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My friends and I played a few open campaigns (1802) and encountered some problems with the victory conditions. If everyone plays this game with the standard victory conditions in mind, no nation will hold a major victory for long, because the other nations will always team up against the leading nation. So the highly arbitrary or random game end will determine the final victor: the nation that happens to hold the always rotating major victory at the moment.

Solution: Victory Points

To counter this, we introduced a victory point system. Every nation gets victory points (VP) acording to the type of victory it has achieved on every production turn.
We awarded 1 VP for a minor victory, 2 VP for a major victory and 5 VP for a total victory. Of course no nation ever achieved a total victory.

We have played a long campaign (two eight-hour-sessions) with these rules. It was interesting, but Austria and Prussia did not have real chances to score VP. The final standings were:

- France..........15 VP
- GB..............14 VP
- Russia..........13 VP
- Prussia..........2 VP
- Austria..........0 VP

Next step: A bidding system

Our next long campaign will therefore start with a bidding system: One has to bid for each nation one wants to play the amount of VP to achieve for a Campaign victory. Highest bidder gets the nation to play. The nation who achieves its bid first, wins.

Example: After the bidding the victory conditions could be:

- France............20 VP
- GB................18 VP
- Russia............12 VP
- Austria............5 VP
- Prussia............3 VP

So Prussia will win if she scores 3 VP, (for example 3 minor victories), and France will win with 20 VP. This will set the game up for a close finish as every nation who is aproaching its victory point goal will attract the hostility of all other nations. Sooner or later all nations will be just one or two steps away from their goal. Then one nation can try to make the final rush - and succeed or perish...

How's about this (similiar rules one can find in other board games, like in VINCI by EuroGames):

- First, you need to make up seven cards representing the seven major nations. You lay them out and determine an order in which the players choose their nation.
- First player can choose between all nations, naturally. Probably he'll choose France!
- Then you place 5 PP on each nation left - one could use roulette coins for that (makes more fun dealing out PP in-game than moving markers, anyway). So, if second player chooses GB, he'll get 5 PP right from the start (to be used in first production round).
- Then you place 5 PP on each nation left. Third player, choosing Russia, will get 10 PP extra; and so on. See, what i mean?
- So if 6th player chooses Prussia, he'll have 25 PP extra, and 7th player choosing Ottoman Emprie, he'll have 30 PP extra (equalling 3 PAP, btw).

I know, this rule has it's draw backs (eventually unneccassarily strengthening big nations like Austria/Russia), but it is a fair way to ease the pain for not being able to choose first.

- First, simple ask which player wants to play which nation.
- Second, resolve ties by bidding.

Say, three player want to play France. Then they bid with how many PP LESS in starting forces they dare to play. PP-Values should be in a range which could be paid for with units. So, if one player wins by saying he'll play France with 28 PP less, than he is obliged to substract for example 3 Inf (=18) and 1 Cav (=10) from his starting forces.

- Solve all other ties.
- Players who lost bidding now divide up remaining nations. If there will be more players wanting to play one nation again, resolve by bidding.