Turn 21

901 - 905 a.d.

Greetings and salutations!

FEES & LEVIES:

BASE COST + PER BL POINT

$ 2 + $ 1

For example, if you have a BL of 3, it will cost you $5 a turn. The maximum cost is $5 a turn. Turns are bi-monthly.

NEWS

Starting with this turn, 21, technology backslide will be ON. What this means to you, is you probably will want to start investing HEAVILY (relative term) into your University, or you may soon find yourself losing Tech Levels. There are a few of you who have been making a goodly amount of investments on a regular basis, but generally if you have less than a couple of hundred gold invested, then you’ll want to start investing more real soon.

Also, trade has been cut back with this turn as well.

CLARIFICATIONS

If you are seeing this letter on the site, then generally turns are 3-7 days away from getting to the players. Please do not bombard the GM with questions (you won’t get an answer anyway) until you actually get your stat sheet.

Important! Many of you are using later versions of the rulebook when preparing your turn; please remember that this campaign still uses the 5.7.1 rules edition. This shows up most often when a player converts Agro to gold or NFP! Remember that under 5.7.1, 2 Agro converts to 1 gold for an investment or 5 Agro converts to 1 NFP for a Megalithic Construction Project.

Leaders. I know that I’ve made this point before in this game, but some of you are still not getting the message. There are a number of different leaders that players can have. The LP designation for a leader is one that may currently be a Lieutenant, but is part of the royal bloodline, and therefore should be the first ones promoted to Prince/Princess, before activating another member of the royal line as a P leader. Also, in the case where a player may have a K & Q leaders, then, the 2nd leader listed is the actual Heir, with the various P leaders listed behind, as next in line for the throne. With all that said (and it has been said before) several players made mistakes promoting various persons of royal blood this turn. When these mistakes were made, it required a LOYALTY check to be made by the GM for EACH leader that was passed over for promotion, or for EACH leader that was displaced by the promotion. In some cases , leaders remained loyal (but their stats may have been reduced somewhat, as the King has just undercut whatever authority they had), but in a few cases they didn’t. I had to deal with 3 DFs this turn, because of players getting a bit sloppy. You can always have the GM put the royal line/leaders on “AUTO Promote Leaders” if you wish, and this note will appear on your stat sheet. This will generally (95% of the time) eliminate those DFs, but will a player will lose control somewhat of who is in what position. The choice is yours.

One last thing, for all you newbies (and some of you longer term players, who are still missing the boat): NFP Total & Total Avail (Gold). These are the totals available for your empire. Do not apply your 10% Census to these figures -- it’s already there.

The next turn is due 31 August, 2002.