District Guard Captain – Population and Disaster Management:

At the start of the game there will be a layout in pieces, placed on the city Crisis Map, by Control, described in tokens. This layout will represent the population of the city. Some districts will have more populated areas while others will have more space available.

During the Specialisation Phase all District Guard Captains will attend the Crisis Map table. Their role during the Specialisation Phase is to find the most optimal distribution of population and displaced refugees, in order to manage the clearing of infrastructure damaged by the crisis points which will arrive on the map, each turn. The Scientist specialisation is responsible for determining the location of the next crisis events and for distributing that information to the District Guard Captains before the next turn when the destruction will take place. If the Scientist team has managed to locate the next crisis points, the Guard Captains should know where the next crisis will take place, in order for them to take appropriate action. This information will take the form of hex map coordinates.

Distributing Population -

At the start of the game there will only be ‘population’ markers on each of the hexes within the city map. Each hex is referred to as a ‘hex block’ for the purposes of these rules, aka; a ‘city block’ for scale. Some areas will also be clear of population, following the starting layout rules. The Crisis Map will track the affect of each possible crisis on the population and infrastructure of the city. Crises, when they occur, will be centred upon a single hex grid coordinate, and based on the magnitude of each crisis, that will define a radius which affects either a smaller, or larger area.

Ideally, this information will have been passed to the Guard Captains by the Science team, or some subset of that information from the previous turn. In order to respond to the crises, the Guard Captain Players must locate the hex blocks that will be affected by each crisis and negotiate, amongst themselves and in reference to the Council’s mandate, the best outcome for the most people. There are a few rules dictating how population and refugees may be moved around the city;

1. Each hex can only ever hold a maximum of two tokens of any type.
2. A population token can be moved, once per turn to any adjacent hex block, that has room left to house it.
3. Population may be moved voluntarily, further than one hex block away from its origin in that turn, but if they do so, that token will be converted into a refugee token.
4. If a population token is ever forced to be move by a crisis point, or from lack of space, rather than being intentionally moved by the Guard Captain Player, then it will be converted into a refugee token regardless of the distance that it moved.
5. Refugee tokens can only be converted back to population tokens if they are moved, intentionally into an open space, which contains no unrest or, infrastructure damage tokens.

Avoiding Crisis Points -

When the Guard Captain Players become aware of a potential crisis, they can choose to move the population, out of the hex block where the crisis will take place. The population token is moved into any adjacent hex block, keeping the population movement rules in mind. Larger crises will affect a greater area, and so it may be prudent to move a population further than one hex, in order to clear them from the affected zone. The population movement rules, then dictate that any population token moved like this will be converted into a refugee token. The Guard Captain Players must try and run the balance between, creating refugees and leaving populations in peril. Any population that is still in the range of a particular crisis at the end of the Specialisation Phase will be affected by that crisis, and removed.

Each time that a hex block is hit with a crisis, that hex block will be given a number of infrastructure damage tokens. These tokens count towards the total number (two) of tokens allowed in each space. Minor crises will usually only create one infrastructure damage token per hex block, while more severe crises will create two at its centre with fewer on the outer hex blocks surrounding it. If a population token is still in an affected hex block when the crisis is active, if there is enough space, the infrastructure damage token will be added.

If the hex block is either at capacity or suffering a major crisis, the infrastructure damage tokens displace any number of population or refugee tokens present.

If a population token is displaced by a crisis, it becomes converted into a refugee token and moved to an adjacent hex block. If a refugee token is displaced, it becomes an unrest token and is moved to an adjacent hex block. If there is no space adjacent to the displaced hexes and either a refugee or population token must be moved, then the token is destroyed and removed from the map. Removal indicates destruction amongst the population due to the crisis.

Seeing as each hex block may only ever contain two tokens of any type, this may cause a ripple effect across the city. Guard Captain Players are advised to stay vigilant to any potential chain reactions which may occur.

When a refugee token is made to move involuntarily, they become an unrest token, indicating that the civil order where that token rests has broken down. Unrest tokens cannot be displaced or moved and if they otherwise would have been, are removed from the map instead.

If three or more refugee tokens are in adjacent hex blocks, they will be automatically converted into unrest tokens with the associated rules. If three or more adjacent hex blocks contain unrest tokens at the end of the Phase, then all affected unrest tokens are converted into infrastructure damage tokens. Please refer to the ‘Adjacency’ rules to determine whether or not any hex blocks may be affected.

The Affect of Unrest and Population Death -

If a district contains unrest tokens, or has suffered population death in the previous turn, it can affect the morale, as well as taxation potential, for the entire district. In this case Guard Captain Players should expect to hear from their Councillors as it will have ramifications beyond the Crisis Map.

Catastrophic Failure -

If three adjacent hex blocks are fully damaged, i.e. contain two infrastructure damage tokens each, then each subsequent turn where that continues to be the case, an additional infrastructure damage token will be added to all adjacent hex blocks. This represents the city being slowly swallowed into the sinkhole. Please consult the ‘adjacency’ rules to see what may count for the purposes of this ruling.

Clearing Rubble and Rebuilding -

Infrastructure damage tokens can be cleared at the beginning of the Specialisation phase, by moving a population token into a hex block containing at least one damage token. When doing so, one infrastructure damage token is removed per population token that is moved into place, in order to replace it. This means that even if the hex block is at capacity, this is a valid action due to the fact of the tokens replacing the existing token rather than adding to the total number of tokens on the hex block. Refugees cannot clear infrastructure damage tokens.

Adjacency -

For the purposes of both refugees going into unrest and for the spread of damage under the ‘catastrophic failure’ rules, adjacency is considered to be happening when three or more hexes meet the occurrence’s other requirements, while also having at least two of their sides in contact with the other hexes meeting that criteria. Adjacency is calculated at the end of each Specialisation Phase and the effect will be applied before the start of the next Specialisation Phase.

Funding and Civil Orders -

The way a Guard Captain Player interacts with the Crisis Map is to fill out their Civil Order Form. These will be available either at team tables or at the Crisis Map and will have sections covering movement from one hex coordinate to another as well as a notes section for context giving. These forms may be delivered to Control anonymously, and the outcome will only be revealed upon its execution in the Specialisation Phase. The amount of actions allowed on the Crisis Map in a turn will be determined by the amount of funding given by the Player’s District Councillor. If there is not enough funding for a District to carry out all of the orders listed, then Control will execute the actions on the Crisis Map, in numerical order, top to bottom, until the funds are exhausted. The other action will be discarded, that turn.

Jurisdiction -

Civil Orders are only valid if the origin point is within either the Player’s own District, or originates in a non-District slum (uncoloured spaces on the map). Orders may move tokens into other districts, so long as they originate on their own colour or an uncoloured space.