'll let you guys know and i'll try to release a test-play as soon as possible to start ironing out inbalances etc.

Having more than 2 units is a pain in the ass though. Don't think anyone has cracked the puzzle for the webDip code yet.

Don't do multiple unit types.

*IF* you can/decide to change the units, don't do it 'just because', and certainly don't do a paper/scissors/rock system for them!

I think that new units should only be incorporated where technological advances caused a significant change in the way wars were fought. ARMY can still represent most land based units, including supporting artillery and units with a mix of tanks and infantry - though WW2 was the pioneering deployment of highly mobile entirely armoured and mechanized forces (aka, the German blitzkrieg) that perhaps deserve their own unit. NAVY can still represent all standard surface fleet assets. Submarine, Air, and possibly Carrier (or just the ability to base air units on fleets) alongside mechanized/armoured units would be my recommendation.

Again, thats IF its even a good idea to change up the system.

Thanks for the recommendations Commander_Cool

There are many World War II variants:
http://www.variantbank.org/results/classificationq.asp

***PREVIEW UPDATE***

http://s7.postimage.org/4v4qder4q/preview.jpg