Her Diamond Heart: A Peshawar Lancers IOT
The year is 1880 AD. Two years previous, a great and terrible meteor shower known as the Fall, almost destroyed Europe and North America, leaving civilization elsewhere in shambles. Although civilization could have rebuilt itself then, the Great Winters then struck due to the dust from the impacts and the disruption of the Gulf Stream, freezing everything and leaving the survivors to starve. Great empires have fled to their colonies, leaving Europe home to wandering bands of cannibals. However, the majority of countries, unable to feed or defend themselves, simply collapsed to ambitious warlords who saw the Fall as an opportunity to gain more power for themselves. Others in the Southern Hemisphere and elsewhere, previously crushed under the European yoke gained their freedom and seek to make their mark upon this brave new world.
Your people have entrusted you to lead them through these dark days. Will you build an empire to stand the test of time, or will you perish in the harsh and violent world of The Peshawar Lancers?
The Rules
Note: all rules are subject to change, so please keep an eye out for them. Thanks.
House Rules:
1. Do not flame, troll, or personally insult any other player OOC or IC. At all. You may comment on certain things negatively, but don't take it further than that.
2. Stay on topic. Make sure all comments are relevant to the fictional world of the current IOT and have nothing to do with your personal religious/political beliefs.
3. Your posts should actually consist of something relevant to your nation and not just one-liner comments. Do not spam.
4. Long diplomatic discussions belong to the realms of Social Groups or visitor and private messaging, not the Game Thread.
5. No powergaming. By definition, powergaming is making your country surpass every other country by all terms including armed forces, technology, etc.
6. The GM is supreme. He reserves the right to change game rules, ignore or modify orders, impose restrictions on players, disband player nations, and so on.
7. Above all else, RESPECT THY FELLOW FORUMERS.
8. If you have an issue with the way I GM this game, PM me with your issue before making a big stink about it.
9. Posting in this thread or the claims thread, PMing a player of this game for any IOTE-related reason, or performing ANY sort of interaction with this game.
Posting at all declares that you have read and understood the rules to the letter.
Breaking the rules, ignoring warnings, and missing orders will result in stability penalties.
The Map
IMPORTANT NOTE: Provinces marked in grey are impassable, and represent areas devastated by the meteors/tsunamis/froze to death/home to cannibals. You can neither start in impassable territory nor claim them. They will go away eventually, though.
Joining the Game
To join a game choose a nation and a color, tell us about it, a flag is necessary, government, religion, people, policy and etc. Claim any fifteen connected passable provinces to begin.
Tip: If you have trouble coming up with ideas for a nation, check out the Wikipedia article on the Peshawar Lancers novel or the Peshawar Lancers Redux project on Alternate History.com.
Updates
IOTs are turn based games. each turn is five years in-game.
Roleplaying
Roleplaying is the essence of IOT. It’s how your nation develops. It’s how alliances are formed and broken. Roleplaying is very encouraged. Feel free to inhabit your nation with whoever or whatever you want, provided it fits with the setting and the etiquette listed above. Good Roleplaying will grant you military and economic bonuses.
Expansion
There are three types of provinces.
Settled provinces are normal provinces controlled by the empires in game.
Unsettled provinces are unclaimed provinces.
Colonial provinces are provinces countries are expanding into.
Each army allows a player to claim one province, and a fleet is required to claim overseas provinces. Claimed provinces start as colonial provinces, which produce EP like normal provinces, but require a certain number of armies to remain on defense to keep the peace. The number of divisions and fleets required to police the colonies depend on stability.
Stability
Stability meter runs from 1 (representing collapse) to 10 (ironclad stability). Stability drops if you have too many colonial territories compared to your military might or declaring war. As long as your stability is 6 or higher, colonial provinces will slowly convert to settled provinces. If your stability falls below 6, colonial provinces will slowly regress back to unsettled. If your stability falls below 4, settled territories will regress to colonial.
Declaring war, having too many colonial territories, or having stagnate economic growth will hurt stability. Being at peace, having few colonies, and experiencing positive economic growth will increase stability.
Stability determines the number of divisions and naval squadrons required to police the colonies.
At 10 Stability, one division can police ten colonial provinces. At 1 stability, you need one division per colonial province.
Economy
There are three currencies in the game: Economic Points (EPs), Industrial Points (IPs), and Financial Points (FPs).
One EP is produced per province. For 5 EPs, you can build a factory, which is worth 1 IP. Industrial Points are used to train divisions, naval squadrons, and later, air squadrons. A banked IP will produce 3 EP for the banking player next turn.
For 5 IPs, you can build one financial market. Financial Points are used to research new techs and influence NPCs. A banked FP will produce 8 EP for the banking player next turn.
Industrial Points and Financial Points have upkeep costs. Every factory costs 2 EP a turn in upkeep. Every financial market costs 2 IP a turn in upkeep.
War
Combat is decided by RNG, of course, with Technology and Leadership being modifiers.
Divisions cost 5 IPs to build and have a maintenance cost of 1 IP a turn. Divisions will defend when not ordered to do anything else. Without the Tank technology, you cannot blitz enemy territories.
Naval Squadrons cost 10 IPs and 2 IPs a turn in maintenance, and are used to ferry troops and perform blockades. Blockades increase the overall maintenance costs of the blockaded player based on the number of blockading naval squadrons versus defending naval squadrons. Each naval squadron increases the overall maintenance cost by 5%.
Air Squadrons cost 10 IPs and 2 IPs a turn in maintenance, and are used assist in land battles or bomb the enemy's infrastructure. You can only build air squadrons once you have researched Airships. Bombing enemy infrastructure increases the maintenance cost of the bombed country by 5% per successful bombing squadron. It costs 1 IP to repair 5% of damage from bombing.
Battles aren’t fought for individual provinces, but along fronts. Whether attacking or defending, you must have Leadership Points to commit. If you have no leadership points on defense, you will automatically lose battles. Each leadership point committed to a battle increases your combat bonus by 10%.
Once you unlock blitzing for divisions, you can order a blitz on a front. If you win the battle, you will seize double the amount of the territory you would’ve taken otherwise, but the leadership bonus is halved. Blitzing divisions cannot be supported by air power unless you have airships that can blitz too.
Espionage
An espionage mission is a secret mission. Each mission has a minimum cost for success. Paying a multiple of the minimum cost (two times, three times, so on) increases the chance of success.
Espionage Missions come in several varieties:
NPCs
NPCs fall into two categories: Active and Passive.
Passive make up the bulk of NPCs. They don't expand and won't really go to war without being pushed or bribed. To influence passive NPCs, you have to throw Financial Points at them. Once you've gained a percentage of the influence in the country, you can perform diplomacy actions.
Bribe: Chance of Success=Percentage Influence (divided by 2 if sphered by someone else). You can convince this NPC to go to war with a neighbor. A NPC cannot be bribed to go to war if already in a war, and will not declare war on a country inside a sphere with it.
Sphere: Chance of Success=Percentage Influence/2 (divided by 4 if sphered). You diplomats will approach the NPC government and request concessions. A NPC in your sphere will follow your foreign policy directives, and is pretty much an ally.
Annex: Chance of Success=Percentage Influence/4 (divided by 8 if sphered by someone else). Your diplomats demand the country surrenders to you. If the NPC rejects, you either go to war or lose face.
You can only perform three diplomacy actions per turn.
Rebel NPCs and away players make up the active NPCs. Rebel NPCs, when they form because of foreign influence, will automatically join the sphere of the country that triggered the revolt.
Other Active NPCs cannot be added to spheres, bribed, or annexed.
Types of Wars
There are two types of war in the game.
Colonial Wars are undeclared conflicts between countries for control of colonial territory. These wars are limited in nature. Blockades and Strategic Bombing can't be used in these wars. When provinces change hands in these wars, IP and FP don't change hands.
Major Wars are wars DECLARED IN THREAD. These wars allow battles to be fought over settled territory, IP to change hands when settled territory is seized, and the air squadrons and naval squadrons to have fun.
Technologies
You can invest FP in researching technologies. Technologies are used to add bonuses to your militarycapacity. There are several Tiers, and every civilization starts at Tier I, which has no bonus. Tier II costs 100 FP, Tier III costs 250 FP, and Tier IV costs 500 FP.
The tech tree is as follows:
Army
Tier I (Line Infantry): (No bonus)
Tier II (Breech-loading Rifles): +50% on combat rolls
Tier III (Machine Guns): +50% Defensive Bonus
Tier IV (Tanks): Can Blitz.
Munitions
Tier I (Cannons): (No bonus)
Tier II (Nitroglycerin): +50% Combat Bonus
Tier III (Poison Gas): +50% Combat Bonus
Tier IV (Advanced Ballistics): Enemy factories are destroyed in land battles during Major Wars.
Navy
Tier I (Ships of the Line): (No bonus)
Tier II (Ironclads): +50 Combat Bonus
Tier III (Dreadnaughts): +50% Combat Bonus
Tier IV (Submarines): Blockade Strength doubled.
Aerial
Tier I (n/a): <cannot build Air Squadrons>
Tier II (Airships): Enables Air Squadrons
Tier III (Sterling Cycles): Enables blitzing for air squadrons. Allows air squadrons to ferry troops like fleets.
Tier IV (Fighters): +50% on combat rolls against other Air Squadrons. Air squadrons act as armies for policing colonial territory.
