• Talents represent hard silver currency in your treasury. There is no limit to how many talents you can store.

• Manpower represents troops with which you train units. Manpower will accumulate but has a limit, visible in your turn pm.

• Action Points (AP) function as a limit to how much you can do in one turn. Actions are lost if not used in the turn.

Below is a list of available actions and their costs.

Domestic [Cost - 1 AP]

-20t Propaganda [Everything from bread and circuses to more complex rumour spreading]
-50t Found colony
-50t Invest
-100t Recruit leader [Can be a historical person you’d like to add, or one will be randomly generated]
-25t Domestic reforms

Covert [Cost - 1 AP]

-20t Assassination
-30t Stoke unrest

Diplomatic actions [Cost - 1 AP if covert, free if public]

-20t Influence [Send envoys and diplomatic missions, work the wheels of foreign governments or society]
-20t Send navigator
-5t Send missionaries
-x Send aid (can be covert)

Military [Cost - 1 AP]

-x Deploy army [Initial 1t per unit deployed, 0.5t per unit deployed on campaign]
-50t Build fortifications [Specify what you’re building, takes time + upkeep depending on scale and RNG]
-0t Loot territory [requires deployed army]

Recruitment
It costs 1 AP to recruit any number of units, and 1 manpower per unit. Talent costs for each basic unit type are listed below:

-10t Heavy Infantry
-5t Light Infantry
-5t Archers
-10t Light Cavalry
-25t Heavy Cavalry
-20t Horse Archers
-20t Camel Cavalry
-70t Elephants
-40t Naval Fleet

Additionally, to allow players to add some flavour to their armies, the following action is available, allowing you to create new unit types:

-25t Train army [Either drill your existing army to cement their loyalty and scare someone, or else begin training them in new tactics to create a unique unit over several turns]

Leaders

All factions have “leaders”. These will be at a minimum the leader of your faction, but may include generals, politicians, and other notables. Leaders either arise historically or naturally, or can be recruited. There is an absolute cap of 5 leaders.

All actions require “action points” typically - however where you assign a Leader to carry out a particular action, you do not spend action points to do that action and can receive a boost to your chances of success.

Additionally, leaders have 3 key stats:

• Command: this adds a positive modifier to any armies assigned to the command of this leader.
• Management: management provides a boost to investment, recruitment, diplomacy, and general organisation.
• Influence: for your faction leader this reflects their personal influence over the nation, for non-faction leaders this reflects how independent and powerful they have grown.

These stats are ranked from 1 to 5, with 3 being as high as you’d typically expect to see. Leaders have a chance to improve their stats (and gain hidden “traits”) based on their successes and failures.

When used and successful but not rewarded, or when disloyal, leaders can pose a risk to the stability of your faction - potentially leading to coups, civil wars, attempts to weaken your authority, and other internal issues.

Battles/Wars

A brief overview of the combat system happening behind the scenes. Detailed understanding is NOT required - you’ll be able to obtain comparable and fair results by acting sensibly.

The stages of a battle are as follows:

1. The armies are identified as “attacker” and “defender” based on the orders given and how the two sides are interacting, based on GM interpretation of orders.
2. A “positioning” stage, wherein each army rolls 1d4 to determine their success in the early stages of the battle, entailing the disposition of their supply train, their positioning in the theatre, their position on the battlefield, and the opening skirmishing. The difference (if any) between the d4 rolls gives a “positioning modifier” to the high roller. E.g. X rolls a 4, Y rolls a 2 - outcome, X receives a +2.
3. The “battle performance” stage, wherein each army rolls 1d12 to determine the performance of their army, officers, etc., in the fight. This yields a flat figure for “battle performance”.
4. The morale of each army is considered. This ranges from -3 to +3, and acts as a flat “morale modifier”. This will be listed in the stats for any army deployed in the field, but is not listed for any units garrisoned at home.
5. If an army has a leader acting as a general, that leader’s “command” stat will be a flat “command” modifier.
6. Each unit type has hidden “attack” and “defence” values. These are summed together to yield a total “attack” and “defence” figure for the army. Army X’s defence state is subtracted from Army Y’s attack state, and vice versa.
6. “Attack” and “defence” values for units are modified by the terrain, as follows:

The following terrain gives a bonus to the defender:

• hills (all unit types except heavy cavalry (HC) and camels (CC))
• mountains (light infantry (LI), heavy infantry (HI) and archers (A))
• forest (all unit types)
• desert (camels (CC), light cav (LC), and horse archers (HA))

The following terrain gives a penalty to the attacker:

• rivers (all unit types)
• major rivers (all unit types)
• straits (all unit types)
• amphibious landings (all unit types)

8. All values are combined to yield a single final figure for each army, which determines its overall performance in the battle. These final figures are used to guide the GM in determining the outcome of the battle, and form the basis of the narrative in the turn.