As I said earlier. I strongly propose a rule amendment that on top of the 18/34 scs required to solo, you must control Ankara at games end in order to solo.

The only official rule of Ankara Crescent is the object of the game, which is to end the year with a unit sitting in Ankara. Whether that means in game year or actual year varies depending on who you ask.

Over the last 3 years the game as gone down hill and now most people don't even know that's a rule, and some of the ones who do try to not play it with it. However if we are going to turn it into an official game with official rules, I highly recommend that the original rule, ending the year in Ankara gets instated from the original game to the variant as that way it can actually officially be called an Ankara Crescent Game.

This pops the question up in my mind - why is it called the Ankara Crescent? Why Ankara and why "crescent", in particular?

The game was inspired by Mornington Crescent?

I just want to say that this variant is a great addition to the vDip bank. I firmly believe that it will soon become a staple in tournaments and competition on this site.

@Fasces - Firstly, that would put a heck of a lot of pressure on Turkey, as it provides a huge incentive to attack him, and second, that would probably require extra coding which I didn't want to have to do with this variant.
It's only called Ankara Crescent because it's supposed to reflect the madness of the forum game, not because of anything to do with Ankara. I may consider the idea of needing to get a unit to Ankara for Ankara Crescent 2.0 though, if I ever make one.

@Lukas DC is right, it's a forum game that started on WebDip related to Mornington Crescent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mornington_Crescent_%28game%29). The variant doesn't have anything to do with it other than the madness involved.

@Kaner - Thanks :) I hope so; it certainly requires a lot more tactical thought than I originally thought it would have - probably more so than normal Diplomacy.

Since some of you don't know the rules of the original Ankara Crescent, let me explain the rules.

The game Ankara Crescent is, in some aspects, (but hardly any) similar to the board game diplomacy, in fact Allan Calhamer admitted back in 1975 that he designed the board game as a more simplified version of Ankara Crescent. He wanted less rules and less strategy.

The object of the game is simple: You need to end the year in Ankara. You play by moving units across Europe with the aim of eventually getting to Ankara. How units move and where they can move is dependent on where they are, where they use to be, where they want to go and how far away enemy units are. More experienced players will predict the movements of their opponents multiple turns in advance and move accordingly to prevent them from getting there. A few years back, I think it was gobbledydook, was able to predict one of my moves 30 turns in advance.

If you want to know all the rules, I recommend buying the rule book. You can probably find it floating around on eBay, thats how I managed the track it down.

Please note that while the rule book is useful as a starting guiding, it hasn't been in production for 26 years and as such ignores some of the official rule changes such as the Southeast Approach or the Detroit Convention.

@Captianmeme: Fair enough, however if the object of the game is to control Europe, shouldn't it be called European Crescent?

The original version was called Mornington Crescent because the object of the game was to say Mornington Crescent.

The game was then modified for diplomacy forums to be called ankara crescent, adding in some diplomacy rules and switched the end game from Mornington to Ankara, hence the name change.

@DC: but it's a bit different for Mornington Crescent - any player can just say it anytime right?

That was the rule before Finchley Central got removed from the game. Afterwards there are some rules in Mornington Crescent.

Do I really need to argue about this? I thought Mornington Crescent Rules were common knowledge

not quite ... remember that I'm from Asia i.e. there has been little exposure to this game ...

To those who are new to the game, I thought I'd show an example of a game. This is the best game I could find on youtube in 5 minutes of searching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6U2NCsqX78

Why is nobody creating Full Press games? The gunboats will be fun, I'm sure, but the FP are amazingly strategic...

Full press would be enjoyable.

http://vdiplomacy.com/edit.php?variantID=90

OMG this will give me a headache!

Bump.

Any thoughts on the variant? I note one game has finished - well done AncientMemories :)

Yes, I was in that game, well done AM. Only the two of us seemed to communicate at all, so may have influence on final positioning? I seemed to fair better at the beginning when I played it cautious and like a classic game, as soon as I got bold I suffered and it started to hurt my head!! Crazy :)

With all the underground passages available to Ankara I think it is safe to say that whoever controls half the map controls Ankara. Not to mention the secret teleported available in various territories. Since whoever controls half the board moves first next round, it is really a formality.

I am in a game that just started (and I won't comment on it anymore after this) but I have to say it is going to be tremendous fun based on all of the initial press. Everyone should try this variant out.

I just finished my first non-testgame of this - gameID=13815

Well done to Austria for the solo :)
I don't tend to play gunboats so I'm surprised I did so well to start... I ended up being attacked a heck of a lot towards the end though. Russia and Turkey both seemed to want to use my homeland as an evacuation point when they lost their home SCs :D

Yup - good game all. I'll write up an EoG later.

I have a question about convoys. The rules say "Don't underestimate convoys. Although they are made slightly redundant in that units can move between non-SC coastal territories without them, they're incredibly useful for moving armies out of and into coastal SCs. For instance, without a fleet in MAO Portugal can only move to Spain, but if a fleet is there it can be convoyed to any non-SC coastal province on the board."

This seems to be self-contradictory. You can move from one costal non-SC to another for sure, but with a fleet in the MAO, can't A Por move to ANY costal space? SC or non-SC? Just trying to wrap my head around this varient.

This variant is fairly confusing as far as convoys are concerned, so I'll try to explain...

Basically, in normal Diplomacy, a fleet can convoy to and from any territory it connects to. This is exactly the same in AC, but the fleet would connect to more provinces so would be able to convoy to more places.

However, let's take the MAO example to show why it can only convoy to Non-SCs. There's an army in Portugal, which the fleet can convoy out because it connects to Port. Let's assume there's no other fleets convoying this unit.

The places Por can be convoyed to are any land territories MAO connects to - the usual ones (Spain, Gascony, Brest) and also all other coastal non-SCs, because MAO also connects to them.

This also works in reverse - a fleet in MAO could convoy a unit from any of the above territories to Por.

This makes convoys very useful for mobilizing units in and out of supply centers. These convoys can also be combined to convoy out of one SC and into another (for example, fleets in MAO and EMe could convoy Por-Smy).

I hope that clears it up - as I said, it's a little hard to explain.

There were some good convoys set up in gameID=13815

The one in S10 from Naples to London is a good example.

Now I see. Thanks. It was the whole in and out of SCs that threw me.