Salutations vDiplomacy players,
I am new to vDiplomacy, but have frequented PlayDiplomacy for the past few years. 'Edwardian' has been about 4 years in the making (on and off) and dates back to a somewhat half-baked attempt to alter some aspects of Classic and Powell's '1900' in a variant originally called '1905: Europe.'
This iteration of 'Edwardian' that Enriador has been so kind to code and promote here is the 2nd edition of that variant and has been markedly altered from its original inception. As Enriador mentioned, it is larger than Classic or '1900' and has purposely been expanded to accentuate the historical advantages in military strengths and geographical advantages of the early 20th century great powers. By increasing the overall number of pieces available to each power, larger powers demonstrate fully their predominance while not hampering the openings of the smaller powers too badly.
There are three (arbitrarily styled) classes of powers: the Continental Leviathans (Germany & Russia); the Colonial Empires (Britain & France); the Second Tier States (Austria-Hungary, Italy, & Turkey).
Germany and Russia possess 6 centers to begin with, but are either cursed with a contested and central location (Germany) or limited in the number of secure neutral centers to capture first year (Russia). These two powers were granted greater initial clout because of Germany's industrial might and Russia's seemingly inexhaustible man-power.
Britain and France possess 5 centers to begin the game that are spread across the map with each maintaining a colonial exclave (Algiers & Cairo). These produce uniquely challenging and beneficial opportunities for openings, reflecting the reality that Britain and France were the premier colonial empires of the early 20th century.
Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Turkey each possess 4 centers at game start that are either arranged in compact initial setups or stronger openings to potential neutral supply centers. They represent the second-class great powers that dwarfed their smaller neighbors, but lacked the preeminent strength of the more vital empires in Europe. The reasons for these constraints ranged from poor industrial infrastructure (Italy), to the entropy of ethnic nationalism (Austria-Hungary), to simply being a slowly dilapidating husk of a formerly formidable Mohammedan empire (Turkey).
I will be monitoring this thread for any questions.
Enjoy,
VaeVictis
(1253 
)
)
)
)