"Diplomacy" Scenario

[DrPraetorious]

All this talk of betrayal in the main forum reminded me that I've been working on a "Diplomacy" secnario. I'm still working on it, but if anyone wishes to play, let me know.

I'll be PBEM over Llamaserver, and it will start in the midgame - each position will have ~10K gold worth of stuff including 36 commanders, and a gem income of about 30 from six provinces with three forts (each position deviates from this norm slightly.)

The positions are:
Man / England (Sleet)
Marignon / France
Vanheim / Germany
Ermor / Italy (Shovah32)
Ulm / Austria (Lazy Perfectionist, maybe)
Jotunheim / Russia
Pythium / Ottoman Empire

It will use the good old map of europe from everyone's favorite game of treachery. People can pick positions once the scenario is done, and I'll take the last (seventh) choice to ensure that I get the weakest position.

Other rules -
* No compulsion whatsoever to honor pacts or treaties. In fact, if you never betray anyone, I reserve the right to laugh at you and call you a sissy.
* Fast research, maybe slight changes to money or resources (depending on how populous I make each position, everyone should be able to support their starting forces).
* I'll include some minor hotfix mods, the blessing hotfix at least. I can turn off some spells if people are terribly worried about them, but since the game starts at equiv. of ~turn 12, I don't think that'll be an issue.
* 36 hour quickhost to start. The map is fairly small so administration shouldn't get out of hand. There will be no initial blitz since everyone starts with neighbours and a medium-sized army.

A few notes:
* The game starts in the thick of it, so imprisoning your pretender is a bigger penalty.
* You could easily be at war on turn 1, soo\ in spite of your significant army, an awake SC pretender might be a very good idea indeed. You'll also start with some basic thug equipment scattered around on your starting thugs.
* Everyone starts with big heaps of sacred troops, even if their sacred troops are somewhat inferior. I've tried to balance this out as possible (with Pythium, for example, I'm giving them sacred amazon indies instead). This encourages you to take a strong bless.
* Of course, everyone also starts with big heaps of powerful mages, so a research pretender might be a better bet .
* The game is meant to be handled by Diplomacy. No matter what strategy you puruse, if you try to take on one of your opponents 1:1, you'll regret it (unless I mess up the game balance very badly.)