6.1. Payola Classic
The game may be played under the original
rules to the variant, which would mean the following six
changes to the rules above:
- Rule 2.1
- Powers receive seven silver pieces per year per supply
center controlled. (Income is not on the diminishing
returns scale described in rule 2.1.)
- Rule 3.1
- item 1
- Repetition counts are not allowed.
- item 2
- Zero silver piece offers to foreign units are allowed.
- item 3
- Plateau amounts are not allowed.
- item 4
- Augmentation (+) is not allowed.
- item 5
- The only legal separator in an order is the
colon (:).
- item 8
- The use of the vertical bar
(|) to permit multiple orders to appear in an
offer is not allowed.
- Rule 3.2
- Only direct bribe offers (colon offers)
are accepted. All other bribe types are invalid.
- Rule 3.3
- Multiple offers to the same unit are not
permitted, and therefore, combining multiple offers to the
same unit using the vertical bar syntax is also not permitted.
- Rule 5.3
- This rule is unnecessary, given the above changes.
- Rule 5.4
- This rule is unnecessary, given the above changes.
6.2 Application to Map Variants
The Payola system is easily applied to map variants such as Loeb-9,
Youngstown, Colonial, etc., etc. The only necessary modification to
the rules is that the amount of tax income per supply center is
adjusted so that the amount gained from the first center is one silver
piece fewer than the
number of supply centers that is the variant's victory criteria,
and subsequent centers then follow the same "one silver piece less"
tax pattern.
6.3 Tin Cup Diplomacy
Payola Diplomacy is combined with
the Blind variant by making the
following four changes or additions to the rules above. This variant
is called Tin Cup Diplomacy because it is blind with money, much like
a street-corner pencil salesman.
- Rule 1.1
- The usual
rules
of the Blind variant apply and govern which
portions of the board each player can "see" in the results
of a game phase delivered to that player.
- Rule 3.1, item 6
- If a player offers a bribe to a
non-existent unit (which would be forbidden by this point of
the rule), the GameMaster will
not report this fact to that player (nor to any other
player). All such bribes are simply ignored, but may be
revealed by the GameMaster at the conclusion of the game.
- Rule 3.1, item 7
- Likewise, if a power offers a bribe
that mentions any unit that does not exist (which
would be forbidden by this point of the rule —
for example, an offer
to an existing unit to support a unit that does not
exist), this offer will be similarly ignored.
- Rule 5.7, item 3
- In the informational message delivered
by the GameMaster before adjudication of each movement phase,
players are only told the specific amount of that player's money
that was paid to each unit, and the nationality of each such
unit, but are not told the
order that the unit will issue in return for this
compensation.
6.4 eBayola
In this variant, suggested by Payola co-creator John Woolley on
3 August 2005, the total cost of a successful bribe is reduced
(if possible) to one silver piece more than the highest
non-winning bribe.
Any resulting cost savings for the
contributor(s) to the winning bribe are awarded to the contributing
powers
according to their position in the acceptance list of the bribed unit.
There are a couple of
interesting twists,
but that's the basic idea.
6.5 Unbribeable Units
Payola can be played with each human player's
own units being loyal (and ordered as in standard Diplomacy), but with
units of unplayed (DUMMY) powers being bribeable per these
Payola rules. This is not only useful as a technique when
the required number of human players for a game cannot be gathered,
but also in variants in which neutral supply centers (Belgium,
Greece, et al.) are provided with units.
6.6 Alternate Income Schemes
The income scheme outlined by these rules (that is,
17 AgP for the first supply center, 16 for the next one, etc.) can be
modified to be any different (fixed, decreasing, increasing, capped)
scheme, and income can be distributed more often than once a year.
6.7 Zero Sum Payola
In Zero Sum Payola, developed by Michael Schmahl,
there is a fixed amount of money in the world.
Contrast this with standard Payola, in which new money is printed
each year for taxpayers to contribute to their governments. Zero
Sum Payola uses the standard Payola rules with the following
modifications:
- Each power begins the game with a treasury containing 10 silver
pieces for each owned supply center.
- Powers do not receive tax income. Instead, money is
transferred as follows:
- The amount of money that was paid as bribes to the units of
each power during any particular gameyear is deposited into the
account of that power at the conclusion of the Fall turn.
- When a neutral supply center is first captured, the power
that occupies it is awarded a one-time 10 silver piece bonus.
- When an owned supply center changes hands, the new owner receives
an amount of money from the treasury of the former owner.
This amount of money is the total treasury of the disenfranchised
power divided by the number of supply centers owned by that power
at the beginning of the gameyear, rounded down.
6.8 Exchange Payola
Exchange Payola, created by Bruce
Duewer,
disassociates players from the powers on the game map. Each player
is instead an independent investor who can purchase stock in any
of the powers on the board. One player is periodically elected by
stockholders to serve as CEO of
each power; that player controls the power's treasury,
sets the worth (in silver pieces)
of each of the supply centers that are owned by that power, and
issues dividends to its stockholders.
Each power's CEO also enters bribe offers for his power. (Investors may
also use their own private treasuries to bribe units, of course.) A
Pouch Zine article
discusses the variant in more detail.
