This episode was recorded back-to-back with episode 3's discussion of Rinascimento and Bourse. As a result we'd already had a number of drinks. And then we drank some more. So in this episode apologies in advance as the guys get a bit pissy while discussing the wonderful world of Diplomacy. This probably explains why Amby gets rather excited when he discovers from Kaner the "Finished" button within each variant's page. Kaner reciprocates saying he learnt about the archived maps from within any game from Amby.


World War IV - the mother of all variants
Kaner and Amby get into this amazing map that makes this variant one with both the most players (35 or 36 depending on the version you play), and due to the number of territories and SC's its also often one of the longest maps to play:
Hats off to Tom Mulledy for creating the variant for the original 35 player variant and Tom Reinecker for the 36 player World War IV (version 6.2) variant.
Amby kicks things off talking about how "drool-worthy" the map is. But yet hates the game: because he never wins. Amby laments amongst the 3 different versions he's played 6 or 7 games but has only survived once. Every other time he gets eliminated.
Kaner points out with the number of players understandably your odds of winning fall dramatically and your chances of getting shafted go through the roof.
Kaner finds the original 35 player map very "empty", especially in the middle east. WWIV v6.2 is now overwhelmingly the most popular iteration. Even better Kaner's World War IV Sea lanes version.
That said, they both agree that when you start a WWIV game, you always feel, "This is it... I'm going to conquer the world!"
Kaner explains why there's the two versions between the WWIV map. Tom (User ID Tomahaha) contacted the then vDip mods about the site using an older version. Kaner then helped out with porting that map across to vDiplomacy.
The guys talk about the technical aspects of how the games come together on the site with two maps: a true map (with no more than 256 territories) and then a separate layer with the names and SCs on it.  But with the size of WWIV there's an additional map to help run the variant, which is really fiddly.
Amby digresses about how the Regatta's toilets disappointed him. During a quick comfort break between recordings he noticed that it didn't have a mirrored wall for releaving yourself, as reported by the BBC on the internet. Amby thinks this could be a result of a more recent renovation done since the 2011 Brisbane flood (confirmed in this article - scroll to the bottom for the wacky picture of how the urinal used to look/work!)
With dunny talk out of the way, Kaner brings up the common problem in both WWIV maps of sea-based territories forming strong stalemate lines that prevented solo wins.
Kaner discusses his ideas of creating "overseer" zones at the heart of an original large sea territory, and then splitting the remainder of a sea territory into smaller sea territories. These overseer zones allow for fast navigation, but also play a critical part in supporting activity around them. These changes eliminate the issue in the past of too many strong sea-based stalemate lines. This is obviously good if you get sick of games with stalemate lines, but will drive you nuts if you love creating good strong stalemate lines.
The guys discuss though that these changes appear to have had an impact on more sea based powers like Oceania, exposing them to greater naval threats.
Kaner then gives his strategy about the importance of building continental strength quickly and then turning your attention to projecting naval power into the sea lanes. Amby shares his experience of doing the opposite: concentrating strongly on land-based strength but in doing so leaving himself open to naval attack, and ultimately elimination. So pay attention to Kaner's suggested strategy!
That said Kaner goes on to say though that while strategy is an important component, fundamentally your relations