| Manufacturer | Battleline Games |
| Year of Release | 1977 |
| Release Notes | Variant designed by S. Craig Taylor and James B. Wood |
| Map Style | Political |
| Pieces | Cardboard counters |
| Description: Machiavelli is an eight-player game that is based on Diplomacy but is set in 15th Century Italy, with the powers being Austria, Florence, France, Milan, Naples, The Papacy, Turkey and Venice. The rules are similar in spirit to normal Diplomacy rules but are substantially more complex, including a new unit type (garrison), the addition of a summer phase, and concepts such as economics (money, lending, bribery), assassinations, famine, sieges and more. Although many Diplomacy players consider Machiavelli to be a Diplomacy variant, Battleline games marketed it as its own game, not as a Diplomacy variant. | |
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| Manufacturer | The Avalon Hill Game Company |
| Year of Release | 1980 |
| Release Notes | Variant designed by S. Craig Taylor and James B. Wood |
| Map Style | Political |
| Pieces | Cardboard counters |
| Description: In 1980, Avalon Hill acquired the rights to Machiavelli from Battleline Games. The basic box design was not changed from the Battleline Games edition. I suspect that instead of retooling to produce Avalon Hill editions of the game, Avalon Hill may even have used Battleline’s tooling, with slight modifications, for producing the components of the game. There are a few differences, though. The game name and subtitle on the box lid are in yellow in this set, instead of the red used in the Battleline edition (the yellow making the title on the box more visible). Avalon Hill also put their logo in yellow on the side of the box, and if you look at the yellow rectangle in the bottom right hand side of the front of the box, it appears exactly in the spot where the Battleline logo appeared in the Battleline edition (see previous image, above). | |
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| Manufacturer | The Avalon Hill Game Company |
| Year of Release | 1983 |
| Release Notes | Variant designed by S. Craig Taylor and James B. Wood |
| Map Style | Political |
| Pieces | Cardboard counters |
| Description: In 1983, Avalon Hill released a revised edition of Machiavelli. The box design is still the same (complete with the rectangle in the bottom right corner of the lid). This edition includes very few changes despite the fact that the rulebook has a banner on the upper right corner which reads “2nd edition-1983”. An itemized list of changes created by Sergio Lidsell can be found here. | |
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| Manufacturer | The Avalon Hill Game Company |
| Year of Release | 1995 |
| Release Notes | Variant designed by S. Craig Taylor and James B. Wood |
| Map Style | Geographic |
| Pieces | Cardboard counters |
| Description: In 1995, Avalon Hill released a new edition of the game, with a complete redesign that included the box, map and rulebook (see image below). Both the rules and map were revised. Most of the revisions that were made to the map were simplifications (mostly merging of provinces to eliminate some of them). There were also several changes made to the rules, the addition of two new optional rules, and a modification of the scenarios that could be played. An itemized list of changes created by Sergio Lidsell can be found here. Because of the significant differences between this edition and the previous one, this edition should not be confused with the 1983 2nd edition, which only differed from the prior one by a few minor corrections of wording and layout of the rules.In 1997, Avalon Hill put out an errata sheet for this edition of Machiavelli. One question not addressed in the original errata was how breaking of support was handled for multi-strength units. An answer to this question was supplied by Ben Knight of the Avalon Hill Game Company in a personal communcation with Sergio Lidsell. The revisions from the official errata sheet plus the rule covering support cutting for multi-strength units can be found here. | |
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