Sub-Saharan: Diplomacy Variant Rules

What is Sub-Saharan?

Sub-Saharan is a Diplomacy variant set in Africa circa 1881, just prior to the period of rapid colonization known as the Scramble for Africa. It approximates the political landscape of the early 1880s before the drastic changes that came from the Belgian colonization of the Congo and the results of the Berlin Conference.

The map collects an array of colonial and native African powers using rough estimations of their borders, at a point when colonization had mostly only occurred along the African coastlines, and the military footprint of the European and Middle Eastern colonizers was not yet so large as to make total colonization seem inevitable or impossible to resist.

Variant Features

10 players
47 Supply Centers (18 needed to win)
Neutral Minor Powers: stationary units occupying neutral SCs whose orders are set via secret Diplomacy Points (DP) allocations
Additional Home Supply Centers: each player can name up to two new SCs to build from as the game progresses