Let me make a quick introduction. I'm pretty new at the internet hobby (never having played a judge game, though I am in the newbie queue as I write this) and having played face-to-face a couple of times and one hand-adjudicated game via e-mail. I've never soloed. I don't have some sort of killer strategy which will win the game as Italy by 1905 (at the latest). I don't have the next big thing in variants.

With the humility section complete, let's move on to the main thrust of this article. If you are like me, you've played military games other than Diplomacy. (I'll use the term "military games" to distinguish Diplomacy and others from war-gaming proper, which re-enacts historical battles. I've never done any of the latter, and thus am completely unqualified to discuss them!) I want to examine what these games have in common; that is, what are the basic parts of a military game.

Military games (Diplomacy, Axis & Allies, chess, Risk, and plenty of others) can be split into five major structures: geography, forces, power structure, the combat engine, and the winning conditions. Geography refers to the playing area (the chessboard, Europe, or whatever). Forces refer to the units (including their powers) used to achieve the winning conditions of the game. Power structure refers to how the players interact. The combat engine is the method used to resolve conflicts between forces of different players. Finally, the winning conditions specify the object of the game. Let's look at each of these in turn.

Geography, as I mentioned before, is where the game is resolved. It can be abstract (such as a chessboard), realistic (such as the map for standard Diplomacy or Axis & Allies), or imaginary (such as the map for the Tolkein-based Diplomacy variants). Geography should not be confused with the map, however. It is not merely some arrangement of spaces, but how the spaces are arranged. Stalemate lines, for example, are a feature of geography in Diplomacy, as are supply centers. Geography includes not just the names of spaces, but their qualities (is it a land space? a water space? a black space? a white space? Is it impassable like Switzerland?) and their relationships (which other spaces does it border, and how?), not to mention their value (what do you get for possessing it: money, a supply center, strategic or tactical advantage?). It makes a difference whether Brest is a supply center or not, whether it is a land province or not, and whether it is a coastal province or not. It also makes a difference whether it borders Gascony, the English Channel, or Moscow (yes, yes, and no). Note that bordering may not be shown on the map: certain Diplomacy variants allow at least temporary links between two provinces which do not share a visible "border".

Closely related to geography is the structure of forces. What kinds of pieces do you have, and what can they do? How do you get more? What do you begin the game with? In Diplomacy, this structure is perhaps the simplest (there are armies and fleets, and you get more by building them on a home supply center when you have more supply centers than pieces). In other games, of course, this structure is more complicated (think Axis & Allies). Forces interact strongly with geography. One example comes fromchess: a bishop is a piece in chess which can move diagonally any number of spaces until blocked by another piece. More can be acquired by promoting a pawn (when it reaches the far side of the board), though you start the board with two (one on white squares and one on black squares). Notice how the geography of chess affects the forces: because the chess board has squares of two colors, which border other squares horizontally, vertically (these being squares of a different color than the original square) and diagonally (these being squares of the same color as the original square), we can then conclude that a single bishop can only move to squares of one color. From this fact comes various concepts related to bishops in chess: good bishops, bad bishops, bishops of the wrong color, bishops of opposite color, and the much-feared bishop pair.

The third structure is the power structure. This structure determines how the players relate to each other, and there are a few different possibilities. In two-person games such as chess, there is a one-on-one relationship, fixed by the rules of the game. When I play chess, the other player is my enemy, no matter what we might discuss. In multiplayer games, there can be fixed alliances, such as in standard Axis & Allies. In this case, three palyers, by the rules of the game, work together against the other two. One variant of Axis & Allies, The World at War, twists the fixed alliances concept a bit. In it, there is a fixed alliance between Germany and Japan (the Axis) against the other players. There is also a fixed alliance of the UK, France, the US, and China. The USSR player is an enemy of the Axis powers, but also can act, to a limited extent, against the other allies. In the case of Diplomacy, however, there are no fixed alliances. By the rules of the game, anyof players may work together against any of the other players. Geography and forces determine which alliances may work, and how, but there is no rule about any particular alliance. Imagine an alliance between AIRT against the western three. Unlikely, yes, but not illegal.

The fourth structure is the combat engine. This structure decides how the forces resolve disputes over geography. In Diplomacy, it consists of the rules for orders and the rules for resolving conflicts. Do two units bounce, or does one unit remain while the other must retreat. It also involves control of the geography. How is a supply center owned by a country? A unit must be there at the end of a fall turn. But to remain there, it must end up there through the resolution of combat by the combat engine. It must not be forced to retreat, or ordered to move, or set on fire by napalm, or anything of the sort. It may be protested that certain games, such as chess, do not have a combat engine. Not true; in chess, the combat engine consists of moving a piece to a square, and when it moves to a square occupied by an enemy piece, it replaces the enemy piece, with the enemy piece being removed from play.

The fifth structure is the winning conditions. What results are possible in a game. How do I achieve these results? How do I win, draw, or (God forbid) lose? Often there is outside influence on this section, as in tournament play, a result below the best may be sufficient for a tournament win. A player in a chess tournament (where one point is given for a win, half a point for a draw, and no points for a loss) who goes into the final round leading by one point can win the tournament if he or she draws; thus, the player may not be as focused on how to win as how to draw, and thus win the tournament. Similar strategies are no doubt found in Diplomacy tournaments (though scoring systems are, apparently, more complex).

These five structures are the primary place where alterations come in to produce either variants or hybrids. A hybrid is a game which could be described as a variant of two or more games. For example, my hybrid game "The Sword of Islam" is a hybrid of Axis & Allies and Diplomacy, with plenty of other changes. It features new geography (based on the Middle East, with certain space divisions, and both sea and land spaces); forces based on (though altered and simplified a bit) Axis & Allies, a power structure modified from Diplomacy (but with seven new powers, one [the United States] having some distinct rules), a combat engine heavily modified from Axis & Allies (including prolonged battles and separate air combat), and victory conditions for six of the players modified from Axis & Allies (but the seventh has unique conditions).

These five structures, naturally, all interact. The winning conditions of a game of Diplomacy (control 18 supply centers) influences one's relations with the other players (do I ally with them, attack them, stab them, denounce them, or what?) and one's moves on the board (do I send my lone Italian fleet after Tunis?), which is also related to the power structure (do I try a Lepanto with Austria, or can I not trust them?). These moves on the board, and their results (the combat engine) then determine what forces one has, which, in relationship to the board, determine what moves are possible (I can't send a fleet to Tunis this move if I don't have a fleet that can reach Tunis, though I might move toward it). Tactics emerge from the combat engine, forces, and geography, and works on the forces; strategy from geography, power structure, and winning conditions, working on the forces as well. Tactics then implement strategy. Diplomacy arises from the same bases as strategy, but works on the power structure. Strategy and diplomacy thus have a dialectical relationship; each affects the other and is in turn affected by the other. An initial English strategy might be to focus on Germany, then Russia, then worry about France; but if diplomacy reveals a hostile France, then France becomes a higher priority, and the strategy shifts to one of France first. If France is not set on being hostile, however, then one may instead persuade France to be peaceful for the time being, allowing one's original strategy to hold intact. These strategies will determine one's initial moves (which work on the level of tactics), of course: is it ENG/NTH or NTH/NWG for the fleets? Other military games would reveal relationships among the five structures, though naturally in their own particulars. These five structures (geography, forces, power structure, combat engine, and winning conditions) interact to give rise to tactics and strategy (and, in certain cases, diplomacy) which are then used to play the game.