This has brought back many happy memories of Machiavelli the Prince (or Merchant Prince as I believe it was called in the US, where presumably no one does Europ

This has brought back many happy memories of Machiavelli the Prince (or Merchant Prince as I believe it was called in the US, where presumably no one does European history), a late 90s DOS game in which you ran trade routes around the world. One of the key parts of the game was political intrigue in Venice, where you could bribe people to vote for you as Doge, giving you the power to hand out (or not) lucrative jobs to other players. The big plus point for it were the extensive multiplayer options, ranging from taking turns on one computer, through to proper TCP/IP support, and play by email with the save game being passed on after each turn.