That would undermine the whole idea of playing with friends in the first place.

I don't think there's a good solution to being one man down. The ownership of Italy could alter between the remaining players, but that would require stable alliance blocks to be at least remotely fair.

We are playing in person.

Ohhh. That would make since now.

And what about Italy that sits in its SCs and supports its units? Maybe putting a unit in Tunis, too...

Pure brainstorming!

I was thinking of everyone submitting orders for Italy and then whatever the majority was for each move was happens, but then there would be weird incentives to keep people alive to have another vote and other weird situations.

What about an unanimous agreement in orders from England and Russia? Obviously, Austria, Turkey and France have too much vested interests for majority rule to work.

Well, everyone has vested interests... But that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I think best option would be to have italy sit and support hold.

Going for the favoured Italian vote after allowing all players to go vote would risk Italy giving nonsensical orders. That said, would be quite interesting, and might be similar to playing with a newbie who was easily manipulated. Another possibility linked to this would be everyone submitted Italy orders, then one set was randomly chosen.
Still, as I said up top: I'd favour just setting Italy to sensibly do nothing, ie sensible support holds, but nothing else (like the idea of unit in Tunis as well). By sensible I mean if only one unit is under threat both others support that one, rather than in a triangle

make it so ITY has no centers.

I wonder that will happen if you let one person control both Russia and Turkey. You 'force' a juggernaut on the game.

uclabb - there are 4 good options I think:

1) the rule-book endorsed CD italy. (I dont like this as it unbalances the game)

2) the auto-pilot Italy. italy moves nap to tys to tunis. rom perpetually holds ven. nap and tunis constantly bounce in ion. this makes an attack on italy less easy and attractive and almost emulates how italy would play into 1903 or so anyways... so less unbalanced.

3) voting system. each player writes their own orders AND italian orders. the votes for italian orders then also become part of the negotiations between players. ties are considered holds, otherwise whatever move gets the most votes is the one the italian units makes.

4) there is another rule to play with less than 7 players, I forget its name, but someone here might remember. its almost like risk. no uniform starting positions. each player puts a piece down at whatever location they choose, then the next, then the next. almost like risk. several variants. either limit each player to 3 or 4 pieces. or just keep going till there are no neutrals left. so you might end up with units in adjacent supply centers or all over the board, you have to strategically place your starting pieces. again, there is a name for this version, but I forget what it is.

@Babak - your #1 is indeed from the Avalon Hill rules, so it is "official", however -- I like your #2, I'd do it that way

@Babak

I have read something about playing the 4th way, but I cannot remember its name either...

Escalation!

I've heard of the Anschluss variant, where Germany and Austria are controlled by the same player. It is of course grossly unbalanced, but that's obvious to all players, so there is immediate feedback.

Remember that the Austro-German player has to talk to everyone, which is a bitch in FTF. Moreover, he will always be under attack from at least one side. Playing that country anywhere near decent is really difficult, and any beginner who's put in that position will surely be eliminated soon.

uclabb - that's it. Escalation! if you find a source with rules, put the link here for others b/c there are some specific rules I think.

basvan... good option too. hadn't heard of that, but i like it.

http://www.variantbank.org/results/rules/e/escalation2.htm

Check out the rest of
http://www.variantbank.org/
It has rules and/or descriptions for tons of Diplomacy variants

http://www.wizards.com/avalonhill/rules/diplomacy_escalation.pdf

We played escalation... We didn't really do a good job of picking spots, though... one guy (LJTYLERDURDEN on this site) had a ridiculous advantage.

Yeah, we ended up calling the game after the first year because I had all of Turkey, most of Russia and was moving into the Balkans. Part of the problem was that uclabb and I were the only experienced players there. Overall I think it's a worthwhile variant, but it would be a bitch to program into the site, so it's better face-to-face.

I do like #2, as well.

build an AI to take over the world. Kill it before it becomes too powerful and tries to do it in real life.

bump

So just FYI, we had 6 games on sat with auto-piolet italy. 3 w bounces in ion, then 3 w bounces in tys. Others can comment too, but seemed the tys bounce worked better bc the ion self-bounce was too powerful for france.

But overall, I think it worked out pretty well. Other folks from the boston tourney can share their views too.

There are some AI's for diplomacy out there. Unfortunately they require a fair bit of processor power. It would be neat if instead of CD an AI takes over the country. (They are still not very good, but it would be like playing with a non communicative player who just puts in orders.

I had never realized that CD Italy made so many changes to the game.

An auto-bounce in ION was very pro-France and very anti-Russia.
An auto-bounce in TYS was very pro-Austria and very anti-England.

On a side note, I feel bad for my friend who got Russia when we bounced in ION and England when we bounced in TYS : /

Like anything in Diplomacy, I feel as long as the players know the consequences of the auto-Italy the board will compensate itself. The problem was we only played once each way, so it wasn't exactly clear what those consequences would be.

One thing I'd like to try is either a hold in NAP and TUN or a random bounce in ION or TYS. This may give Austria and France incentive to go towards Italy, creating some conflict in that region.

the randomization idea is not bad. how would you implement that in ftf?

but holding I think would be far worst as it would leave an open lane for fast access across the med which would not necessarily be good either. although i guess it could make T and F end up fighting each other much earlier.

@babak

Flipping a coin.

@babak

"but holding I think would be far worst as it would leave an open lane for fast access across the med which would not necessarily be good either."

This is how I think of it:

If France and Austria have no fear of an attack from Italy, the best way to compensate for that is to give them a lot of incentive to attack italy themselves. This way, England and Russia aren't faced to fight enemies without allies. As we saw in the Tournament, giving France *or* Austria incentive to attack Italy doesn't work great. But, if they *both* could easily move against Italy, they may start fighting against each other for the centers, which would be ideal.