Except as noted below, the standard rules of play for Diplomacy apply.
Only two powers are present on the board: the Confederacy and the Union, each of them starting with 3 centers. All the other centers in the map are neutral; their different colors of the States reflect which side they chose during the Civil War, while some territories are colored as generically Northern and Southern neutral territories. The different colors have no effect on the game
Before the first diplomacy phase, each power can choose whether building armies or fleets in their starting centers.
The map is the same used in the Fall of the American Empire variant, with a few slight modifications. The rules concerning the movement of units are thus the same as those of that variant. The only difference deals with the rivers, which have been extended, multiplying the possibilities of fleet movements. The links between territories are set by common sense, reflecting the course followed by the rivers. A fleet in Missouri can move in both branches of the Mississippi/Missouri rivers; in Iowa, a fleet can find itself in the Mississippi River or in the Missouri River (it works exactly as Spain SouthCast and Spain NorthCoast in standard Diplomacy): to move from a branch to the other, the fleet must pass from the Missouri state; a fleet in Milwaukee can find itself in the East Coast, in the North Coast, or in the Mississippi River: a fleet in one of these positions cannot move in another. On the contrary, the territories of Minneapolis, Chicago and Ohio have not this distinction: for example, a fleet can move from Kentucky to Chicago, and next turn to Lake Michigan.
