Rules are here! No promises that this will start soon, but I'd still like comments, as I don't want to find myself starting the NES with a ruleset people don't like.
Rules for SprylliNES V: The Peloponnesian War
Each player represents a single political entity and its dependencies, represented in a single colour on the map. Certain players represent the most important politicians and generals in Athens instead.
Each player has simple stats. For example;
Mantinea/NPC
Democracy
Member of the Peloponnesian League with numerous other members of the League subject to it
2600 Mantineans (Unquestioning)
2000 Parrhasians (Resentful; controlled by the fort at Cypsela)
or
Alcibiades/Thlayli
Reputation among the rich: low
Reputation among the poor: low
Personal wealth: high
(this will deplete when spent lavishly and refill when not spent much)
Military skill: high, inexperienced
Basic Order Information:
Each turn, players all send in orders. You may well not actually need to do something every turn, but in this case I still require orders to this effect. Your state will follow your orders, unless I receive contradictory orders, or conditional orders.
In Athens, all the politicians will send orders for what they would like Athens to do that turn, and the Assembly will pick and choose parts of the different plans. Politicians are expected to take responsibility for their own proposals, and are subject to the consequences if they go wrong. Politicians are also normally required to send in military orders for their own measures, unless they have already agreed with another politician that this other politician will conduct the military operation for them.
If a major battle happens, or some sticky contradiction in orders turns up, I fully intend to communicate with the players in question to resolve the conflict or clarify the issue, so I would appreciate it if players could be prepared to reply to their PMs as quickly as possible during the time between the deadline and the update.
Taxation is very much ad hoc. If you need to do something that requires paying someone to do it, or paying for materials, your state will tax the people and trade subject to you. If you suddenly do a useless project, or your tax rate suddenly increases for no apparent reason because you have tried to do too much, you will suffer, and so you will need to make a judgement as to what is too much, or you will need to put in your orders an order saying that your project should only proceed up to a certain amount of expenditure.
In Athens, it is very much the case that funds are limited by preset tax rates, etc. . The Assembly will take due account of the expense of each plan when considering which politician's plan to follow.
War:
The only definite numbers in your stats are those of troop numbers, which often also represent factions within the state, and their loyalty to you is listed after them. You can command these troops to go where you like and fight where you like.
You should take loyalty levels carefully into account. If you call up soldiers from a disloyal ally, you can't expect them to fight too well or necessarily for them all to turn up to fight at all.
Rebelling - Disloyal - Resentful - Apathetic - Sympathetic - Loyal - Grateful - Unquestioning
Each force of soldiers, unless otherwise specified, is the number of hoplites (or other suitable heavy infantry) of that type; you may expect to have, for each of those men, another light infantryman (psilos).
For all military campaigns, I require
detail. I need to know any extra equipment you want to leave your city with. I want to know what you're going to say to your troops before the campaign or before the crucial battle. I require the precise route of march of any army, or your army will get lost, easily tired, and probably ambushed if I'm in a bad mood. I require orders for what to do in each location along the campaign. Do you intend to plunder the area? If not, where are you going to get food from? Are you going to offer battle to an enemy if they come nearby?
I also need to know what you are going to do if you do battle. You
may not offer battle to any enemy if you do not give me a plan of how to do it, and I will be quite firm here. Equally, if the enemy attacks you and you do not have an emergency battle plan to determine what you will do in such an emergency, you will fight the battle on your enemy's terms. I do not require detail, but I would like, at very least, to know what order, from left to right, the listed components of your army will line up for battle in. If you have no idea, any order is better than no order. I know this demand of mine may meet with some scepticism from some people, but I don't mind; in my opinion, this (unlike a detailed domestic policy of any kind) is a central part of leading any faction of any sort in Classical Greece, and, accordingly, I require that all players take it into account to some extent.
I welcome sneaky ideas, treachery, espionage, etc. . The Classical Greeks seem to have liked it, so I do too.
Anything major battles will be adjudicated on #nes or MSN if the participants and I wish to do that.
Example Orders:
Orders for Mantinea, 422:
Build a new temple in Mantinea to Parrhasian Apollo. It should be fairly small and inexpensive, but modelled on the existing temple to Parrhasian Apollo at Bassae in Phigalean territory. This is intended to make the Parrhasians seem more part of the Mantinean alliance. The money for this should be taken from Parrhasia.
Send the whole army to Orchomenos and ravage the territory. Avoid battle with the Orchomenians, but if they come out to meet us before we have ravaged a substantial amount of our territory, do battle with them as follows. Try to offer battle in an even plain with plenty of room for our larger army to outflank their smaller one, and place our best troops on the flanks (that is, the native Mantineans) with the Parrhasians and mercenaries in the centre, drawn up six men deep rather than four men deep to compensate for the increased likelihood of them running away. Place the mercenaries in the front and back ranks, both to take the brunt of the fighting and to prevent the others running away. Try to outflank the enemy on both sides with our native Mantinean troops.
If we are forced to do battle in a pass or some other place where our numbers cannot be deployed adequately, the Parrhasians will be drawn up against the enemy, again with the mercenaries at the front and back, and the Mantineans will be kept in reserve and will reinforce the line as necessary during the battle.
Religion:
If you act on the assumption that the gods are real and can help you, they may well do so.
Map:
White boundaries represent the states of a koinon (federal state) in most cases; in these cases, I only expect to have one player per koinon, who will take a city, probably the most powerful one, but they should choose, within that koinon. A few white borders represent occupied territory (Leontini and Panactum). Black borders between states of the same colour represent wholly independent states that might reasonably be categorised together, purely to make it easier for me and you to identify which states are which (all states called "Locris" are light green, for example).