A Multiplayer Rome Campaign

Although as everyone knows its impossible to play a multiplayer campaign it could be possible to do something similar with a simple set of rules and a human overseer who wasn't taking part as any of the factions.

What I'm thinking of doing is getting together a smallish group of players who might be interested, and then trying to run a campaign, in which the players would get together online to fight the battles and then post the results here or maybe e-mail them to an account set up for the job. (I think both players would have to save the battle replays and send them to the overseer so results could be double-checked)

Players would start off picking armies worth a certain amount of Denarii, and then send them to the overseer before the 1st turn of the campaign started.

The campaign would be played over a simple, probably abstract map, with players e-mailing their moves, which would be put into action once everyone had sent their moves in (Some sort of deadline might be nesecarry).

Each Province/Location captured would have some sort of denarii value that enabled people to reinforce there armies periodically. Maybe there could even be resources out there like horses which you have to control to build cavalry etc etc.

Anyway I have to go now but I'd like to here from anyone who has any questions about the concept or would like to take part.

Sounds kinda complicated.

i might be interested as long as the process isnt so overcomplicated it makes it a chore to play

I appreciate your concerns about over-complexity, but believe me running the thing I'd want it to be as simple as possible.

A typical first turn should go something like this:

Player A (having bought x denarii of troops) sits down and looks at the campaign map, notices there are 2 provinces next to his starting one. Lets call them A & B.

He decides to move say 6 units of his choice to A & 7 more units to B. He E-mails this info to the overseer (me).

I get everyones orders back, look at where everyone is and is moving to and e-mail them back with the results of whats happened.

It might look like this:

You left 4 units in your starting province

You moved 6 units into Province A
You captured province A

You moved 7 units into Province B
In Province B is an army of Carthage (Player 2). You will need to fight a battle against player 2 with your 7 units.

This turn you have earnt 400 denarii from your home province & 200 Denarii from Province A.

You have 600 Denarii to save or to buy new troops.

**********************************************************

It just occured to me that each province on the campaign map could be a specific Multi player map. ie: Numidian Basin, Illyrian valley etc etc.

Home provinces be cities with stone walls, thus making them harder to take.

Sounds interesting RanidGibbon,

Things like this have been done before and they can be a lot of fun.
But complexity and the effort required to calculate all the moves are certainly among the main challenges, you are right there. But if you manage to keep the system as simple as you outlined above, you will have a good chance of succeeding.

I will see if I can dig out links to other sites where MP campaigns have been played.

Thanks for the encouragement Nigel,

I've prepared a very simple map on the lines proposed above. Theres room on it for 6 players and I should be posting it in the PBEM forum soon.

For those interested in technicalities

I think starting armies would clock in about the 15000 denarii scale, Each captured province would provide maybe 500 denarii a turn, whilst home provinces (Cities) would rake in about 2000 denarii.

There would be a 20 unit per province cap, (players wanting to increase on this would have to make alliances and have there allies move extra units in).

People wanting to sign up for the campaign would have to not mind fighting when outnumbered, defending doomed cities, or taking on every over player in the game on at the same time if they were really unfortunate, I imagine players quitting halfway through a campaign (or even worse an online battle) because they were losing could be a problem.