Canton

In the year 1375, the Grand Mandarin of Canton issues a decree, whereby the merchant of the Chinese Empire who manages to earn the most through trading around the world will be appointed Grand Chamberlain. Those who do not succeed will be forbidden from returning to Canton, lest they be beheaded.

Canton is a strategy game with action elements and a focus on trading. The game puts four players against each other on a world map that spans from Canton itself to Venice, and each player controls one merchant and three marauders. The goal is to earn more money than the other three players in at least nine cities of the world. Merchants and marauders are moved in turns on the map, and marauders can be used to attack enemy merchants or other marauders. These attacks are resolved as simple sword fights between two representatives of each faction, where the winner gets to either loot the merchant or repel the defeated marauder to another city on the map. Merchants trade in artefacts, spices, precious stones and pearls, though they may at times be prevented from doing so by external factors such as the plague.

The game fully supports multiplayer, in that any up to all four factions can be controlled by human players.