Uh, oh.

From the Paradox press release:

“We are all huge fans of the original board game Diplomacy® and want to stay true to the identity and feel, that makes the game so unique”, says Fredrik Lindgren, Director of Marketing and Sales at Paradox Interactive. “At the same time the vision and ideas we are working on are strong enough to bring Diplomacy® into the new millennium which will most definitely attract a new generation of players as well as the true Diplomacy® veterans.”
I am a'feared. Sounds like they are going to take a game that is classic for its clean mechanics and tinker with it in hopes of attracting 'a new generation of players'. What does that mean?

Porting Diplomacy to the computer seems like it should be simplicity itself, but there are serious issues. If play is meant to be against other humans, then there is always the difficulty of keeping seven humans online or returning on a regular basis to complete their moves. If play is against AI, Paradox is dreadful at AI, and diplomacy with the AI would be a quite different experience.

Frankly, I can't see much point (other than getting a 'name' license to work with) of Paradox's decision. Aren't there better things for them to work on?... And this is from someone who loves Diplomacy.

God help us if it's some sort of real-time mechanism.