ModEx: AAR's

[NoPunIn10Did]

I love the rivers...and I agree that France really has very few choices.

I didn't realize they actually got use in the endgame. I watched the replay, but I must have missed the river usage.

My gripe is honestly more about visual design more than anything. There's just already so much going on in Europe that the rivers were hard to keep straight from the rest of the stuff.

[NoPunIn10Did]

While some geographic inaccuracy is inevitable, I'd relabel Irkutsk to Yekaterinburg.

• Irkutsk is much further east, near Mongolia.
• Yekaterinburg is the fourth-largest city in Russia and is approximately located near where this variant's map places Irkutsk.

Understood, and may do so. Sadly not many people have heard of Yekaterinburg. Using Irkutsk was simply down to the fact it is on the Risk board and nearly everyone has heard of it, and it's easy to pronounce.

One nice side-effect of Diplomacy maps is that they present an opportunity both to the players and the designer to learn some geography. If Irkutsk wasn't quite so far away, I'd see the point of fudging the facts a little for familiarity's sake, but I think this particular case is too much of a stretch.

[Nanook]

Victory Conditions
- It's too steep to ask for half the centres on a map this large. The victory conditions will be reduced, to what I'm not sure yet.

I wasn't in this game, but I did keep tabs on it from a distance as I loved the map design. If I can offer a suggestion, perhaps taking a page from the book of another large map game in Vikings, and adapting something similar for victory conditions? Modified to fit your map and vision, of course. I think that would reflect the modern element of it well too, as a country wouldn't really need to take over half of Europe/Africa to consider a war a success.

I'm sure you're familiar with them since you played in the game, but for anyone not these are the Vikings victory conditions (note that in my run they were included as part of the house rules, but they were the same ones used when UpQuark ran it):

Victory is declared when one Nation has control of 26 SCs. If two or more Nations occupy 26 centers or more during the same year, any one of those players may choose to declare the game a draw between the players who own more than 25 centers. Until any player does this, the game goes on until only one player owns 26 centers or more. There are 85 total SCs in the game.

[joe92]

I love the rivers...and I agree that France really has very few choices.

I didn't realize they actually got use in the endgame. I watched the replay, but I must have missed the river usage.

My gripe is honestly more about visual design more than anything. There's just already so much going on in Europe that the rivers were hard to keep straight from the rest of the stuff.

I agree about the clutter. I'm reskinning the entire map (well not yet, but I will) and intend to widen the rivers to reduce the clutter of Europe.

One nice side-effect of Diplomacy maps is that they present an opportunity both to the players and the designer to learn some geography. If Irkutsk wasn't quite so far away, I'd see the point of fudging the facts a little for familiarity's sake, but I think this particular case is too much of a stretch.

I agree with that statement. It's a pretty good way to learn geography. There's still the issue of the name being a bit of a mouthful. I'll replace the territory name as you suggest but may opt for Ufa instead. It's the capital of Bashkortostan so suitably important, but much easier on the tongue.

Victory Conditions
- It's too steep to ask for half the centres on a map this large. The victory conditions will be reduced, to what I'm not sure yet.

I wasn't in this game, but I did keep tabs on it from a distance as I loved the map design. If I can offer a suggestion, perhaps taking a page from the book of another large map game in Vikings, and adapting something similar for victory conditions? Modified to fit your map and vision, of course. I think that would reflect the modern element of it well too, as a country wouldn't really need to take over half of Europe/Africa to consider a war a success.

I'm sure you're familiar with them since you played in the game, but for anyone not these are the Vikings victory conditions (note that in my run they were included as part of the house rules, but they were the same ones used when UpQuark ran it):

Victory is declared when one Nation has control of 26 SCs. If two or more Nations occupy 26 centers or more during the same year, any one of those players may choose to declare the game a draw between the players who own more than 25 centers. Until any player does this, the game goes on until only one player owns 26 centers or more. There are 85 total SCs in the game.

I was thinking along those lines. I think the victory conditions are a tad low for Vikings causing players to make a mad rush at the end, but it's pretty much the same principle. I think I will poach the "can draw or continue till there's a clear winner" rule for sure though. I like that idea. If two players want to honour an alliance they can, or if they want to fight for a solo they can.

P.s. I will get my AAR for that game up eventually. Probably next week at this rate but it will come.

[asudevil]

I love the rivers...and I agree that France really has very few choices.

I didn't realize they actually got use in the endgame. I watched the replay, but I must have missed the river usage.

My gripe is honestly more about visual design more than anything. There's just already so much going on in Europe that the rivers were hard to keep straight from the rest of the stuff.

They were actually a big reason I wanted Germany so that I could use them to push into the Med and avoid the traditional stalemate

[asudevil]

Victory is declared when one Nation has control of 26 SCs. If two or more Nations occupy 26 centers or more during the same year, any one of those players may choose to declare the game a draw between the players who own more than 25 centers. Until any player does this, the game goes on until only one player owns 26 centers or more. There are 85 total SCs in the game.

The only issue with this...is it encourages even earlier draws. Pedros ran a game that I was in...and you couldn't even 3 man draw it because of something similar ... where 2 people would hit the solo mark...and the third would be like 1 SC short. So trying to get 3 people that close at the same time...forced it into a 4/5 way draw (on like a 9player ish map). I don't remember the details. But it wasn't any easier to push for the solo.

Im sure that had I only needed like 30 for the solo...I would have had a lot larger opposition a lot earlier.

But since they didn't need to stop me until 45 or whatever, I was able to get to 40

[Alman]

I'm with Asu on this. A bit lower might be good, especially considering the size of the map, but I thought Viking's limit was TOO low. I know that it was a major factor in the game as we neared the end. It felt like it stopped the game too soon. There must be a happy medium.

[Don Juan of Austria]

One thing is, I probably just played Poland wrong, but it would have been incredible to get a fleet into the med for me, or the Black sea. But I suppose there aren't any major rivers around there...