Send comments or corrections (only for the HTML version of this file) to Doug Massey ([email protected]).
You can receive a copy of this file via E-mail by sending your local Judge a message with "get info.asia" in the body.
Asian Diplomacy was originally conceived of and created by David Lawler,
updated and modified by Peter Baer. Territory chart revised by Will Wible.
This variant has undergone extensive development and playtesting over more
than four years. Several email and quite a few live games later, here are the
results.
Note that there are absolutely no rule changes from the standard Dip
rulebook. Just a new map. Comments: canals are similar to
Constantinople in the regular Vanilla game; ie fleets and armies may
cross, but only one may be occupying the territory at a time. Asian
Diplomacy has almost no historical basis.
The original designers of the variant said "It is VERY well balanced,
which should be the final criteria for a wargame. All powers have
equal chances to win." However, experience says that this is not the
case. Some powers are much stronger than others. It is also very easy
to stalemate the game, which makes solo wins unlikely, and draws much
more likely.
Map
An ASCII version of the map is available from the judge as the file asia.asc.
A PostScript map is still under development. The interconnectivities between
the provinces, and the abbreviations for the provinces, can be found in the
file map.asia, or on the ASCII map (asia.asc). Many provinces have a few
abbreviations that are acceptable; for example, ura and ural for urals.
Most provinces can be abbreviated by the first 3 letters of the name,
exceptions to this rule are:
eas East Africa Sea
esb East Siberia
ecs East China Sea
eio East Indian Ocean
eme,emed Eastern Mediterranean
hkg,hk Hong Kong
hon Honshu
irn Iran
irq Iraq
jav Java
jvs Javan Sea
scs South China Sea
sio South Indian Ocean
tha Thailand
ths Thai Sea
Other acceptable abbreviations are in the map.asia file; if in doubt you can
always spell out the name in full.
Countries and Starting Positions
There are 7 nations. As with Youngstown, there are 2 nations beginning with
the letter "I"; once again, the letter "N" is used for India. "I" is used
by Indonesia.
The starting positions are:
China India Indonesia Japan
A Beijing A Calcutta F Borneo F Hokkaido
A Tibet A Delhi F Java F Honshu
F Shanghai F Bombay F Sumatra A Manchuria
F Philippines
Russia Siberia Persia
A Moscow A Irkutsk A Iran
A Sevastopol F Kamchatka A Iraq
F St Petersburg A West Siberia F Arabia (east coast)
Victory Conditions
40 territories are marked as supply centers, and 21 are needed to win.
Programmed for the judge by Nicholas Fitzpatrick