Great Lakes:A few years back I developed the concept and basic map for a pre-colonial Native American variant centered on the Great Lakes of North America. The map was tweaked with help from the community and I ran one play-test, which was deftly won by Frost. (Surprised? Anyone?) As the game currently stands, there is a still-yet-to-be-completely resolved issue with a "Portage" order. Essentially this order acts as a 'reverse convoy' of a Kanu Unit (canoe/fleet) that can be supported by War Party (army). Portages must end in water, therefore they can't be used to directly take SCs. Red lines on the map represent "land bridges" that may be crossed by War Parties.

*Had to reduce image to 500 pixels wide...sorry.
**I'm willing to share the files for RP if anyone is interested.
***If the interest exists for a game, I could brush of the GM hat.

I've got Kendercommander's IBERIA variant, which is also a good standard-style variant to share as well.

Five of my games are here:
http://www.freewebs.com/tomahaha/

Just looking at your Explore! variant - don' worry I'm not about to ask to play - got me thinking, with Civ and other similar games you can have a deathmatch variant for quicker starts. Perhaps you could start each player with a level 3 city, a level 1 city and 3 units. Or players start with say 4 points with which the first thing they do is decide how to allocate those points, eg one player could spend all 4 points on their unit to make it level 3 offence and level 3 defence, another player spends all their points on their city, etc.
Just a thought

The game (at least how I ALWAYS start it) is kinda like that already.
I start every player off with their first city and a neighboring city site. In every game to date all players moved to that city site to start developing it immediately and we leap forward 4 turns since all are doing the same thing...or almost the same thing, we might have a player or two explore a space that first turn, then get into building the site. They do have an option to throw caution to the wind but it would be foolish in almost every case. The one turn exploration fits well also since the new build would be done at the exact same time. But yes, basically we leap into year three overnight with 2 units.

Baldrick wrote:Just looking at your Explore! variant - don' worry I'm not about to ask to play - got me thinking, with Civ and other similar games you can have a deathmatch variant for quicker starts. Perhaps you could start each player with a level 3 city, a level 1 city and 3 units. Or players start with say 4 points with which the first thing they do is decide how to allocate those points, eg one player could spend all 4 points on their unit to make it level 3 offence and level 3 defence, another player spends all their points on their city, etc.
Just a thought

Interesting thoughts, the concept of giving players a bank of points to start the game with that they must spend before start could add a very different dynamic for a few players. My guess is most would use them in whatever manner gets them more units in play as soon as possible.

Roadkill wrote:

Baldrick wrote:Just looking at your Explore! variant - don' worry I'm not about to ask to play - got me thinking, with Civ and other similar games you can have a deathmatch variant for quicker starts. Perhaps you could start each player with a level 3 city, a level 1 city and 3 units. Or players start with say 4 points with which the first thing they do is decide how to allocate those points, eg one player could spend all 4 points on their unit to make it level 3 offence and level 3 defence, another player spends all their points on their city, etc.
Just a thought

Interesting thoughts, the concept of giving players a bank of points to start the game with that they must spend before start could add a very different dynamic for a few players. My guess is most would use them in whatever manner gets them more units in play as soon as possible.

WHAT?... Don't listen to that Roadkill guy, he's a few crayons short of a box.

So will there be any massive non-Otto games in the future... Nuclear Dip could see a little makeover and have it started in 2011...

I have hosted most of the massive games and am getting to the point where I may be ready to host a game "soon". I could do one of the biggies like WW4 or NWO if we have interest, but those are BIG. (NWO is the nuclear dip game I think you are speaking of, it has 50 players and I don't know if we have those numbers any longer????)
http://www.freewebs.com/tomahaha/newworldorder.htm
...I had planned on doing it again, with somewhat simplified rules, back to the basics of the game.

working on updating the WWIV map to version 6.1 for vDip:

http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic ... 5864#p5864

That's a major undertaking and I saw what you had posted elsewhere...looks nice.
Some aspects of my Explore! game are being automated and a similar game may be developing quite nicely as we speak. I just stumbled upon a game idea (not a Dip variant but a unique different game) a few days ago in some older files. Not sure how it would go over but it involved 4 people playing one game as nations and their merchant fleets while another 4 players played roles as Pirates trying to plunder these merchants. I called it "Privateer" I can add it to my freewebs site if any has interest ...not a freaking CLUE if it would play out well or not, it was a simple idea that floated through my head a few years back. Unlike the Explore! game, I knew that one would work, this game is just so different I'm clueless. It IS nice to see a posting in this section though, we used to have a ton of variants being developed and even played. Oh, and among those older files I found the maps and such for Kingmaker as well, that was such a pretty map! (for me)

Oh, and I notice you added the possible new sea alterations. They were few but it would be interesting to see if they work as expected? (I guess that would make this version 6.2?)

I'll update that when it gets uploaded to the lab.

And WWIV v_6.2 has just been uploaded to vDip .

iLLuM wrote:So will there be any massive non-Otto games in the future... Nuclear Dip could see a little makeover and have it started in 2011...

Illum, how about hosting that Ambition & Empire variant you volunteered to do a year ago or so?