The Game

Overview

Mediterranean Campaign 220 BC is an old project: a grand strategy game run by email in two campaigns between February 2007 and December 2008, with its battles played out on the tabletop under the Strategikon wargame rules. Each player ruled one state of the Mediterranean world as it stood in December 221 BC, the eve of the Second Punic War and the Social War in Greece. Every two months of game time was one turn, and every turn the players sent written orders to the Game Master (GM) and received back a private report on their state and a public newspaper.

The game called itself “mainly role play”. A player could attempt anything a ruler of the period could plausibly attempt, and the GM decided what happened, using dice, judgement, a written rulebook and a workbook that held the values of every province. The rulebook went through four versions (February 2007 to June 2008) plus a short letter of basics, Λίγα Βασικά, with 29 answers to common questions.

The scale was large for a hand-run game:

• 13 player states in the first campaign and 15 in the second, with up to 17 players, because Rome was split between three Senate factions.
• 138 provinces, 8 sea-trade zones and about 190 cities on the campaign map, Medmap1.
• Dozens of independent peoples, kingdoms and cities run by the GM as non-player states.
• 21 turns played in all (16 in the first campaign, 5 in the second), covering 220–218 BC of game time.

The campaign and the battlefield were two layers of one game. The campaign decided who met whom, with what and where; large battles then went to the table and were fought with miniatures under Strategikon, while smaller actions and every sea fight were settled by dice.

The world in 220 BC

The board was the whole Mediterranean and its hinterland, from Iberia and Gaul to Mesopotamia and the Black Sea, divided into provinces on land and trade zones at sea. On the map white squares marked large cities and dots small ones. Movement was by province, never by hexes or coordinates: orders named the places an army would pass through.

Provinces. Every province was a row in the GM’s workbook and a line on its owner’s sheet, written as Name (Size, Relation)(Prosperity, Loyalty) / Tax / Horses / Elephants / Wheat / Weapons (levy counter). Its values were:

The 2008 workbook held 138 provinces, and their statistics were public, so every player could see what every province was worth.

Sea zones. Eight zones carried sea trade, each with a value per turn split into 10 shares among the states that traded there:

Cities. Large and small cities mattered for weapons production, emergency garrisons (500 men for a city, 2,000 for a large one), occupation garrisons, sieges, and in the second campaign the number of athletes a state could send to the Olympic Games.

The states. The player states were the great powers and some of the middling ones: Rome, Carthage, Macedon, the Seleucid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, Achaios’s realm in Asia Minor, Pergamon, Bithynia, Rhodes, the Achaean League, Syracuse, the Illyrian Brenci, the Koinon of Taurica in the first campaign, and Pontus, Massalia and Byzantium in the second. Around them stood the non-player states, run by the GM: Aetolia, Elis, Sparta, Epirus, Athens, the Carian and Cilician cities, Tarsus, Sinope, Cappadocia, Armenia, the Galatians, Gallic and Iberian peoples, Saguntum, Numidian and Mauretanian kings, and many more. Each non-player state had ratings for land and naval strength, external and internal stance and courage, which guided how it behaved.

The player’s seat

A player ruled one state through three sectors of government, the same three that the orders letter was divided into: state administration (production, finance, trade, investment), military command (recruitment, armies, fleets, fortifications, treasuries) and diplomacy (every proposal to players and non-player states, with the player’s real intention behind it). In practice players also wrote separate sections for the navy, espionage, personas, newspaper announcements and questions to the GM, so a full set of orders ran to 4–8 sections.

The state sheet. Everything a player knew about their state came from one private report per turn. It opened with two indices, Credibility and National Morale (both around 1.0, seen from 0.5 to 1.2), the state’s base command quality and its special attributes. Then came the provinces, sea-trade shares, stores of money, wheat, weapons and horses by treasury, the ledger of the turn just resolved, the personalities with their agents’ reports, treaties, armies and fleets with their reports, the upkeep bill for the next turn, rumours, letters relayed from other rulers, and the GM’s answers.

Attributes gave each state its character:

Personas. The ruler acted through named people: generals, admirals, governors, envoys, spies, treasurers and garrison commanders, and the king himself in the field. A player could create any persona with a period-appropriate name, an age and a trait they were known for (“the Eloquent”, “the One-eyed”); a modern-sounding name lowered its quality at once. Each envoy and spy had hidden Skill and Loyalty, never shown (the sheet printed ”?”), and the rules warned against creating personas just to fish for good rolls. Once active, a persona cost about 2 T per turn and could not be dismissed. States ran 6 to 24 agents each; Rhodes built 16 city spy networks with named heads, cover professions (grain merchant, library clerk, courtesan) and designated successors. Agents were captured, framed, turned and bribed, and one general defected to the Ptolemies.

Rome was unique. Three players shared it as Senate factions (Paulii, Julii and Flaminini in the first campaign; Aemilii, Cornelii and Valerii in the second). Each faction saw the same state sheet but with its own votes, faction treasury and the forces under its command. The Senate elected consuls and governors in the Dec–Jan turn, voted armies, fronts, triumphs and treaties, and factions won votes through victories or bought, courted, defamed and prosecuted senators. A faction could move only forces under its own command, and a general at war could hold at most two legions.

The economy

Money was counted in talents (T), food in wheat units, and armament in weapon parts and horses. The economy ran on a fixed calendar, and much of a player’s skill lay in timing: the big incomes came once a year, while armies ate and were paid every turn.

Income and when it arrived:

Seasonal factors shaped the year: sea trade paid nothing in the two winter turns, normal in spring and autumn and double in summer; land income paid half in winter and one and a half times in summer. Carthage’s 290 T of trade thus came in as 0, 290 or 580 depending on the season.

Treasuries. Money was a physical thing. Each region kept its own treasury (Rome had five: Rome, Lilybaeum, Epidaurus, Aleria and Neapolis), each paid its own region’s upkeep, and every field army carried its own chest of talents and wheat. Money shipped between treasuries by sea ran the risk of storms and pirates, could be insured at 5–10%, and could be lost entirely; a captured baggage train meant a captured war chest.

Raising more. A state short of money could order an extraordinary tax, collecting a province’s full annual tax at once at the cost of −0.2 Prosperity and −0.2 Loyalty; seize temple treasures at a heavy cost in credibility; borrow, with a credibility penalty for every missed instalment; sell prisoners, slaves and loot; or disband troops and ships. Bankruptcy led to loans and temple seizures, and unpaid troops deserted.

Sea trade and piracy. Trade shares were the most contested income in the game. They changed hands by sale, by treaty, as peace terms, or by force: warships ordered to raid took 1d10 T each from a zone’s trade, half of it as profit for the raider. The GM also ran pirates of his own, so a raid never proved who was behind it. Aegean piracy cost the trading states 80 T in one turn and over 200 T in another, and searches of shipping in the Straits drew public protests from the Black Sea cities.

Markets. Each newspaper listed goods and mercenaries for sale, with place and price: wheat and horses at Phanagoria, horses at Carthage and Sardis, weapons at Carthage, Cretan archers, Taenarum mercenaries, Galatians. Stocks fell as players bought. In the second campaign horses, wheat and mercenaries were sold by sealed bid, the winner paying one step above the next bid, with payment due by summer, delivery a turn later, and the buyer bearing the risk of the voyage.

Events. Each state rolled 1d100 every turn: 96–100 brought something good (a mineral find, a good harvest, a charismatic personality), 01–05 something bad (crop loss, a poor harvest, an earthquake). In play there were also livestock plagues, blights, extended winters, revolts, barbarian incursions and planted rumours.

Armies and war

War in the game was expensive, slow and logistical. A typical army of the period numbered 15,000–20,000 men, not 40,000–60,000; sieges were hard, and non-player states were not easy prey.

Raising troops. Every province had a lifetime pool of heavy infantry, light infantry and cavalry, measured in levy parts of 3,000, 6,000 or 10,000 men for population levels 1, 2 and 3. The first part could be raised freely; each further part cost −0.1 Prosperity and −0.1 Loyalty, and beyond the second, relations suffered if the province was not homeland. Troop types were tied to places (phalangites only from Lydia and Pisidia; Ptolemaic phalangites only from Egypt’s two core provinces), and every levy had to name its source province, troop type and exact number. Recruiting cost twice the type’s base cost plus weapon parts and horses; new troops were raw (−1 on every die) until two turns of training, though up to 20% of a call-up could be trained reserves and 10% veterans, paid at their level.

Upkeep and readiness. Troops cost half their base at peace in home or allied land and the full base on campaign or in foreign land; mercenaries cost about double, and veterans more. An army on peace upkeep counted as half strength, could not invade, raid or patrol, and needed a full turn to mobilise. Units paid and ate at the start of the turn, after income and before anything was built.

Mercenaries were hired by sending an envoy to the source or making an offer to a ruler: Cretans, Galatians, Thracians and the Greek mercenaries at Taenarum in the east; Numidians, Balearians and Iberians for Carthage in the west; none for Rome. Prices rose as players competed for the same bodies.

Food. An army ate 1 wheat per 100 foot and 3 per 100 horse each turn. At home it ate free; in neutral land it had to buy, if allowed; in enemy land it foraged, up to 1,000 wheat per population level, at the price of local hatred. In winter an army outside Africa and the Levant had to carry its food and expected desertion; attrition ran at 2–9% per turn, more in winter, and one Seleucid winter march lost 500 horses, 5 elephants and 1,100 men.

Movement was by action points: 7 for light cavalry, 6 for cavalry, 5 for light infantry, 3 for regular infantry, 2 for baggage and ships. Moving to the next province cost 1 AP (0.5 hasty, 1.5 careful), doubled over long distances and multiplied by terrain; looting and foraging cost 2, scouting, seeking or avoiding battle 1. A campaigning army had to name its vanguard and scouts, main body, foraging and looting detachments, and baggage guard. Ships carried 100 foot, 25 horses or one elephant per transport, with one crossing per turn, and every sea zone entered meant a storm check (25% in winter, 5% in summer).

Battles. When hostile armies met in a province, their orders decided what followed: reconnaissance, then a chance of engagement if either side sought it. Small actions and all naval battles were resolved with dice and narrative. Large battles were fought on the tabletop with miniatures under the Strategikon rules, with other players commanding the non-player armies and betting odds published beforehand; a big battle could pause the campaign for “a supplementary turn after the battle”. The next sheet reported losses by type, prisoners, captured treasure, weapons and horses, and unit morale. Sieges advanced on progress counters, but many cities fell to treachery arranged by agents (Gaza, Petra, Gangra) or surrendered on approach.

The campaigns produced memorable fights: Philip V beaten twice by non-player Aetolia (900 nobles captured, then 5,000), then crushing Aetolia with 23,000 phalangites; a Seleucid army of about 12,000 surrendering to the city of Tarsus; Carthage conquering Mauretania while its Mauretanian allies betrayed it mid-battle; and a consul storming Ravenna.

Diplomacy, espionage and the non-player world

Diplomacy was the heart of the game: in the players’ orders, envoy missions, treaty proposals and spy reports outnumbered every military order. The one iron rule was “Nothing happens unless the GM knows it.” Every deal, official or secret, had to be reported in writing by every party, with each party’s real intention (negotiate, stall, deceive, comply, help), or it did not exist.

Relations between independent states ran from war through peace, conditional peace and truce to defensive, offensive and full alliance. Forced dependency had its own scale: annexation, occupation, a forced alliance with or without tribute (paying 0.5 or 0.25 of tax), or tribute alone. A state could also guarantee another’s independence, which gave a casus belli against anyone who attacked it, and could demand hostages.

Envoys were needed to negotiate with non-player states and to ratify any agreement; announcements, proclamations and ultimatums needed none. Each envoy mission was resolved as (Skill + d100) against (50 + d100), adjusted for relations, morale and bribes, giving a draw, a success, a great success or a perfect success. In Rome, Carthage and the Achaean League a skilled envoy could even sway the Senate, Gerousia or Council over the player’s head. Treaties were written with care: when two parties sent texts, only the clauses common to both counted; underlined clauses were published and the rest stayed secret. Real examples included a 30-year Rome–Carthage peace drawing the Carthaginian sphere at the Ebro, the harsh surrender of Gangra to Bithynia and Pergamon, a one-year truce between Rome and Macedon with secret clauses, and a Black Sea league of Taurica, Pontus and Sinope.

Credibility measured whether a state kept its word. It fell easily (declaring war and attacking in the same turn cost −0.2; failing an ally, an unmasked false flag or a missed loan instalment also cost) and rose with difficulty, and non-player states would hardly treat with known oath-breakers. In the second campaign any war needed a turn’s notice.

Spies cost the same as envoys and were resolved the same way. Each was a network covering its city and the country around it, and there was a 50% chance that a spy sent nothing in a given turn. Spies gathered intelligence on armies, fleets, walls, morale and intentions, spread rumours, incited revolt, bribed officials, and prepared the ground for assassinations and betrayals, though they could not kill by themselves. Their reports came back as prose, deliberately mixed with noise and rumours, which made them the game’s main fog of war.

The non-player world was played hard. Elis twice beat the Achaeans; Tarsus forced a Seleucid army to surrender; Aetolia beat Macedon twice. Non-player states formed leagues against aggressors, protested in public against ship searches in the Straits, accepted defensive alliances but refused open-ended offensive ones, changed sides when a patron was losing, and offered loans, mercenaries, horses and wheat. Historical figures acted on their own: Aratus, Theodotus’s defection, Molon’s revolt. Set pieces drew the whole Greek world together: a Congress of Corinth in both campaigns, with speeches from the powers and votes by the non-player cities, and the Olympic Games in the second campaign, to which each state sent athletes from its cities.

The newspaper carried the public side of all this. Mediterranean News (Εφημερίς Μεσογείου) reported headline events, battles with losses, the goods and mercenary markets, and the rulers’ own announcements printed verbatim and in character. In the first campaign a player newspaper, Colossus, ran to seven issues and hosted a long in-character war of words between Antiochus, Rome and Rhodes.

How a turn was run

A turn covered two months of game time (six turns a year: two winter, one spring, two summer, one autumn) and took between eleven days and two months of real time. Everything moved by email, document files and the GM’s spreadsheet.

The cycle:

1. The GM sent each ruler a private state sheet for the coming turn, together with the newspaper and a deadline for orders.
2. Rulers wrote their orders into the same sheet: an action line under each army, fleet and agent, a proposed ledger of stores at the start and end of the turn, and outgoing letters. Letters to other rulers went as separate files, named by sender, recipient, turn and year, for the GM to relay. Corrections were accepted until the deadline.
3. Diplomacy ran alongside, by letter and in conversation, and later on a forum. Every deal still had to reach the GM in writing.
4. Battles flagged on a sheet (the header read “–ΜΑΧΗ–”) were fought on the tabletop under Strategikon or resolved by dice, and their results entered the next turn.
5. The GM resolved the turn, re-issued every sheet and wrote the next newspaper.

What resolving a turn meant. For each of 13–17 states, every turn, the GM:

• advanced every sheet and carried provinces, stores and forces forward, producing three separate views for Rome’s factions;
• updated Credibility and National Morale with reasons;
• applied Prosperity and Loyalty changes from levies, taxes, devastation and events, and added or removed conquered, tributary and lost provinces;
• ran each regional treasury’s ledger: last turn’s upkeep, agents’ costs, sea trade by season less piracy, Extra and mine income, tax in autumn, harvest in summer, horses and elephants, and the execution of last turn’s orders (weapons, recruitment, ships, purchases, transfers, gifts, bribes, tribute, loans, sales);
• recomputed every army’s strength and upkeep, training markers, war chest and wheat, and enforced feeding and relief obligations;
• resolved movement, scouting, looting and foraging yields, attrition, sieges, naval patrols, piracy and contacts;
• arranged battles and, after them, posted casualties, prisoners and captures;
• moved every agent, rolled every mission, applied the 50% silence rule, and wrote a prose report for each, with deliberate noise;
• wrote the answers and offers of the non-player states, the market prices and stock, and the moves of their pirates;
• relayed letters and ran the Roman Senate’s agenda and votes;
• rolled events, storms and harvests, and the scripted triggers (Achaios’s secession, the Hannibal deadline, the Seleucid assassination roll);
• checked the players’ own bookkeeping and answered rules questions;
• wrote the newspaper.

Orders in practice. Orders had to be exact: numbers of men, the province each levy came from, the troop type, the route by named places. They could also be standing (“valid until executed”), conditional (“activate if attacked by 4,500 or more”; “if the enemy is inferior or equal, seek battle”) or default (“all envoys continue as before”), and armies could be given postures and thresholds (“engage only with 2:1 superiority”). Over the two campaigns the rulers’ documents held more than 5,400 individual orders, of which spy missions, envoy missions and treaty proposals were the most frequent.

Joining mid-campaign. A new ruler taking over a state received the rules, the basics letter, the map, an example turn and the state’s past sheets and newspapers, so that they could pick up its affairs where they stood.

The two campaigns

Campaign 1, “220 BC 001” (February 2007 – May 2008). Sixteen turns took the world from December 221 to July 218 BC. It opened with Aetolia at war with the Achaean League and quickly drew in the great powers.

The first campaign closed in May 2008 as a full test of the rules, and a second campaign was set up on the revised rules and data.

Campaign 2, “220 BC 002” (July – December 2008). The game restarted from December 221 BC with a revised workbook (fewer horses, new trade, tax and recruitment ratios, Pontus split into two provinces and made a player state), the final rules, opening house rules and sealed-bid auctions. Massalia and Byzantium joined from turn 3. Five turns covered 220 BC: this time the Achaean League declared war on Aetolia; Philip called a Panhellenic Congress at Corinth and barred the Romans; Ptolemy took Petra and Egyptian warships diverted a Carthaginian grain fleet; Rome took Placentia and stormed Ravenna; Pergamon went to war with Mytilene and Pontus with Sinope; and the Olympic Games were held. The campaign closed in December 2008, the same year as a Strategikon tournament played with army lists for the period’s main armies.

Player states. The table shows which states were in players’ hands in each campaign; every other state was run by the GM.

From the original to the new game

The project’s record is unusually complete for a game of its kind: more than 500 emails, 230 state sheets, 179 rulers’ documents with more than 5,400 orders, 13 issues of Mediterranean News and 7 of Colossus, seven versions of the rules and five of the province workbook.

That record shows how much a refereed game could carry: a full economy, logistics, named agents, written treaties, a living non-player world and tabletop battles, all within one campaign. It also shows which parts were done by hand and can now be done by a computer:

The new Mediterranean Campaign 220 BC keeps the world, the rules and the spirit: one state per player, the administrative, diplomatic and military sectors, named personas, region-based movement on the campaign map, the market, the newspaper and a GM who can still step in. Its first piece, the map, with every province, sea zone and city and all the workbook values, is open now.