I have not yet done a line by line comparison (probably this weekend), but two noteworthy changes are:

1. Further confirmation that impossible order=hold order, and

2. A clear mechanic for civil disorder removals.

The biggest change I spot is that timed play (either by a set end-date or by a fixed amount of real time) is now acknowledged as official victory criteria, alongside regular victories (18 SCs) and draws (agreement by survivors).

FtF and online play has extensively used timed play for decades, nice to finally see it recognized even if it changes little.

Isn't "Dislodged by An Adjacent Convoy Attack" new as well? That's a clarification, at least. If I remember correctly, there are online platforms that don't follow this rule.

Also noteworthy that "Land and Convoy Routes" was not changed. That rule remains ambiguous.

I have performed a comparative analysis of the Renegade's 6th Edition (2023) rule book and the previous 5th edition (2008) rule book. Disregarding cosmetic and non-substantive changes (such as changing the colors of the example maps or dropping a reference the CD-Rom version of the game), there are a handful of substantive changes, as follows:

1. The rule book has added, to the traditional outcomes of solo and DIAS, possible results for time-limited or turn-limited games.

"A game of Diplomacy can end in one of four ways:

1. Control 18 Supply Centers: As soon as one Great Power controls 18 supply centers, it’s considered to have gained control of Europe.
2. Draw Involving All Survivors: All players who still have supply centers agree to share equally in a draw.
3. Turn Limit: Game ends after a number of predetermined turns (e.g., after Fall 1907) and the winner is the player with the most centers. Tied players share in victory.
4. Time Limit: Game ends after a predetermined number of hours (e.g., 4 hours, 8 hours) and the winner is the player with the most centers. Tied players share in victory."

Leaving aside the question of whether a victory can be shared, this change does not really have a practical impact for other than "friendly" FTF games. Unless you are in a tournament, on line or otherwise, games are very rarely either time-limited or turn-limited. If you are in a tournament, those outcomes are too simplistic and will be superseded by the tournament scoring system.


2. Rather than a vague statement that units "farthest from the country are removed first", there is now a clear methodology:

"In the event of a power going into civil disorder or when a power does not order a required removal, (a) No unit on a supply center is to be removed unless there are no viable options and (b) Unit precedence for removal starts with furthest from an owned supply center, by counting absolute adjacent provinces regardless of the ability of the unit to move into it, are removed first. Fleets are removed before armies, and then units are removed in alphabetic order of the name of the province on the map."

Perhaps not the most elegantly written the rule, but certainly serviceable and a since it is unambiguous, a big improvement over the previous rule. Most, if not all platforms will need to revise their code to comply with this rule.


3. The previous rule book clarification about impossible orders being hold orders if further, unequivocally clarified with capital letters, no less):

"A unit given an impossible order results in the unit HOLDING so it can be supported in place. For example, “A Burgundy—Moon” or “A Bohemia—Edinburgh” are impossible moves."

At least one platform is not compliant with this rule.


4. The next change is a clarification (and tightening up) of "matching" in support order for units with multiple coasts, so that a player may now specify support to a particular coast:

"The specification of Support to a specific coast in a split province such as Spain must match the move of the piece ordered to that province. For instance:

France: F Portugal S F Mid-Atlantic - Spain (sc); F Mid-Atlantic - Spain (nc)

The movement is valid but the support order is invalid because it identified an incorrect coast. If the order was F Mid-Atlantic - Spain (sc), then the support order would be valid."

The concept of "matching" was undefined in previous editions of the rule book, and while I can understand the opinion of those that wanted matching to be limited to a province, rather than a coast, I feel that this clarification aligns more with the overall spirit of the rule. I believe multiple platforms are not compliant with the rule.


5. The last change relates to a conflict between two rules in previous editions, with one rule forbidding a retreat by a unit to "the province from which its attacker came" and the rule which permits two units to switch places if one or both are convoyed, the issue coming up when a convoy from an adjacent province succeeds and dislodges a unit. The new edition resolves the conflict:

"A dislodged unit can retreat to the position of the attacker when there is a convoy to an adjacent province. For example:

England: A Edi-Yor; F Nth C A Edi-Yor; A Lon S A Edi-Yor
Germany: A Yor H

The German army is dislodged from Yorkshire. If the army in Edinburgh had attacked via land to Yorkshire, then the German army could not retreat to Edinburgh. Since the attack is coming from the convoy in the North Sea, the army in Yorkshire can legally retreat to Edinburgh."

I have always been of the opinion that if a unit could have moved to a province successfully in the movement phase, the unit could be legally ordered to retreat to that province in the subsequent retreat phase. I think there are multiple platforms which are not compliant with this rule.

Comparing with Stabbeurfou's errata for the 2000 rules, it seems like the first two issues remain uncorrected:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191228034627/http://www.stabbeurfou.org/docs/regles/en/Compl_Hasbro_en.html

The civil disorder rule is quite different in that it seems to prioritize keeping units in any supply center, not just home supply centers.

Oh yes, there are still unresolved issues. But this does takes care of 3 or 4 previously outstanding items. Incremental progress, I guess, but I will take it.

JECE: "The civil disorder rule is quite different in that it seems to prioritize keeping units in any supply center, not just home supply centers."

Agreed. An odd change really since there's no real need to extend the existence of a civil disorder position, and it could potential create scenarios that unjustly punish a prior ally or disaffected nation. This was never really a problem in past until folks started getting semantic to gain an unjust benefit. A few clarifying words could easily removed the perceived ambiguity. While it's not a completely disruptive change, it's really change for the sake of change. I think that the home supply center rule was more realistic and playable.

Another such change for the sake of change was the impossible order decision. While it's easy enough to adapt to, there's no real reason to do this. There is a valid order to hold and always has been. If players want to send subliminal messages with impossible orders, or actually make mistakes, the units ordered to move should be assumed to be ordered to mobilize and depart the zone, not to be entrench, receiving support. I'm curious why anyone thought that this needed to be changed.

The coastal support change is really somewhat deconstructive the the entire combat resolution philosophy. It's another example of where the prior rule functioned for all but those looking for a semantic excuse to gain an undeserved edge. This change, while needless is somewhat more tolerable since it places an emphasis on accuracy of order writing. And it definitely will stir up more drama in the manner of honest mistakes and "mistakes."

Would you enlighten me on the nature of the „Renegade edition of the rules“? Never heard of them before.

Renegade Game Studios is a small, independent game company. They obtained the publishing rights to Dip along with some other games. Acquire and Axis & Allies at least, there may be others, from Hasbro. I understand that the new edition will be generally available beginning this summer.

Thank you.

I like the way they gave a modern overhaul to the map, looks good.

RUFFHAUS 8: "Another such change for the sake of change was the impossible order decision. While it's easy enough to adapt to, there's no real reason to do this. There is a valid order to hold and always has been. If players want to send subliminal messages with impossible orders, or actually make mistakes, the units ordered to move should be assumed to be ordered to mobilize and depart the zone, not to be entrench, receiving support. I'm curious why anyone thought that this needed to be changed."

The rationale has been thought through at length:

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/L.B.Kruijswijk/#4.E.1

GOD: I agree that the map looks nice, but I wonder about some of the choices. The borders of Serbia, Greece and Albania are way off. I don't think that they did that for readability purposes, since, for example, if you look at Russia, Ukraine is now very tiny and you can hardly tell that Livonia borders Warsaw.

It's super-odd to make Ukraine so tiny given the ongoing war, to be honest . . .

They colored the islands. That's also a mistake. With Corsica being colored the same as Marseilles, the logical conclusion is that corsica belongs to Marseilles. And the logical conclusion from that, is that Marseilles borders Tyrrhenian.

Same issue with coloring Crete and Sardinia.

If you know, then you know, of course. But people that buy the game and has never played before, they don't know. And there's just no reason to include ambiguities like that.

My first Diplomacy board was a bootleg version that had colored islands. It took us 5 minutes to figure out that contiguous provinces without a name written on it are as impassable as Switzerland.

We have over a hundred variants with colored islands and enclaves, confusion over adjacency seems pretty low.

I think the UI on vDip removes the risk of confusion. And you have the adjacency maps available for each variant as well. Anyway. Isn't the saying, what can be misunderstood will be misunderstood? Just seems unnecessary to me, especially since there's no in-game upside to coloring islands.

Fair enough, maybe they could have kept their design vision but avoided any potential issues by tweaking the sea borders slightly (so e.g. Corsica was entirely covered by Gulf of Lyon).

Personally, the lack of colouring for Sardinia has bothered me from an aesthetic POV for the last ten years or so, I like it.