Circus Maximus

Version 1.5.0. Two games on one circuit.

How to begin

The game opens on the Stable. Buy four horses, choose a car, and spend twelve points across the driver's four skills. Hispani are quick and spend themselves early; Thessali are slow and are still running on the last lap; Cappadocians turn inside anything on the circuit. A light car is fast and comes apart like kindling; a heavy one survives what it starts. Scythes on the hubs cost you speed and give you a weapon.

You may also put money on the race before it runs. When you are ready, press To the carceres. To try the sand instead, press A bout on the sand.

Controls

Every control is a button or a slider; nothing needs the keyboard. The board can be dragged to pan and zoomed with the wheel or a pinch.

Playing with other people

Set the table on the Stable screen: from one driver up to eight. Each seat takes the tablet in turn and seals it, and the panel is cleared between seats so nobody sees what the last man wrote. The turn resolves only when every seat has written. The bout does the same for two people, and each picks his own arms before stepping out.

Turn order

A turn has three parts. First every driver writes a tablet in secret: a speed, a line, the whip, and a tactic against one named rival. Then the tablets are revealed together. Then the turn is resolved over twelve impulses, during which cars advance, drift toward the line they asked for, and meet each other. Nobody reacts to anybody; everything on the tablets was written before any of it was known.

Movement

Speed is measured in lengths a turn, and the tablet is written to the quarter length. You may change speed only inside the band your horses allow: up by your team's acceleration, down by its braking. Tucked in behind another car you are out of the wind and may hold a length more than your band.

A space on a straight costs one length. A space round a turn costs more the further out you are - the outside lane is nearly half as long again as the rail. That is the whole trade: the rail is the shortest way round, and the slowest through the meta.

Combat or scoring

Entering the first space of a turn, you make one control check against the safe speed for the lane you are actually in. At or under it, you are safe. Over it, you may run wide and lose two lanes, or lose the car altogether. Handling holds the line; a lash across the face makes the check half again as likely to fail.

Beside another car you may ram him - scythed wheels bite much harder and jar your own axle much less - whip his driver, or cut across and force him a lane wide, into the outer wall if he has nowhere to go. A wrecked driver is tied to his reins and dragged until he can cut them; once he is on the sand, anything that runs over him will probably kill him.

In the bout, both men write a card: ground, and a blow. The gauge has five bands from touching range to out of reach, and every armature has a minimum reach as well as a maximum. A man who has a reach at the distance they were at and loses it as the other comes inside gets one blow on the way in. Keep giving ground and the barrier arrives at your back.

Winning conditions

The race is over when three teams are home. First place takes the palm and the largest purse, and the season table is scored ten, six, four, two, one down the field. A bout is won by still standing.

Losing conditions

You lose a race by being wrecked, run over, or simply beaten. You lose a driver outright if he is killed under the wheels or dragged too far, and the yard hires a new one with new skills. A beaten gladiator raises a finger and appeals to the editor: he must reach a bar of 14, shifted by the editor's temper and by how well he has fought. Failing it, the thumb goes to the throat.

Saving and restarting

Save the day writes the season and the race in progress into browser storage under a single key. Resume reads it back, and the race continues exactly where it stopped - the same field, the same generator, the same race. Starting a new season is simply a matter of reloading the game. A specific season can be replayed by adding #seed= and a number to the address.