Rules of Cleruchy

Rules:
Cleruchy is played on a 10x10 board:

Initially, the board is empty. Players acquire pieces by purchasing them with resources. Each side starts out with an budget of 100 resources, and spends them as he or she sees fit.

The piece types and costs in resources are shown below (the actual function of each piece will be explained later):

Type	Cost (in resources)
Cleruchs	2
Hoplites	3
Peltasts	5
Phalangites	8

A player may only purchase a piece if they have the resources to do so. Upon the purchase, he or she may place it in the "zone of authority" that corresponds to the player's piece colour (either white or black). The zones represent the "sides" that the players are moving their pieces from, and are shown on the board below:

Note that pieces cannot be placed on squares that are already occupied by another piece.

Players take turns, then, either purchasing new pieces or moving existing ones (note that the zones of authority do not apply when existing pieces are moved). Each piece can also peform certain actions that render it inactive, unable to move any further, and which also may result in the piece being removed from the board. Play ends when both players do not have enough resources to purchase anymore pieces, and when all existing pieces are inactive. The winner is the player that occupies the most territory on the board, which is measured by the number of colonies under each player's control.

Colonization:
The central component of the game is the creation of cleruchies, the colonies of men, women and children that have been transplanted from your home territory. These wandering souls are called cleruchs, and, as stated above, can be purchased for the low price of 2 resources.

The cleruch piece is shown below, using the most recent graphic set:

When a cleruch piece is on the board, it can move up down, left or right one space at a time on subsequent turns. A piece may not be placed on the board and moved in the same turn.

Instead of moving, a cleruch piece can perform the action of founding a colony on its present square. If it does so, it creates a cleruchy, shown below:

Note that the piece cannot move any further. When a cleruchy is formed, the founding player is credited with 1 point, a measure of the gain in territory under this player's control. Territory, and therefore points, can also be acquired by the occupation of opponent cleruchies.

Occupying Opponent Cleruchies:
If a player can place his or her colonies at specific points, they can seize control of enemy colonies between them. These occupied cleruchies will switch allegiances and "belong" to the occupying player.

An opponent cleruchy is considered occupied if the other player places two of his or her own cleruchies on opposite sides of the enemy colony, forming a vertical, horizontal or diagonal line out of the three pieces. A line of opponent colonies can be occupied by trapping them between two cleruchies in a similar way.

One occupied cleruchy A row of occupied cleruchies

The opponent pieces will immediately switch colours, reflecting the switch in allegiances. Each one of these occupied colonies results in a tranfer of 1 point from the side that used to own the piece to the one that now occupies it. A cleruchy can be reclaimed by its former owner in an occupation of his or her own

A player who places a few colonies strategically, then, can end up controlling large regions of the board with little trouble. This territory can be reclaimed, however, by the use of military force.

Military Units:
There are three military units available in the game. They all work in the same ways, but move differently, and cost varying amounts of resources to create. They are each explained below:

Hoplites

Hoplites were by far the most common units found on the battlefields of Ancient Greece. Rows of tightly packed soldiers, carrying spears and huge shields, hoplites are a little slow and cumbersome, but still quite effective. An added bonus is the cheap cost of production, since the fighters were commoners who supplied their own equipment.

Cost: 3 resources
Movement: Up, down, left or right 1 space

Peltasts

Around the 4th century B.C., lightly armed troops were beginning to be used in Greece and surrounding territories. These included archers, slingers, and a particularly useful javelin thrower called the peltast. Carrying small shields and throwing spears, the peltasts offered a mobility that was not possible with hoplites. They were often used for surprise attacks, to defend passes, and also proved useful in backing up an army of hoplite soldiers.

Cost: 5 resources
Movement: 1 space in any diagonal direction

Phalangites

Philip II of nearby Macedonia tinkered greatly with the military units of the era, and the phalangite soldiers were one of his crowning achievements. They each carried a small shield and sword, but their most striking piece of equipment was a pike (sarissa) that measured up to 18 feet long. This gave them a jump on units that carried much shorter weapons. Philip's armies eventually took over all of Greece, but you can hire some of them out as mercenaries here, though at a high price.

Cost: 8 resources
Movement: Up, down, left or right 2 spaces, or 1 space in any direction

Note that the phalangites can jump over pieces of any type if they move two spaces, and that no military piece can move onto a square already occupied by a piece that belongs to its side. They can, however, move onto a square occupied by an opponent piece, thereby launching an attack.

Attacking Other Pieces:
As stated above, a military piece can be used to attack and destroy other pieces simply by moving it onto a square occupied by the opponent. The battle always has the same outcome: the aggresor wins and the piece it attacked is removed from the board. If the defeated piece was military itself, then the turn ends here, with no further action taken. If it was a cleruch piece or an actual cleruchy, however, than things are more complicated.

Besieging a Cleruchy:
It is usually not in a player's best interests to attack a group of travelling cleruchs. Though the military unit has the advantages of arms and armour, they are vastly outnumbered, and colonists can be a hearty bunch. An attack on a cleruch piece will result in its removal from the board, but the attacking piece will also be removed, since it will have suffered losses that render it useless as an army. This will be strategically advantageous in only the rarest of cases.

If a cleruchy is attacked, the invading military piece will suffer a similar fate. Besieging a city in Ancient Greece was a long, ardous process, and heavy losses on both sides were virtually certain. There are, however, added benefits to laying waste to an enemy colony. The surviving soldiers will help rebuild the city, but establish themselves as its rulers. This results in a cleruchy piece being placed on the square where the battle took place, belonging to the player that attacked the old colony. Moreover, due to the ensuing chaos in the region, any cleruchies that were beside the old one and on its side will also be turned over to the enemy. This switch in allegiances will continue in straight lines eminating in all directions from the epicentre of the battle, and will be stopped each way only by a break in the string of formerly friendly colonies (This can be thought of as an occupation of adjacent cleruchies in all directions by the new one, without the need for another colony to "bookend" each line). This action is illustrated below, with an attack on the highlighted cleruchy:

The hoplites' next move is right The cleruchies have been seized

As with occupation, each cleruchy that switches sides will result in a transfer of 1 point between the players.

Special Squares:
Version 0.94 of Cleruchy introduced special squares to the game. These squares may be pre-built into the terrain when a board is loaded. Tools are provided to create and store specific designs. In all, there are four types of new squares:

Mountains. Greece is a rather mountainous land, and the craggy slopes hinder travel to the point of impossibility. No pieces may be moved onto a mountain square.

Water. Like mountains, no pieces can be moved onto water squares.

Arid Land. Only 30% of the Greek land was worth cultivating in ancient times, and arid land is no place to start a colony. Pieces may freely move through arid squares, but cleruchies may not be founded on them.

Native Colonies. There may already be colonies of people native to the land when the game begins. These settlements do not belong to either side initially, but may be occupied or attacked like opponent cleruchies (When dealing with rules of occupation and besieging, native colonies are treated like "wildcards", meaning that they will be counted as an enemy colony no matter who is doing the takeover).

Ending the Game:
All of the following conditions must be met for the game to be considered over:

1) Both players must not have enough resources to purchase a piece of any type.

2) There must be no cleruchs on the board, only cleruchies.

3) There must be no military units on the board, or only units of one side that can no longer perform any function.

If these are all true, the board can be modified no further and the game will be finished. The winner is the side with the most points, or, equivalently, the most cleruchies on the board under his or her control. Draws are possible, in which case there is no winner.