Re: New Press Variant?

I strangely like it.  Notes below.

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 2:16 PM, Manus Hand <[email protected]> wrote:
> RULE HAMMER_PRESS -- players may not communicate with one another
> whenever they have adjacent units, or when either player has a unit
> adjacent to a supply center owned by the other.

One alternative I would propose: Player may not communicate with each
other if, in the last move turn, they had units ordered to the same
space and/or one moved into the other's supply center.  So...everyone
would be able to negotiate from the start, but if, for example, the
Russians and Turks bounce over the Black Sea, they won't be able to
renegotiate on that for the Fall move.

> I think it might strengthen alliances like England-Turkey v. Russia,
> Russia-France v. Germany, etc. Or it might lead to a lot of "hey, can
> you tell Austria this for me?" and thus a lot of "hey, Turkey told me
> to tell you this" lies.

All to the good.

> "...seems like one of those arbitrary silly-rules that has no POSSIBLE
> interpretation in terms of the real-life situation. If anything, it
> should be easier to communicate when you're close. But given the
> six-month game turns, a government would have to be SUPERNATURALLY
> ineffective to be unable to get messages around."
>
> I responded saying that it is realistic in an unrealistic way: "We
> will break off all diplomatic relations with you if you are ever in
> any position that could threaten or endanger our troops or cities."

Actually, it has a certain effing brilliancy about it - much of the
history of warfare revolves around how difficult it is for two warring
countries to *effectively* negotiate an abatement of hostilities.  cf
for example the efforts by the Japanese to negotiate a surrender to us
in WW2 - they had no *effective* means of communicating subtleties in
their position, so they were, indeed, reduced to relaying messages
through the Russians, which did, indeed, mangle the message.

-- 

P. J. O'Rourke  - "You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money."

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