Empire in Arms

EIA is a Grand Strategic game of the Napoleonic Wars. Players take the role of the ruler of one of seven major powers: France, Great Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain and Turkey.

Map

The map depicts Europe and Northern Africa from the Atlantic coast to the steppes of Russia. It is divided into areas for regulating movement and combat. Areas are grouped into provinces to determine control for purposes of taxationa and political control. In addition, there are sea areas which expands the scope of conflict to the adjoining oceans.

The map is functional if a little plain (read: UGLY.) Each area has a terrain type: clear, mountain, forest or swamp. Terrain type is represented by coloured symbols, which covers the entire area. Rivers are placed so that they fall on the border of two areas. The main problem with the map is that each area has a forage value which is printed directly onto the map. This destroys the simple beauty of the mapboard.

One saving grace is that information of cities are represented symbolically such as the number of spires its symbol has. This IMO saves the mapboard from being transformed into an ugly monster, with unsightly numbers scrawled all over the place.

A great pity that it comes in mapsheets rather than pre-mounted. Personally, I have played less of this game than I would have, if it were mounted on a decent mapboard. The hassle of having to set up a paper map so that Napoleon does not get blown away by an unfortunate gust of wind got the better of me on mor than one occasion.

Counters

There is a colourful variety of troops that a player may command in the game: infantry, cavalry, militia, guards, artillery, cossacks and even guerillas. These are represented by strength points (sp), which are usually placed in corps.

The major 'units' in this game comes in the form of corps. Each corps represents an administrative organisation that can accomodate a certain number of strength points. The exact type of sp and how much of each that a corps hold may vary from corps to corps. The I French corps may for example, contain up to 25 infantry and 3 cavalry sp while the XII Russian corps can only coordinate 10 infantry sp and no cavalry.

Not all strength points need to be placed in corps. Garrisons, may be placed directly onto the map. Other special sp, like guerillas and cossacks may be placed on the map directly. For most purposes, the latter types operate like single sp corps.

Leader counters are also included, which gives a rather detailed assessment of his capabilities.

Combat

Combat in EIA is broken down into days, which are subdivided into 3 rounds. Combat continues until either side retreats (voluntarily or by breaking) or is annihilated.

Each day, each player choose a tactic to employ. These tactics determines the combat charts to be used for the three rounds of combat that day. In each round of combat, players roll on the combat charts to determine their losses.

Each round of combat causes losses in both sp and in morale to both armies. An army which loses all of its sp is obviously defeated. In addition, if an army loses morale in excess of its original morale, it breaks and is forced to retreat from the area. Victors in combat may choose to pursue retreating enemy corps.

The combat system gives a good flavour of Napoleonic combat. Field armies, in the form of corps are seldom destroyed in combat. Rather, most combat results in one side breaking, and it is in the resulting pursuit that the most sp are lost.

Victory

Each major power has a Victory Point (VP) limit. The player whose power first exceeds its limit is the winner.

VPs are gained solely by the power's position on the political track. The political track records the current political points that a player has. The player gains or loses political points for events in the game, such as victory/defeat in combat, gain/loss of provinces, political marriages, and even economic mainpulation.

In some game sessions, it is common to bid VPs for powers. This comes in the form of handicap points a player concedes for playing a particular power. This method offsets the perceived imbalances in strength.

Comments

EIA is a really fun game to play, if sufficient number of players can be gathered.

The game is very long and there are times when there is very little for certain players to do. A typical campaign game may easily stretch over several months, assuming that players play one/two evenings each week. Because the game lasts so long, diplomacy becomes paramount, as deals can be negotiated and made between players while away from the gaming table (and unwelcome ears.)

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