If you fail to submit orders on time, you will have 24 hours to submit them before I order your units to perform the default actions and I process the turn. Default actions are Hold on a movement turn; Disband on a retreat turn; Waive on an adjustment turn with builds available; and Disband the unit(s) farthest from your home centers on an adjustment turn with disbands required. Once you're late--whether or not you end up submitting moves after 24 hours--you use up a late pass. Each player will have three late passes at the beginning of the game with additional passes to be granted as the game progresses. In a given turn, a player cannot use more than one of their late passes. If a player does not submit orders on time and has no late days available, I will order their units to perform the default actions without waiting 24 hours.
I will email a player warning him that he's late if I do not get his moves on time. I will also email all players to inform them that someone is late, but I will not say who.
Invalid orders include ambiguous province abbreviations (NOR, LIV, etc) where the meaning is not clear from the context; unspecified coasts on a fleet movement into a dual-coast province where the meaning is not clear from the context; and typos, nonexistent units, etc. If you send me an invalid order, I will attempt to warn you as soon as I notice it but, especially for orders submitted near the deadline, I cannot promise I will catch your error in time to send you a warning. You will have until the deadline to correct the order or confirm the invalid order (in which case it will be announced as written, but processed as a default action for the turn) without penalty. If you do not correct invalid orders prior to the deadline I will inform you of the invalid order after the deadline and you may correct it within 24 hours at the cost of one of your late passes if you have any remaining; if you would rather not use up a late pass, if you do not respond within 24 hours of the original deadline, or if you confirm the invalid order, I will publish the invalid order as written and process it as a default action for the turn, while all valid orders of yours will be processed.
Turns will not be replayed unless I have made a horrible mistake in processing the turn somehow.
If a player needs an extension on a turn deadline, he should request it as far in advance as possible, and in enough detail so that I can determine whether it's necessary. I intend to be reasonably strict about deadlines, but I will grant extensions if a good argument is made.
Orders should be sent to the moderator alone. Since orders are meant to be secret, it is important that the email you send me containing your orders is not sent or copied to any other player. I can't stop you from bcc'ing it, but I have to trust that no one will do this. If you really want other players to see your moves, forward them the email you sent me; at least this is forgeable. If you send moves to me and to another power simultaneously I will ignore the moves and treat them as just a piece of correspondance which you have sent to me for my amusement.
All requests for extensions should be sent to the moderator alone. Please do not send your extension request to all of Europe; that could lead to all sorts of ugly confusion that I'd rather avoid. I'm serious about about this. I might even refuse your request just to spite you if I see that you sent it to all the players.
Draw votes will be done through the moderator. If a player wants to call a draw vote, he should email the moderator--and no one else--and I will announce the vote. All players will send their votes to me--and no one else--and I will announce the results of the draw. Draws must be unanimous in order to succeed. Draw votes will have deadlines and if a player does not vote in time I will count that as a "no" vote. The game itself WILL continue during a draw vote; if a turn deadline occurs while a draw is being voted on, I will still expect you all to send in your orders, and I will process the turn.
We will be using anonymity throughout the game. Obviously it is possible to find out the other players' identities if you try hard enough. Please, please do not do this. Even after you've been eliminated, don't reveal your identity to the other players. There are enough geographical and experience imbalances among you that keeping your identities anonymous should make a significant difference and keep things fair.
We will be using free press. At any point in the game, if you send the moderator an email with the text "[FREE PRESS]" in the subject line, I will send that out as an anonymous message to all the players. (You should supply a subject line too--ie, send me a message whose subject is "[FREE PRESS] Turkey declares war on everybody," not just "[FREE PRESS].") This can be used strategically or just for fun and I strongly encourage you all to use it, if only to entertain me. Keep in mind, though, that I'm not a computer and don't check my email *constantly*, so if you have something important to say via free press that you want to get out before the end of the turn, don't wait until the last minute to do it.
All game-related communication should be through the in-game email addresses to keep things anonymous (and well-sorted). All messages to me--orders, free press, technical questions, etc--should be sent to the in-game moderator's address.
You can send as many sets of orders as you want up to the deadline. I will only process the last-sent orders and will discard any previous orders. In addition, I will never process orders before the deadline, even if all players have sent in orders early--someone might change their mind and send in another set of moves. The only exception is the retreat phase, which I will process as soon as I have received all the orders.
If you have any questions about rules, how a particular set of moves would be resolved, etc, feel free to email me DiploModerator@gmail.com and ask.
Speaking of order resolution, I strongly recommend using an adjudication program of some sort to plan out your moves and see how orders will be resolved; my favorites are RealPolitik and jDip.
To entertain me, I'd appreciate if you could all send a short blurb explaining your motivations and thoughts with each set of orders you send in. I obviously won't penalize you if you forget this, but I'll be happier if you do it.