AWESOME

Dresden is wrong. It should be where Leipzig is

Actually, Dresden should be Wroclaw and below Poznan should be Krakow. Leipzig can be either Leipzig or Dresden, both are big Saxon cities, although Dresden was more relevant to the war.

Thanks Fairfax they're in the wrong places, anything else?

That's very good, but if the Powers are only allocated 3 (or 4) home SCs each you're going to have to make sure that each one has access to an ocean, otherwise that Power will never be able to build fleets.

Finmark should be Finnmark. Don't know what Norw is but it should be Narvik, a crucial port in the area that serves for shipping Swedish iron from Kiruna and the primary reason Hitler bothered to occupy Norway in teh first place.

Speaker - to answer your question each is going to start with 7 home SC's. I am actually aiming for a more long-drawn out game with larger powers, and a lot more supply centres than classic diplo.

Here's another preview with the rough starting positions coloured in for preview purposes - these won't be the ACTUAL starting positions, as not every home province will be a supply centre (especially USSR!) but just to give you an idea.

http://s2.postimage.org/ytigw1wso/preview2.jpg

Thanks very much ulytau.

Chechnya is actually to the Eastern edge of the map, it could be something like Krasnodar. Arkhangelskaya Oblast can be simply Arkhangelsk, Oblast is something like a county and nowhere else on the map you reffer to provinces as such. Similarly, Tirana should be logically called Albania. Rostok should be Rostock. Balrearic Sea->Balearic Sea. Cote d'Azure->Cote d'Azur.

Also, Switzerland seems strangely deformed :) Other countries are pretty much fine but this struck me as really weird.

Thanks, we're getting to the more controversial stuff now - supply centres.

Here's what I had in mind for the starting supply centres. I've had to try to make the starting positions balanced, which is why for example the UK doesn't start with NI, and why Russia starts in such a forward position. Please do let me know what you think.

http://s14.postimage.org/z304n60u8/preview3.jpg

Why does Germany get Konigsberg but not Danzig?

and I think Germany should start with territory in Czechoslovakia if not there and Austria as well because the war essentially started with them in those areas already. The map just makes Russia look too strong with so much land separating it from the rest of Europe. It can essentially eat the British fleet in Egypt, and any Slavic area. Germany can't expand that far east without risking losing the original Germany to France or Italy. On top of that, to be historically accurate, shouldn't Switzerland be blacked out like on the Classic map?
And for simplicity's sake, unless it's a supply center, maybe get rid of Iceland or Mauritania. It's geographically accurate, but takes up space. It's like the Philippines and Madagascar in the global map. useless, really.

It's a beautiful map, btw. Nice job.

Königsberg belonged to Germany, Danzig didn't.

Cardcollector - there are methods to my madness, let me explain.

First of all, this isn't specifically a 1936 map, and I feel that Germany's first moves should be to annex Czechoslovakia and/or Austria/Denmark as the player chooses. I have calculated the distances to nearest supply centres and actually the Soviets were disadvantaged, so I've put supply centres in the Baltic states to compensate.

Blocking out Switzerland for neutrality would mean blocking out Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Sweden? Put simply I would rather give the player the choice than isolate large sections of the map for accuracy.

You've got a point with Iceland, I suppose. Should it be a supply centre?

"Why does Germany get Konigsberg but not Danzig?" - roleplaying already, I like your style

and it might just be me, but Croatia looks weird. and I also agreed that so does Switzerland. Otherwise, very, very nice map.

Iceland should be one, maybe for Britain. It seems difficult for Britain to effectively claim supply centers without starting war.

and synapse, nice. I guess it works that way. Seems like you thought this through well.

I've neatened up some of the borders and the Scandinavian coastline.

http://s8.postimage.org/naslirmxw/preview.jpg

Can somebody give me some advice? I've read the howto on the forums but I don't actually know anything about php or how to get this working for testing etc?

Since it's your first variant just create a thread here: http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewforum.php?f=25&sid=77 05831d6688ed0bd60554489bbf994 and Oli (Sleepcap there, he also heads vDip) will set you up because he's a really helpful guy. He runs a laboratory for new variants, so you don't even need to enter the topology by hand but via his graphical tools. If you don't alter any gameplay rules, implementing your variant should be pretty straightforward.

Also, Leipzig should really be Breslau (German for Wroclaw) ;) COnsequently, Wroclaw is Cracow and Cracow should be something, perhaps Lwow. Your Poland is in a whole really strange, seems like you took modern borders and pushed them eastwards to fit with with interbellum borders, which resulted in all cities being way too to the East.

I'll have a look at revising Poland. Thanks.

Ulytau - looked at a map and realized my mistake. I think I had the boundaries right for the division of Poland but the wrong province names in the provinces - doh!

Does this look better?
http://s14.postimage.org/5xhe0qtoh/poland.jpg

Yup. You might want to switch Brest-Litovsk for Wilno/Vilnius so the abbreviation Bre isn't mistaken for Bremen but that's a really minor detail. Otherwise a really good map!

Should Champagne be renamed Ardennes?

Ardennes are really only in the northernmost tip so IMHO no.

Wow this map looks great. The one thing i picked up on however is the libyan sea and tripoli border. can tripoli move to the libyan sea? because i dont like messy corners like that. unless it can move there, like in the messenian sea in the ancient meditteranean map. same question about the libyan to aegean sea, etc. if it cant, perhaps clean them up and look for little things like that across the board. otherwise, very nice! though maybe arabia should be a supply center as well in order for the land to be used at all. :P Good luck!

Thanks, Tripoli and Libyan Sea shouldn't be connected. Likewise Aegean and Libyan Sea. I'll sort these borders out.

Just a few of questions:

1. coast adjacency (do they connect?):
Tripoli - Libyan sea?
Benghazi - Sea of Crete?
Tobrok - Libyan Sea?
Palestine - Red Sea?
Stalingrad - Black Sea?
Brest - Atlantic Passage?
Croatia - Sth Adriatic Sea?
Gothenburg - Skaggerak?
Finnmark - White Sea?
Alexandria - Red Sea?

Isolated SCs/territories:
Copenhagen - will there be land bridges in this region?
Crete - ^as above^
Cypress - ^as above^

Dual/Multiple coasts (do they or not?):
Rome, Tuscany, Athens, Suez, Constantinople, Gothenburg (if adjacent to SKA), Kiel, ?Denmark?, Edinburgh, Andalucia.

For information about making your variant please see:
http://www.vDiplomacy.com/wiki/

Synapse, I like your map - just a few comments about the three Romanian provinces - they should be Transylvania, Walachia and Moldavia. Also, the Banat region (the western tip of Romania which borders Hungary and Serbia (or Croatia on your map?!) should be an independent province or belong to Transylvania, but not Bucharest - see the following links for how to divide up Romania of the 1930s into provinces:
http://melidoniumm.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/romania_mare-1-jpg.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NGU0nP6M7LM/UC1OeX3tTVI/AAAAAAAAHUs/3VmOHG_e7FA/s1600/TeritoriiRomanesti.png
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-00lVp6uulQA/T_NNX3igDQI/AAAAAAAAAhc/CxH8d7TYUQs/s1600/024.+PROVINCIILE+ISTORICE+ALE+ROMANIEI+%281918+-+1940%29.jpg
http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz329/basarabeni2010/1_decembrie_1918_ziuanationala_a_romaniei.jpg

Also, you are inconsistent in your naming, sometimes you call territories by the name of the region, sometimes by the name of a city. In the original game, only home supply centers are called by names of cities, maybe you should keep that rule. Or at least be consistent, don't call Tyrolia Innsbruck and Budapest Hungary.

Here are drafts of both my large and small map. Does somebody have a patient eye to look and compare them both? I'm looking for border inconsistencies, particularly along the coast. If you spot anything please let me know.

http://s2.postimage.org/ve89xesd4/map.jpg
http://s2.postimage.org/dkhd9uyop/smallmap.jpg

Some comments:

1) Don't have Egypt be a SC, make the SC Cairo and have it border Sidi Beranni, Alexandria and Libyan Desert.

2) Give Italy 5 SC (Rome, Naples, Tripoli, Benghazi, Trieste) and Tobruk can be neutral.

3) Simplify Italy a bit more. Italy should consist of Piedmont (instead of Turin), Tyrolia (Trentino + Milan), Tuscany (one coast to Tyr), Rome (one coast to Tyr), Naples (Naples + Mes + Sicily), Apulia (half of Naples facing Adriatic Sea) Sardinia, Tripoli, Benghazi, and Trieste (with an extended coastline to connect with Naples)

4) Merge North and South Adriatic to Adriatic Sea

5) Make Spain an active country with 5 SC's (Madrid, Valencia, Barcelona, Rabat, Granada) and provinces (Basque, Andalucia, Galicia, and Spanish Morocco)

6) Make Turkey an active country with 5 SC's (Istanbul, Ankara, Smyrna, Merzin and Cyprus) and provinces (Van)

7) Make Greece one country

8) Make Yugoslavia (Croatia + Serbia + Bosnia + Macedonia) 1 SC (Serbia, as it is neutral) and 2 provinces (Northern Yugoslavia (which is Croatia and Bosnia) and Southern Yugoslavia (which is half of Serbia and Macedonia)

9) Simplify France into a 5 SC Power (Brest, Marseille (Marseille + Rhone), Maginot (Champagne), Paris (Paris + Orleans), Algiers) and provinces (Picardy (Normandy + Calais),Gascony (Bordeaux + Tou), Corsica, Algeria (replaces Algerian Sahara)

10) Simplify Britain into a 5 SC Power (London, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Alexandria, Cairo) and provinces (Wales (Dset + Bir + Card), Yorkshire (Nc), Clyde (make Edinburgh have one coast facing the North Sea and make the rest + Inv Clyde), Northern Ireland, Sidi Berrani and Egypt)

11) Germany is too complex. Make a 5 SC power (Berlin, Kiel, Konigsberg, Munich and Frankfurt) and make the rest provinces (merge them with one of the 5 SC's or make them provinces like Ruhr, Thuringia, Silesia, Prussia, etc.)

12) Russia is byzantine in nature. There are too many provinces and it is too isolated from the rest of the game. Give it 6 SC's (Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kiev, Minsk and Sevastopol (replacing Crimea)) and condense the provinces to Novgorod, Ukraine, Georgia and Siberia. Don't have too many or Russia is inaccessible. That may be true in history, but it makes Russia too powerful in diplomacy. The only reason I'd give them an extra SC is because they have to worry about Turkey and Germany.

Overall, it was pretty good. This should supplement all the advice given above.