modern 2 and fall of the american empire were the variants. Quite surprisingly, they are reacting positively when they seem to hate variants in general

Hmm, interesting move for them to make their site slowly move towards ours... xD Like Halt said, I think it is hilarious they cry blasphemy to the idea of variants being played there and have just added two, saying they are great additions.

y'know, I really haven't even seen talk in the forums there about this, just noticed that the variants now exist and people are playing

I don't think that they are slowly moving their site to ours. They are only bringing in variants which are well balanced (using Classic as their standard). That said, a map like Rinascimento or Imperial Dip probably will never be accepted into WebDip.

Besides, Vdip is sort of like a testing ground of sorts. We get to try out all the new toys that the mods develop. (i.e. ordering with mouse clicks, elo-algorithm rating, arrangement of units feature etc,). In a sense, we are to webdip, what vdip.lab is to us.

Colonial Diplomacy is a pretty good variant they should try out... Other than that, I'm not sure what other map right now is balanced enough.

It looks like that pattern holds true as well:

As soon as a new variant is added there is a HUGE proportion of new games being made as Gunboat.

yeah, I'm actually excited at playing Modern gunboat, since we don't play gunboats here in Vdip.

lol @ modern and colonial being balanced

TW, if you start a Colonial and you pick up China, I'll be the first one who will join your game! :)

The main problem with Colonial is that the Railway rule hasn't been implemented yet.

Russia doesn't really have that difficult a time in Colonial though. It's China that usually gets torn to bits

It's funny you say that, Guaroz... ;)
Anyway, I don't think China is any worse than France in Modern Diplomacy. You don't have a country you can't ally with, unlike France and Spain where they are inevitable enemies.

Yea, we could add this suggestion to Colonial Variant Page:
"Tip for China: You don't have a country you can't ally with, so ally with someone and do better than previous China-players!" :D Just joking.
TW, yes, in Modern F-S alliance might not be the most easy, but it's much more easy than... have you ever seen, in a Classic, a good A-T alliance rolling over the Board? I did.
Anyway, about inbalance...you're right. France:Modern=China:Colonial.

I also find that France has a weak position in the Modern Diplomacy II variant.
It seems to me that the cause of that situation is the fact that Bordeaux is a Supply Center instead of Brest.
Does anyone know why the variant whas designed that way ? Has this question already been discussed ?

I am VERY interested by that question because I am working right now on a new 15-player variant which is based on the Modern Diplomacy II variant.

Correction : why the variant *was* designed...

Hi Ret, happy to hear you're working on a new variant, looking forward to it.
May I be so bald and make you notice that we miss 14 and 16 players variants? Just in case for some reason you were thinking to add or take out a Country. You'd have one more reason. :)

*bold. lol.

Honestly it's probably because Bordeaux is in reality much more relevant than Brest/Brittany is now, so it's probably for accuracy.
I do agree that it makes France much weaker though. It's funny how not even Monaco can help it out...
A way to fix it might be to make the Alsace split into the Alsace and Lorraine, or Alsace and Burgundy like in Europe 1939. It would look messier, but it'd work.
Or even taking out Bordeaux, and putting Nantes into Brittany's/Brest's place. That could work, even though it's not really a port city.

@ Guaroz :

Thank you for the idea ! I will certainly not remove one country but I will think about adding one more, although it seems rather difficult without changing a lot of things in the variant.

@ The Worst :

Thank you for your answer but what you wrote is wrong :

1° Brest is the second military port in France after Toulon.

2° Nantes, which is geographically included in the Modern Diplomacy II Coast Zone called "Brest", has been a very important sea port for centuries ! Today, the port of Nantes has a traffic of 3 millions of tons of merchandise per year ! And the "Grand port maritime de Nantes-Saint-Nazaire" (the "Great sea port of Nantes-Saint-Nazaire") has a traffic of 33 millions of tons of merchandise per year !

-> Nantes is a port city !

-> "Accuracy" requires that Brest is a SC and not Bordeaux !

Actually there is a visual error in Modern II (picked up on webdip) and this is that Brittany is named as Brest in the largeMap.

Perhaps more accurately I should've said in terms of population, as the variant is very huge on that. The military part is irrelevant to the population since this variant likes to focus on pop as is apparent by the description.
that's why I suggested Nantes, as it's bigger in terms of pop than Bordeaux.

@ kaner406 :

Thank you for your remark. I do know that "Brest" is the same space than "Brittany" : the names change from one map to another one.

My question please stays : for game balance purposes, shouldn't there be a SC in Brest (which is called "Brittany" on the small map) instead of in Bordeaux ?

I can't really say if it balances the map more. However, shifting the center to Brest/Brittany will strengthen France only in the sense that England won't have free reign over the Channel. However, it weakens France from making a crack at Spain since if France moves to Bay of Biscay early on, Channel can threaten a French center, something that normally doesn't happen. The Channel's strategic importance increases several notches up as a result.

As far as I can see, it gives France more options, but leaves him more vulnerable as opposed to having it in Bordeaux. I'd say the pros and cons balance each other out, but that's just me.

Bordeaux was chosen as the France SC for reasons of playability rather than historical or logistic accuracy. The Modern Diplomacy variant has been around for over 20 years, and has been play tested thousands of times. That doesn't mean that it's perfect, and the Bordeaux situation does hamstring France a little bit, and it's not particularly an accurate representation of France's 'modern' military and economic makeup. With that said to simply swap the SC location from Bordeaux to Brittany has consequences that are not being considered. Giving France a starting position in Brittany without modifying the ocean territories puts England at a terrible disadvantage, and it gives Spain no reason to negotiate over Portugal. You cannot just make these changes in a vacuum without considering the dynamics of what else is going to become imbalanced. It's not like this map was just cooked up three months ago and designed without any consideration to this, or without significant play testing.

The reality is that France is not the weak sister of the Modern board any more than Egypt is on the WW4 map, or for that matter any more than China is in Colonial. Both of those positions are actually anything but weak. France starts the Modern game with four supply centers, in a compact and highly defensible position with excellent alliance opportunities. Just because Bordeaux does not lead to a guaranteed neutral SC pickup does not make it an invaluable position. Modern is a build anywhere map, and the ability to build both fleets and armies at the tip of Iberia is powerful.

Modern's biggest weakness lies not with the odd logistical geographic of France, but with the other side of the map where there is no ability to move fleets north and south. This creates a serious of essentially premade alliances because military progress moving from the Mediterranean Sea to the Baltic Sea or North Atlantic is next to impossible. The solution for this was the insertion of the "wing" unit. Wing units were added to a third version of Modern, which does not appear in the Dip Pouch any longer, but they were widely recognized as making the map much engaging and fun to play.

Wing units could move one space per turn across land and sea territories, attack and support, but the could NOT occupy (capture) supply centers. They can blockade/bombade supply centers, denying the resources temporarily to the owning power though. Some variations of wing rules allowed for airlifts (convoys) between a string of wing units. While the wings are very powerful because of their mobility, their inability to capture supply centers also limits their power, and makes them more of a luxury unit. If you build to many wings, it's difficult to capture centers.

Inserting the wing unit into Modern opens up the entire board, and provides for an exciting change of place to the game.

Thank you for your detailed answer, RUFFHAUS 8.

PS: I fixed the naming for the largemap now.
Strange that it was unnoticed for so long...

Just jumped on the modern diplomacy wagon :P see you in game!

This might be the only time I've ever said this, but I agree with RUFFHAUS. The reason that Gibraltar is part of England is to give Spain another neighbor. One-neighbor countries don't have a lot of options, and moving a French SC away from Spain gives Spain more control locally. This would help out Spain much more than France, and it might even hurt England.

Stop thinking "us" vs "them". There are a lot of good things about both sites, which is why many if us play on both. I've been a member of webdip for.longer than this site has even been around, but I joined here because of the variants, and have stayed here because of the people.

Playing a game, you know what webdiplom needs?
Server side stored orders. So many times has that saved me from misorders recently, so it's awesome to have as a fail-safe. It'd be very helpful for new players as well who aren't familiar with the new maps.

Long ago in a forum far away I said that a possible change that could be made was this.
A) Borduex is a terrible port
B) Only Mon is a lock
C) Britain has little fear from France because of Bord and France can't capitalize on British weakness as well as standard
D) Spain is a backdoor neighbor that almost always comes into conflict with France
Possible Revisions?
A) Add Andorra as a SC that connects to Bord, Nav, Auv, and Bar
B) Move Bord SC back to Brest
C) Add Algeria as an SC
I never play tested it so I don't know how effective it would be.