A.M.N.E.S: The Ancient Mediterranean NES

Ancient Mediterranean Never Ending Story
(AMNES)

WELCOME
To the very first Ancient Mediterranean NES. This is a moderator-operated NES, a type which allows more combat and diplomatic flexibility. It is also one of the first to concretely implement such ideas as trade, science, and money.

THE PLAYERS
Each player starts with an equal number of armed forces. While this may not be historically accurate, it balances the game. Still, some civilizations get bonuses in different areas of the game (for example, Carthage has better, faster ships). Negotiation is an essential part of the game as no player can easily conquer another.
There are 10 spots available. The game will start after the 5th sign-up and new players can join later.
1. Rome (TAKEN)
2. Carthage
3. Greece (TAKEN)
4. Gaul (TAKEN)
5. Iberia
6. Egypt (TAKEN)
7. Phoenicia (TAKEN)
8. Macedon
9. Anatolia
10. Numidia

Rome is red, Carthage yellow, Greece green, Gaul is blue, Iberia is brown, Egypt is pink, Phoenicia is brown, Macedon is purple, Anatolia is orange, Numidia is grey.

ORDER OF PLAY
The game will start on the first Saturday after the 5th join-up. From there, play will proceed by calendar.

STARTING THE GAME
Each player will receive ten Flag-Bearers. Every military unit must be attached to an FB, so each country may only have 10 separate armies. Each FB can only lead 5 units, so the maximum total army size is 50 military units: this includes ships! Flag Bearers will be numbered 1 to 10, with the nation’s name in front: Carthage 6 is Carthage’s 6th FB.
You will receive twenty talents on the Saturday the game starts. Talents are the currency of the game and good for buying units or giving to other players in deals. With those twenty talents you will buy your first military units, attach them to Flag-Bearers, and send them out to explore.
You will start with one capital city. Your treasury and your government are in this city, so protect it well! While your empire will not entirely collapse and your entire treasury will not be stolen if your capital is captured, your situation will be seriously threatened.

ORDER OF PLAY: SATURDAY and SUNDAY and MONDAY
On every Saturday, not including the first one, the moderator will reveal who won the Science and Luxury bids and explain the consequences.
Also on every Saturday but the first, a new map will be posted and combat will be resolved.
On every Saturday, including the first Saturday of the game, the moderator will email each player a PM with their paycheck. Money each player receives is entirely arbitrary, but will heavily depend on: the total land area your empire occupies, the military you have to support, any discontent in your empire, and how assimilated the land is into your empire. The paycheck is added to your balance from last week and this number is your treasury (at the beginning of the game, each player gets 20 talents).
By Monday, you must submit a PM to the moderator with “Carthage BUILD” as the subject (replacing Carthage with whatever nation you have). This PM will contain:

1. Your total treasury (and be honest, because the moderator will also be keeping track)
2. How many new military units you will buy, how much they’ll cost, and which FB you will attach each to. Remember, military units start life in your capital, so there’s no point in building unless you have an FB in your capital to attach them to.

Note: although FBs can exchange military units in the field if they are close enough, ANY and ALL military units that are not attached to an FB die. Therefore, armies with only 2 or 3 units should start heading back home to replenish.
All military units are named the same and fight the same no matter which nation they belong to: however, some nations receive in-combat bonuses.
GALLEY: 5 Talents
HORSE: 3 Talents
SWORD: 2 Talents

For example, any starting nation could use their 20 talents to buy 5 Swords, one Galley, and one horse, and have money left over.

ORDER OF PLAY: TUESDAY
Tuesday starts the official negotiating period.
During this time players may make public and private agreements, through the board or by PMing me. If any secret deals between nations are made, they MUST be PM’d to me. If any money moves from one treasury to another as a result of a deal, it must be PM’d to me so I can also keep track. If you want to make deals public as well, go ahead. NO deal is binding and anyone can backstab another player - if they want to, but it will sure harm their reputation.
On the negotiating table, the only resources the players have, and the only part of the game made public, is an estimate (sometimes inaccurate on purpose) of each player’s treasury, and an estimate of their military size. Also, a map is posted showing current empires. On these maps FBs are displayed as dots, EXCEPT when the player has PM’d me a message telling me to keep one FB’s position secret (sorry, only 1 FB at a time). The map does NOT show how many or which units are attached to each FB.
If you want to do some spying, send me a PM with the nation you’re going to spy against, the talents you are committing to do this, and the objective you want. Here are some possible objectives, but you’re not limited to them:
Find out the position of a hidden FB.
Find the number a FB is carrying (1-10).
Find the size of the FB (how many units is he carrying?).
Find out which kinds of units an FB is carrying.
Find out a player’s treasury.
Find out a player’s Science and Luxury bids.
And so on. However, realize that the more complex missions will require more money to even have a chance, and the chance of discovery and publication is greater. No whining if you don’t commit what I think is enough money, and nothing happens. Such is espionage. The average espionage mission will cost about 10 talents.
Finally, on Friday diplomacy winds up.

ORDER OF PLAY: FRIDAY
By Friday evening at the latest, you must send me another PM, this one with the title “Carthage ORDERS” or Rome ORDERS, etc.

1. Going down the list of Flag-Bearers, tell me where they are (I’ll keep track too), and where they are going, and what special orders they have (dig in here, build a fort here, don’t cross over this line, attack any of this nation’s troops you see, try and stay hidden, etc).
2. How many talents you are bidding for science this week.
3. How many talents you are bidding for luxuries this week. (Science and Luxuries will be explained later).

NOTES ON MOVEMENT
Note: Ships, of course, are also led by FBs (in case you didn’t realize that). Ships move about 4 times faster than a Sword. Land armies move depending on if they have any Swords, or they are all Horse. All Horse armies move at a rate of 2, any army with Swords moves at a rate of 1.
Note: Colonies will follow your divisions to expand your territory unless you’ve given specific orders NOT to colonize a certain area.
Note: Movement is faster than you’d think. A Sword army can go from the southern tip of Italy, to Rome, in one turn. A Horse army could move all the way to the Alps. A Ship could go from Marseilles to Venice.
Note: FBs leading Galleys can ONLY move on water.
Note: If an FB has a galley and at least 2 empty slots, it can carry another FB (carrying the normal 5 units) to another coast. Each FB with a galley and 2+ slots can carry only ONE FB itself.

EXTRA IMPORTANT: the FB loaded into the second's Galley CANNOT itself be carrying Galleys! It can only be carrying Horses and Swords.

An FB can carry both Galleys and military units at the same time, and these can be loaded onto FBs standing on the coast, which is the 2nd form of transport across sea.

EXAMPLE: Rome-1 has 3H, Rome-5 has 4G, Rome-2 has 1G and the rest empty, Rome-3 is empty, and Rome-4 is carrying 1G and 4S. One one turn, Rome-1 can load itself onto Rome-2 and travel to distant lands. HOWEVER Rome-5 cannot be loaded instead, because it's carrying Galleys. At the same time, Rome-4 will carry its Sword payload to Rome-3, where the Swordsmen will join Rome-3, leaving Rome-4 with just a galley.
Note: Military units can switch around between two FBs if these FBs are right next to each other, or very near. However, still the 5-unit limit applies.


FRIDAY EVENING: COMBAT
On Friday Evening, I’ll process the combat and science-luxury bids, and post the new results on Saturday, and the cycle begins again.

COMBAT
Numbers in this game are overwhelming: however, if the defender has prepared defenses or has good terrain, the balance swings in favor of the defender. Surprise is a major consideration and provides a hefty bonus. Galley vs Galley battles tend to swing in favor of whoever has the most Galleys unless one nation has a seafaring bonus, like Carthage or Phoenicia. In land battles, the Swords slug it out while the Horses try to flank around the side. If you have special tactics, tell me in your PM. Again, numbers are a large consideration, but if you have another FB waiting in secret with a counter-attack to the enemy’s rear, or a horse unit that secretly sneaks away to plow into the enemy’s flank, both of those will give you an advantage. Creativity is rewarded!

Once an army is seriously outnumbered because of losses (in other words, 4:1 or higher), it’s likely it’ll run away from battle rather than sustain more casualties unless you tell it to fight to the last man.

Two to one odds are usually enough to defeat an enemy, with some losses. Three to two is risky, and might result in defeat more often than you'd like, or a win which leaves your army nearly empty. Three to one is almost a certain win with very light casualties.

LUXURY and SCIENCE
Luxury bids are to keep your people happy. There is no reward for the highest bid, except that your people are even happier! HOWEVER, luxury is extremely important. If I see the bids are dropping, I may decide to make the lowest bidder’s nation have a bit of a revolt on their hands, where a portion of their territory descends into civil disorder, doesn’t generate taxes, and offers to join the nearest friendly nation. So keep those bids up! I think a good spending on luxury is about 1/6 of your paycheck.
You can submit a zero science bid if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Every week, the player with the highest science bid has a chance (about 2 in 3) of making a scientific discovery, which may give them faster ships, a lower Luxury bid needed to satisfy their people, better Swords, better roads, etc. In the interests of fairness I may make a larger nation discover a new kind of government, forcing the nation to undergo anarchy for a turn while they’re changing, and making them an easy target. Also in the interests of fairness, I may reward 2nd and 3rd place bids when I feel they deserve it.

LAST NOTE: Staying apathetic in this game will not help you survive. I won’t skew combat results just to keep your nation alive. You will get a bonus defending your homeland, but if you are conquered, you are conquered.

NOTE ON MAP: Gibraltar Straits and the Straits of the Black Sea are crossable ONLY by building bridges, or by ship: no jumping across!

Oh, a note on a possible BUG: If an army is destroyed, the FB is merely returned empty to the capital, ready to fight another day. So while your actual army size may change, each player has the possibility of owning up to 50 units.

A map please?

Damn, this is too similar to the one I was thinking of, except I was thinking of upkeep rather than flag bearers to limit the number of units. But I think FBs are a much better way.

Are any of those just based on an island? I much prefer being able to stay out of the land combat! If there is, put me down for that nation.

If not, put me down as Rome!

Nemesis

Oh, and due to the similarities, I think I'll change UKNES to a simple quick NES, so they won't be similar.

Nemesis

The Troquelet: You should post a link in the "open spots in NES games" thread to attract some more attention.

Sullla, thanks for reminding me. I'll post there ASAP.

UKnemesis, I've got you down for Rome.

Das, and anyone else that could help, I can't seemt to be able to post pics here recently. Before TF's changes to the uploading rules, I could always use the PrintScreen button, paste it into Paint (the one that comes with Windows), save it as a gif, and load it up. But now that doesn't seem to work.

I've got a Clarisworks 4.0 Paint (PT) file that shows the map very well. My question is, how do I load it up?

PS - Glad you like the FB idea, UK. The other option was to let each nation have a specific army size replenished every turn, like in the UKNES, which didn't give a disadvantage to nations whose empires were tiny as compared to huge empires.

On the other hand, letting army size be strictly ruled by land size let large nations just get bigger and bigger with no way of stopping them.
The FB idea not only puts a limit on army size, it emphasizes strategy and using your armies in task forces, and gives smaller nations at least a chance of gaining some territory, with large nations scrambling to use a mere ten armies to defend their huge borders. Also it puts more of an emphasis on diplomacy, since allies are now needed if you want to have the overall odds in your favor.

Put me up for Pheonicia .

The Troquelet: Here's what I'd try for your map problem. Open up the map and take a picture of it with the "Print Screen" key as usual. Open up Paint and copy in the image. Then save it as a .jpg file and either attach the file or upload it to the CivFanatics server. I've always had bad results with .gif files and these forums, so try the .jpg format and see if that solves your problem.

Sulla, I tried what you suggested and here's what I got:

"A network error occurred while Netscape was sending data (Network Error: Connection aborted) Please try connecting again."

I'll try with Explorer now..

Neither gif nor jpg

Neither gif nor jpg works. Let me try one more thing... I think it may be just my computer acting up. I'll try emailing the pic to myself. If I can email myself it, I can email one of you too, and maybe your computers are less Bug-prone.

5min later: nothing doing. It can't attach the file, I can't post it here, what the heck is going on with this piece of junk?!

One more try...

YES!!! I cannot believe my own brilliance. (Bows) Had to save it into Imaging (that came with Windows) and THEN as a .jpg!! How do I get the white space at the bottom away though?

OK, I deleted the old one and here's the new.

Looking good so far!

While I'm not declaring for this game at the moment, if you need some people to get the game started I will take a civ.

I wanna be Egypt!

Ok, I have the last bug ironed out. This is to do with building Galleys. Six Civs do NOT have their capital on coastline: these would be Numidia, Iberia, Gaul, Macedonia, Anatolia, and Egypt. These civs can still build Galleys, however instead of attaching to a free FB in their capital like any other unit, they can attach to any free FB on a coastline, and within a reasonable distance (a Horse move or so) away from the capital (notice that this FB now has to put out to sea, carrying any other units, because FBs carrying Galleys can only move in water).

Second, Luxury and Science bids have now been moved to the "Nation ORDERS" PM so as to allow spying oppurtunities and exchanging bid numbers in diplomacy.

And last of all, the gap between the Black Sea and the Med is on purpose: it can only be crossed by spending time to build a bridge, like Xerxes in ancient history.

The Roster so far reads:

ROME (Uknemesis)
PHOENICIA (Toasty)
EGYPT (Eric Mesoy)
OTHERS (open)

2 more to go. We don't need to start the game tomorrow, as the first turn is mostly exploration anyway: we can start as late as Tuesday or Wednesday if people don't join till then (and besides, six would always be better than five!). So no pressure, Sullla, although you'd be welcome in my game if you want!

My name is eriK, not eriC. AM I allowed to give my spending orders already, or must I wait until the 5 have signed up?

I'll play as Vercingetorix of Gaul.
If I mess up at any point (like, by mixing an order up, or something) please tell me, and I'll try to fix it...