Youngstown Diplomacy is a variant on the
Diplomacy board game, so named because it was created and developed by hobbyists in
Youngstown, Ohio. It expands the game map to cover
Africa and
Asia, and brings the total number of playable countries up to ten by adding
China,
India, and
Japan. The European portion of the map has additional territories, and the European powers all start with four units (Asian powers get three and Russia gets six).
Youngstown has several features that are not found in traditional Diplomacy:
- The map has twelve "off-board boxes," representing the high seas. Fleets can move between adjacent off-board boxes, and can also move between off-board boxes on opposite sides of the board. This allows the Youngstown map to accurately resemble a world-scale map (never mind that the Americas are omitted). Convoys are permitted through these spaces.
- The Suez Canal is represented by a water territory within the territory of Egypt, linked to the Mediterranean and Red Sea by arrows.
- Several of the European powers start with a unit in Asia.
Because Youngstown is so dramatically expanded in comparison to the original game, stalemates are very common. The powers are also noticably unbalanced.
China almost always wins or draws because it has early access to a large number of supply centers in
Southeast Asia. Nowadays, Youngstown is much less popular than it was in its 1970's heyday, but there are still some people who play it by e-mail every now and then.