In post 2571, mykonian wrote:But wow, the game you talked about sounds and looks awesome. Tell us more!
Come to think of it, this might be up your alley. There's plenty of historical detail in the game.
It's designed for two to four players; however, it plays best with four because you then have two teams of two. You're not allowed to communicate strategy with your counterpart and in fact are encouraged to betray them if they are too far ahead of you. It behooves you and your counterpart to work together where possible to gain territory for your side, though, because that gets you points at the end of each turn. Anyway, the object of the game is to gain the most victory points by the end of the wars, and you do that by controlling territory each turn.
Each turn represents ten years of the Wars of the Roses. To start, players take turns -- based on turn order, which is in turn determined by how well you are doing in the game -- picking cards drawn from the deck. Each card is either a person (e.g., Bishop of Exeter, House of Tudor, Ship of Plymouth) or locale (e.g., London). Some cards provide income each turn, and others don't. You spend your income on one or more of (1) bribes of personae to either keep them on your side or take them away from an opponent, (2) armies to defend or attack a locale, and (3) a bribe to the Captain of Calais to gain additional power in a southeastern county.
Each item you own in a county represents the amount of control you have in that county. If your side controls the majority of the county, then all of that county's Parliament votes are given to your side; if your side controls the majority of Parliament votes, then your side is said to have won that decade. Some items (particularly personae) can be moved to different counties to help you gain control in other areas.
There's loads more detail, but that's the gist of the game. What is nice about it is that the only random factor is which cards get drawn each turn. Everything else is determined by players, so you win or lose by how good you are at strategy and reading your opponents. Good tactics can get you a lot of points but won't do much if you don't plan for the future.