Hi guys,

let me take this opportunity to adress a couple of matters:

DIPLOMACY POINTS

First of all, note that any power may only spend at most two of its DPs on any one DP order! This limitation doesn't exist in the original Ambition & Empire rules and hence bears emphasising.

Of course, two players (Dirk and Nigel) control two powers respectively. So in theory, they could stack up to four DPs in any one country. Say Nigel could stack up two Soviet and two Republican DPs in one country.

Obviously there are two caveats here:

- The Spanish powers control merely one SC each during the first year and hence only get one DP each to allocate right now.

- Following limits on the use of Spanish DPs are in place until one side "wins the civil war", so to speak: "Until a faction controls either all three Spanish Home SCs or it is the sole surviving Spanish power, DPs may only be allocated to Portugal or to another minor power provided the submitted order either supports the Spanish faction under one’s control or supports an attack against the opposing civil war faction."

I'd say this prospect of being able to use Spanish DPs anywhere on the map (and combine the DPs from both controlled powers) presents a significant incentive for winning the civil war next to the more obvious advantages.

How ought DP orders be written:

- First of all, Dirk and Nigel will have to clearly designate which DP allocations are Italian/Soviet and which are Nationalist/Republican. Any ambiguity here will make those DP orders invalid.

- I'd like you to use the following format: "2:F Swe S F NRG-Nwy", i.e. 2 DPs allocated to Sweden in order to support a fleet from the Norwegian Sea to Norway. If you stick to that format, I'll just have to copy paste that into my speadsheet and it'll save me a some work.

Another reminder: A Croatia and A Serbia both belong to the same minor power, Yugoslavia (hence the same flag icon and the thin borders between the two). Since self-dislodgement and support against one's own units is prohibited in Diplomacy, these two units obviously cannot do so. This ain't a game about the 1990s!

I cannot stress how important the effective use and coordination of DPs are in succeeding in this game! 22 of the 50 SC are initially occupied by minor power units. That's a lot of invaluable military potential you can tap into! Naturally, over time, the number of minor powers shall decrease, but - veterans of the 1926 playtest - don't count on the Balkans, for one, being carved up as quickly as was the case in that game. The Balkan theatre has been "Swiss-cheese-ified" and hence it ought to prove more difficult for the minor powers to conquer these minor powers. Rule of thumb: The fewer minor powers adjoin a minor power, the more difficult it may prove to take.

As regards to how one might use one's DPs, here some options:

a) To support one's own movements.
b) To support one's ally's movements
c) To support a minor power and hence deny their conquest to a rival
d) To have the minor power simply hold.

As previously mentioned, DP coordination with other powers may prove decisive. A rivalling power might match on its own your 2 DPs in any one country and cancel them out. But if you were to say get another power to allocate one of his DPs to the same order (say in exchange for the promise that you'll spend your 3rd DP to help him out in turn), then you'd be able to trump your rival and have that minor power execute the order you were hoping for.

Since DP allocation remains secret and merely the end-result is published, the trouble is that it's difficult or indeed impossible to ascertain whether someone actually keeps his DP allocation promises. I trust any Dipper sees what opportunities for mischief present themselves! :p

As the game progresses and the number of minor powers decrease, DP expenditure tends to become less parochial, less spread out and instead stacked quite high. DPs are your means of influencing and shaping the board far beyond your direct sphere of influence. Do not neglect this - especially considering how low the victory criterion happens to be! 15 out of 50 SCs means one player needs only 30% of all SCs to win (though note that the Spanish factions' SCs are halved when added to their patron powers' total). What does this mean for the players? Well, they need to be more alert to the shifting balance of power and tailor their foreign policy to this reality. DPs may prove a handy way in containing a power and manipulating the balance of power. I believe that more than perhaps any other variant, you'll have to "play the whole board" given the DP mechanics and low victory threshold. Ignore what happens at the other end of the board at your peril!

So, following the ole Diplomacy mantra ("Write early, write often, write everyone!" only becomes yet more important in a DP variant and one with such a low victory criterion to boot. Time and again, I've seen powers who invest more thought and energy into the "DP game", swaying minor powers more successfully to their side than their more complacent rivals. Don't get caught napping!


THE INTERMARUM CONFEDERATION

I was asked by one player why I accorded Poland building rights in Latvia, Lithuania and Rumania. The historical justification here are the many schemes for a confederation of East-Central European states under Poland's leadership back in the interwar period. Let me cite a brief summary from wikipedia:

Międzymorze (also known in English as Intermarum) was a plan, pursued after World War I by Józef Piłsudski, for a federation, under Poland's aegis of Central and Eastern European countries. Invited to join the proposed federation were the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), Finland, Belarus, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The Polish name Międzymorze, which means "Intersea" or "Between-seas," has been rendered into English, from the Latin, as "Intermarum" or "Intermarium." The proposed federation was meant to emulate the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, that, from the end of the 16th century to the end of the 18th, had united the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Intermarum complemented Piłsudski's other geopolitical vision—Prometheism, whose goal was the dismemberment of the Russian Empire and that Empire's divestiture of its territorial conquests. Intermarum was, however, perceived by some Lithuanians as a threat to their newly established independence, and by some Ukrainians as a threat to their aspirations for independence; and was opposed by Russia and by most western powers, except France. Within two decades of the failure of Piłsudski's grand scheme, all the countries that he had viewed as candidates for membership in the Intermarum federation had fallen to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.

During the 19th and 20th centuries such projects for a state/confederation that encompassed a much wider territory than merely those predominantly inhabited by Poles were labelled as "Jagiellonian" (after the dynasty that united Poland and Lithuania in the 14th to 16th centuries). Opposing plans for Polish statehood that favoured a more ethnically homogeneous Polish state were considered "Piastic" (after the dynasty which created the Polish realm in the 11th century).

Pilsudski (btw, pronounced roughly "Pee-sudski" was an adherent of such Jagiellonian concepts. Yet following WW1, Poles and Lithuanians clashed over Vilna and that permanently soured relations between those two countries and proved a hindrance to the realisation of such a vision. Ukrainians and Poles also barely got along much better - and once the Reds had defeated the Ukrainian nationalists, that key element in such confederation plans also fell by the way-side.

Though Pilsudski managed to gain a good chunk of Lithuanian, Byelorussian and Ukrainians lands thanks to winning the Polish-Soviet War, that fell well short of anything like a Jagiellonian confederation and those not ethnically Polish (Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Lithuanians, Jews, Germans etc.) suffered considerable discrimination under the Second Polish Republic. Not exactly a recipe for success, I must say, in a state in which Poles made up but 69% of the overall population. Add to that the fact that Poland managed to engage during the interwar period in armed conflicts with all her neighbours save Latvia and Rumania, and you get some inkling why Poland was diplomatically isolated and ill-positioned to fend off German-Soviet encroachment in 1939...

That being said, that outcome was by no means inevitable and this variant affords the Polish player the opportunity to avoid such a fate. Jozef Beck, Pilsudski's successor following his death in 1935, continued to pursue "Jagiellonian" projects similar those of Pilsudski. He championed the concept of a "Third Europe" (basically an alliance or confederation of all states between the German-Italian bloc and the Soviet Union), but had precious little to show for it. Even the one glimmer of success, the Polish-Rumanian Alliance, proved of little use in the 1939 campaign - other than allowing Poles to escape via Rumanian territory, that is.

Lithuania, Latvia and Rumania were among the key components of an "Intermarum Confederation", so that's why I gave Poland building rights in those states. From a purely mechanical perspective, I wanted Poland to have the ability to build fleets on the Black Sea. Fortunately, the historical rationale more than justifies this. Poland enjoying such extensive building rights presents one of the strengths of that position and hence one reason why I don't think Poland can be rated as an underdog comparable to Standard's Austria or - gasp - Italy.

Okay, enough in the way of a long-winded explanation!

THE ATLANTIC

Much as the Atlantic's adjacencies are detailed in the variant rules, one player based in the 1926 variant his play on some false assumptions regarding that space. Lets not have that happen in this game! So let me remind you that the ATL space wraps all around Africa and borders Egypt(sc), Suez and the Arabain Sea on the Near-East side of things, whereas at the other end it borders the North-Western Approaches, Ireland, the South-Western Approaches etc.

This means that Suez/Egypt are put three moves away from the next British HSC, Edinburgh. So you might move F Edinburgh -> Ireland -> Atlantic Ocean -> Suez. Brest, France's closest HSC to the Near-East is equally but three moves away from Suez/Egypt. So don't overestimate the actual distance (in terms of moves) between the Western powers' home bases and the Near East! It's (by design) not really remote.

Okay, I've now more or less run out of things I wanted to say. :p Enjoy the game. And make as much as you can of early negotiations. In this game of musical chairs, those players who only engage late or sporadically in negotiations, are often the one's left standing. Everything's still in the cards during the opening season. Needless to say, I'm enjoying reading what negotations have taken place so far!

Viel Erfolg!

Charles