Originally posted by Rude
What is this game all about?
It's a board game (adapted to the PC) along the same lines as Risk, but the objective here is to take over Europe. Instead of using dice to decide fights, it's numerical superiority: 2 armies beat 1 army, 1 army ties vs 1 army. The hitch is, you can only have 1 army per territory. The fact that you have so few armies necessitates working with the other 6 players on the board to form alliances, since an evenly matched country fight would stalemate quickly. Also, all moves happen simultaneously (no turns), so you have to guess at what everyone else is going to do.
It's the outguessing, making/breaking of alliances, combined with the necessary negotations, that makes the game a blast.
In the online version, orders are processed every few days (3 days in the AH Oclub games I've played in). You have the time in between to strategize and negotiate with other players by email. It's all web based, so nothing to buy.
Assuming you don't get wiped out early, a game will probably go on for months before someone wins.
ed: If that sounds interesting, here's a good page with the original boardgame rules, as well as FAQ's and strategy stuff.
http://devel.diplom.org/Online/
