How the game works

Campaigns and the day

A campaign is a war between factions, played one war day at a time. Both sides plan the day in secret, and the server alone resolves it. The client never decides an outcome.

Joining a campaign

• Every signed-in general sees and can open every campaign.
• Founding one needs a declared allegiance. The founder becomes its commander and general of their faction, and the campaign forks from the world at the moment chosen (default now).
• Engaging seats a general: as general of their allegiance if that faction has no general yet, otherwise as a deputy serving under the one who has. Deputies read but can't order.
• Only the commander changes the campaign's status (active, suspended, completed) or its pace, and only they can close a day early or hand the campaign to another seated general.

The day's move

• Each day the commanding general drafts a move: the whole configuration of the faction's forces for that day. That means every brigade's march, posture and operation, every tracker, and the drone order (posture per front, spy recruitment, spy tasking, risk).
• The draft starts as things stand, autosaves, and reports what doesn't stand, unit by unit. Nothing in it touches the war or reaches the other side before the day resolves.
• End move locks it, and Reopen unlocks it. The day resolves as soon as every commanded faction has ended its move.

The war clock

• A stalled day resolves on its own at its deadline, 1 / pace real days after it opened (pace 1 = a war day per real day; 0 = no deadline).
• Sides that hadn't ended their move play their draft as it stood, and the report says so. Suspending a campaign stops its clock and keeps the time left.

How a day resolves

1. The moves become the live configuration. An order that no longer stands (a target out of sight, a depot lost) gives way to the brigade's fallback, or is skipped and reported.
2. Supply lands at each side's port, and spies recruited yesterday join the free agents.
3. Strikes, fired from where launchers stand at dawn, then the struck and attacked reactions.
4. Marches, deliveries and blockades, in four stages, with contact and approach reactions after each.
5. Chokes, oil and the oracle's engine (trackers move, gain or lose contact, and report).
6. Scores, the end-of-war check, and each faction's report. The next day opens, and every seated general's screen refreshes.

Brigades

Brigades are a faction's ground units. The scenario names which brigades take part, and the campaign plays its own copies of them, taken from the world at the fork.

Posture

• Hidden: the enemy doesn't know where it is.
• Exposed: the enemy sees its name, size band (company, battalion, brigade or division) and position.
• Defunct: it has surrendered, defected, disbanded or been destroyed, and takes no orders.

Firing, being stopped, or stopping someone else exposes a brigade. Moving is not a posture: a brigade with a destination marches speed_km a day in a straight line, keeping its posture.

Operations, by role

• Hold or defend a town: bars the brigade's area to enemy columns.
• Blockade a road (from, via, to): once the brigade stands still within its area of the road, an enemy column travelling the road stops at the blockade's edge.
• Deliver: march to a base your side holds (a depot, or the port), load the items, follow the receiving brigade and unload into its magazine.
• Besiege, assault, patrol: can be ordered and are reported, but there is no ground combat yet.

Columns that are stopped

• An enemy column stops at the edge of a blockade, of a brigade holding a town, or of a military base its faction holds (operational or degraded).
• A stop exposes both sides and is reported to each. The column keeps its orders and tries again every day until its general halts or redirects it.

Countermoves

• Fallback: a one-day alternative order, taken if the brigade's own order no longer stands when the day resolves.
• Reactions: up to three standing orders, each firing at most once a day.

When a reaction fires, the brigade can strike back (launchers, at an exposed brigade in range), withdraw to a town, hold, reinforce a town, engage (close on the enemy, exposed), or change posture. A counter-strike sets off nothing further.

Missiles, drones and strikes

Launchers strike from where they stand at dawn, and enemy missile defence and air-defence brigades try to stop each shot. A launcher fires at most 4 a day, can't march the same day, and keeps firing every day while its magazine lasts.

Targets: an airfield, a military base, a front base, an oil site, a town, or an enemy brigade that is exposed.

Interception. Each missile or drone meets, in order:

1. The target front base's own missile defence, against ballistic missiles only: 0.6 a shot.
2. Every enemy air-defence brigade on cover whose radius holds the target, one interceptor a shot: 0.6 against ballistic missiles, 0.7 against cruise missiles and drones.

Damage from what gets through

• A front base loses hit points.
• An airfield, base or oil site builds up damage. At 60 it is degraded; at 150 an airfield closes and an oil site shuts; at 300 it is destroyed, and a damaged oil site produces and passes less.
• A brigade loses five men a point of damage, and morale.
• A strike on a town is reported only.

Who learns what: firing exposes the launcher. Both sides are told what was fired, what was intercepted and what hit, and a hit on a public site is announced on the open line. Weapons spent are written to each side's ledger as deployed. Rolls are seeded per campaign, day and launcher.

The real-time drone skirmish (/battle) is a separate, standalone browser game against an AI. It doesn't affect campaigns yet.

Supply by sea

Almost nothing is made in the theater. Each side's weapons and goods are shipped by its outside patrons to one port, at a rate the oracle sets, and are paid for in ZZCash when they land.

• What is shipped: the weapons above, plus goods: fuel, ammunition, spare parts, food and medical supplies, priced per load. Goods are stocked and carried like weapons but have no battlefield effect yet.
• The oracle decides how much: standing supply lines (so many of an item every N days, M days at sea) and one-off ships. It can open, change or stop a line at any time.
• Like the weather: supply runs on real time and never looks at any campaign or battlefield.
• Paying: a side pays its patron at catalogue price when the cargo lands, from its world treasury, or from its war chest in a campaign. Cargo it can't pay for waits offshore, and so does everything behind it, so cargo lands in order.
• In a campaign: each campaign lands the same ships by its own war date into its own copy of the port. Cargo also waits offshore while the side has lost its port in that campaign. A war that runs ahead of the real calendar gets a ship late, never early.
• Onward: the port is a depot like any other, so brigades deliver from it. A captured port's stock passes to its captor.
• Tracing: every landing, loading and delivery is recorded, and the faction's Port panel shows stock, cargo waiting offshore, ships at sea and recent movements, to its own side only.
• Recruitment: the only thing a general buys in the theater is spies. They cost a fixed price each and join the next day, up to a daily capacity that grows with the provinces and bases the faction holds.

Oil, shipping and money

The game has two economies. ZZCash is money: it pays for supply and spies. Oil is a physical stock that someone owns, moves along routes that can be cut, and becomes tradable only once it reaches market.

Money

• Every account is a general's own or a faction's treasury, and its balance is the sum of its ledger. Only the server writes to a ledger.
• In a campaign, each side spends and earns only from its war chest, opened at the fork with what the world treasury held then.
• Weapons fired or lost stay on the ledger as deployed or written off, so everything bought can be traced.

Oil in a campaign, each day

1. Oil stored at a site now held by a different faction is captured.
2. Fields and refineries produce for whoever controls them.
3. Pipelines carry it, but oil can't cross a province, or enter a site, held by a different faction.
4. Terminals load tankers. A lane through a contested choke is closed, and its share reroutes round the Cape. At a choke another faction holds, the holder takes 1% of the barrels as a toll.
5. What is left waits in the tanks; what doesn't fit is shut in.
6. Each side's oil war chest receives its war share of delivered oil and tolls. A held choke also pays a ZZCash toll on the other cargo passing it. Every 3.5 barrels credited scores a point.

Example: capturing Medina cuts the East-West pipeline, shutting in about 1 million barrels a day of Saudi oil and raising the campaign's oil price.

The world market: barrels are sold in sealed-bid, second-price auctions. The world is a standing bidder at the fundamental price: Brent, raised by the oil that running campaigns keep off the market. A campaign prices its own oil each day but has no market inside it yet.

What's public: site control and status, and the traffic through each choke. A faction's tanks, expected flow and oil report are its own.

Intelligence and fog of war

Each side sees the public map and its own forces in full, and the enemy only through exposure, trackers and spies. The server builds each general's view, so nothing hidden ever reaches the browser.

What each side sees

Trackers are a faction's sources that follow a person.

• Each works from a post with a range in km. A campaign plays its own copies, taken at the fork, set in the day's move: active or dormant, where they work, and whom they follow (never someone of their own side).
• When the quarry is visible and within range, the tracker gains contact and files a position report. Each report is off by an error that depends on the tracker's reliability grade (A–F).
• Gaining or losing contact, and every sighting, is posted on the faction's channel. Sightings build the faction's location database of last known positions.
• The oracle moves tracked people about their home towns each day, and can pin someone in place or make them vanish.

Spies (designed, not yet resolved): a general recruits spies and tasks up to a few networks at a front, a base or another faction.

• Watch brings one exact fact per report: the enemy's mission on a front, the package it committed, or one weapon stock at a base.
• Sabotage removes one missile, one interceptor, or delays one job.
• Both raise the network's exposure, and a base's security can catch a network.

Channels: a campaign has an open line for every seated general, and each faction has its own channel there. Each faction also has a central command shared across campaigns. Faction traffic never reaches the open line.

Scoring and the end of the war

The Red Sea campaign runs for 30 war days unless one side wins outright first. If it runs to the end, the highest cumulative score wins, and a tie is a draw.

Each day's score

• Provinces held: an ordinary province weighs 1. Aden, Jizan, Makkah, Al Madinah and Tabuk weigh 3 each.
• A held choke: Bab el-Mandeb pays 5 a day to the faction that holds it. A contested choke pays nobody.
• Oil: one point for every 3.5 barrels credited to the side's oil war chest.

Sudden death: the Shia win at once if they hold Makkah and Al Madinah while the Sunni hold none of the Saudi Red Sea shore from Jizan to Tabuk.

Stopping early: the commander can mark the campaign completed, and the score at that day stands.

Provinces don't change hands yet: that waits for battles and ground combat. Until then, each side's province points are the same every day, and only chokes and oil separate the sides.