Yarmouk

Syria, 634. Six Roman cities stand on the road from Bosra to Antioch, and behind them the emperor is gathering everything he has.

Yarmouk - The Siege is a watercolour strategy game of the Muslim conquest of Roman Syria. You command one host on one long road. At every city you first break its army in open country, then find a way through its walls before the relief army arrives.

The campaign

• Six cities, two roads. Bosra, then Damascus or Fahl, Emesa or Baalbek, Qinnasrin or Latakia, Aleppo or Caesarea, and at the end Antioch. Whichever road you take, the emperor's whole strength is waiting on the Yarmouk.
• No two cities alike. Each is rolled with its own traits: a moat, an iron gate, a sworn garrison, a starving one, Ghassanid allies riding close.
• The war council. When a city falls, spend the plunder on lasting improvements and new tactics, then choose the next road. Something is usually met on the way.
• Veterans. Men who live through a fight march on with you.
• Three lives. A fight is lost if your general falls or your camp is overrun. The host can bear two defeats. The third ends the campaign.

Four ways into a city

• Over the wall: ladders, with archers to sweep the battlements.
• Through the gate: a ram under the murder holes, or a sortie caught with the portcullis up.
• Through the wall: mangonels to batter it down, or sappers beneath it.
• With a purse: a gatekeeper has his price when the garrison's resolve runs low.

A relief army is always on its way, so a siege cannot be waited out.

Your host

Swordsmen to hold the line and climb the ladders. Spearmen to stop a cavalry charge dead. Shieldmen to cover the men around them from arrows. Archers, horsemen, and the mubarizun, champions who cleave two foes at a stroke. Your general fights among them, and men near him fight harder.

Against you stand Roman footmen, bowmen, pikemen, guardsmen and cataphracts, and in every citadel a strategos.

Controls

• A / D or click: move your general
• 1 to 9: recruit
• Z / X / C: fall back, hold, assault
• Tab: choose who the orders are for
• Q / E: aim a volley or a bombardment, then click where it should fall
• W / R: sound the rally, bribe a gatekeeper
• T / F / G: shield wall, fire arrows, war cry (learned at the war council)
• Space: pause. Esc: menu. F11: fullscreen

The game is played with keyboard and mouse. A campaign is saved between fights.

Running it

Windows, one file, nothing to install: download yarmouk-windows-standalone.exe and run it. The game is not code-signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway.

A note on the history

The road follows the order in which the cities of Syria were fought for, and the named battles (Marj al-Suffar, the Yarmouk, the Iron Bridge) stand where they belong on it. The rest is a game: the walls, the numbers and the events on the road are invented, and the general is no one in particular.