Dodes
Count
INTRODUCTION: Welcome to Balance of Power: 270 B.C.E.! This is a strategy and diplomatic forum game in which players compete against one another in order to establish dominance. The game setting is the time of 270 B.C.E.(Before Common Era) or 483 A.U.C.(Ab Urbe Condita or "From the founding of the city"[Rome]) and the game location spans from Europe, North Africa, parts of West Africa, down to the Horn of Africa, to modern-day Pakistan, and bordered by Siberia.
The game plays in turns and each player selects a faction from the time period and location provided. The player will then receive a country card according to their faction with varying information. It is then up to the players to develop their faction and secure its dominance by conquest, diplomacy, stewardship, religion, and intrigue. The game is played in a free form manner and it is up to the player how to distribute their currency, which is called credits, accordingly. Depending on the varying factors of the player's faction's economy and well-being, they will receive a differing amount of credits each turn. It is up to the player to make decisions to influence his and others' factions in order to win the game. Actions are what credits are spent on and they are what players use to influence factions and the game world.
SETTING: The game begins as the Romans have established subjugation of most of Italy with the recapture of Rhegium from the Mamertines and the defeat of the Brutians, the Lucanians, the Calabrians, and the Samnites. As many know, Rome would then go on historically to conquer vast amounts of land and build an empire that would become a testament to Europe. While Rome has gained strength, it faces a mighty competitor in the Mediterranean, the Carthaginians. Rome and Carthage are about to collide in a series of conflicts called the Punic Wars, which would change the fate of the Western world forever.
This is what happens according to the annuals of time though, how this game plays out is entirely up to the players.
CREDITS: As said before, credits are the currency of the game and represent resources and manpower to be used by your nation. You need credits to do anything and everything. Where money runs the world, credits run this game. Credit amounts are relative and thus larger amounts of credits must be spent to have the same effect on large factions as it would have on a smaller faction. The success and effectiveness of credits are based on chance, creativity of orders, plausibility of actions, and the amount of credits contributed.
COUNTRY CARDS: Country cards are what are given to players in order for them to know about their faction.
A country card will have the following variables that change over time depending on chance, the game world, and all players' actions:
We will now go over, one by one, what each category means and what variable it has in order for clarification.
GAME MECHANICS: The two primary game mechanics in this BoP will be nomadic movement and a combat system.
• Nomadic Movement: Factions with a civil policy of "nomad-able" will be able to initiate nomadic movement, in which their territory becomes mobile on the map. The player deciding to become nomadic first chooses a path or location to follow or go to on the map, which their faction will slowly migrate to. The turn which the faction decides to begin nomadic movement will earn no credits for the player to use and all income while in this nomad mode will vary dramatically but generally be less than it would be if the faction was static. Both civil and military upkeep will be suspended for the faction, the faction will receive some military units to represent the population becoming either mobile or militarized, but the faction will not be able to produce units while nomadic movement is active. If the path or location is the same as another faction's territory or near or through it, then war will automatically be declared between the nomad nation and the other nation and raiding and forced resource sharing will commence. Large factions that become nomads will also suffer a stability hit and factions with oversea provinces or colonies will lose those provinces or they may become independent.
• Combat System: When armies engage each other they will enter the combat system to calculate who wins the battle and with how many casualties on each side. How the combat system works is that each unit has a value for each phase of combat. The phases of combat are long-range, skirmish, main battle line, flank, and pursuit and they happen in that order. Each allied faction gathers all their points plus a random amount anywhere from one to how many forces are participating in that phase. To participate in the phase, a unit must have at least one point in their stat for that phase. Once each allied faction gives their total tally, the numbers are compared and the percentage difference divided by three is how many casualties are inflicted on the team with the lower tally. Then the losing team inflicts response casualties which are the median of both army morale and discipline(if you remember which is a percentage) divided by two. This process repeats until all phases are carried out and then the armies disengage. Armies engage each other one on one, so three armies versus one will mean each battle is decided by one army versus one three times, however if, for example, there are two armies versus two, then the armies will combine and engage each other once.
RULES: No screenshots of chat logs or copying past logs into this thread are allowed. You are not allowed to edit your posts in this thread either. Violation of these two rules will first result in a warning and then result in a ban from this BoP. You must turn your orders in by the time allowed or your credits will be banked for the first two offenses and for the third offense you will be dropped from the game. If orders are not clear or not plausible, I will ask you to change them, if you cannot be contacted, the credits used on the unclear and implausible orders will be banked.
The game plays in turns and each player selects a faction from the time period and location provided. The player will then receive a country card according to their faction with varying information. It is then up to the players to develop their faction and secure its dominance by conquest, diplomacy, stewardship, religion, and intrigue. The game is played in a free form manner and it is up to the player how to distribute their currency, which is called credits, accordingly. Depending on the varying factors of the player's faction's economy and well-being, they will receive a differing amount of credits each turn. It is up to the player to make decisions to influence his and others' factions in order to win the game. Actions are what credits are spent on and they are what players use to influence factions and the game world.
SETTING: The game begins as the Romans have established subjugation of most of Italy with the recapture of Rhegium from the Mamertines and the defeat of the Brutians, the Lucanians, the Calabrians, and the Samnites. As many know, Rome would then go on historically to conquer vast amounts of land and build an empire that would become a testament to Europe. While Rome has gained strength, it faces a mighty competitor in the Mediterranean, the Carthaginians. Rome and Carthage are about to collide in a series of conflicts called the Punic Wars, which would change the fate of the Western world forever.
This is what happens according to the annuals of time though, how this game plays out is entirely up to the players.
CREDITS: As said before, credits are the currency of the game and represent resources and manpower to be used by your nation. You need credits to do anything and everything. Where money runs the world, credits run this game. Credit amounts are relative and thus larger amounts of credits must be spent to have the same effect on large factions as it would have on a smaller faction. The success and effectiveness of credits are based on chance, creativity of orders, plausibility of actions, and the amount of credits contributed.
COUNTRY CARDS: Country cards are what are given to players in order for them to know about their faction.
A country card will have the following variables that change over time depending on chance, the game world, and all players' actions:
• Faction Name
• Governance Type
• Stability
• Popularity
• Corruption
• Economic Condition
• Infrastructure
• Public Health
• Public Order
• Food Surplus
• Tax Rate
• Armies
• Navies
• Total Income
• Tax Income
• Tribute Income
• Production Income
• Trade Income
• Banked Income
• Military Upkeep
• Civil Upkeep
• Final Income
• Conflicts
• Alliances
• Campaigns
• Issues
• Events
• Civic Policies
• Military Policies
• Army Morale
• Army Discipline
• Internal Opposition
• Governance Type
• Stability
• Popularity
• Corruption
• Economic Condition
• Infrastructure
• Public Health
• Public Order
• Food Surplus
• Tax Rate
• Armies
• Navies
• Total Income
• Tax Income
• Tribute Income
• Production Income
• Trade Income
• Banked Income
• Military Upkeep
• Civil Upkeep
• Final Income
• Conflicts
• Alliances
• Campaigns
• Issues
• Events
• Civic Policies
• Military Policies
• Army Morale
• Army Discipline
• Internal Opposition
We will now go over, one by one, what each category means and what variable it has in order for clarification.
• Faction Name: This is the formal name of your faction or the dominant tribe of your faction. This can change over time.
• Governance Type: This is the government of faction. Different types of governments function in different ways and to represent this, more decentralized and more liberal governments will be harder to directly commence and sustain actions.
• Stability: This is the strength and well-being of your nation's government's control expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the more stable your government's hold and vice versa. It is always good to have a high stability and always bad to have a low stability. One of the primary concerns of faction management should be raising stability, it is up to the player at what cost.
• Popularity: This is how your people's opinion of the current government, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the more pleased the general populace feels about your rule of the faction. If popularity is lower than stability, than stability will lower until it is the same value as popularity stability will raise if popularity is higher than stability until the value is the same. Popularity is changed by player actions, how well your faction is doing compared to other countries, random and player-driven events, and if issues are being addressed.
• Corruption: This is how corrupt and effective your government is, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the more corrupt and ineffective your government is. It is good to have as low as corruption as possible. As corruption increases, you will find your actions and previously established initiatives will not work as well as they once did and negative events will become more common.
• Economic Condition: This is how well your faction's economy is financially expressed as a word or phrase. The more positive the word or phrasing, the better your economy. The better your economic condition, the more credits you are likely to receive from your faction's income and the better chance your economic initiatives will have of succeeding.
• Infrastructure: This is how well your faction has infrastructure built all over its territory, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the better the infrastructure in your faction. High infrastructure leads to better natural economic growth and more efficiency with actions that require infrastructure to be successful.
• Public Health: This is the general health of your faction's people, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the greater general health of the public. Low public health can run the risk of plague, which is detrimental to your income sources. Low public health decreases your popularity and public order as well due to the population complaining that they are not being taken care of enough.
• Public Order: Public order is how contained your population is from civil disobedience that interferes with the operations of your faction's governance, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the more orderly your faction's population. Low public order will decrease tax, tribute, and production incomes and make cause events that harm your faction or cost you credits. Low public order is caused by low popularity, high corruption, and decisions the player makes that are considered by your faction to be unpopular. Public order does rapidly fall and regain strength as compared to other statistics expressed as percentages though.
• Food Surplus: This is the amount of agricultural supply you have, expressed in units and than accompanied with a phrase to indicate how good that number is compared to the number of provinces you have. Each province requires one unit of food each turn and each province produces a variable amount of food each turn. You can buy food from other players at whatever cost they offer. If your food surplus isn't enough to feed your provinces, then they may starve, leading to low public order, decreased public health, and decreased popularity and sometimes even higher corruption.
• Tax Rate: This is the level at which you are taxing your land-owners and citizens, expressed as phrase. The more extreme the phrasing, the higher the tax. Tax rate directly effects your tax income amount. You can change your tax rate indirectly through actions, although a higher tax rate can lead to food surplus shortages, lowered public order, and lower popularity. It is best to have a balanced and reasonable amount or a low amount to act inversely as a high tax rate would.
• Armies: This is the number and composition of your armies. Units are organized into armies, a total of 30 units per army, which is considered optimal. Armies are theoretically lead by generals, which are represented by random dice rolls during combat between armies. You can have unlimited armies, though it is preferred to group as many units as possible into one army, as combat is determined by an army vs army comparison.
• Navies: This is the number and composition of your navies. They function the same as armies, except with naval units instead of land units.
• Total Income: This is the amount of credits you receive as income from all income sources.
• Tax Income: This is the amount of credits you receive from land-owners and citizens, decided by your tax rate.
• Tribute Income: This is the amount of credits you receive from warlords and village leaders. It can be considered the "barbarian" equivalent of a tax rate as recently colonized provinces will generate a higher tribute than tax rate to represent the subjugation of tribes in that area. The greater respect for your faction's government by tribal leaders, the greater this income.
• Production Income: This is the amount of credits you receive for goods and harvest resources being sold to your faction's population. The greater amount of production your faction directly controls, the greater the production income. Production is determined by how effectively natural resources are exploited in your provinces. This income can fluctuate to represent the supply and demand of a faction's market.
• Trade Income: This is the amount of credits you receive from the tax on goods traded between nations, decided by your tax rate. It will fluctuate to represent the continuously growing or shrinking regional markets. Trade will automatically be generated between peaceful and allied factions and sometimes even with provinces that are owned by no faction.
• Banked Income: This is the amount of credits unspent from last turn. Unspent credits are cumulatively banked. Banked credits do not increase or decrease while in the bank. Sometimes this amount is expressed as a negative when you are in debt. Note that you cannot intentionally go in debt and debt is only the result of having sustained upkeep exceed fluctuating income.
• Military Upkeep: This is the amount of credits that a faction spends on its military upkeep. Each unit has an upkeep value, which is the amount of credits deducted from your income each turn.
• Civil Upkeep: This is the amount of credits that a faction spends on sustaining actions that involve civil policy. Civil upkeep also represents the administrative costs of your faction. Civil upkeep can be reduced by actions that are designated to have no cost that are aimed at reducing administrative upkeep or repealing civil policies.
• Final Income: This is your total income deducted by your upkeep and debt. This is the amount of credits you will be able to do as you please with this turn.
• Conflicts: These are the wars that you are waging either domestically or on foreign lands. It shows where the war is and who is involved.
• Alliances: These are the alliances you have made with other factions.
• Campaigns: These are the campaigns your armies are waging. Instead of giving individual armies orders, you tell an army or army group to go on campaign and then give orders for that specific campaign. Campaigns can be concentrated in one region or over a spread of regions, depending on how the player orders the campaign.
• Issues: These are happenings within your faction that should be addressed if the player so desires within the turn. They are usually negative and can have dramatic and detrimental results if left unchecked by either the end of the turn or the end of a few turns ahead.
• Events: These are happenings within your faction, some of which will be broadcast in the turn report for all players to see. These events may be minor or major but most will have instant effects on your faction.
• Civic Policies: These are policies that your people abide to, either initiated by the player or historically pre-set. It would be wise to factor these policies in before making any major decisions for your faction.
• Military Policies: This has to do with the structure of your military and its ideology. It can have varying effects on army morale and army discipline.
• Army Morale: This is the national will to continue fighting of all the faction's military units, both factional and regional. It is used to determine how many casualties you inflict in response to taking casualties in battle.
• Army Discipline: This is the experience, professionalism, and training of the faction's military units. It is used to determine how many casualties you inflict in response to taking casualties in battle.
• Internal Opposition: These are political, radical, and military movements within the faction that directly oppose your rule. Should they succeed, you will lose the game. However unlikely that they will solely topple your ruling power, they can be a serious thorn in your side.
• Governance Type: This is the government of faction. Different types of governments function in different ways and to represent this, more decentralized and more liberal governments will be harder to directly commence and sustain actions.
• Stability: This is the strength and well-being of your nation's government's control expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the more stable your government's hold and vice versa. It is always good to have a high stability and always bad to have a low stability. One of the primary concerns of faction management should be raising stability, it is up to the player at what cost.
• Popularity: This is how your people's opinion of the current government, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the more pleased the general populace feels about your rule of the faction. If popularity is lower than stability, than stability will lower until it is the same value as popularity stability will raise if popularity is higher than stability until the value is the same. Popularity is changed by player actions, how well your faction is doing compared to other countries, random and player-driven events, and if issues are being addressed.
• Corruption: This is how corrupt and effective your government is, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the more corrupt and ineffective your government is. It is good to have as low as corruption as possible. As corruption increases, you will find your actions and previously established initiatives will not work as well as they once did and negative events will become more common.
• Economic Condition: This is how well your faction's economy is financially expressed as a word or phrase. The more positive the word or phrasing, the better your economy. The better your economic condition, the more credits you are likely to receive from your faction's income and the better chance your economic initiatives will have of succeeding.
• Infrastructure: This is how well your faction has infrastructure built all over its territory, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the better the infrastructure in your faction. High infrastructure leads to better natural economic growth and more efficiency with actions that require infrastructure to be successful.
• Public Health: This is the general health of your faction's people, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the greater general health of the public. Low public health can run the risk of plague, which is detrimental to your income sources. Low public health decreases your popularity and public order as well due to the population complaining that they are not being taken care of enough.
• Public Order: Public order is how contained your population is from civil disobedience that interferes with the operations of your faction's governance, expressed as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the more orderly your faction's population. Low public order will decrease tax, tribute, and production incomes and make cause events that harm your faction or cost you credits. Low public order is caused by low popularity, high corruption, and decisions the player makes that are considered by your faction to be unpopular. Public order does rapidly fall and regain strength as compared to other statistics expressed as percentages though.
• Food Surplus: This is the amount of agricultural supply you have, expressed in units and than accompanied with a phrase to indicate how good that number is compared to the number of provinces you have. Each province requires one unit of food each turn and each province produces a variable amount of food each turn. You can buy food from other players at whatever cost they offer. If your food surplus isn't enough to feed your provinces, then they may starve, leading to low public order, decreased public health, and decreased popularity and sometimes even higher corruption.
• Tax Rate: This is the level at which you are taxing your land-owners and citizens, expressed as phrase. The more extreme the phrasing, the higher the tax. Tax rate directly effects your tax income amount. You can change your tax rate indirectly through actions, although a higher tax rate can lead to food surplus shortages, lowered public order, and lower popularity. It is best to have a balanced and reasonable amount or a low amount to act inversely as a high tax rate would.
• Armies: This is the number and composition of your armies. Units are organized into armies, a total of 30 units per army, which is considered optimal. Armies are theoretically lead by generals, which are represented by random dice rolls during combat between armies. You can have unlimited armies, though it is preferred to group as many units as possible into one army, as combat is determined by an army vs army comparison.
• Navies: This is the number and composition of your navies. They function the same as armies, except with naval units instead of land units.
• Total Income: This is the amount of credits you receive as income from all income sources.
• Tax Income: This is the amount of credits you receive from land-owners and citizens, decided by your tax rate.
• Tribute Income: This is the amount of credits you receive from warlords and village leaders. It can be considered the "barbarian" equivalent of a tax rate as recently colonized provinces will generate a higher tribute than tax rate to represent the subjugation of tribes in that area. The greater respect for your faction's government by tribal leaders, the greater this income.
• Production Income: This is the amount of credits you receive for goods and harvest resources being sold to your faction's population. The greater amount of production your faction directly controls, the greater the production income. Production is determined by how effectively natural resources are exploited in your provinces. This income can fluctuate to represent the supply and demand of a faction's market.
• Trade Income: This is the amount of credits you receive from the tax on goods traded between nations, decided by your tax rate. It will fluctuate to represent the continuously growing or shrinking regional markets. Trade will automatically be generated between peaceful and allied factions and sometimes even with provinces that are owned by no faction.
• Banked Income: This is the amount of credits unspent from last turn. Unspent credits are cumulatively banked. Banked credits do not increase or decrease while in the bank. Sometimes this amount is expressed as a negative when you are in debt. Note that you cannot intentionally go in debt and debt is only the result of having sustained upkeep exceed fluctuating income.
• Military Upkeep: This is the amount of credits that a faction spends on its military upkeep. Each unit has an upkeep value, which is the amount of credits deducted from your income each turn.
• Civil Upkeep: This is the amount of credits that a faction spends on sustaining actions that involve civil policy. Civil upkeep also represents the administrative costs of your faction. Civil upkeep can be reduced by actions that are designated to have no cost that are aimed at reducing administrative upkeep or repealing civil policies.
• Final Income: This is your total income deducted by your upkeep and debt. This is the amount of credits you will be able to do as you please with this turn.
• Conflicts: These are the wars that you are waging either domestically or on foreign lands. It shows where the war is and who is involved.
• Alliances: These are the alliances you have made with other factions.
• Campaigns: These are the campaigns your armies are waging. Instead of giving individual armies orders, you tell an army or army group to go on campaign and then give orders for that specific campaign. Campaigns can be concentrated in one region or over a spread of regions, depending on how the player orders the campaign.
• Issues: These are happenings within your faction that should be addressed if the player so desires within the turn. They are usually negative and can have dramatic and detrimental results if left unchecked by either the end of the turn or the end of a few turns ahead.
• Events: These are happenings within your faction, some of which will be broadcast in the turn report for all players to see. These events may be minor or major but most will have instant effects on your faction.
• Civic Policies: These are policies that your people abide to, either initiated by the player or historically pre-set. It would be wise to factor these policies in before making any major decisions for your faction.
• Military Policies: This has to do with the structure of your military and its ideology. It can have varying effects on army morale and army discipline.
• Army Morale: This is the national will to continue fighting of all the faction's military units, both factional and regional. It is used to determine how many casualties you inflict in response to taking casualties in battle.
• Army Discipline: This is the experience, professionalism, and training of the faction's military units. It is used to determine how many casualties you inflict in response to taking casualties in battle.
• Internal Opposition: These are political, radical, and military movements within the faction that directly oppose your rule. Should they succeed, you will lose the game. However unlikely that they will solely topple your ruling power, they can be a serious thorn in your side.
GAME MECHANICS: The two primary game mechanics in this BoP will be nomadic movement and a combat system.
• Nomadic Movement: Factions with a civil policy of "nomad-able" will be able to initiate nomadic movement, in which their territory becomes mobile on the map. The player deciding to become nomadic first chooses a path or location to follow or go to on the map, which their faction will slowly migrate to. The turn which the faction decides to begin nomadic movement will earn no credits for the player to use and all income while in this nomad mode will vary dramatically but generally be less than it would be if the faction was static. Both civil and military upkeep will be suspended for the faction, the faction will receive some military units to represent the population becoming either mobile or militarized, but the faction will not be able to produce units while nomadic movement is active. If the path or location is the same as another faction's territory or near or through it, then war will automatically be declared between the nomad nation and the other nation and raiding and forced resource sharing will commence. Large factions that become nomads will also suffer a stability hit and factions with oversea provinces or colonies will lose those provinces or they may become independent.
• Combat System: When armies engage each other they will enter the combat system to calculate who wins the battle and with how many casualties on each side. How the combat system works is that each unit has a value for each phase of combat. The phases of combat are long-range, skirmish, main battle line, flank, and pursuit and they happen in that order. Each allied faction gathers all their points plus a random amount anywhere from one to how many forces are participating in that phase. To participate in the phase, a unit must have at least one point in their stat for that phase. Once each allied faction gives their total tally, the numbers are compared and the percentage difference divided by three is how many casualties are inflicted on the team with the lower tally. Then the losing team inflicts response casualties which are the median of both army morale and discipline(if you remember which is a percentage) divided by two. This process repeats until all phases are carried out and then the armies disengage. Armies engage each other one on one, so three armies versus one will mean each battle is decided by one army versus one three times, however if, for example, there are two armies versus two, then the armies will combine and engage each other once.
RULES: No screenshots of chat logs or copying past logs into this thread are allowed. You are not allowed to edit your posts in this thread either. Violation of these two rules will first result in a warning and then result in a ban from this BoP. You must turn your orders in by the time allowed or your credits will be banked for the first two offenses and for the third offense you will be dropped from the game. If orders are not clear or not plausible, I will ask you to change them, if you cannot be contacted, the credits used on the unclear and implausible orders will be banked.
