Age of Renaissance - Old Skool Ameritrash

I played two games of Age of Renaissance in the last month. It had been almost a decade since we last played it, so we all had to have a good look at the rules. Although rusty, we were back up to speed by the end of the first evening.

Age of Renaissance is an Old Skool Ameritrash game by Avalon Hill. As suggested by the title, the game is set in the period leading up to the Renaissance, starting in the 8^th century. The game is not about empires conquering territories but about trade metropolises dominating markets. The trade empires are Venice, Genoa, Barcelona, Paris, London and Hamburg.

Movement by sea is the best way to expand your trade empire. You start out with slow galleys that have to hug the coastline. Although you can extend the range (and carrying capacity) of your galleys, improving shipbuilding technology first removes range limits, first to all of Europe, then to the East Indies and finally the New World.

A familiar map, very early in the first game. With five players, Hamburg

(and the Baltic and Russia region) isn't included

The map is asymmetric with the most high value areas in the Levant (the eastern board of the Mediterranean), the Black Sea and East Indies and New World. This favours Venice and Genoa, because they are closest to the Levant and the Black Sea. It also means Paris, Hamburg and London should be aggressive (or locked out from the juicy bits).

My list of technological advances, about 3/4 into the game
In the right corner below, you see my biddings

The game mechanics are a development on the original Civilization, and similar in feel but a bit more complex. Like in Civilization there are trade goods where the value grows exponentially the more you have, there’s a tech tree and conflict is abstracted and requires a minimum number of counters to engage.

The trade goods are not based on cities but on areas on the map you control and they each produce different goods like timber, wine, spice and ivory. The tech tree is a bit more structured and expanded, and all the technologies now provide benefits in the game. And conflict is influenced by control of neighbouring areas and technology.

A few sample event cards

The major change to the game as opposed to Civilization is the addition of event cards: you can play them to score trade goods and bonuses on technology or tactical advantages in conflict. There’s also a number of catastrophes such as famine, epidemics and religious strife that will increase the misery of your population. 

The Misery track is another addition to the game. As a result of catastrophes and certain technologies, your people will suffer, and at the end of the game, misery will cost you points. And the higher you are on the track, the bigger the steps, so the harder it becomes to reduce misery. Money and some technologies allow you to reduce misery, but it takes some effort to keep on top of it.

The event cards can be very powerful: scoring a high value trade good or a good leader bonus can buy you an extra technology, a tactical advantage can make you win two more areas. And a catastrophe can lose you half your money. Pretty powerful stuff that can determine the outcome of a game and will have players arguing whether the player targeted is the one in front or not.

The Black Sea and the Levant, cornered mostly by
Genoa and Venice in the four player game

Your basic economy depends on the number of areas you control, but as said above the type of area makes a difference when trade cards are scored by playing event cards. The value of your harvest is determined by the square of the number of areas you hold in that trade good, so monopolies can be very profitable. It’s not possible for all trade goods and sometimes it’s better not to monopolise a good because other players won’t score their cards if you’re the only one benefiting. On the other hand, if you have a trade good card yourself and you can try to collect a few more areas to improve your haul.

As an old skool Ameritrash game, it has many of the flaws associated with the genre. The game is long, taking 5 to 6 hours with 4 players (longer with more players) but that also increases the sense of epic achievement by the end. There is the possibility of a runaway leader if nobody goes after him and it is prone to king making. Like Civilization, there’s lots of calculation going on to optimise your score, and that is something not everybody likes to do in their spare time.

The game is also different with fewer players. There’s too much room in a 4 player game, while 5 players is too hard on Barcelona (with London breathing down its neck). I would like to try six players sometime again because that might be the best balance.

Were it designed or republished today it would be more streamlined to fit into 3 hours. I should try the recent Romanian game Warriors & Traders to see how that works, because it basically has the same theme. But despite all its flaws Age of Renaissance is still worth digging out once every couple of years and probably a great game when you're in school or university and have more time to burn.

Lost in the Western Desert

As they say: a darn good read! I picked it up at Skook books which rewarded me so well on my first visit this weekend.

The desert war has always fascinated me. It's the topography of the battlefields, as Barnett says, almost empty and therefor best suited for a clash of generalship. Here the operational genius of Rommel and O'Connor would stand out against the mediocrity of most others. But there's also the strategic side, the long distances and the logistic challenge (where Rommel showed less brilliance, perhaps, but which he tried to make up for with bluff and sheer willpower).

This book is not so much about the operational and strategic issues as about the character and ability of the commanders of the Eight Army and its predecessor, the Western Desert Force. Obviously, Barnett favours O'Connor and Auchinleck, while he writes Cunningham and Richie into the ground, even if with some sympathy.

But the venom is in the tail. Barnett's account of Montgomery's command is a textbook character assassination. After exposing him as a mean but before everything else a self publicising monomaniac who furthers his carreer at the expense of others (as opposed to modest men like O'Connor, Wavell and Auchinleck of course), he then destroys Monty's military reputation.

Not only (and this is Barnett speaking, not me) does Monty steal the good ideas for Alam Halfa and Alamein from Dorman-Smith and Auchinleck, he then also bungles the planning for Alamein (presumably counting on the effect that Rommel would have to withdraw anyway due to the Torch landings) and only saves it by superior resources and bloody single mindedness. He then finally fails to catch Rommel in pursuit. And at all times Barnett implicates that Montgomery tries to shift the blame and claim the glory.

In the appendices there's also an eulogy for Eric Dorman-Smith, obviously a highly talented, but non-conformist staff officer. Barnett sees him as the creative element during much of the successfull operations who was perfectly teamed with commanders like Wavell and Auchinleck, who appreciated his talents and knew how to employt them constructively.

However, after Auchinleck's removal, Dorman-Smith's carreer went downwards and at several times he was removed from commands. Barnett claims he was doing well in all those positions and that the reasons behind his repostings had to do with his intellectualism and intolerance for the mediocrity of others.

Whether or not this explanation is 100% correct I don't know, but there is clearly a pattern in the British army of WWII where visionary and intellectual officers (think also Hobart) lost out to more practical and especially more conformist ones.

Most surprising to me is that Wavell has no more prominent role in this book. While he maybe was always more than only a desert general, his presence in the background was highly influential in the first two years of the war. Barnett is generally favourable to Wavell.

Barnett is an excellent writer, despite his biases. I'm only now becoming aware of the factionalism in British military history writing, and it's still a bit fuzzy for me, but I get the impression that Barnett is part of the Liddell Hart group.

The problem for me is that I have always instinctively taken sides with O'Connor, Wavell (I even named him my favourite general) and Auchinleck. And Barnett's story of the bright elite losing out to the mediocre establishment makes them the natural underdog and plays on my self image as talented and non-conformist (Stop laughing, please!).

But I am also wary of totally discounting Montgomery's ability. He was obviously not a nice person to be associated with professionally, but he's always seemed solid to me. I've also grown suspicious of black and white characterisations.

So while enjoying this book very much, it leaves me not entirely convinced of the characterisations of the people involved.

Here I Stand Up to My Ankles in the Med - The Last Crusaders

Last year I spent my holiday with the family on Rhodes, the smallish Greek island with a grand history, just off the Turkish coast. Cities sprang up here around 3,000 years ago, providing legendary Olympic boxing champions and some great classical philosophers. Later, its rethorical schools provided crucial stages in the education of the Roman elite, among whom Caesar. However, the civil war that ended the republic of Rome also led to the destruction of Rhodes.


The island never returned to those glory days, but slowly recovered under the Byzantines and the Genoese. A third golden (or rather silver) age occurred under the rule of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem between 1309 and 1522. The Knights ended up on Rhodes after choosing the better part of valour by leaving the Holy Land in 1291. Although they first found shelter on Cyprus, the destruction of their fellow crusading order, the Templars, by the French king in 1305 suggested that they'd better get a place for themselves and prove themselves still relevant as a crusading force.

In 1306 a small expeditionary force took two strongholds on Rhodes and in 1309 the Hospitallers agreed a deal to take over the whole island, including its strategic port in the capital. From then on they preyed on Muslim ships (and a lot of Christian ones as well), expanding their outposts to surrounding islands and the Turkish mainland. The Mameluke rulers of Egypt tried to retaliate by besieging Rhodes unsuccessfully in 1440 and again four years later.

But the fall of Byzantium in 1453, the position of the island so close to the Ottoman mainland and across its commercial arteries effectively doomed the Knights' presence. And this is where my choice for holiday reading nicely intersected. I brought along Barnaby Rogerson's The Last Crusaders, which covers the struggle for control of the Mediterranean between 1450 and 1590. What better excuse than to put the great sieges of Rhodes in 1480 and 1522 in the bigger picture? Also, I had just received my copy of the reprinted boardgame Here I Stand, which just begged for some background knowledge to the game.

For players of Here I Stand, the Mediterranean may appear like a minor theatre compared to the epic struggle of the Reformation. And true, the climax of the struggle between Spain and the Ottomans lies beyond the scope of the game. But the southern conflicts already drew much of the attention of the Habsburgs before the big climax of the 1560s and 70s. Francis I, king of France, entered into an alliance with the Turkish Sultan to keep Charles V off balance. The great advance of Suleyman through the Balkans occurred at the same time as the battle of Pavia and the sack of Rome. Later, Charles himself chose to organise his own crusades to Tunis and Algiers rather than take on the Protestants in Germany. Therefore, The Last Crusaders is an excellent companion for putting the game in perspective.


The book is a well written narrative of the developments in the major powers in this conflict: Portugal, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire, as well as the Moroccan dynasties and the Barbary corsairs. It first describes their rise in the late 15th century and then the clashes in the 16th century, culminating in the epic sieges and battles of the 1560s and 1570s, such as Malta, Cyprus and Lepanto. After that, Rogerson contends, all parties involved decided that the cost of control of the Mediterranean were too high and diverted limited means from other crucial conflicts. They either disinvested their overseas commitments or accepted a de facto truce that would never be broken.

Not only is the book fully within the narrative tradition, it also is heavily dependent on biography. All the main players' life and character are sketched in detail, while even the relatively minor cast gets ample attention. In this book, their ideas, childhood trauma's and anxieties determine policies, rather than geopolitical considerations. This provides for a much better read than more analytical studies, but tends to obscure a few larger developments that Rogerson has skilfully woven into the book. Rather than summarise it all, I'm going to pick out those from the book that drew my attention and are relevant to Here I Stand, but I think there is a lot more in the books than what I touch upon here. For example, there's great stuff on the famous corsair captains such as the Barbarossa brothers, Dragut and Uluj Ali and the role of Jewish merchants in the markets for military goods.

Rogerson is a travel writer and historian with long experience in Africa and the Middle East. I only realised while reading the book that I'd already consumed another book by Rogerson, The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad, which covers the history of the first Caliphs and the schism between the Sunni and Shia in the years immediately following the death of Muhammad. A very engaging and interesting book in itself, the main point for my story here is that Rogerson has a pretty good understanding of the Muslim world and the political implications of religion.

This is especially relevant when it comes to the initial weak legitimacy of the Ottoman dynasty, having no direct hereditary links to the Prophet. On the one hand it influenced their plans for conquest to the point that they strove to control religiously important centres like Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina and to appear as defenders of the faith. On the other hand it also increased the intensity of the conflict following the Shia revival of Persia under sha Ismail, which posed a powerful millenarian alternative to Ottoman rule.

Considerations of religiously founded legitimacy also played its part in the rise of the dynasty in Morocco in response to Portuguese expansion. The Sufi brotherhood traditionally organised communal charity and education and mediated between warring tribes. The authority they derived from these religiously valued activities gave them greater legitimacy when taking up the struggle against the foreign invaders, be they Portuguese, Spanish or Ottoman. It allowed them to first usurp the role of the traditional rulers of southern Morocco, and later to unify the country under their rule.

Religion of course also played a role for the Christians. On the one hand in the crusading tradition of the knightly orders, but also in the sanction of royal rule. After the conquest of Granada in 1492 the pope elevated the Spanish monarch to 'Catholic Kings', which was a major boost to the weak claims of Isabella of Castile to her throne. The crusading tradition strongly supported the position of the Portuguese kings against their Braganza rivals. This could also have negative effects when viewed from a geopolitical perspective, as attempts to strengthen control over Morocco for a long time came at the expense of expansion into Asia and the New World.

But apart from legitimising new and older ruling dynasties, the holy war also became political and part of the process of state formation. Both in Portugal and Spain the knightly orders were put under royal control, and even mere promises of crusade could garner Papal and noble support for extra taxation. The pope granted the 'Catholic Kings' unprecedented control of the clergy and the Inquisition, which became an important tool in keeping the nobility and commercial classes in order.

And strengthening the state was crucial to participate in the game of power and conquest. Access to the new technology and the ability to use it on a grand scale now determined the outcome of military conflict (showing the influence of Rogerson's former tutor Geoffrey Parker). The period covered in this book is that of the military revolution, which was driven by the increasingly destructive power of siege guns which in turn necessitated improved fortifications.

Also, the power struggle required larger armies for longer campaigns, including more specialised troops like gunners and engineers. This necessitated the use of mercenaries rather than noble contingents. Major campaigns now took years of preparation including fleet building programmes and the establishment of vast arsenals.

The Ottomans built up the most powerful siege park which allowed them to blast through the walls of Byzantium, Cairo, Rhodes and Belgrade but also field artillery that won them battles like Mohacs. Use of ships as gun platforms gave the Spanish, Venetians and their allies victory in the climactic battle of Lepanto in 1571. But the large scale use of state of the art machinery drove up the bill and made states seek sources of revenue and intensify the pressure on traditional sources.


By the end of the period all players in the book had mastered the new rules of the military revolution. The Portuguese were driven from Morocco by improved gunnery which made the cost of maintaining their trading posts on the coast prohibitive. Spain was driven from Tunis and Tripoli. The Ottomans were stuck at the end of their logistic lines and economic ability to support expenses.

All this conflict was accompanied by large scale destruction of human lives and property. Sieges with horrendous casualties were followed by brutal sacks which left cities depopulated. Religious minorities were force to convert or cast out with similar results, although the refugees from Spain and Portugal repopulated cities abroad such as Tetouan in Morocco and Thessaloniki in Ottoman Greece (as well as Antwerp and later Amsterdam). Ironically, this greatly damaged the Portuguese and Spanish economies in the long run.

Rogerson is keen to point out that at this time the Muslim world was more civilised and sophisticated than the Christian. Standards of personal hygiene and personal modesty were higher, but also tolerance for other religions. To me this kind of discussion of moral high ground is always touchy, especially because Christianity and Islam have gone through different developments since then which tend to cloud our interpretation. The picture is mixed at best and bleak in any case by today's western standards.

The added taxation of the Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire and especially the forced release and conversion of part of the youth if Christian communities surely didn't mean life under the Turk was hunky dory, but for Jews it was certainly better than forced conversion or expulsion as in large parts of Europe. In some cases, as on Cyprus in 1571, the Ottomans were greeted as liberators by Christians. As far as slavery was concerned there was little difference in attitude between Muslims and Christians, and the Ottomans would persecute the heretical Kizilbas movement as bitterly as the Habsburgs would go after the Protestants.

According to Rogerson, the Hospitallers came out on the worse side of the spectrum, contrary to what present day tourist guides of Rhodes would like to you to believe. Some Byzantine possessions refused their offer of protection and rather faced the Ottomans unaided. They raided Muslim and Christian shipping indiscriminately and used the captives to row their galleys. Jewish refugees from Spain were sold by them into slavery. To their merit, however, they provided some of the best medical care to everyone.


All in all the behaviour of the order and the strategic position of the island made Ottoman attack inevitable. The knights withstood the first Ottoman siege in 1480 by a whisker, and were only saved by the struggle for the succession of Mehmet the Conqueror a year later. A rebuilding programme significantly strengthened the defenses but the next attempt in 1522 ended with the honourable retreat of the Knights of St John to Malta, where they withstood yet another Ottoman siege in 1565 and continued their activities until Napoleon conquered the island.

Rhodes spent several mostly quiet centuries under Ottoman rule until the Italians conquered it in 1912. Apart from a sprinkling of nice old mosques in the capital and a colonial extension of the town the impact of these two peoples seems limited. Rhodes is now a Greek holiday island much like the others in atmosphere, but with that historical bonus of a few largely intact fortresses. I heartily recommend a visit.

Full disclosure: I have no connections whatsoever to the Greek Bureau of Tourism.

This post appeared earlier on Fortress Ameritrash.