How to play

Diplomacy, as written in the Avalon Hill fourth edition rules. Seven Great Powers, no dice: every unit is equal, and the only way to get anywhere is with help. You are a diplomat first, a commander second.

Object

Control 18 of the 34 supply centres after a Fall turn and you have won Europe. Surviving players may instead agree a draw by all voting for it in the Map tab.

The year

• Spring: everyone submits secret orders, they resolve together, dislodged units retreat.
• Fall: the same, then every power adjusts its army to match its supply centres.
• Movement phases run on the game clock (24 hours by default). Retreats and builds run on the shorter clock and are skipped when nobody has anything to do. A phase resolves early once everyone who must act has submitted.
• Talk as much as you like, in public or privately. Nothing said binds anyone.

Orders

Hold

Stay put. Units without an order hold.

Move

Armies move to an adjacent land province, or to a coast by convoy. Fleets move along the coast or between sea provinces. Bulgaria, Spain and St Petersburg have two coasts; when both are possible the order must say which.

Support

Give up your move to add one to the strength of another unit's hold or move, into a province you could have reached yourself. A move needs more strength than what it faces; equal strength is a standoff and nobody moves. Support is cut if the supporter is attacked from anywhere except the province it supports into, or if it is dislodged. You may support anyone, invited or not, but you can never dislodge your own unit or help anyone else do so.

Convoy

A fleet at sea can carry an army from one coast to another; several fleets can chain. If a fleet in the chain is dislodged the convoy fails. Two units can swap places only if one is convoyed. Mark a move "via convoy" to insist on the sea route when a land route also exists.

Retreats

A dislodged unit must retreat to an adjacent empty province it could normally move to, never to where the attacker came from, never to a province left empty by a standoff. Two units retreating to the same place are both disbanded. A unit with nowhere to go, or no order, is disbanded.

Builds

After Fall retreats, a power owns every supply centre one of its units stands on. More centres than units: build in your vacant home centres (fleets only on the coast). Fewer: disband your choice of units.

Missing a deadline

Civil disorder. Your units hold without supporting each other, dislodged units disband, and forced disbands remove the units farthest from home first, fleets before armies, alphabetically after that.

Fewer than seven

• Six: Italy sits out; its units hold and defend themselves.
• Five: Italy and Germany sit out.
• Four: England; Austria and France; Germany and Turkey; Italy and Russia.
• Three: England, Germany and Austria; Russia and Italy; France and Turkey.
• Two: England, France and Russia against Austria, Germany and Turkey, from 1914, Italy joining one side in 1915. 24 centres win.

Anonymity

You sign in with Discord, but at the table you are a Great Power and a codename. Notifications go to your own DMs. Identities are revealed at the end only if the host switched that on.