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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2442 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 27, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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If you're tired of the unrealistic peace treaties of Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Victoria, and Hearts of Iron, one enterprising company has published a board game about the Paris Peace Conference that ended World War One: Versailles 1919. Here are some of the 52 different "issues" that can be resolved as part of the game. (The players are UK, France, USA, and optionally Italy.)

Kurdistan (Middle East, 3 victory points):

  • French mandate: +1 to French empire, −1 to USA happiness, +1 to Middle East unrest, +1 to Balkans unrest

  • UK mandate: +1 to UK empire, −1 to US happiness, +2 to Middle East unrest

  • Independence: +1 to self-determination, −2 to French happiness, +2 to Middle East unrest

  • No Kurdistan: (no effect)

Palestine (Middle East, 4 victory points):

  • UK mandate: +1 to UK empire, +1 to Middle East unrest

  • French mandate: +1 to French empire, −1 to UK happiness, −1 to US happiness, +1 to Middle East unrest

  • Arab state: +1 to self-determination, −2 to UK happiness

  • Zionist state (28 years early!): +1 to UK happiness, +3 to Middle East unrest

Prussia (Europe, 5 victory points):

  • Germany: +1 to industry, −1 to French happiness, +2 to Europe unrest

  • Danzig corridor: +1 to German containment, +1 to Europe unrest

  • Poland: +2 to German containment, +2 to Europe unrest, −1 to US happiness

Slovenia and Croatia (Balkans, 5 victory points):

  • Both independent: +2 to self-determination, +1 to Italy happiness

  • Slovenia independent, Croatia in Yugoslavia: +1 to self-determination, −2 to Italy happiness

  • Both in Yugoslavia: +1 to German containment, −4 to Italy happiness

If unrest in a region gets too high (perhaps due to an event card—Eleutherios Venizelos, Ho Chi Minh, Ibn Saud, etc.), an uprising may cause a settled issue to become unsettled, requiring a new resolution to be agreed to. But keeping troops mobilized to quash unrest will make your people unhappy.

The same company has also published board games in the same vein for negotiations during (not after) the War of the Sixth Coalition (UK, Austria, Russia, and France) and World War Two (UK, USA, and USSR). These two games have slightly more military action. (Which is more important—achieving your long-term diplomatic goals, or actually defeating the enemy in the short term?) All three of these games have solitaire/bot rules.

Big fan of GMT, and Churchill (the WW2 game that Versailles 1919 is based on). Churchill has the same basic setup: a three-player game representing the US, the UK and the USSR negotiating even as WWII is still going on. You need to make progress against the Axis (represented very abstractly on two different tracks, one for the war in the Pacific and one for the Eastern and Western fronts in Europe), but you don't want your opponents to make too much progress compared to you. You are also carving up the post-war world with colony chips, and there is a separate Atomic Bomb track. Victory conditions are kind of wonky, because if one faction wins by too large a margin, they destabilize the peace (being seen as a new existential threat) and then there are some complicated rules to figure out who is the "real" leader of the post-war world.

Tangentially related and a bit more on-rails, but you might really like Suzerain, a sort of amalgamation of a little bit of political simulation, a bit of choose your own adventure, a bit of visual novel, and a bit of Paradox. You basically guide your country, fresh off of a lifelong dictator's one-party rule, into the sorta-democratic era, and decide if you want to be a dictator yourself, maybe a commie, maybe a capitalist pig, maybe in the middle. But it's not all country-simulation: you are you, the leader. If you promise to reform the constitution, you sort of have to follow through, unless you're savvy enough. The chief justice of the supreme court might try to bribe you at some point. Your son sometimes acts out. A cabinet member might get embroiled into an affair or a scandal. Terrorists sometimes attack. You have neighbors including one who might invade you, and a sort of cold war analogue going on internationally (where you are not one of the big dogs).

Have you played any of them? Are they fun? I've played the Crusader Kings Board game (just solo) but really enjoyed it.

I now have spent a few hours muddling through a few solitaire games of Versailles 1919, and IMO it's quite fun.

I purchased them out of sheer amazement and thankfulness that they exist. I don't have any spare time/energy to play them, though.

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