Imperial Fever: Great Power Competition in the Late 19th Century

Imperial Fever: Great Power Competition in the Late 19th Century is a deckbuilding game for three to four players that recreates great power competition in the period between 1881 and 1915. Players will vie for world dominance as they take on the roles of the United Kingdom, France, the Central Empires (Germany and Austria-Hungary), and the Emergent Powers (the USA and Japan). These powers compete across several interlinked domains, including the naval arms race, military expansion and diplomacy in Europe, power projection in key international theaters, and colonial expansion. This was an era in which the race for hegemony became an end in itself, with entire peoples and national industries consumed by petty competition, eventually resulting in colonial exploitation and the outbreak of WW1. This game does not excuse or glorify the behavior of the player factions but rather seeks to present and understand the perverse incentives that drove them to act in this way.

The game features a unique approach to this complex and important period of world history, including the following innovative aspects:

• A deckbuilding mechanism that will allow players to pursue different strategies and model escalation of global competition.
• A variety of other mechanics, including area majority, push your luck, tug of war, technology tracks, and set collection.
• Competition between players in different areas: national prestige, military power, naval dominance, colonial expansion, and key strategic areas.
• International tensions that may culminate in the outbreak of the First World War.
• A wide range of political agendas that will allow players to choose among different paths to victory.
• A rich Event deck that poses additional challenges to players, ranging from international conflicts to political mishaps at home.
• The influence of non-player powers such as Russia, China, Holland, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal.
• The full game is playable in under four hours, once players are reasonably familiar with the rules.

ASYMMETRIC POWERS

Each Power starts with a slightly asymmetric hand of cards: The UK hand is the most versatile, France is stronger in colonial expansion and diplomacy, the Central Powers’ hand allows for rapid military growth, and the Emergent Powers’ hand reflects the economic and industrial potential of the USA and Japan at the time.

Each Power also has a different play style, with varying weaknesses and strengths:

• The UK is strongest at sea, but its army is weak and overextended to protect a vast empire.
• France is good at establishing colonies but lacks an exclusive key area to exert influence over.
• The Central Powers have the strongest army but may easily lag behind the UK in the naval race and France in the colonial race.
• The Emergent Powers have exclusive backyard key areas to control and must plan for wars against non-player powers, but they do not have access to European diplomacy or to the colonial race outside the Pacific.

Power asymmetry ensures replayability, since the experience of playing the game varies greatly depending on the power you choose. Mastering each power’s playing style takes several games. Also, strategies are interdependent: if the Central Powers commit to the naval race, the UK will be forced to devote resources to their fleet and will probably need to establish alliances with other naval powers, such as France or Japan. Similarly, if France concentrates on contesting the Triple Alliance’s military superiority, the Central Powers may take advantage of the opening and try to get the upper hand in colonial expansion. In general terms, each player should make sure that they stay ahead in the area they are best at, while trying to do as well as possible in the other areas, and always with a view to what the other players are doing or failing to do, but there is no single, preordained path to victory.

COMPETITION, NOT CONFRONTATION

Imperial Fever is a game of historical simulation that follows in the wake of Churchill, Pericles, and  Versailles 1919. Like those games, the main focus is not on military operations but rather on diplomatic and political conflicts. Players compete for supremacy in the military, naval, diplomatic, colonial, and economic spheres but without resorting to open warfare between one another.

There is no direct military confrontation between the players because there were no wars between these powers in the time period covered by the game. Instead, a game of Imperial Fever ends if such a war, the First World War, breaks out. However, history does not need to repeat itself, and the game may end without the First World War breaking out.

While there is no direct military confrontation, conflicts will often arise between players, most notably when two players try to seize the same colony. Players will also compete to control the five Naval Zones and China and will struggle to attract minor countries to their coalitions: the French-led Entente and the Triple Alliance led by the Central Powers.

As explained above, players may not go to war against each other, but armed conflict is reflected by the need to conduct military actions to assert control over colonies. Additionally, each player Power has at least one war to fight with non-player powers, including the Sino-French and Sino-Japanese wars, the Afghan war, the Spanish-American war, the Russo-Japanese war, and the Austro-Serbian war. There may be no direct confrontation in Imperial Fever, but there is plenty of conflict and tension.

COLONIAL STRIFE

The period from 1881 to 1915 witnessed the frenzied race by European powers to colonize Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Vast areas so far unexplored by European countries were claimed and subdued in a few decades, often by quite brutal methods. As a result, local powers were overthrown, artificial boundaries were established, and whole populations were snatched from their traditional way of life and thrust into an alien notion of modernity. Members of one ethnic group were split into colonies established by different European countries, while rival groups were thrown together into artificial political entities. Most postcolonial civil wars and conflicts in Africa, Asia, and Oceania can be explained by the haphazard and heavy-handed scramble for colonies by European powers at the turn of the 20th century.

The main European powers embarked on colonial expansion under the guise of humanitarianism, but the drive behind this mindless race was originally economic, since European powers needed not only natural resources but most importantly captive markets for their manufactured products. However, economic considerations were soon forgotten and replaced by the jingoist notion that national prestige was dependent on the size of overseas empires.

In Imperial Fever, European powers may be initially compelled to enter the colonial race for the resources but will soon find themselves trying not to lag behind in the prestige that colonies offer. Colonial policy is also reflected in the game. When colonies are established, players will be tempted to deplete their resources, even at the expense of losing some prestige, like Belgium did in the Congo, but there is always the choice of a less brutal exploitation, or even to invest in the colonies’ infrastructures. The latter is a path that European powers rarely took, but the game makes it a viable option, a short-term cost that will potentially be rewarded in the future.

Components:

• One 34” x 22” mounted game board
• 160 playing cards (Action, Event, Colony, and Agenda cards)
• 182 wooden pieces
• One full-color countersheet
• Eight double-sided player aids
• Four double-sided player mats
• Six 6-sided dice
• One rulebook

Players: 1-4 (full solitaire system included)

Game Designer: Carlos Márquez Linares
Game Developer: Joe Dewhurst