The Broken Fleet

Venice, winter 1570. Nicosia has fallen and the Sultan claims Cyprus. You command the fleet of the Republic: build it in the Arsenal, find it rowers and biscuit, take it to sea, and decide where to fight.

The Broken Fleet is a documentary simulation of the war for Cyprus, 1570–1573, and the companion to La más alta ocasión, in which you hold the Holy League together as the Pope. Here you hold the galleys. The title is the Ottoman naval historian Kâtip Çelebi's heading for Lepanto, Sefer-i sınğın donanma: the campaign of the broken fleet. The League won the battle and lost the war; the Sultan rebuilt his fleet in a single winter.

Three layers.

• The Arsenal, in winter. Design your own galley classes (banks, men per bench, bow and broadside guns, soldiers, days of biscuit), lay them down, hire rowers and soldiers, pay the upkeep, and meet the League's quota of hulls.
• The campaign, at sea. Both sides give their orders at the same time, then they are carried out together. Fleets search for each other, miss each other, raid coasts and shelter under the guns of their harbours. Relieve Famagusta, join the allies at Messina, and do not meet the Sultan's main fleet alone.
• The battle, by squadrons. Wings, centre, reserve and the six galleasses, never single ships; four impulses of sealed orders on both sides. The Ottoman commanders follow a doctrine drawn from the sources, at three levels (Rookie, Professional, Expert) that differ only in how well they decide.

The sources disagree, and so does the game. Did Uluç Ali urge battle at the Ottoman council, as the Venetian Contarini wrote in 1572, or argue against it, as Peçevî and Kâtip Çelebi tell it? The game secretly draws a reading at the start and tells you after the battle which one you fought against. Every event card and the order of battle link to the passage on the source site Lepanto and the War for Cyprus (doi:10.5281/zenodo.23048980).

Know your ships. Public-domain plates of the galley, the lantern galley, the galleass, the galiot and the Ottoman fleet, with notes on what made a galleass a floating castle, in the game and in the strategy guide.

A benchmark for your command. The reckoning (Cyprus, the fleet that remains, the treasury, battles, Ottoman hulls sunk or taken, coasts raided, faith to the League, a separate peace) is compared with 3,600 bot games in the same scenario and against the same opponent. Freed rowers and enslaved people are counted, never scored.

• Three scenarios: 1571 (the year of the League), 1570–1573 (the whole war), 1572 (Modon and Navarino)
• Five save slots in your browser; 30–60 minutes per game
• Prototype 0: Venice only; the Ottoman side comes next. The numbers are provisional.