History of the World:

Speed

These are additional rules for History of the World. My web page also provides access to further History of the World material.

First Epoch

Randomly give each player an empire in the first epoch, and ignore the swapping provisions.

This is motivated by the fact that in the first epoch there is no in-game reason to decide which player should be given a bad empire. Therefore, only out-of-game considerations apply, and since I consider these to be Bad Things, there's no reason not to make the selection fast and random. If none of the players had ever met then going through the first epoch in the standard way leads to almost the same effect anyway. (The only difference is that some players will know a particular empire is coming.)

Routine Attacks

Any attack in which

the defender rolls only one die;
the defender receives no positive modifiers;
the defender has only one unit; and
the target land has no fort, fortress, monument, city or capital
The attack is not across a strait or coastline, or entering defensive terrain

is considered a "routine attack" and is automatically resolved as a victory for the attacker.

The aim of this is to minimise the ``routine'' and therefore boring rolls required by ``I have two you have one'' attacks. The rule has been attacked on the grounds that it will make every empire play the same. An answer to that might be to say the rule only applies from Epoch II onwards. An incidental effect is to make fortifications much more significant. The conditions for routineness are deliberately redundant.

This page is hosted by GeoCities, in return for carrying their advertising they will give you a free home page much like mine. Everything on this site varies without notice, especially after I get feedback.