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In the last few weeks I've read up a lot about the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan and his successors, and as I have also been replaying Dippy here after a long time I thought a map loosely based on the 13th century Mongols could make for an interesting many-players Dippy map.

It spans a huge, diverse map stretching from Eastern Europe in the west, India in the south and Japan in the east, with a geography that makes for an interesting map with distinct advantages and disadvantages for the different areas:

  • Himalaya mountains, Caspic sea, and possibly Gobi desert and/or Caucasus mountains make for impassable inland terrain to funnel and isolate certain relationships, without creating a single central impassable area that allows for stalemate lines (like Switzerland is on the original Calhamer map).
  • The arctic sea between Curile islands in the far east and Barent sea in the far west is effectively impassable at the medieval TL, funneling all the fast convoy lines between theatres southwards to Western Mediterranean / Red Sea / Indian Sea, giving a distinct advantage to controlling the southern areas compared to the northern ones. There is also obviously no loop between the Eastern Pacific and the Western Atlantic at that time, creating distinct edges.
  • The Mongol Empire can be split into three powers with the Golden Horde primarily threatening Europe, the Il-Khanate threatening primarily the Islamic world between Anatolia and Afghanistan and the Yuan Dynasty primarily threatening East Asia, creating three distinct triangle or diamond theatres, as well as a fourth inner triangle between the Mongols. (The Chagatai Khanate would be better modeled as neutral SCs, as it would have no way to expand but through other Mongol powers and so force an early civil war, rather than to make it a possibility.)

Suitable Powers:

(powers in [square brackets] are 4 unit powers split between two theatres, like Russia in Calhamer Dippy between the Eastern triangle of Russia/Turkey/Austria and the northern Triangle of Russia/Germany/England):

  • Golden Horde / European theatre: Golden Horde, Hungary, Byzantinum, Novgorod, [Crusaders](Lithuania / Malta), [Seljuks](Armenia / Middle East) - western Europe and western North Africa would be glossed over as a few roughly hewn non-SC neutral territories, with possibly a couple of neutral SCs thrown in to foster conflict and/or buff disadvantaged European powers. Venice has to make an appearance as a neutral SC for Marco Polo alone.
  • Il-Khanate / Islamic theatre: Il-Khanate, Ghore Sultanate (northern india), [Seljuks](Arabian Peninsula), [Crusaders](Outremer / Edessa) - Persia/Baghdad might make for a good contested neutral SC, 1-2 Pagan Kingdom neutral SCs between may link the Islamic and the Eastern theatre. Ghore Sultanate should have relatively weak Southern India as an easy early neutral SC, at the price of being less effective against Pagan and the half-powers in the early game.
  • Yuan Dynasty / East Asian theatre: Yuan Dynasty, Southern Song Dynasty, Japan, Tibet, Burma/Khmer/Pagan Kingdom (not sure yet which of the three, or maybe even to lump all three of them into one federation as ahistorical as it may be), Goryeo/Korea (?, while resistant and not unimportant in history it might be better gameplay-wise as a neutral buffer between Song and Japan, especially as it would require serious dimorphism to squeeze three SCs of recognizable scale on the Korean peninsula)

Other implications:

  • Some powers like the Golden Horde have exclusively inland home centers, forbidding them from building any fleets ever by standard Calhamer rules. The map would either need to be a chaos map (allowing to build units anywhere), to designate some coastal SCs as universal home centers for whoever holds them, or provide a way to turn armies into fleets and vice versa. A chaos map may be the most simple solution, and the one closest to history (the Yuan dynasty employed subjugated Goryean and Southern Song wharfs to build the invasion fleets to hit Japan, after all).
  • There should be some incentive for the Mongol powers to co-operate, look after their own well-being and each go for their own sphere, rather than to be heavily tempted into an early civil war. One extra unit for each Mongol power per full six SCs owned by all the three Mongol powers combined might do the trick, and rally the non-Mongol powers into crippling the Mongols first. Of course there is short-term gain in siding with the Mongols against another non-Mongol power - especially for well-protected powers like Japan on its island, or Tibet on its Himalaya plateau, which might in turn lead to non-Mongol powers taking care of likely traitors first... Asymetric power relationships and opportunity costs are at the heart of Dippy, after all.
In the last few weeks I've read up a lot about the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan and his successors, and as I have also been replaying Dippy here after a long time I thought a map loosely based on the 13th century Mongols could make for an interesting many-players Dippy map. It spans a huge, diverse map stretching from Eastern Europe in the west, India in the south and Japan in the east, with a geography that makes for an interesting map with distinct advantages and disadvantages for the different areas: - Himalaya mountains, Caspic sea, and possibly Gobi desert and/or Caucasus mountains make for impassable inland terrain to funnel and isolate certain relationships, without creating a single central impassable area that allows for stalemate lines (like Switzerland is on the original Calhamer map). - The arctic sea between Curile islands in the far east and Barent sea in the far west is effectively impassable at the medieval TL, funneling all the fast convoy lines between theatres southwards to Western Mediterranean / Red Sea / Indian Sea, giving a distinct advantage to controlling the southern areas compared to the northern ones. There is also obviously no loop between the Eastern Pacific and the Western Atlantic at that time, creating distinct edges. - The Mongol Empire can be split into three powers with the Golden Horde primarily threatening Europe, the Il-Khanate threatening primarily the Islamic world between Anatolia and Afghanistan and the Yuan Dynasty primarily threatening East Asia, creating three distinct triangle or diamond theatres, as well as a fourth inner triangle between the Mongols. (The Chagatai Khanate would be better modeled as neutral SCs, as it would have no way to expand but through other Mongol powers and so _force_ an early civil war, rather than to make it a _possibility_.) **Suitable Powers:** (powers in [square brackets] are 4 unit powers split between two theatres, like Russia in Calhamer Dippy between the Eastern triangle of Russia/Turkey/Austria and the northern Triangle of Russia/Germany/England): - **Golden Horde / European theatre:** Golden Horde, Hungary, Byzantinum, Novgorod, [Crusaders] (Lithuania / Malta), [Seljuks] (Armenia / Middle East) - western Europe and western North Africa would be glossed over as a few roughly hewn non-SC neutral territories, with possibly a couple of neutral SCs thrown in to foster conflict and/or buff disadvantaged European powers. Venice _has_ to make an appearance as a neutral SC for Marco Polo alone. - **Il-Khanate / Islamic theatre:** Il-Khanate, Ghore Sultanate (northern india), [Seljuks] (Arabian Peninsula), [Crusaders] (Outremer / Edessa) - Persia/Baghdad might make for a good contested neutral SC, 1-2 Pagan Kingdom neutral SCs between may link the Islamic and the Eastern theatre. Ghore Sultanate should have relatively weak Southern India as an easy early neutral SC, at the price of being less effective against Pagan and the half-powers in the early game. - **Yuan Dynasty / East Asian theatre:** Yuan Dynasty, Southern Song Dynasty, Japan, Tibet, Burma/Khmer/Pagan Kingdom (not sure yet which of the three, or maybe even to lump all three of them into one federation as ahistorical as it may be), Goryeo/Korea (?, while resistant and not unimportant in history it might be better gameplay-wise as a neutral buffer between Song and Japan, especially as it would require serious dimorphism to squeeze three SCs of recognizable scale on the Korean peninsula) **Other implications:** - Some powers like the Golden Horde have exclusively inland home centers, forbidding them from building any fleets ever by standard Calhamer rules. The map would either need to be a chaos map (allowing to build units anywhere), to designate some coastal SCs as universal home centers for whoever holds them, or provide a way to turn armies into fleets and vice versa. A chaos map may be the most simple solution, and the one closest to history (the Yuan dynasty employed subjugated Goryean and Southern Song wharfs to build the invasion fleets to hit Japan, after all). - There should be some incentive for the Mongol powers to co-operate, look after their own well-being and each go for their own sphere, rather than to be heavily tempted into an early civil war. One extra unit for each Mongol power per full six SCs owned by all the three Mongol powers combined might do the trick, and rally the non-Mongol powers into crippling the Mongols first. Of course there is short-term gain in siding with the Mongols against another non-Mongol power - especially for well-protected powers like Japan on its island, or Tibet on its Himalaya plateau, which might in turn lead to non-Mongol powers taking care of likely traitors first... Asymetric power relationships and opportunity costs are at the heart of Dippy, after all.

4 comments

[–] jidlaph 1 points (+1|-0)

If you want to draw up a map I'd be happy to playtest it.
[–] Skyrock [OP] 1 points (+1|-0)

Creating a map would be the next step (and a work-intensive one given the size of the area and the many powers).
[–] TheRedArmy 1 points (+1|-0)

Some searches on your part might find ones that are suitable already. The setting and time certainly seem interesting.

Cursory search found this off the bat -

http://www.vdiplomacy.com/variants.php

http://www.variantbank.org/index.htm

Might find something suitable in there already.
[–] Skyrock [OP] 0 points (+0|-0)

There are already various Dippy maps of Europe and Asia, but nothing ready made for my needs. It would need some serious dimorphism to make Eastern Europe of a scale that is readable without a magnifying glass, magnify some tiny but important areas like Xanadu or Jerusalem, and faciliate the three outer theatres in the early to mid-game by isolating them from each other by long treks through dead space without SCs and unpassable terrain. (Mongolia in the center north, southern sea convois and going through defeated half-powers would be the short-cuts for the mid- to late game when the distinctions between the theatres start to blur and fast travel becomes desireable to see a timely end to the game.)

Interestingly, Gary Gygax had already made Khanomacy, a Dippy variant revolving around the Mongol Empire, but this variant has been lost like tears in rain. (And judging from his surviving Napoleonic and Crusades Dippy variants, it was probably loaded to the gills with unnecessary special rules like double-armies or neutral armies squatting on neutral SCs.)

Here is a particularly good article on map design: http://www.variantbank.org/articles/designing_maps.htm
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