Pax Romana: The Ancient Mediterranean World

This game just came in the mail last night.

Quoting from the GMT Games website:

"PAX ROMANA covers the Europe from 300 BC through the end of the 1st century BC, when control of the Mediterranean was in a state of flux with four empires possible. And it does so with a scale and system that is filled with decision-making tension but also highly accessible and easy to play. The emphasis is on strategic operations, from raising armies to colonizing outlying areas, to fighting barbarian incursions, to maintaining political stability at home.
PAX uses a unique marker-oriented play sequence that provides surprise and opportunity, plus a deck of unusual cards that provide the historical background of events and calamities within which the players must operate.

Each turn represents 25 years, with the movement of forces and the shifting of power occurring at a proportionately very large scale. Combat takes place throughout the game, but they, too, represent ongoing conflict as much as individual battles. But even here, subtleties are built-in: force composition matters – armies overbalanced by cheap light infantry suffer penalties, while cavalry can single-handedly make the difference between winning and losing – and knowing when and where to make a stand and when to withdraw to safer places can literally decide the fate of a power for an entire generation."

The contents of the game includes:

Three 1/2 inch & one 5/8 inch Counter Sheets
55 Event Cards
One 22"x34" Mapsheet
2 Player Aid Cards (11"x17")
Standard Rules Book
Advanced Rules Book
2 Combat Ratio Cards
2 6-sided dice

This monster which can accommodate 2-4 players will take at least 10-15 hours to play per scenario.

Oooh, intriguing.

I bought an interesting Michael Grant book titled 'The Mediterranean World' a few weeks ago.