Merchant Prince

Overt attacks against other players can destroy one's popularity and influence, but the game offers a thieves' den where covert options include arson, rumor-mongering, and assassination.

The games are won after a predetermined number of turns (years) by the player with the highest net worth, including the value of bribed senators and cardinals.

The games begin with a letter from the player's wealthy uncle Niccolo announcing that he has died and left the majority of his estate to his daughters.

Support from a majority of the council at the decennial election allows one to hold the office of doge, controlling other appointments and Venice's taxation.

[17] Popularity can be improved by donations to the church, by throwing lavish masquerades, or by funding major works of sculpture, painting, and architecture.

For the devious, impatient, or wrathful, "den of iniquities" permits players to burn others' warehouses and homes, destroy reputations with rumormongering,[n 3] or to assassinate senators, cardinals, doges, and popes.

"[29] The player must send out trade or military units to explore the world, facing pirates, brigands, and storms at sea and in the desert,[30] or negotiate with the other families to purchase more accurate maps from them.

[19] The time and effort exploration takes is somewhat compensated by the occasional discovery of extremely valuable relics—such as a head of John the Baptist—that are sold to the cathedral at Venice.

[36] The commodities include Venetian glass, French wine (as "grog"), relics from the Holy Land,[23] African gold[broken anchor] and ivory, Chinese silk,[37] and Indonesian spices,[7][n 4] though not salt or slaves.

The cities include major centers such as Venice and Khanbaliq (misspelled "Kahnbalig"),[4] along with oddities like Antioch and imaginary locales like Shangri-La (as "Xiangrala").

[39] Goods become extremely valuable in times of crisis: during interdicts from the pope (driving away pious traders), outbreaks of plague (which usually begin a decade or two into the game), and wartime.

The Venetian–Genoese Wars, corsairs,[21] Black Plague, condottieri, and indulgences appear[43] and the players' actions may instigate an early Reformation,[21] recreate the ignoble Fourth Crusade, or mirror the struggles of the Medicis, travels of Marco Polo, or precepts of Machiavelli.

[42] On historical maps, the rounding of Africa and assaults on Turkey, Persia, and India may be achieved by the players or AI ahead of the Portuguese, but there is no effect on the prosperity of Venice.

[21] Game mechanics push players into adopting a coasting trade for galleys, large caravans and convoys for important routes, and working for the good of all Venetians in public while covertly bribing officials and sabotaging rivals.

They were the Hanse (the Hanseatic League in the North and Baltic seas), the Mediterranean (a Venetian family), the Orient (a Shanghainese trader in the Far East), Marco Polo (along the Silk Road), and a fantasy treatment of Atlantis[7] (represented as a single island city in the Atlantic).

[45] The scenarios were not differentiated apart from their maps, however: players continued to see Venetian gondolas and St Mark's in "Atlantis" and "compete[d] to become the Doge of China or the Pope of Asia".

Ed Pike credited his rereading of Machiavelli's Prince during the 1992 US presidential election, along with post-Watergate American politics generally, for his concept of the game.

The graphics were improved, along with aspects of the interface that (e.g.) permitted easier grouping of units, clarified the trade status of cities, and displayed the routes of long-distance ships.

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA
Canaletto 's Entrance to the Grand Canal ( c. 1730 ), a variant of which serves as the Venetian screen in Merchant Prince II .
The world map from Ptolemy 's Geography , rediscovered by the Byzantine monk Maximus Planudes c. 1300 . Note the largely accurate treatment of the Mediterranean , while Scandinavia disappears, Scotland is placed at a right angle to England , Sri Lanka swells to a larger size than India , and the placement of the western shore of the World Ocean remains uncertain.
An accurate map of the world in a historical game of Machiavelli , along with a series of the maps bequeathed to players at game start by their deceased uncles. Note that, while Italy remains consistently accurate, distant features such as India and Japan shift, disappear, or become separate continents. Even nearby Anatolia sometimes mutates as well. The effect upon gameplay is pronounced when such maps are the only guide to exploration of randomly-generated worlds.
The player graph from a game of Machiavelli , showing its progress up to 1343. Relics found during exploration gave the blue player an early lead. An alliance with red then permitted a rapid expansion following his election as both doge and pope . The descent of Italy into plague and war permitted red to start catching up, while the expense of early feuding has kept yellow and green from growing at the same speed.