4-8 players
480 minutes playing time
Age: 12 plus

Machiavelli recreates the historical situation of the fast developing and ever shifting balance of power struggle in Renaissance Italy. There are five major powers: The Republics of Florence and Venice, the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of Naples and the Papacy (which was a secular power in this era) along with 3 major foreign powers: Valois France, Hapsburg Austria and the Ottoman Turks.

All of these states singly of in combination compete for control of the peninsula. There are only three kinds of units: sea and land and garrisons . Movement is simple and very similar to Diplomacy. This is a game where negotiation is key to survival and winning.

There are a range of advanced variants that add economics, famine and other complexities into the game moving it beyond being a Diplomacy variant.