Quest for the Nile
Decide where the Europeans go next.
The caravan assembles
Cargo waits offshore, carriers demand payment, and residents must decide what they can afford to supply. The European representative wants cheap services and a large cargo. Bargain with him as one of six local participants whose interests can conflict.
Choose one human role for solo play, or several to share this device. The computer controls the other roles. Each character has two actions per turn, over at most four rounds.
Play online with other playersThe playable journey begins at Bagamoyo and continues to Kanyenye. The intervening river and mountain stages are planned. Characters, quantities, contracts, and alternative outcomes are fictional.
This saved game uses an earlier Bagamoyo ruleset. Finish it under those rules, or start a new game to use editable counteroffers.
Speke’s account supplies reported encounters and chronology; his judgments about African participants are his perspective. The game’s decisions and effects are invented. Read the source.
The European representative
A fictional negotiator managing a limited budget. His offers and replies below are invented game dialogue.
Competing local interests
Use the action buttons to move. Numbers mark characters; the gold outline marks the current location. This is an illustrated fictional landscape.
What is needed for departure?
Journey journal
How the Bagamoyo negotiations work
Six African participants each get two actions per turn over four rounds. The European representative is controlled by the computer. He offers low rates, wants eight cargo bundles, and demands four or six food bundles. Type the trade-good amount you want for wages, food, or landing, or propose your own cargo and food quantities. Ask for better terms, accept his reply, or refuse services. Every action and reply has a report and Continue button.
The carriers’ spokesperson counters the advance, accepts a rate, then recruits. Refusing work gives leverage. The boat owner and seller can counteroffer or withhold services. The representative reacts to refusals, urgency, remaining funds, and delay. Waiting in port costs one spendable trade good per unfinished round.
The warehouse keeper earns fees from packing, retaining all eight bundles, and arranging credit. His full-cargo objective conflicts with the carriers’ and healer’s safe-load objectives. Safe capacity is six. Overloading costs one health and loses safety guarantees; the healer can call a stoppage. Ask the representative to permit lighter cargo. Propose how many cargo bundles to take and how much food to supply. He can accept that package, counter with different quantities, or concede as resistance and delays mount. Accepted packages become the departure terms; a counteroffer waits for your acceptance. The warehouse keeper must then actually store two bundles.
Extra food sales may deplete local stores. Exclusive purchasing rights help the seller but reduce autonomy; the delegate can revoke them. Merchant credit funds the expedition and pays the warehouse keeper a fee but creates debt that the delegate opposes. Computer characters follow these interests and can refuse agreements, rather than automatically cooperate.
Departure requires landed and packed cargo, willing paid carriers, an accepted load, the demanded food, water, health at least four, and local consent. Fair wages and safety remain separate personal objectives. Not everyone can win: retaining all eight bundles conflicts with a safe six-bundle departure. Ending in port may still preserve local interests.
After departure and outcome review, continue to Kanyenye. Two food are used during the intervening journey; remaining expedition resources carry forward and players take new local roles. The river and mountain stages are planned.