The homepage of the variant:
http://uk.diplom.org/pouch/Online/variants/minorpower.html

Variant is based on a standard diplomacy game board.

That sounds very interesting. It’s a bit like the FUBAR variant but much more balanced. Or Rinascimento without neutral SCs.

Minor issue that I see is Turkey, it might get locked in entirely from turn one.

Sounds fun, and can't wait to play as Serbia... and get crushed!

Btw for the issue of Turkey, is it possible to let the seven choose their builds too?

Well the whole point of *not* letting them choose their builds is not making them even more powerful beyond starting out three times the strength of their neighbours.

@hakureimarisa if it will be so England will always chose to build 3 fleets at the start. So rules don't let majors to chose their builds.

Ouch, I missed England. A stuck Turkey is far much better than dead France, Belgium, Holland and Norway. My bad XD

And another idea. To replace the half-bid for one-province minors, and to balance the issue of Turkey.

We add a Bidding Phase to the start of the game. Players receive a certain number of tokens respectively and they bid for the country to play as. Much like that of Greek Diplomacy, just let them bid for countries instead of centers.
Then some can get multiple countries to play while some get none. So then there's gotta be a Selection Phase. In this phase people with more than one country must choose one to play with, while the unlucky randomly get a country at the end of it.
Or if people don't like the idea of "no luck for once and I'm doomed", we can do the bidding-selection thing for some more times. The problem is that these repetitions can mean a boring and prolonged starting.

I think that it always makes sense to port variants as designed, maybe with changes that the original variant author would have liked to make. Other changes would be new variants.

As to the bidding, the coding should already exist. Once upon a time, at least on webDip, when you joined a game in progress (took over a 'great power' in civil disorder), you had to bet (D) by function of how many supply centers you would take over. In fact, you can still see that figure on vDip here after instances of "worth:"):
https://vdiplomacy.net/gamelistings.php?gamelistType=Open%20Positions

Of course, that would be closer to betting a third of what the great powers bet, not half of what great powers bet (Russia throws the calculation off slightly), but I would prefer that players bet a third anyway.

@JECE, that makes sense. I mean the idea to pay a third.

I have started th job. Please join for the test and development:
https://webdiplomacy.ru/board.php?gameID=12804

But I ask help in the following tasks:
1. Major powers should have fixed builds (this time all powers can chose their builds in the pre-game phase)
2. Minor powers should bet 1/3 of the full stake to enter the game.

Variant page:
https://webdiplomacy.ru/variants.php?variantID=222

First test game. Please join to test and develop:
https://webdiplomacy.ru/board.php?gameID=12804

If smbd is willing to help with coding spacial variant features mensioned above - here we have the source-files of variant:
https://webdiplomacy.ru/files.php?variantID=222

Just give Turkey a fleet in CON

@christinaFeggy by now all initial builds are free to chose for the player

The variant is almost ready to go. But what we should do with Serbia? The only power which can't build a fleet for the first 2 winters. So, we can do such tricks:
1) Add unit-transformation option to the variant;
2) Simply make Albania as a power with SC on a board not Serbia.
3) Do nothing

Port the variant as designed, right?

@JECE. So you advise to release the variant as author wants it to be. (with original rules)?

Yeah, I think that that is best practice. You can always release a different version of the variant later! This is just my opinion, though.

Ok. Let it be so! ;-)

Variant is released! https://webdiplomacy.ru/variants.php?variantID=222

Great work!

@Let's wait Oli to install this variant on vDip.

I found smth similar in The Dutch Revolt variant source-code.
I mean the special fixed builds for certain powers.