I didn't have an opponent, so my task was to sail a frigate between two rocks with the wind coming at me from 90 degrees, aka on my beam. In the photo, the ship started several inches to the left of its present position, facing to the right of the screen.

Another game I got to try (albeit briefly) at SDHistCon was Captaincy, by John Carnahan, covering small-scale naval warfare from the 16th century to the Napoleonic wars with an emphasis on the handling of your ship.

Anyway, that's all beyond the scope of the game! But it did get me thinking about what games about social forces model, and what abstract measures like victory points represent. Congrats to Akar on a great design, and I look forward to playing it when it comes out.

And yet, although Egypt today is a very unequal society in terms of wealth and power, different classes interact socially on a much more equal footing. The semi-feudal deference the poor show the rich, which you can still see in India, is much less pronounced.

If Egypt had dalits, it would be really difficult to imagine movement as militant and powerful as India's emerging in Nasser's bureaucratic authoritarian system, even though Nasser himself was not of the traditional elite.

I think it's fair to say Nehru was very much a man of his class/caste - yet his very personal commitment to democracy opened the door for all kinds of mechanisms that empowered the lower castes.

Now the game doesn't handle post-independence politics - with complications including democratic coalitions and schedule caste and land reform - but it did get me thinking a bit about what measuring social forces in games.

By participating in the struggle, we get a chance to shape the nature of Indian independence. "Nehru" here is the historical outcome, which reflects an upper-caste worldview.

Now, eventually the British will start to really step on our toes, and the 1857 rebellion will occur. We did not play this far, but after the rebellion the independence struggle will begin.

The shudras and dalits at first are locked out of the bigger political picture a bit - they're just trying to make ends meet. But if we squeeze them, ie, if I really need cheap labor to get my temple built, they have the chance either to convert or to resist and ultimately to organize.