After the first Design of a Variant article was published in the S2002R Issue, I received a number of comments from people who had not previously had a chance to look at Maharajah’s Diplomacy. Most of the substantive comments suggesting improvement or noting possible problems fell into three groups:

1. The variant could be improved by making it more fleet oriented.
2. The defensive positions of the edge powers were too good when compared to those of the central powers.
3. Several people had brought multiple stalemate lines to my attention.

These comments were all somewhat interrelated, and the more I thought about it, the more strongly I felt the need to try and make some improvements to what I thought was my “final” map. But I wondered how I could improve balance and fluidity of play while simultaneously making fleets more important. I looked at altering the province borders, but every change that improved things in one area threw something else out of balance. There was also nothing I could do to significantly increase the use or importance of fleets without what I worried might be a radical redrawing of the map. As I had discussed in the previous article, there are few areas in the world as conducive to fleet oriented play as Europe is.

I came to the conclusion, somewhat reluctantly, that I needed to look at expanding the map boundaries. Going north or south didn’t seem to be a way to add anything of value, so if expanding the map were the answer, it needed to be east or west, or possibly both east and west. (A copy of this map can be found later in this article, as Figure 1.)

Going east would add, depending on how far I went, China, Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. I did not want to expand the map to such a large extent, for several reasons. Unless I also expanded the map further south as well, it would create a set of Pacific Ocean water provinces cut off from the present provinces by the Malay Peninsula. Even if I could work around that problem, the entire scale of the variant would change. I wanted Maharajah’s Diplomacy to be more or less the same size as Standard Diplomacy (presently it had 14 fewer provinces, one more Supply Center and the same number of Powers). Huge variants, while having an appealing complexity and sweep, are not to everyone’s taste, and adding more powers would make it more difficult to round up the number of players necessary to start a game, and increase the administration problems for GMs. I had found this out through personal experience, having designed and playtested Alien Invasion Diplomacy, a 14 player variant.

I wanted to expand the map by the smallest amount necessary to achieve my goals. Taking a closer look, I thought that by increasing the area covered by the map in the east by 10 percent, I could get enough to work with. In the southeast I would add what is today western Thailand (then, the Kingdom of Ayutthaya), and the northern part of the island of Sumatra (Aceh), without adding any disconnected water provinces. In the northeast, by moving the map key (equivalent to Tibet) eastward that 10 percent, and adding one or two provinces there, I could provide opportunities for flanking movement near the Mughal Empire and the Delhi Sultanate, and lessen the ability of players to force a stalemate in that area of the board.

I reached the same conclusions about expanding the map westward. If I went too far, I would have a huge variant with new Powers (the Ottoman Empire, among others) and several disconnected areas of water, including the Black, Caspian and Mediterranean Seas. But if I made the same 10 percent increase in map size in the west as I had in the east, I could add a province or two west of the Safavid Empire, again providing opportunities for flanking maneuvers, and I could also add the eastern portions of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula to the map. The Arabian Peninsula would be separate from the mainland portion of the map, and since the missing portion was a desert, it would not be too bad for historical purposes, and more importantly, it would be a new possibility for the placement of offshore Supply Centers, as would Aceh in the east, and therefore good for increasing the importance of fleets.

At this point, I made the decision not to add any more Supply Centers, but rather to just move around the ones already in existence, while adding new non-Supply Center provinces. I was fairly sure I could greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the various existing stalemate lines by lessening the density of Supply Centers on the map, if, of course, the new provinces and relocated Supply Centers were in the right places. For the convenience of the reader, and ease of comparison in the discussion that follows, both the earlier map (Figure 1) and the revised map (Figure 2) are reproduced here.

[Figure 1] Original Map
(Reduced from actual size.)

[Figure 2] Revised Map
(Reduced from actual size.)

I now began to make specific changes. In the east, I moved the Supply Centers in Ava and Jaffna to Ayutthaya and Aceh. These moves, together with changes in the boundaries of the water provinces, made the map more challenging for the eastern and southern Powers, because the Supply Centers were more spread out, and would therefore be harder to defend. In the northeast, I did move the map key eastward, and added two provinces, Kashgar and Yarkand, which would make movement in the area more fluid, and defense correspondingly more difficult.

In the west, I redrew the provinces of the Safavid Empire in the south, eliminating Baluchistan and creating Shiraz, and I added two western edge provinces, Yezd and Isfahan, to create new opportunities for flanking attacks. I had not been satisfied with the provincial borders in the area, and the expansion enabled me to make significant improvements. Again, to increase the importance of fleets, I moved the Supply Center in Indus Delta to Oman, and added two more provinces, Arabia and Yemen, to provide flanking opportunities.

At this point, I should mention that these improvements did not take place all at once, or in a vacuum. I posted an interim version of the map, incorporating some of the changes I just discussed, and once again invited the members of the Diplomacy Variant Workshop (yahoogroup) to comment. Some of their comments led me to make the remaining changes.

Looking at the revised map, I was satisfied that I had accomplished what I had set out to do. The board was less dense. I had added 10 provinces, for a total of 71, as compared to 75 in Standard Diplomacy, still with just one more Supply Center, and the same number of powers, so the size was very similar. The coastal and offshore Supply Centers were more widely dispersed, which I expected would increase the use and importance of fleets. Finally, the added provinces were all on or near the edges of the map, making the defensive positions of the edge Powers less secure and eliminating several stalemate lines.

With the design work done, I turned to three other important areas of variant development: testing, publicity and support. For testing, I did the obvious and put out a call for players to join an initial playtest game, which is about to begin as I write this, as game number 1051 on Cat23. The roster is very good, and I am quite sure that all of them will play with dedication, which is important for a true test of the capabilities of the powers in a variant. I am running the game no-NMR for the same reason. If readers here are interested, contact me and I will include you in the mailing list for the game, as Official Observers. In addition to getting the results, Official Observers will have first chance if any replacement position should open up.

Between the articles here and the ongoing discussion in the Diplomacy Variant Workshop yahoogroup, I thought I was doing fairly well in the publicity department. To further publicize the Maharajah’s Diplomacy, I added a page on the variant to a web site I was constructing, and applied to link the site in the Diplomacy Webring. I will probably also ask some people I know who play in other forums to drop a message about the variant in the general message board.

Support was my weak point. Though I will gladly make myself available to GMs and players with questions, I play in Cat23, and its subgroups, the Academy and the School of Creative Destruction, and GM all my games “by hand”. I have neither the direct need nor the programming skill necessary get Maharajah’s Diplomacy supported on judges or other automated adjudication programs. Fortunately for me, some other people who were interested in the variant were willing to offer their assistance. Erlend Janbu offered to do the work necessary to add Maharajah’s Diplomacy to Realpolitik, which I am told is one of the most popular of the non-judge adjudication programs. Manus Hand, Millis Miller and David Norman (the “Keepers” of the USDP, USTV and USTR judges, respectively) each expressed interest in adding the variant to their judges.

That work is ongoing as I write this article. I gritted my teeth, and downloaded the Mapmaker utility, and learned to use it. With it, I created a “.mkr” file, which presents itself on a computer screen as a network of nodes (representing provinces) and lines between them (representing borders). The onscreen appearance of a .mkr file is reminiscent of a multicolored spider web. The .mkr file is necessary, I am told, for further work that must be done to adapt a variant for play on several of the judges. This will not be a straight forward task because of the special convoy and home Supply Center conversion rules (which may be found in the earlier article, on my website, or in that most comprehensive of all variant related resources, the Variant Bank). These particular rules have never been coded on any judge, though similar ones have been, which will hopefully make the work a little easier.

I hope this article will be helpful and give some guidance to people thinking of designing a variant of their own. It is not easy to develop a good variant, but it is a labor of love, and can be educational, as well. Development never really ends, of course, so if the Editor is agreeable, I may publish an article to summarize further Maharajah’s Diplomacy developments, and discuss the results of the initial playtest.

  David Cohen
([email protected])