Interview with zultar from webDiplomacy & the Ancient Mediterranean variant

In this episode we take a deep dive into webDiplomacy and also one of its variants, the Ancient Med.

• The guys celebrate the conclusion of the Diplomacy World Cup with a webDip player - Demon Overlord - coming in 3rd (30 secs)
• Kaner discusses how one of the guys at webDiplomacy has created a pilot "Diplomacy - the Game Show". Amby and Kaner give their thoughts on it and some possible tweaks to improve it further (3 mins 55 secs)
• The guys pose the question why more women don't play Diplomacy (7 mins 20 secs)
• Kaner discusses the backlog of Mod issues at vDiplomacy and has discovered he's now an Admin. He talks about what magical powers he now has (9 mins 40 secs)

Interview with zultar, co-owner of webDiplomacy

• The guys talk about how they both started out at webDip when they started playing web based Diplomacy (13 mins 30 secs)
• After a bit of a false start Kaner kicks the interview off properly (16 mins 30 secs)
• Zultar explains when he first joined webDip as a player and his role as co-owner with Kestas (17 mins)
• He goes on to give a summary about webDiplomacy (19 mins)
• The guys explore with zultar about the process for bringing variants to webDip and what happened with the attempt to bring Known World 901 across. He also touches on how webDip differs from vDip, and how the webDip code has been picked up and used on other Diplomacy sites (23 mins)
• Discussion turns to the preference by webDip players to generally stick with Classic games (25 mins)
• Amby shares his thoughts on playing live games at webDip (26 mins 45 secs)
• Kaner explores with zultar how the mod system works at webDip (28 mins 20 secs)
• Kaner asks zultar about how much he likes getting lots of +1's (30 mins)
• Zultar talks a little around how they address meta-accounting and multi-accounting (32 mins)
• Kaner asks about the forum and what happens when things get too heated in discussions (33 mins)
• Zultar discusses his favorite variant at vDip but why it probably won't be coming to webDip  (37 mins 15 secs)
• Amby asks about the Mafia culture on webDip and if there's any connection to the actual game Diplomacy (39 mins)
• Zultar gives his view about any future merge between webDip and vDip (41 mins)
• Zultar discusses what's coming down the pipeline as a result of webDip's donation drive to make a range of improvements to the site (45 mins 40 secs)
• Audio quality warning - a flakey bit of the recording, sorry lasts for about 45 seconds (46 mins)
• Zultar describes his goal for webDip and then goes on to discuss all the updates and improvements coming up at webDip (47 mins 30 secs)
• Amby asks about the process followed at webDip to prioritize the proposed features (52 mins)
• Kaner asks zultar about an interesting story around his experience as a mod (53 mins 30 secs)

• Following the interview the guys share their thoughts on what they learnt and go off on a little Fog of War tangent (55 mins)
• Kaner goes on to discuss the webDip forum while Amby discusses how Kaner has previously talked about getting a different political view of the world from the webDip forum (1 hr 2 mins)
• Amby discusses a theory around whether Putin's minions have penetrated the webDip forum to create friction within the US. He goes on to reference Dan Carlin's "Common Sense" podcast around this (1 hr 5 mins)

The Ancient Mediterranean variant

• The guys discuss how the Ancient Med is one of the few variants available at webDip, and also at vDip (1 hr 7 mins)
• Amby talks about why he likes this variant, and discusses he recently played a game of it (Gunboat Pizza) over at webDip as Carthage.  The variant sees Rome face off against Greece, Persia, Egypt and Carthage. The variant was designed by Don Hessong (1 hr 8 mins 30 secs)
• Kaner goes onto explain to Amby how to see which territories are connected in any php Dip game (1 hr 11 mins)
• Amby particularly likes the territory connections for this map, saying it reminds him a lot of Indians of the Great Lakes (1 hr 15 mins)
• The game was drawn between Poohbelly, Captain Tomorrow and song. Well done to them with Amby being eliminated due to poor timing and as a result getting involved in too many fights. Amby explains his bold plan of crippling Rome quickly and then turning his units on Egypt, but it didn't work out (1 hr 17 mins)
• Amby gets excited discussing the game and knocks over his wine (1 hr 21 mins 45 secs)
• The guys wrap things up as Amby's iPad (which had just had wine spilled on it) goes crazy (1 hr 23 mins)

Don't forget if you're enjoying the podcast please hop onto iTunes and give us a rating and a review so we can get the Diplomacy message out.

Venue: Sonny's House of Blues, Brisbane

Drinks of choice:

• Kaner - Young Henry's Natural Lager from New South Wales
• Amby - El Hurricane pinot noir from the Barossa Valley, South Australia

If you have any suggestions on what you'd like to see covered in an upcoming podcast, or something you'd like to see regularly covered, please contact us or leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks to Dan Philip for his rockin' intro to the Diplomacy Games podcast.