Over the summer I played a board game in which players took on the role of 19th(?) century European powers, and accumulated score by owning 'control points' in various geographic regions around the world. It was an extremely fun game mechanically, though the primary scoring mechanic of oppressing/eradicating indigenous populations was questionable.
Here are the salient features I remember from my one day of playing:
- Game is divided into three 'wars', each of which has 5-6 rounds of player turns
- At the start of each war, players bid to decide which 'alliance' each player is part of
- Players send their armies or population abroad to colonize such areas North America, India, The German Confederation, etc. Also to seize (partial) control of these areas from players in the opposing alliance.
- Combat is resolved by rolling two dice and subtracting the high number from the low, plus some modifiers for army size/navy/technology
I can remember all sorts of details, but the name escapes me. I think 'empire' was in there somewhere, and possibly 'war', but these are probably the least helpful terms when looking for obscure board games. Could anyone help me figure out the name of this game?
EDIT:
Additional info about the board and game pieces.
The board itself contained a map and several spaces for book-keeping. The map was dominated by Europe in the upper-right-hand corner, with the Americas to the left (divided into North America in brown, the Caribbean in purple, and South America in green). Africa, India, and the East-indies in boxes along the bottom.
Player pieces were tiles color coded by empire, but otherwise mostly the same. Infantry armies were represented by two crossed rifles superimposed on an early 1800s infantry hat (tall with a brim and a feather), Forts by a start fort, and navies by tallships; all were square any ~2 cm on a side. There were also circular tokens for the control points, which showed the heraldic device of the empire in question and were maybe 1 cm in diameter.
There were also a large number of tiles players could buy, such as Ally Tiles ('Gauchos', 'Saxony', 'Cossacks'), Technology Tiles ('Logistics', 'Press-ganging', 'War office' ), and Company Tiles ('East-India Company', 'Baltic Company', 'Sugar Company'), which conferred various benefits. These were larger and bore pictures representing the tile's benefit.
