✕ close

How to play

You are the Holy See holding the League together, from the demand for Cyprus in spring 1570 to Venice's separate peace in March 1573. Twelve seasons. The capitulations of 1571 make the Pope ✦ judge and arbiter of every quarrel among the confederates, and forbid any of them ✦ to treat with the Turk alone. Venice did so in March 1573; a strong League can prevent it, rarely.

1. Cards. Each season opens with the events of the documents and one card from the season's pool. Some ask you to choose. Every card cites its source ✦: the link opens the passage in the documentary apparatus.
2. Actions. Two actions a season, three in summer: negotiate with a partner (+1 Resolve), subsidise galleys, grant church revenues to Spain (once a year; Venice resents it), hold a council of war (+1 Unity), run relief into Famagusta, muster the fleet at Messina, seek battle, and after a victory campaign in the Levant.
3. The League is signed only when all three partners are willing (Resolve 3). A partner at Resolve 0 leaves; if Venice leaves, it makes its peace and the game ends. From 1572 Venice tires of the war; only a Venice at full Resolve holds into 1573.
4. Famagusta falls when its walls or its powder run out. The six assaults of summer 1571 come from Martinengo's report.
5. The battle weighs the League's squadrons, the Venetian galleasses, the Spanish infantry and the unity of command against the Ottoman fleet. Without full unity, Uluç Ali escapes with his squadron, as he did.
6. The accounting separates what the victory bought (galley slaves freed, Famagusta, Cyprus, Ottoman sea power at the end, the League itself) from what was remembered (the day, the feasts, the prints, the books).

For advice, tested against 400 bot games, see the strategy guide.

Prototype 0: every number is provisional and lives in deck.json. The Ottoman side is the thinner one: the landing, Nicosia, the arsenal, the raids and Uluç Ali's escape cite the Ottoman historian Peçevî; the Ottoman council of 1571 cites the Venetian Contarini, whose version the apparatus sets beside the Ottoman ones on its Compare page. The rest speaks through Venetian, Spanish and English sources.