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Post 14 Jan 2011, 10:10 am

Javelin wrote:Geojanes has a very good idea there, and I think I recall someone else proposing something similar earlier on. Once a week, say Sunday evening GMT, realtime online games can be played. Gunboat seems like the ideal starting point for this concept, teaching players the mechanics of the game in a short period, like a FtF game would. 5 minutes per turn means a game lasting to 1912 would take 2 hours. If successful this could perhaps be expanded to real standard games with a gmail like chat option, 10-15 minutes per turn. Something to think about.


There will be forum, Facebook-styled IM added to the footer bar at some point; the MOD I'm intending to use hasn't been released yet. So, RT games will become a possibility.
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Post 29 Jan 2011, 8:10 pm

RUFFHAUS 8 wrote:One extremely interesting chaos variant we played there was on the Modern or Postmodern map. It had an unique rule that required you to occupy your owned supply centers at least once ever two years or they would slip into Revolution. I don't recall the specifics, but the 'revolution' in the empty centers would then reintroduce eliminated players to the game in their former centers. It was actually a very interesting experimental rule, and we several instances of revolutions, frantic attempts to put them down while facing great odds on the battle front, alliance shifting left and right, and brave attempts to survive.


Sounds fantastic. There's an element of realism that I find attractive too.
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Post 01 Feb 2011, 4:45 am

Hello all!
Some very interesting thoughts on the game which I hope to add to in the fullness of time. I'm glad to see the site back up and running and as any of you who have played games with me might assume: am thoroughly enjoying the Alternate Reality backdrop :)
Purism aside - The notion of taking what is most enjoyable to me about the game of Diplomacy and transposing it into a game which is completed more quickly - and has less likelihood of player abandonment is a great and worthy challenge!
I am still travelling at the moment, so may not get the opportunity to contribute to the discussion for a few months more, but just wanted to say that I'm very glad it's taking place - please consider this a placeholder for something altogether more rambling ^^

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Post 01 Feb 2011, 6:10 am

Again, let me state clearly: I will not modify the Standard Diplomacy: 18 centers variant in any way, graphical treatments excluded (I intend to construct the alternate-reality "steampunk" map/units first and then craft a more historical-based theme afterwards). So there will always be Standard Diplomacy games, forum and automated.

What I want to do though is continue to explore variants as a way to expand upon the game, starting with GMTom's wonderful variants. In addition, a variant which is more light-hearted and easy-going is something I want to make available for merriment. I can hop online and play a 10 minute Chess game (usually two) for a bit of entertainment/distraction and then get back (hopefully) to whatever I should be working on (like this website, for starters). I'm not looking for a10 minute variant of Diplomacy, but I am seeking something that is quick and rather painless as an alternative to participating in a more dedicated game.
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Post 09 Feb 2011, 7:04 pm

well if you want a 10 minute game, how about a simple diplomacy, no chat enabled, a big 1 minute clock running on top of the screen, where u put moves and wait for results, after all this is something a newby can try to learn how movement is made. and we can have some fun over that 10 minute game as more experienced
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Post 10 Feb 2011, 6:58 am

or why not make it a whole 2 minutes and allow chat? Talking to one another is a crucial part of the game and by not having it, you really open up the possibility for some to work around it still. That would still be break neck speed while keeping the basics the same
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Post 19 Feb 2011, 5:51 pm

true, I did try something similar with a 5 min clock, but that it is too long as it is 20m per turn.
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Post 24 Feb 2011, 11:54 am

For those of you playing FtF (but having less than 7 players and less than 6-7 hours) I would very much recommend the boardgame Struggle of Empires. A lot of the same fun as in diplomacy, but shorter timeframe. And a very nifty alliance idea. Basically, you play three wars, and between each war the players bid money on who should be in which alliance. Then during the war you can only attack your enemies. After the war there is a new alliance bidding round. Since you can only be attacked by roughly half the players no one normally fall too far behind. And figuring out which matchups are good for you and how much it's worth is great fun.
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Post 24 Feb 2011, 10:39 pm

Interesting: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/ ... of-empires

I'll read more on this over the weekend. I'm still after that elusive "this isn't Diplomacy, but similar" turn-based game that's a bit gentler on friendships.
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Post 11 Mar 2011, 12:43 pm

I just noticed this post Chad
That game looks great, did you see the reviews? I checked 4 pages of reviews and every single one was a 10 out of 10. And the comments were pretty much everything you would want to hear, strategy, interaction, easy to learn, changing plans, it looks like a real winner. I would be interested if anyone gets this or has played it, would it maybe lend itself to something online as we do with Diplomacy?

Unfortunately, my friends, while most enjoy games, they only like the really standard fare stuff or cards.
Poor Tommy has nobody to play with
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Post 12 Mar 2011, 3:32 pm

I don't own the game, but a friend does and we've played it 5-6 times. I'd say the amount of bookeeping needed would be roughly the same as Advanced Civ, but the map is much simpler to handle. It's sequential play, and unlike Civ you will almost always want to know what the person before you did. Also there is dice-rolling for combat, so you need a random-generator.
The only mechanism that would really suffer from online play is unrest. Basically in the game you get unrest from taxing the population and losing units in battle. The player(s) with highest unrest at the end of game loses points. You can remove unrest by reforming the government. FtF it's almost impossible to keep track on the exact sums of unrest, but if you have a written record you can easily go back and calculate everyone's score. Perhaps that could be solved by having unrest markers of different values and then randomly drawing one marker when you'd normally get one unrest or something like that, but it would have to be adjusted I think.

/Vidar