Model for Online Campaign: Diplomacy Game

The game Diplomacy is an old board game (it predated WWII). If you are not familiar with the game, read www.diplom.org.

Diplomacy (or simply Dip) has a map showing political boundaries of different provinces/countries. Seven players control resources and armies of 7 powers and the objective to win the game is to control more than half of the resources.

So far as I described above, it looks a lot like the campaign map in Shogun. The idea is to adapt the game Diplomacy to Shogun online campaign.

It must be noted that Diplomacy thrives right now as a Play-by-Email game (it is much easier to find 7 players to fill a game than a small circle of friends). But there is also real-time diplomacy where players meet online and conduct the game within a given time.

The rules of Diplomacy is far simpler than Shogun. Here is the general idea. I describe the Standard Map rules as the game could be played on any map, even Japan's map.

1. The map is Europe (could be MTW?). There are about 70 provinces (land) and about 30 sea spaces. On land provinces, there are 34 provinces holding resources (supply center). Each supply center can sustain an army. Controling a number of suply centers allow creation and maintain of the same number of armies.

2. The armies are of two type: regular army and fleet. Regular army can go only on land by itself. The fleets can go on sea spaces or coastal lands (provinces bordering a sea). The fleets can transport (Dip term: Convoy) an army from a province to another via sea spaces.

3. Army or fleet moves from one province to the next (must be adjaccent, unless army is convoyed) in one movement turn (generally, there are 2 movement turns in a year). A province of sea space can only hold an army at a time: moving an army into a province is the same as attacking the province. Someone has to yield: either the defender moves away, or the attackers returns to his original province. If no one wants to yield (among hostile armies), a battle must be fought. (This is where STW comes in: as a way to resolve battles).

4. Battle rules in Diplomacy is quite simple. The game is about nogotiation between powers. The rules for battle is simplified.
a) one army (or fleet) attack a province defend by one army (or fleet): defender wins and stay, attacker must return.
b) Armies in adjaccent provinces could "support" the attack, or "support" the defend. It takes more attackers then defenders in order to force the defender out of the province. The supporting armies stay in their province (as if they defend their own province as well).
c) Support could be "cut". If someone attacks the supporting army's province, the support that army provides is now nullified. The supporting army now is simply another defender.
d) The defending army, if lost the battle, can retreat to an unoccupied province. If there are no unoccupied province nearby, the defending army is disbanded.
e) an attacking army, if lost the attack, have to defend its own province. A support for the attack is not a support for a defense. Can't support an army to defend while that army is ordered to attack (the support is void).

I may go a bit too far into the details, or may not completely describe the rules (there are a few more rules). But I think you may have the general ideas how Diplomacy works.

Since we will have to rewrite completely the rules for battle resolution, the simple rules of Diplomacy is described only to illustrate some of the points.

So, what brings Dip to Shoggy?

1. The idea of building ports and then you can attack any far-away province that has a port should be eliminated. There is no such thing as "teleporting". To move in sea spaces, army must have boats. Sea Spaces could be blockaded by enemy' fleets. You can bring armies around using boats but it shall be limitted to accessible sea spaces.

2. Massing all army to one province is not allowed. Only one army occupy a given province at a time. This will help online battle setup because in online battle, an army is only 16 units, and there are only 8 armies allowed in any given battle. If we draw the map so that a province only border at most 7 neighbors, this would be easier to setup battle.

3. An army is not totally annihilated after a battle and can retreat to defend another province. This may not reflect history 100% of the time, but most of the time, an army fought a series of battles before getting disbanded. Army gets annihilated when there is no place to retreat to (no place to regroup and rebuild its force).

4. Since there are less provinces with supply centers (30%), this avoid the "an army in every province" syndrome. There will be "frontline" forming, forcing the countries to chose who to ally to and can rarely afford a two-front war.

In Summary:
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It is feasible to write simple rules for on- line campaign. Although many have tried before with success to organize online campaigns, the simple rules of Diplomacy may serve as a working model for STW online campaign.

MizuYari
ps.: I may have to move this thread to the Campaign/Mod sub-forum now before the Emperor kicks me out.