@Jack: That sounds awesome! I love how you’re playing a game based on a real-life outside force. I really love that the game hinges on an unknown – will Barbarossa arrive soon?? XD (though of course with tracking you can get a very good idea; I think it would be interesting to not check it though) There is a weird scenario where your game does end up taking “forever” – if Barbarossa gets lost in the mail! Meaning his transit ship went down with him. Hope that doesn’t happen of course.
I know my 2015 Economy Edition game kinda made it seem like it’s “my” ruleset, but all credit goes to cannonfury (not at Miniature Trading anymore). Hopefully I made that clear enough on the Game Ideas page and at the outset of the EE battle report.
Will your map somewhat resemble the Mediterranean, or is it just the 4 HI’s placed reasonably similarly to where they are on a map? (with no extra land area, whether imaginary or not) What about the wild islands – geographically similar or random?
Interesting that you need a steady stream of gold to keep the ports alive. It makes more sense than what I like to do (no gold/food maintenance), I just like to launch new stuff and constant maintenance costs slow down campaign games in that regard and just aren’t my thing. Glad you’re trying that though since it will be fun to see how it goes.
If Malta runs out of food… I don’t know. They don’t lose, though.
Either they could start the game with tons of food (I assume there will be some food for each port at the start? Else they’d die Turn 2), or perhaps get a reinforcement fleet from Europe. (though introducing free points would unbalance things of course)
All those UT’s floating around will be really interesting – it makes boarding the opposing fleet to try and flip the effect around for gold a viable strategy. I have some other thoughts on how the strategy might play out, but I don’t want to put thoughts in your head….