RPGPundit Reviews: Julius Caesar

This is a review of the Wargame Julius Caesar, by Columbia games.  Wow, a second wargame review... I swear, one of these days I'll be getting back to reviewing actual RPGs and such, but the folks at Columbia Games were so impressed with my review of their earlier game, Richard III, that they sent me this one right away so I could give it the same treatment.

Julius Caesar is a game that could be said to be in the same series as Richard III; it has an extremely similar format and mechanics.  Even the box is basically the same, with a different slip-cover (very nice art on this one, not that Richard III was bad).
Inside you get a similar product as well: a very nice map on a kind of hard-paper (that looks fairly durable, though people planning to really make a serious use of this game should look into laminating it), the rulebook, dice, cards, several dozen blocks and stickers for the units.  Its a great pleasure attaching the stickers to the blocks, the kind of tedium I don't always like but somehow I found that its a great way to familiarize one's self with the units for either side.

Julius Caesar is a two-player game, which like Richard III takes only a few hours (1-3, typically) to play, assuming both players are already familiar with the rules.  If anything, play in Julius Caesar is simpler in terms of rules than Richard III; while the system is very very similar, Julius Caesar eliminates some of the trickier aspects of play in the former game, making play go very quickly and smoothly.  In my experience playtesting Richard III, I remember that my opponents and I both were referencing the rulebook relatively often, to check certain details about movement, terrain limits, units, treason, etc.  In Julius Caesar's playtest, once both players were familiar with the basic rules we hardly had to look at the rulebook at all. It runs very smooth.

The map is a long, very beautiful representation of the Mediterranean region in the time of the late Roman Republic. The playable areas of the map are divided not into zones or territories like Richard III does, but rather into cities connected by a series of Roman roads (major and minor roads; each player can move 4 units per turn along a major road, and 2 per turn along a minor road).  There are also several sea zones, clearly marked. So play happens by moving from city to city along the roads, and from port to open sea for ships.  Units can move across certain straights, or can make amphibious moves from any port city to any other port city (so long as its not occupied by enemy forces) in the same sea zone, assuming the sea is controlled by the player making the movement.

Cities are divided into regular cities, and numbered cities. The latter are the larger and important areas of the game map, which are numbered with a 1 or 2 (only Rome and Alexandria are worth 2).  These numbers are important for how many troops can winter in a city (3 can winter in a normal city, while cities with a number can winter 3 units plus the number value of the city; so 5 in Rome, for example), but more importantly they are the victory points the city is worth.

The victory conditions of the game are fairly simple.  Gameplay is divided into 5 Years (49bc-45bc) of 5 rounds each, at the end of each year of play there is a "winter phase", where certain units must be moved (ships must go to port, units that are currently in cities where they have more than their allowed wintering are eliminated, Cleopatra returns to Alexandria), and where the players would check to confirm whether one of the players has won the game; to win a player needs to have 10 victory points.  You get 1 victory point for every point of city you occupy, plus 1 point for every enemy leader you've killed. There are only 3 enemy leaders, and only a few cities worth points, so at any moment in a game you are likely to have both sides at 5 to 7 victory points, and the real struggle happens in certain areas of the conflict over dominating two or three cities in order to turn the tide.  If neither player reaches the 10 point margin at the end of the 5th year, then whoever controls the city of Rome is the winner.

Sides are divided into the armies of Caesar and the armies of Pompey.  Caesar has Antony and Octavian as his secondary commanders, and Pompey has Scipio and Brutus.  The third commander of either side only comes into play if either of the first two commanders have been eliminated. As was the case in Richard III, forces are not precisely evenly matched; rather, some effort to emulate history is attempted; Pompey begins the game with an overall advantage, Caesar begins the game with more chance to quickly capture Rome (and should he fail to do so, he's probably doomed), and generally speaking in the course of the game Caesar is the one who is obliged to play very offensively while Pompey must generally play defensively while trying to take opportunities that present themselves to push Caesar back.  The initial layout of the map-board simulates the historical position of the two sides' respective forces at the beginning of the war; though optional rules are provided for a more free-form initial set-up. Since for me, the appeal is to emulate the historical conflict, I could never see myself using this option, I can imagine that some players might appreciate it.

Each side has several Legions, which are tied to particular cities and can only be recruited there. They also have equitates (cavalry) that also can only be recruited in particular cities.  Pompey also has one unit of Elephants he can recruit in North Africa.  Both sides have auxiliares which can be recruited in any city, a ballista artillery unit, and "navis" (ships) that can be constructed in major ports (designated on the map with a symbol).  Because of restrictions on construction, players have to be careful about where and when they recruit; if a unit isn't recruited at the moment you have control of a city, you might never get another chance to recruit that legion again.  Units are distinguished by their name, strength points (which determine the health of the unit and the number of dice they roll in battle) and their combat statistic (in the form of a letter-number combination, ie. A3, B1, D3, etc), which determines in which initiative order the unit can attack and the number that they must roll or less on a D6 to score a hit.  Readers already familiar with the rules to Richard III know that this is basically identical to the former game.  As in the former game, unit blocks are played upright, so that the opposing player can see how many blocks you have in any given area, but will not know which specific units those are, or what the units' strength is like, simulating the "fog of war". Units that are not initially deployed are kept in the player's "pool", and can be recruited by spending "levy points" in the player's turn.

There is a wild-card unit as well, Cleopatra, who starts the game on the side of Pompey but who can switch sides; at the end of each year, control over the Cleopatra unit passes to whoever is in control of Alexandria.

In each year, players receive 6 cards, discarding one of them to remain with 5 cards to play one per round of the year.  There are regular command cards, and special action cards that each have the name of a particular Roman deity. Play begins with each player revealing the card they chose for the round.  Command cards have two important values: movement points and Levy points.  The player who played the card with the superior Movement Point value goes first in the round (in case of a tie, Caesar always goes first, giving him an important advantage). If either player issues a special card instead of a command card, they automatically go first; but if BOTH players issued a special card, they cancel themselves out and the round is skipped.  This is an interesting difference from the Richard III game, and it was surprising in the playtest for Julius Caesar just how often this happened, in moments where both player clearly felt that it was the moment for special events.
The special event cards tend to be for highly specialized limited actions, that have to be carefully played to take advantage; if the situation doesn't arise where the card in question would be really useful, the card is practically worthless, but if played at the right moment, the card can have devastating effects. Some examples: "Mars" allows you to make a "surprise attack" where you get first strike with all your forces before the defender can react, "Neptune" does the same but in naval battles, "Jupiter" allows you to turn one opposing unit to your side, "Apollo" (possibly the most powerful card in the game) allows you to imitate the last card played by your opponent (in the previous round), "Vulcan" creates an earthquake/volcano/natural disaster that causes one point of damage to every unit in a city of your choice (even if that damage would eliminate the unit).

In each player's round they first resolve movement. For every movement point you can move ALL the units currently in one city, they don't all need to move in the same direction. Alternately, you can move the ships in one sea space, or you can make an amphibious move with a single unit. Levy points allow you to restore one strength point to any single unit, or to call up a new unit if you meet the prerequisite conditions (that is, if you are in the correct city space). Unlike Richard III, units do not automatically reset to full strength at any moment in the game, so Levy points are important to keep up the health of damaged units; also, units called up from the player's "pool" begin with only their minimum strength, though you can use levy points to raise its strength after being called up.

Another important difference from Richard III is that the naval element is emphasized, with each player having several ships, and ship units being able to move in and out of ports (when in ports they can fight as units in land battles), or across the various sea zones, or engage in naval combat.

After the player completes all his movement and uses all his levy points, the second player does the same, and then any combat is resolved. Anytime the forces of one side move into a city held by units of the enemy side, combat automatically ensues. The combat system is essentially identical to that of Richard III, but skipping some of the more complicated elements of that game's combat (there are no "heir charges", terrain doesn't grant special bonuses, and no "treason rolls", treason being covered by the use of the aforementioned event card). Units roll their attacks in order, defender going first, according to their combat designation.  First all the Defender's "A" units attack, then the attacker's "A" units, then the defender's "B" units, the attacker's "B" units, and so on. Anytime hits are scored, the damage goes to the unit with the highest current strength value on the opposing side, in the case where two or more units have the same (highest) strength value, the owner of those units chooses which unit takes the hit.  Extra hits are applied to the following units if the first unit taking the hit is eliminated.  Only the first group to move into a battle or the troops currently in the city defending get to act on the first round, all other troops that approach the city to add to defence or offence are held in "reserve" and begin to act on the second round. Units can retreat only from the second round onward. If combat lasts until the fourth round, the attacker is obliged to retreat all his units on that round. The winner of a conflict can "redeploy" units to adjacent unoccupied areas at the end of a battle.

Limitations on movement have a major effect on game play; units can usually move only one space if they are also going to engage in combat (they can move two spaces if neither move would put them in combat). Road movement limits (4 units on major roads, 2 on minor roads, 2 across straights but only 1 if the city on the other side of the straight is occupied by enemy forces) strongly limits the number of troops that can participate in battle, and these limitations also mean that players can usually anticipate where their opponent plans to attack.   In some ways this makes for a more cautious, strategic kind of game than Richard III, where combat can sometimes come on more quickly and with more troops, and its easier to take your opponent unaware.  Thus, even though in many respects Julius Caesar is relatively easier to learn than Richard III, it is also perhaps a more strategically thoughtful game.

I was tremendously impressed by Richard III, and I am if anything more impressed with the style and gameplay of Julius Caesar. Both are excellent games, quick to learn but repeatedly playable and interesting, with great strategic elements, historical emulation without allowing the history to bog down the fun, and fast resolution (perfect for a quick evening's entertainment). With these games Columbia moves into the vanguard of design for exactly the kind of historical wargaming I love. If you like historical-but-fun wargaming too, you can't go wrong with this product.

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