Rising Empires

[guildofblades]

Hi All,

Well after 15 years of sitting on my empire builder game design I've finally begun the process of fine tunning it and getting it ready for publication. For years now, pretty much the 13 years that the Guild of
Blades has been a publisher and then some, we've put off trying to make this game for one basic reason. Its absolutely huge and trying to make it a boxed war game in print would have pegged it at a $300 price tag or more. Likely much more actually. So I've finally decided the game was never destined to get produced in print and have begun to write up the rules and do the graphic design work so as to release it as a PDF. It will be a very large PDF, pegging in at around 700 to 1,000 pages in total and likely be priced at $49.95.

What Is Rising Empires?

Rising Empires is a fantasy empires builder type game where all players begins with a sizable city with a population of about 50,000 and set off the build an empire. Rising Empires has three unique rules elements that set it apart from all empire building games that have come before it. These I will I will discuss briefly below.

--Master Hex Mapping System:

Rising Empires' Master Hex mapping system uses two levels of map detail. The core game will include 5 different game worlds and each of these game maps serve as "world maps". A world map is a hex map which
shows the continents, oceans, major lakes and rivers, etc, for a game world. Each hex is numbered in order to link it with its Master Hex display, plus colored to show the dominant terrain type of the hex.

For every single hex on a world map, once you or another player discovers that hex and has a need to randomize what is in it and use it in game play, players will print out a blank "Master Hex" or roll
up and use one of the game's pre generated ones. A "Master Hex" is a hex shaped playing board that fits on an 8 1/2" x 11" page and includes 61 "sub hexes". That makes a Master Hex 5 sub hexes wide upon
its 6 edges and up to 9 sub hexes across depending on entry and exit points. Its is the sub hexes that you actually play on as hex territories within the game. Because a Master Hex can be printed and
played on separately almost like its own little mini map, it creates the potential to pull out and play on a master hex when needed and to file it away when its not needed. The ability to file away and manage
the use of your Master Hexes becomes important once your empires grow large enough that you simply own too many Master Hexes to actually lay them out and fit them onto a table together.

Yes, if you do the math, this means a Rising Empires game can become truly huge. In fact, the five maps to be included with the PDF, once fully mapped out onto Master Hexes, will provide a gaming space larger
than a football field.

--Master Hex Mapping System:

Level of detail. Rising Empires is more than just running military units around conquering places. It is also a game about resource management and logistics. You will begin play buy spending points to
"create" your kingdom and you can spend points to create vastly different kingdoms. You can start with a sizable army or a small one, you can invest into the ownership of more lands and additional
villages and towns to be a part of your empire in addition to your main starting city. You can invest in cultivated agriculture to increase your initial food supply, chose the type of government you
want your kingdom state to operate under, invest in builder units (construction and labor), intelligence operatives, better generals, wizards, roads, walled cities, castles and other fortifications, and so on. This wide selection of choices insures that nearly every kingdom that begins play in Rising Empires will be unique.

Once you begin play you have a lot of different resources to manage. Population, taxes, food, wood, stone, metals and others. Raw materials such as wood, stone and metal must be chopped, quarried, mined and this take labor units effort and time to do. How much tax you can generate will depend on your tax structures, but be warned that too high a tax structure can vastly increase the chances of conquered peoples rebelling on you. Every unit, from military to civilian, you have in play cost you money to maintain each turn, including your civil authorities that govern each new village, town and city you conquer. And each turn you must also make sure you have enough food to feed your populaces, your army, etc. Army that goes goes hungry or
unpaid goes AWOL at best or spearheads a rebellion against you at worst. Populations that go hungry shrink in size instead of grow, yield less taxes and may rebel.

Strategically only militia and main army units are shown on the map for all to see. Elite fighting units, generals, wizards, supply wagons, intelligence units and all other units are shown as question marks on the top of their counters and their true nature can only be determined by the strength of your own Intelligence Units in the
field. This can sometimes lead to undeclared wars as Intelligence Units hunt each other to rob the other players of vital information. So Intelligence Units play a vital role in how your empire operates.
They do everything from explore new master hexes, spy on player and non player kingdoms, hunt down rebel instigators within your own lands, act as rebel instigators within enemy lands to outright
sabotage efforts against enemy ports, ships, cities and militia.

Army logistics is another resource that must be carefully managed in the game. Each game turn represents one month of real time. Its varies
by your government type, but the average kingdom is able to marshal a maximum of 15% of its population into fighting men. This means all regular fighting units, generals, intelligence units, militia, sailors
and labor battalions (or at least men to oversee slave labor battalions). Population has a chance to increase within each village, town and city you own once every 6 months and can swing as wildly as a
+5% increase to a -10 decrease (for plagues) with the average being a small increase of 1-2%. Of those population gains, only 15% of them can be conscripted into military service. Your main city begins with a population of 50,000, which means 15,000 able bodied men at max. A single infantry, cavalry, or archer unit requires 500 men. So a
population gain of 2% on your 50,000 man city will give you enough extra men to form 2 new fighting units every 6 turns on average, or one new fighting unit plus an assortment of militia, intelligence
units, labor battalions, etc. If you get yourself into a brutal war and start losing one or two units a turn while you empire is still young, it might take your army half a generation to recover.

Since fighting men are thus such a scarce resource, training, good generals, wizards to support your army, and optimal intelligence become the key to surviving and growing as an empire. That and knowing
when and where to pick your battles. All units in Rising Empires begin as lowly level "untrained" units. That's the equivalent of some shoddy basic training with no advanced training or experience. And even this level of training will take several months (game turns), so there is no such thing as an instant army except very low grade militia units.
Once units enter play they have a chance to gain in skill each time they survive a battle. But you may also take existing units that are in play, remove them from active service and use military schools to
further their training. This costs more money and takes considerably longer, but better training units win more battles while taking far, far fewer loses. So it is up to you to decide if the investment in
time and money is worthwhile.

The last major logistical element to Rising Empires is that of supply and movement. Money and food and other resources don't magically flow from where you first get them to where you want them. Cities,
villages, towns, fortresses and other constructs can serve as supply points. Each supply point can naturally extend automatic coverage of supply logistics a small number of sub hexes away. This can be regarded as the local peasantry moving these goods short distances merely as part of the economic system. Building roads can double these automatic supply logistics where a road runs from point A to B. Roads take a lot of labor and a lot of stone to build, but can vastly increase your supply logistics and the rate at which your military units may travel. Where your automated supply runs out and you have needs to move money, food, wood, stone, metals, etc, these must be carried physically around the map by supply wagons. And supply wagons thus become units on the board that can be attacked and lost or even raided so that your valuable supplies get stolen by other players.

--Rebellions:

Fear the dreaded rebellion. In Rising Empires it is your bane. But seriously, looking at our own history, why is it that great empires such as the Romans, Chinese, Persians, Macedonian, Mongol, British, etc, failed to conquer the world when at their heights they had great populations, great wealth, nearly invincible war machines and so on?
Three reasons. Force density, force projection and the basic truth that conquered peoples aren't always happy about being conquered. Force Density? That is simply a measure of your military strength compared to the lands and territories you have to defend. Think of Rome prior to the first Punic War having a strong manpower and army and only a portion of Italy to have to defend. Then think of Rome 500 years later with its million men under army but all of western Europe to defend. Comparing the two you find that per square mile Rome actually had a greater force density prior to the massive rise of its
empire. Force Projection? Rather a more modern military term, but a factor in military strategy since the darn of time. You have X number of men spread out over Y amount of territory. How quickly can you move those men around and merge them together to equal a great fighting force? When you combine a bunch of those men together and fling them
into battle along one of your frontiers what you've probably done is greatly reduced your strength along your other frontiers and maybe even stripped your garrisons along the many lands you have conquered.
Ok, maybe not for a small war, but if you are Rome trying to cobble an army together to stand against Attila the Hun, you've stripped the land bare of soldiers to put your army together for the big battle. What happens if some small town or village, or even a larger city that you conquered then rebels against you? Will you have the men to go in a crush the rebellion? Or merely the garrison forces to try and check them against expansion? When one city rebels and survives, it surely begins to give all the other conquered peoples hope and will increase
their likelihood of rebelling as well. Building your empire in Rising Empires is a continual challenge that only get HARDER as your empire gets bigger and bigger, as you carefully structure your tax codes,
garrisons, roads and other military installations, etc, to not only support your troops along the frontiers, but also so that you have both the plan and infrastructure in place to put down rebellions
before they get out of hand...which they can rapidly do.

Well, that's your basic overview of Rising Empires. Been working on taking our many notes on this game and finally writing the rules for the PDF. Its going to be monstrous in size before were done (75-100
pages of counters just for starters), but promises to be a unique gaming experience for anyone willing to sink their teeth into it.
_________________
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.thermopylae-online.com