From: jfurr@nyx.cs.du.edu (Joel Furr)
Subject: Re: Historical Variant?
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Date: Tue, 5 Jan 93 20:48:44 GMT

In article <DIPL-L%93010512131700@MITVMA.BITNET> BLT@OSUCC.BITNET writes:
>Dear fellow list members,
>
>    Are there any variants out there that attempt to make Diplomacy
>more historically accurate. Diplomacy is an excellent, well-balanced,
>fun game that recreates well the diplomatic negotiations of the time,
>but it's somewhat lacking as a historical simulator. There are two
>areas for improvement that I see:

Diplomacy as it exists gives each person more or less the same odds of
winning, since everyone starts out equal except for Russia, who has more
fronts to defend.  Making it "historically accurate" would mean making
France, England, and Germany more powerful and Austria, Italy, and Turkey
less so.  Diplomacy is *not* a World War One simulation game.  It's a game
that happens to use the map of Europe for its gameboard and draws flavor
from doing so but that's where it ends.  Diplomacy changed to represent
the strengths of the powers of the time would no longer be Diplomacy.

>1) Make the starting forces roughly equivalent to their historical
>   strengths. Turkey's armed forces were not even in the same ballpark
>   as Germany's at the time, yet they are identical in standard
>   Diplomacy. It would also be necessary to adjust the victory
>   conditions for each country to compensate. And while we're on it,
>   what's the historical basis for having to conquer half of Europe
>   anyway? Only a few megalomanics like Hitler and Nappy (and dippers)
>   have attempted it.

Again, it's just a game.  There have been games in which two powers each
had 14-16 supply centers and some scrappy little bastard with 4-8 supply
centers managed to hang on and win.  What would be the point of a game
where you conquered five or six supply centers and then said "hah! I win"?
Until one person has half the board under his control, others can say
"give me time, I'm just getting warmed up."

>2) Separate the diplomatic struggle for control over small countries
>   and colonies from the military struggle. It was mainly a non-
>   military struggle from 1901 until WWI began in 1914. Some provision
>   would have to be made for the off-map colonies that were negotiated
>   over (e.g. France and Germany over Morocco, France and England over
>   Egypt, England and Russia over Persia). Maybe there should be non-
>   military units that can establish control over minor countries and
>   colonies while that military units wait for war to break out. Or
>   maybe the game shouldn't even try to simulate the military part and
>   should end when war breaks out.

The Youngstown variant brings in Asia: India, Japan, and China.  Even so,
this doesn't make it a colonial powers struggle. 

I guess what it keeps coming down to is this: Diplomacy uses a map of the
real world for a gameboard and draws flavor from it, but is NOT a
recreation of any historical period or events as they happened in the real
world.  Making it more "accurate" would sacrifice the diceless, "pure"
strategy aspect that makes Diplomacy such a popular, timeless game.

          (__)                                           
          (oo)                                                     Joel Furr
   /-------\/                                     jfurr@polaris.async.vt.edu
  / |     ||                                            Blacksburg, Virginia
 *  ||----||                                                             USA
    ^^    ^^

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