A game of Baltic Empires lasts up to 8, 12, or 16 Rounds, chosen before starting the game, but can also end sooner if a player wins a sudden death victory (as described in the previous article). This article will describe what happens during a Round, and how players can manipulate the turn order in each phase, as this is a key element of Baltic Empires. The full details of each phase will only be briefly touched upon here, as they will each be the focus of later articles.

Each Round consist of 6 phases that must be conducted in this order:

1. Income Phase
   Players simultaneously collect the Goods and Thalers generated by their Provinces.
2. Maritime Trade Phase
   Players may simultaneously trade some of their Goods for money or rare (and therefore more useful) Trade Resources.
   The Mercantile Hegemon gets a bonus here that will allow them to gain additional Trade Resources, representing their ability to get better prices for their wares.
3. Finances Phase
   Players have the option to borrow money from the bank, and must repay old loans and pay upkeep for their army and fleet. This phase is NOT simultaneous but is conducted in an order determined by the Mercantile Hegemon, potentially allowing later players to base their decisions upon what an earlier player does.
4. Production Phase
   Players spend their Goods and Thalers to produce new Workshops, Cities, and Customs Houses to improve future income, recruit new units for their military, or hire Dramatis Personae to gain access to their unique skills. This phase is NOT simultaneous but is conducted in an order determined by the Production Hegemon, again allowing a later player to e.g. recruit specific units in response to an earlier player’s choices.
5. War Phase
   Players move and fight with their military units and can spend money to get temporary assistance from independent powers. This phase is NOT simultaneous but is conducted in an order determined by the Military Hegemon, which is often crucial to determining victory or defeat in battle.
6. Hegemony Status Phase
   Here players check to see who will have the status of Mercantile, Production, and Military Hegemons for the upcoming Round, based on their current standings on the Mercantile, Production and Military Tracks.

The Hegemony Tracks are an essential part of the game, both for determining victory and controlling the order of actions during each phase. Players keep a constant tally of their rankings on the Hegemony Tracks, which can be seen here on the left (prototype art only). A Power’s ranking on each of these tracks is the sum of their controlled infrastructure or units associated with that track (Cities and Customs Houses for the Mercantile Track, Workshops for the Production Track, and units for the Military Track), as well as any modifiers that are specific to that Power or from Dramatis Personae cards they may have attached to their Court. The Dramatis Personae cards are described in detail in another article, so here I will just describe them as characters you can “buy”, who then bestow certain bonuses or other advantages to your power. Being the Hegemon on a track means that you are superior to the other Powers in that field, and are able to use that superiority to control the turn order and gain additional advantages.

The main advantage to being Hegemon is that you are able to determine the order in which players act during the relevant phases of each Round, which has a number of different strategic implications:  

In the Finances Phase the Mercantile Hegemon decides the turn order, representing how a strong merchant power might be able to use their trade connections abroad to gather information on (and take advantage of) the financial situation of their opponents. In this phase it is almost always best to go last, as you will then know if your opponents are borrowing money and/or are going bankrupt and forfeiting their loans before making your own decision on whether to borrow money (with heavy interest) or not this Round. If your mean-spirited and aggressive neighbor is suddenly borrowing heavily, they might be planning something, and it could be prudent for you to borrow money yourself so you can strengthen your defenses in the upcoming Production phase. It is cheaper in the long run to repay a loan with interest than to try to rebuild your country after a devastating invasion (but cheaper still not to fight a war at all!).

In the Production Phase the Production Hegemon decides the turn order, representing how a richer and more economically developed power will be able to outspend their opponents and reorient their investments and production plans at shorter notice. In this phase there are both advantages and disadvantages to going last, so being able to choose when everybody takes their turn is especially useful. By taking your turn after another power you will know what they produced and thus be able to react to that, but by taking your turn before them you have the option to recruit one of the available Dramatis Personae cards before anyone else can do so.  Each Round, 5 Dramatis Personae cards are randomly drawn from a deck, and these will be the only ones available that Round. These have a wide range of effects and can be highly useful in specific situations, so being able to snatch one before your opponents can be crucial. 

To continue the example from above, you may want to produce AFTER your meanspirited neighbor to see if they do in fact have any aggressive plans, and if so, which provinces will be within range of their newly produced units, so you don’t waste resources trying to defend everything. The saved resources could then be spent producing a Dramatis Personae card that will be very helpful for your power in the long term, and as you suspect one of the other players is also interested in that card, you decide to take your turn in the Build Phase before them. Your Hegemon status therefore allowed you to get the best of both worlds in this phase, by manipulating the order in which players acted.

In the War Phase the Military Hegemon decides the turn order, representing how a power with a larger military, better commanders and/or better military infrastructure will have the initiative over weaker powers. Being Military Hegemon is perhaps the most useful of the three Hegemon titles, as it allows you to either strike vulnerable provinces before your enemies can react or reinforce threatened provinces before your enemies can strike them. It can be very satisfying to see your rivals first wear themselves down in bloody battles against each other over a rich province, and then take your turn last and move all your units into that province to finish off the remaining enemy units, secure in the knowledge that none of your (now empty) provinces will be vulnerable to attack this Round.  The downside to being the Military Hegemon is that it can be a costly enterprise, since the main way to increase you position on that track is having a lot of units on the map, and this dramatically drives up the amount of money you have to pay for upkeep in the Finances Phase. This is the exact opposite of the other tracks, where the investments that increase your position (Cities, Customs Houses and Workshops) all make you richer. 

Using Hegemon Status as a diplomacy tool

The advantages of being able to determine turn order within a phase should now be clear, but wily players will quickly discover the additional diplomatic advantages Hegemon status can give you. In Baltic Empires players are free to talk and offer deals involving movement and combat, turn sequence, or even transfers of money or control over provinces. You might therefore find yourself in a situation where your decisions on turn order will be of paramount importance to some of the other players, but only of limited importance to your own power. You can then use your Hegemon status to extract money or favors from the other players, potentially changing the course of the game dramatically (although it should be noted that long-term deals are not binding, so beware of betrayal!).

A good example of this could be if you, as Poland, are the Production Hegemon, and have a tense relationship with Russia. Meanwhile Denmark and Sweden have been in constant (and costly) conflict, but have reached an uneasy truce with neither side really trusting the other. The only thing in this situation you really want to know is whether Russia builds forces on the border with Poland or not, so you want to take your Production turn after Russia. The order of the other powers is of little importance to Poland but of huge importance to each of them. Denmark wants to recover and spend its goods and money to improve their economy by producing Workshops and Cities, but cannot risk doing so before they know if Sweden will uphold their deal or take one last stab at conquering them. Sweden is in the same situation and on top of this they fear being attacked in the back by Russia, and so also want to know how Russia´s production turn is spent. Russia on the other hand realize they won’t be able to surprise you (Poland) with a military buildup, but could do so against Sweden if they go after them, and also have a strong desire to snatch a certain Dramatis Personae card before Denmark takes it, since it’s very useful to both of them. Thus, all the other players have very specific wishes for how they want the Production Phase to play out, and all of them are compatible with Poland´s own plans (going last). You could therefore offer to arrange the turn order to suit the highest bidder, or demand some other concessions such as a territorial exchange or a (non-binding) military alliance. Similar deals can be made in the Military phase, especially if you are a weaker power like Prussia with potentially less interest in territorial expansion.

With this article I hope to have explained what happens in a Round of Baltic Empires, and how despite utilizing simple mechanics the game offers a relatively deep multi-player experience with a lot of interconnected choices and bases for diplomacy. In the next article we will look in more detail at the economics of the game and the Income, Maritime Trade, and Finances phases.

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