You mentioned the problem of rushing towards the opponent and eliminating them before conquering the defined number of colonies. What comes to mind is what Distraction makers calls the Strategy Circle. You have Rush, Resource, and Defense. These are the three main archetypes of any strategy game. Rush beats resource, since resource committed their resources to producing more resources, and Rush just put it all into attacking. This is the secret behind Zerg Rush in Starcraft and the issue you seem to articulate. Resource beats Defense, since Defense commits resources to not losing, rather than looking toward the future. Eventually, a Defense strategy will be overwhelmed by Resource. Defense beats Rush, since the defensive options are more efficient than aggressive options and allow the player to not be as worried about the opponent's attacking units. From what I can tell from this video (it being the first I've watched about your game), the defensive options seem to be more expensive than being worthwhile, especially since your rush and resource strategies almost seem to overlap. When this happens, the game devolves into a mono-strategy. I don't know how familiar you are with Magic the Gathering - the Commander format specifically - but in Commander, the rules changes from other formats (being 4-player rather than 2 and 40 life each rather than 20) have basically denied Rush from being part of the cycle. As a result, the Resource strategy has run uncontested and imbalanced the basic gameplay of most Commander games. I bring this up as an example of what happens when you neglect one of the three prominent strategies. It can be an intended effect, but you asked for comments.
Very good insight! I think an easy solution would be to have your first settlement start with walls. This would make it so a rush strategy can still punish any early expansions, but can't completely knock a player out of the game without getting cannons first.
@@hunter5284Was literally about to comment this. This does allow for building cannons in your starting colony though, so maybe upping the price of cannons slightly or requiring stone for other things could make a rush less possible. Another thing would be to make taking a colony raze it to the ground rather than capture it, meaning the attacker would have to build a new one along with a new harbor and walls.
Dude when this goes to market I’ll buy it! One thought I had was ether make it 2-4 players or if two friends have the same game they can combine it to make the game 2-4 player. Do what you think best, but I know playing with more people is always fun! Keep up the good work man!
If it does have up to 4 players you can take inspiration from the european edition of risk where if theres less than 4 players each person at the beginning of the turn order try to buy the armies that arent being played by a person and whoever pays the most controls them for that turn
Look at Clash of Cultures for map generation. It uses hexes in 4-hex diamonds, and has rules that causes water tiles to bunch up into rivers and inland seas. Additionally, it has a rule that you can move from water to water around the outside of the map, as if the map were surrounded by an ocean
How about the two players take turns to place all of the water in a continuous blob. Then the other terrain pieces are placed to fill out the over all shape. While a square map is easy to visualize, a hexagon, or a rectangle could also be challenging. The two players would have to agree on a shape at the start.
@@benanddadmechanical6573 I think this could be the way to go. Each player taking a turn to build out the map, with the stipulation of water needing to touch.
@@julianbirke I would be careful on player choice for placement if there isn't a frame or rules keeping the board of the game as a square. The further the shape strays from a square or vaguely circular shape, the harder it will be to form colonies that remain far from each other, as well as not on the edge tiles. It would still be possible, but could restrict gameplay.
@@joe7176 This could be mitigated with some simple rules for the placing of the tiles. For example a maximum distance between the two tiles farthest apart from each other, or that after a certain amount of tiles has been placed, the remaining tiles must be placed so that they border at least 2 other tiles.
@@julianbirke I’d advise against this, or at the very least have the terrain pieces comprise multiple tiles. I’ve noticed that games that have players construct the map before a game as part of play (Twilight Imperium especially) become dominated by the setup. If a player gets dealt a bad hand or is not good at map building, they lose before getting to play the game you’ve actually spent time to design
The best way to find solutions to some of your questions would be researching similar games. I'd argue that this game is actually most similar to not risk/catan, but... - Scythe: Gain resources by putting your units onto the appropriate hexes. Multiple ways of scoring/moving towards the win condition means that you can't go all-in on a single objective. Variable combat elements mean it's risky to do early aggression, better to build up forces and score in other ways. - Twilight Imperium 4th Edition: Scoring system are randomly revealed cards, that generally require you to spend resources (that you get by controlling hexagons). Because of limited resources, fighting is inevitable. This game has a ton of mechanisms to draw from for some of your design questions, highly recommend. - Eclipse: Has a lot of interesting technology ideas to draw from, a way to modify units and change up the balance on a game-by-game basis so that X unit build doesn't always beat Y unit.
@@ACatienza I do have to agree with Josiah on this, I have nothing against those games but I would like to make this a pretty simplistic game that's quick to learn. I think there's definitely inspiration I can pull from though.
I like this idea a lot! For what it’s worth, I think the chess like battle mechanic is brilliant. At first I was thinking it was just a Catan copy until that mechanic. The combination of the two makes me really want to play it! Good job!
I have some ideas, 1) allow players to playertrade if they are 3 or less tiles away, encourages building closer to other players, or if you have a road leading to them 2) allow pieces on tiles with roads move an extra tile since its easier to move on roads 3) expand the board to allow 4 players 4) new ship, the galleon, a ship that replaces the attacking role of the friget, costs 2 wood 1 iron and a cannon, can attack the same way as a cannon but only move 1 tile no return, it cannot transport units, to compensate the friget can transport inits, is more manuverable and if withing 1 tile of a port can allow trade with the player who owns the port 5) a new way of combat, pieces can only be attacked by certain pieces, A cannon by a galleon, horse or cannon A galleon by a cannon or galleon A friget by a cannon or galleon A gunguy by anything A horse by anything but a galleon This balances combat so that you need a bit of everything
I did a ten minute prototype once in a similar direction but I used Carcassonne mechanics, making tile placement and "exploration" a part of the experience. I bring it up because one iteration might be helpful for your setup step: each player started with a home tile and then expanded from there. We color-coded tile edges to indicate the types that could be attached, essentially blue was water, red was mountain or hills and green was anything. Our water tiles either had 3 blue sides connected to each other opposite green sides or 2 blue sides with a shared vertex, or 2 blue sides opposite the hex. We had the most of the 3 blue sides ones, because those were basically "beach fronts" This mean you could create long and meandering rivers or coastlines easily or you could create narrow passageways and straits with the parallel blues. Simple edge highlighting for color coding can help control the logic of a map while not locking it into a given orientation.
I would highly recommend to bring the design to tabletop simulator, my game saw rapid improvement as to how quickly I could change things in playtests.
Hmmmm for taking care of the early game rush. I have two ideas, exclusive of each other: 1. Friction rule - no combat until both players have 2nd colonies. The early game turns into developing and massing armies, eventually til conflict becomes inevitable. Alternatively you could do: No combat until either player creates a second colony. 2. State carrying capacity - players can only build 3 units maximum until they have a 2nd colony.
@@carloreytansiongco8741 I have considered similar rules to the "friction rule". My thought was, why not just start the game with 2 colonies instead though? I will say, some play tests where fun, when the game is sort of building up to a large war. It's as if people are first settling the map and then fighting starts as land becomes more scarce. I do like the idea of limiting the amount of units to the number of colonies though, I'll have to think on that!
@@julianbirke So for this, I think you hit the nail on the head about how designing around the goal is better then fumbling with additional rules. One strategy I think can solve these problems would be to go from 4 colony's to instead 7 colony's (or 6 depending on playtest and also scaling up with more players)! This way the player's are incentivized to let their enemy scale up in power before enacting full war against them. And killing off your opponent early actually causes you yourself to lose the game, since you used up to much of your nations resources and people, in a war that doesn't benefit enough to cover the costs. Causing your nation to spiral die and eventually die out. For pieces I was thinking instead of your settlement having a wall (or maybe putting more walls into the box), whenever capturing an enemy settlement you place down your walls instead of there's? Or maybe you could not change that and instead have it be another resource the player keeps track off. Figuring out which wall from their city's their willing to lose in order to capture an opponents colony. And of course you could also differ to a classic design of VP (victor points), players gaining 3 points from each colony, then they could spend 3 of any of the same resource to gain 1 VP. Incentive to gain more resources, spending more resources, and of course taking your opponents colony for VP and to generate more VP.
How do the different military units interact with each other? Is it one to one, or more of a rock paper scissors? Could players "tech up" to being able to invade colonies?
What if after the colony falls, the victor plunders some resource cards from the defeated (if available), and the defeated rolls the die in the attempt to place a military man on an adjacent unoccupied resource tile the colony once stood sort of as a retreat. And since the player is still close by, the victor can attempt to chase down the defeated or leave him to continue to try and build a new colony. This could then add strategy where to person can decide if he wants to destroy the colony to gain more resources or advance his overall victory depending on if his opponent has a stock pile of resources.
Awesome, it's certainly looking good and the nice pieces certainly help its table presence. I also love some streamlined board game rules and the simplicity is great as well. And additionally as everyone else here I'll just toss in my 2 cents... Aesthetics - Sea vs land needs more contrast, as does Stone vs Iron Comeback Mechanism - Infantry killed respawn in a colony or next to a colony, When an opponent builds a colony draw a card, If there's a 3+ player mode a respawning comeback mechanism is necessary as in so many classic wargames the first person to lose is dogpiled which is no fun Incentivizing Expansion - First colony is cheaper? Start with cavalry? One resource is much rarer than the others? Nerfing Cannons & Blockades - When captured they're permanently kept by the other player, When surrounded by an Infantry & Cavalry they're Immobilized (incentivizes unit diversity), And imo but the economic deprivation tactic is maybe too brutal so for each turn blockading you must discard a card Map Variety - Perhaps a hex that just gives 1 VP? A Deep Water Port which gives double harbor bonus, Impassable Mountain which creatures chokepoints, Or perhaps make 1 of the resource hexes much rarer than the rest The Heretical Suggestion, Reintroducing Dice - Units can always take another single unit, but can roll 1d6 to take on two units but if it fails it's destroyed (obviously), taking on an Infantry + another on a 4-6, Cavalry + Cav/Cannon on a 5-6, Cannon + Cannon on a 6. Imo this would only add to the combat experience because it allows someone unpredictably to push their luck or be reliable & transparent, Maybe just put a "adding dice variant" in the back of the rulebook and giving the game a few d6 wouldn't add too much to its cost
Thinking about gameplay loops, where positive loops help players who are ahead and negative loops help players who are behind. Generally games should have negative feedback loops either helping behind players or hurting ahead players in order to prevent snowballing. Some ideas: Colonies should be destroyed rather than captured, forcing the attacking player to defend the tile long enough to rebuild the colony (and any walls and/or harbor). Starting colonies should have walls to prevent rushing and taking it. Having to move a long distance to eliminate players means players who are behind can instead focus on troops rather than roads or ships. Limiting hand size to ten cards (or some other fixed number) means players with three colonies will likely have to discard cards after harvesting, and so have more choice of what to do but can’t completely outproduce players with one or two colonies. Side note: might want to change name to settlements, outposts, or another name with less problematic connotations.
What if the water hex tiles were on a seperate board that gives an outline of where the land tiles go? Possibly a neoprene mat. Then place the land tiles on top of the water mat. This would make the land tiles more stable (they wouldn't slide around on the neoprene) and it should eliminate the battle issue that comes with randomizing the tiles. You could build two main (or more) islands with an ocean in between them. I believe this would also give a cool 3D effect as having the water lower than the lands. Just a thought. Nice production and explination. I wish you all the best with your game design.
I was thinking something similar, where there is a "board" with an inner frame of water tiles and the other tiles are placed inside the frame. When placing a water tile, it must be adjacent to another water tile. Not sure if my next idea is already part of the tile placement. Have each player draw a tile (like with Twilight Imperium) and place it adavcent to another tile or the water tiles along the frame (using the water tile placement rule when one is drawn).
Oh and for a victory condition I recommend another faction maybe yellow their are 3 victory types conquest where you take all your enemys land or build victory with 4 or maybe 5 Of your own settlements not conquered settlements
I love the idea, I have to print it on paper and try the combat strategies to give you some feedback. The game looks easy enough to learn how to play and, it would put players into interesting situations where decisions have to be made. Some Ideas that come to my mind: - Bigger map + more players: This could be a nightmare in balancing and combat mechanics. For 3 players it is always complicated. - Towns and improvements: every time the player builds a town they can select a special power card that improves some actions. (Stonemason: Every time you have to pay 2 or more stone resource cards, one of them may be of any other resource) -Tactic card: Every time you build a wall you may learn a tactic for your armies. Tactics allow special movements for your units, like flank attacks, retreats, and some others. -Factions: Factions may change a bit some units, buildings, or other rules to add more variety to every game and make it more replayable. All those suggestions add more complexity to the game, which I don't know if that's something it needs.
During early covid days, I made a similar concept. Catan, but with some improvements on the luck of resource accumulation, and initial placement and also adding in combat similar to risk. It used a regular d6 die to collect from a space around each settlement corresponding to a 1 for the top right hex and then going around in a clockwise rotation for all 6 hexes surrounding a settlement. This gave you more resources and that made it perfect to spend on troops. Troops rolled different dice and sometimes had different rules like horses had more movement, priests convert enemies when they roll higher instead of killing them, wizards roll a d20 but can’t be on the same space as other troops to form an army, and other fun little things. Plus each player could choose different fantasy factions (dwarves, gnomes, goblins, Sasquatches, etc.) and there were special peoples cards to give more bonuses. Definitely had some issues but was fun! Hope your game can answer some design flaws in my system and give the world its long awaited risk-catan hybrid
The answer to the water problem is either to build the water first, or after building everything move swap all water tiles not in the largest body of water with the closest tile adjacent to the largest body of water starting with the furtherest (with any luck this will connect some of the closer ones without having to move them).
Just an idea for the tile setup. 18 Water players evenly. If the number of players does not allow the tiles to be distributed evenly, add a few other tiles of a random type to the water tiles. Now in turn order the players will each place one water tile down on the board, the only rule is, you must set the water tile next to another water tile. If you have a non-water tile you can place it anywhere touching any tile already placed. After all those tiles are placed you could then begin randomly placing all the other tiles for the game. This setup would make your ocean and landscape unique and different each time. Possible islands or complete divides could drastically change each game. There would be an issue of making the water area too big, and thus making the board not symmetrical. So, I would suggest a frame type situation similar to Catan where they wouldn't be able to place tiles outside the bounds which are set.
For the water tiles, rather than having them be individual single tiles, perhaps you make the pieces be connected together in bigger clumps (maybe groups of 4, arranged in various formations such as 4 in a line, or 4 in a cluster, or a left hand turn, whatever), and when building the map, all of these tiles need to be touching each other, or perhaps they would need to touch at least 1 other tile. This should enable players to build rivers which span the board, lakes which are surrounded by land, or oceans which span to the edge of the map.
Maybe you can divide the map tiles into three categories: - sea (water tiles) - universal (wheat, woods, hills) - high grounds (mountain, stone) The central area of the map will be made from 12 sea tiles together with two random universal tiles put together in random positions but creating symmetrical circle (so islands, peninsulas and other interesting "water-related" structures can be formed). Then, all around the tiles you put 16 more randomized universal tiles. They create the 2nd layer section of the map. Then, you put the high ground tiles mixed with universal ones to form the corners of the map. It should look something like an egg: inner part, middle part, and the external part. Alternatively, you can also divide the map kinda like neapolitan ice cream. This way, the resource distribution is going to be less equal which might lead to some interesting plays.
I absolutely love the system you have for resource harvesting. My biggest gripe with Catan was no matter if I put it on something that's statistically likely to be rolled a lot or not, I never seemed to get much of anything in a lot of games. This system seems much more consistent, really only punishing players that don't sprawl out to get a bunch of resources. I also always love seeing / hear game developers express excitement to see how players play the game!
Nice work. You inspired me to build one. Victory conditions: Loot - count up tiles where units were beaten. Or gain 1 resource for each win. Skirmish - how many back-and-forth volleys occurred for a win (ex. 2-3 my guy beat your guy who beat my guy)) Blitz - most units taken by a single unit VP Add some Plague tokens to block tiles off like the Robber in Catan Add Flag tokens to mark battlefields taken for VP
The least used mechanic is traps. Like Root make a Trap system so a lone unit can become 2 under certain conditions. Mountains could be Vantage Points to make 1 unit 2. Each land unit could gain +1VP for wins on logical tile types (Cannon on Mounts, Cavalry on Hills, Rifles in Fields)
Love where the game is going; can't wait to see where it ends up! You obviously have done some playtesting, and I applaud you for your commitment! Some ideas for alternate win conditions: I think it would be interesting to win by building a certain amount of any infrastructure (roads, ports, walls, roads, and colonies) and not just colonies, or controlling 2 of each resource. That way, positioning, not just pure conflict, is also important. I really like how the positioning of the pieces is a major aspect of the game and I think this win condition would expand upon that aspect of the game. Some ideas for map building: If you want to do map building, you could have the players design it, but have incentives for placing certain tiles net to each other (ie, each water gets you 2 gold for each water you place it adjacent to; mountains get you one gold if it is next to no water, 1 gold if the forest, field, or pasture tile you placed is next to no other resource of the same type. Then the player with the most gold gets priority for picking where to start). Keep it up, excited to hear the next installment!
TL:DR "What if I remade Catan but it didn't suck" Only kidding, I try to absorb as much game dev as I can on youtube. Actually finishing one of my game ideas is on my bucket list for sure~
This is a very interesting concept! I have a couple of questions/ideas. Have you thought about player mats with upgrades? A game like Windward comes to mind, or Root. A board that explains most of they rules and helps you organize materials. This would also give the option of using resources for upgrades. Like making 2 roads per stone, calvary can sack a walled city, being able to attack from a warship like a cannon and move back (so it can attack units near the water), calvary moving an extra hex, also an upgrade that makes it so the enemy needs 2 canons/ships around to sack. These sorts of upgrades could make defending easier and could help defeat the 'blitz attack' strategy that you were talking about in the video as being a possible problem. This would also allow you to get rid of the cards and instead have resource trackers on the mats, and of generating constant resources. Making the game have a little more of a resource management aspect. This could also incentivize some colonies to become really juicy targets. The colonies or settlements could even be numbers (on the board piece) and correlate to a mat that shows what the colony is producing for you. Do you have any thoughts of expanding this game for more players? I could see this as a VERY fun game with 3 players or more. Though I am sure how a map is made would need to be redone. In fact, I wonder if the random tiles is a good idea as it can lead to heavily unbalanced games over just creating a couple of maps to use over and over? People could create or print their own if you give the proper dimensions... this would allow reprints and new map packs to come out. As for 'special tiles' that would be important to get. You could always add mines, that can get you gold that can exchange as any other resource? Or a high point that is harder to take, like it gets the rules of being 'walled' naturally? I like the concept of the game. I look forward to being able to play it!
@@Tom_a_youtube_commentor a board or mat wouldn't change how players interact in anyway. It would just change the need for cards as resources and allow for upgrades or abilities to be unlocked. Nothing about the core gameplay would change at all.
This is very intriguing. My son and I play all sorts of board games, and frequently attend Protospiel. The win condition is combat centric. It would be difficult to consider alternative win conditions without that playtesting. It would be nice to see you put out a playthrough video... though... you may be holding off at this stage for proprietary reasons. Regarding the water tiles... perhaps rather than individual hex tiles... you could have all water tiles connected as a group of 3. So anytime water tiles are placed, there are always 3 water tiles connected minimum. Again... without playtesting it is hard to make suggestions... and that's okay. I feel like the outside edges of the map would see less action and therefore less importance. I'd love to be able to build lumbermills or stone quarries in resource tiles outside my colony to boost resource gathering... and perhaps tie a victory condition to some sort of expansion of your empire with a certain number of them. Just brainstorming! I subscribed so I can keep tabs on your progress!
Risk, Catan and Chess are 3 games I enjoy playing (mainly Risk) You should implement a mechanic that allows you to steal 1 or 2 random cards of your opponent every time you conquier a colony I'm exited about your project and will buy the game once it will be out for sale
such an elegant design, as much as i know tweaking for balance is inevitable and more iteration during playtesting is helpful, i hope you don't overcomplicate or add too much to this, it seems like a perfect base to build off of in expansions, i'd be seeking out publishers asap and getting this to market coz you've got a real hit on your hands here!
I want to play this, RIGHT NOW! This is actually so cool. As a fan of Catan, who always wanted to a combat system this would be perfect! I love the idea, and the balancing seems fair. Instant purchase if available!
Wow 🤩 Really nice game One of my first thoughts was to get some special hexes for the game Like an old ruin which makes building a colony easier or which is better defended Also a neutral trading post would be cool Like a place where you can trade 1 for 1 but you have to move with a kart or other vehicle from there to a colony To establish a trade route
Really cool, I love how you kept the combat simple. It lets the game be more about the resources and tactics than luck or anything. The only thing I'd like to see is an expansion to 4 or even 6 players, I'd love to see how that could play out. But I understand why you've kept it to two for now. Great work on the video too, clear, concise, and my interest is piqued. Following for more.
Me and a group of friends love getting together to play risk a couple times a year, but we hate how long and dragged out it can be. I think what youre doing is amazing and can't wait for it to release. My only thought during your video was it'd be cool to have a bigger map, or even leave it up to the players by having set map sizes, i.e "16 tiles, 32 tiles, 64 tiles". I'm not the greatest at explaining my thoughts but I'm hoping you understand what im getting at here. Love the work so far, keep it up.
I like the idea of combining the colonizing system from Catan and Risks war warfare, really makes it very diverse and complex! Hopefully it gets released!
I LOVE THIS IDEA! I honestly love that you use chess/checkers attack gameplay because rolling dice or other methods are super boring. Even in the more fun games like the card game War it is boring if you don't feel like you have control over positioning. I am not a huge fan of Catan yet but I also have had an idea of a game like this but more like monopoly, except with a manueverable board. You could buy properties or infrastructure and profit off from your opponent using it or from upgrading it or a dice roll maybe.
My only concern is that it seems that comebacks would be rare and difficult. Other that that the game looks really good and like something I would play 👍 Subbed
@@jan_Linaso1178 that is true. I didn't mention this in the video but I'm actually working on a system that can add surprise "maneuvers" Incorporated into the resource cards. I think this will help add some strategic luck into the game and may be enough to spark a comeback, if played well.
This is a good thing to note. Usually in games like these a nice thing to do is to try and make things harder for players that are winning, rather than easier. One thing you may want to try is some sort of tax type system which would make the costs of having a larger empire bigger.
@@mistercookboom1899 perhaps something like the catan knight activation, making you spend resources to move units around, or make the the first move on the turn free, but others cost resources
Hey, Julian. You can solve the setup problems by grouping the tiles. Instead of individual hexes, they can be groups of 7 hexes. This way you ensure sea tiles together and the cities will be at least 3 hexes away from each other in just by placing them on center of the tiles.
So glad I found this! The math behind trading is so simple yet so effective and puts both ports and port blockades to a good use. I've been trying to make up a similar game but just couldn’t decide why naval supremacy would ever be necessary or how blockades should work out. I love your solution!
I don't know how the algorithm new EXACTLY WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. Will surely buy this when it's done! Thank you for bringing the idea to life and I wish you best of luck. I do hope that in time you can create a version for 5-6 players (I know it's a lot, but it's our usual party size)
This looks really cool. I think this game will really benefit from having a really simple elegant pool of units and combat system. I think small and simple deep mechanics almost always make games better than complex shallow mechanics. I think you really found something cool here. I also really like the look of your game. it is great fun to get into the imaginative mindset of roleplaying an empire and i think you've build a world with just enough suggestion to put players in that mode without hitting them with so much lore that you do all of the Role playing work for them. That might just be my taste though- i like trimmer thematic experiences. A few notes: 1. Map size: 4x games all suffer from a fundamental problem. There is no map size which does not have a pretty game breaking drawback for this genre. If you go for a small map where players can interact with each other right away than you are going to miss so much opportunity for players to build empires big enough and unique enough to show off your clever combat system. The game will be over before it starts. Also RNG will impact the trajectory of the game a huge amount because the game wont be long enough for RNG to equalize and treat all players roughly fairly. Ok but if you go with a larger map you are going to increase the amount of time before players actually engage with one another and a larger and larger chunk of the game will be bogged down with sim-city beaurocratic game play. When players do interact it is more and more likely that the winner will be already obvious because one player will have snowballed more than the others. Any the larger the map is the less RNG in die-rolls and map distribution matters. So every player will have a roughly interchangeable empire and experience and your game will lose a lot of its interest and replay ability You can mitigate this by adding some kind of trade, diplomacy, exploration mechanics for players to engage in before they contact one another and some mechanics which mitigate snowballing by slowing down the leader somehow in the first phase of the game. Eclipse Second dawn is *the only* 4x game I am aware of that has a compelling solution to this problem with the genre and even that isn't perfect. Dont get me wrong - this genre rocks despite this difficulty and i am excited to play your game in its current form but I think if you can find a clever way to deal with this it would really make it something very special. And all that said- there is something to be said for letting a simple elegant game be simple and elegant and not trying to add mechanic after mechanic to fix every single problem. At some point the new mechanics become a problem in themselves. 2. Win condition: you are absolutely right to spend a ton of time refining your win condition. I like that your current idea is so concrete, thematic, and tight. The trick I think is to find a win condition which will mean that players feel like anyone has some chance at winning if they are cleverer than their opponents right up until the moment the win condition triggers. Then that goal also has to be interesting enough to motivate players to explore your mechanics in the most fun way they can. 3. Player count- If this is a more than 2 player game, how do you stop the phenomenon where weak players get steam rolled and strong players just get ganged up on. I think most adversarial multiplayer games feel Samey because they all end up becoming gang-up-on-the-leader sims. You can mitigate this by separating players spatially on the map but then some players will lose without being able to confront the leader at all. This is a tricky problem. 4. Do you have problems breaking through dug-in battle lines. I am thinking a bit about the interactions between your three units and i am not sure what players could do to break through a stalemated front. This is like a more complicated version of the problem with risk where at some point two players are just chucking units at each other until the player with the slightly better economy wins. Not that that's a bad thing in itself its just that the actual process there can get tedious. What if you could speed it up by dropping your surplus resources to give cannons +1 range, infantry +1 health or cavalry +1 movement for one turn. It would have effectively the same feeling, but it would speed up the trench warfare. 5. Maybe asymmetry could be cool. Idk, your game is really elegant and i think that's sweet so maybe asymmetry would ruin that but it also tends to add some character or replayability. Id say almost the same thing about not-combat player interactions (ie diplo victory or something) Ok sorry for the spammy response. I think you are unto something really cool so if any of this is helpful ill be psyched but mostly i just want to say this is cool keep going.
This looks great! I love the production value of all the tiles and pieces, they look fantastic. I also like the simplicity of it, it looks really intuitive to play but I can imagine you'd get a lot of interesting strategic depth out of it. Couple of minor bits of feedback 1. The Mountain tiles look quite similar to the Stone tiles - maybe add some more snow on the Mountain tiles to make it easier to differentiate? 2. For fixing the water setup so they clump together - maybe use larger groups of water hexes (e.g. groups 4 connected water hex tiles) instead of individual water tiles. I would still use randomised placement for these and a mix of random hex group shapes but this would mean there are no landlocked individual water tiles and every water tile has a few connected water tiles. 3. It might be interesting to see if this system could be expanded to more than 2 players? It would lose the chess-like nature of 2 player but I can imagine playing this on larger board with 4 players would feel really epic!
@@BrendanHead I appreciate it, thank you so much! Feedback on mountains is noted, I'll think on how I can make them stand apart more. That would be a great idea for the water tiles. The unfortunate thing is that, I'm not aware of a manufacturer that will print like that. I'm sure it could be done but it would probably be costly. The goal is definitely have it be a 2-4 player game. I actually have 2 other colors but I usually just use the 2 for demonstrative purposes. It is pretty epic with 4 players ⚔️ lots of different fronts to consider!
I’d happily buy this game. It’s a perfect combination of some of my most favorite games. The only small feature I think would be a perfect addition is a little reference card like in catan, to show you what resources are needed for each thing.
Infantry are good against cannons. And Calvary cannons are good against walls . Calvary are good against cannons and ships are good against all land unit.
On the issue of early aggression. You could take some inspiration from HOI4. Holding occupied colonies requires of resources to control the population. At the end of each recourse phase a play must spend one or two food(wheat or fish) to prevent an uprising. This could last something like 6 turns. If during those six turns the player does play 2 or 3 times the colony flips back to its original owner. I think this would go some way to balancing the zerg rush tactic. If you don't want this to play as much of a role in the mid to late game, you could have it so if cav take a colony the control time is 4 turns and the cannon is 2. I hope this is of some help. It looks like a fantastic and timeless game. I am really excited to play. : )
I like the idea though I don't think having a rule that involves doing something for X turns is good gameboard design since counting those 6 turns would be annoying to do outside of digital. I would personally rather implement your idea by having a consistent low cost of maybe 1 food per turn, that can be removed by paying some bulk cost, like the cost of a settlement, almost as if you're "replacing" that settlement with your own.
Have you considered using the historical era of Pike and Shot combat as inspiration for the combat system? Historically, there would be groups of pikemen and groups of musketeers working together, each with their own role to play. I think it could be represented as something like this: - Pikemen: Move 2, kills units in the same tile, but dies alongside enemy unit if it charges another unit. Cavalry charging into pikes will die without killing the pikes. Prefers to stay braced. This both simulates histotical realities (getting Last Samurai'd if you charge an enemy gun-line, or trying to take a cav charge while unbraced) and creates an interesting play pattern where can either use your pikes conservatively to try and screen away enemy cavalry from charging your cannons and muskets if you think you have a ranged advantage, or send them charging in sacrificially to try and clear a hole for your cavalry to be able to charge into the enemy ranged units. Could cost 1 wood to represent the long logs used to make their pikes and 1 iron to represent the armor they wear. - Musketeers: Move 2, kills units in adjascent tiles. Maybe Pikemen could take 2 shots before dying due to their armor? Maybe worth testing. Can only attack adjascent units once per turn. Moving them into melee with another musketeer kills both, moving into melee with artillery kills the artillery but not the musketeer. - Cavalry: Move 3, kills units in same tile unless it charges a pikeman. - Artillery: Move 1, kills units 2 tiles away once per turn.
This is what I've always wanted as a board game, and I'm so excited someone has decided to do it! Incredible game! A little question, though: When someone conquers a colony, what happens to its roads? Do they have to change side? Can they, despite being orange, be used by blue? Also, 7 roads and 2 bridges are enough for the game to flow? Can they be destroyed, so that you can cut supplies and etc.?
That's a really interesting core system. I'm always on the lookout for games that are deep and accessible. Like Scythe but better. This one could be a winner.
I like How you justify setting the exchange rate from 5:1 for a different resource by making that cost lower when building ports. Personally it would be great to see more interactions between infrastructure and fighting units. 1. Perhaps if the canon had the ability to destroy bridges. 2. Another cool feature would be to have a single unit called the worker which you could place on a tile next to a colony that could harvest 1 of the resources it’s on each turn and could easily be killed by all attack units. 3. One last thing would also be to add a bit more randomness like a bandit like in catan or maybe a natural disaster function. But again that’s just more complicated in the end. I think what you’ve created looks really fun and very playable indeed.
This is a really cool idea. Subscribed! These rules seem simple to grasp, yet provide room for strategic depth and sound really fun to play. Disclaimer, I play tabletop wargames so the rules below could be way too granular and complicated for this scale of game. Feel free to disregard. My first thought was that the attack of cannons and cavalry seem switched: - Cavalry have greater attack/movement range, but can't hit and run - Cannons have short attack range, but can move after attacking This seems to be due to the concept that pieces are "captured" like in Chess, where you move on top of the enemy piece to remove it. I think to differentiate the cannon as a long-range unit, you could do the following: - keet its slow movement - cannons are the only military piece that does not "capture" enemy pieces through movement - cannons attack at 2 range, but must stay still (if they move, they cannot move into a hex with an enemy on it) Then for cavalry: - they can move/capture 3 tiles of total movement, can they can capture at any of the 3 steps they make (so move 1 to capture, then move 2, or move 2 to capture, then move 1) - only can capture one enemy piece per turn Finally for Musketmen: - 2 movement range instead of 1. This makes cavalry uniquely able to flank and reflects the movement capability of cavalry, but still prevents them from outrunning cannons if they overextend themselves. Cannons would still be excellent defensively, and very powerful, but would require protection by Musketmen to not be overpowered by cavalry. Then you also have a nice "3, 2, 1" rule for cavalry, musketmen, cannons.
For guaranteeing bodies of water are of a certain size, you can set a minimum group size, such as “all water tiles must be part of a body of water at least 6 tiles large”. To keep this rule if tiles are randomly placed, can have isolated water tiles or small groups move to water tiles closest to them, which can create random bodies of water
The chess-type combat looks fun! Maybe the sides of water tiles can have restrictions regarding what they can connect to, like a side that must connect to water, another that must connect to land, and a third that can connect to anything. Even if most sides on most water tiles can connect to anything, it might make it so water tiles would be more likely to form rivers and lakes (kind of like Carcassonne but with more flexibility).
Have you settled on tile set up rules yet? I watched this earlier and been thinking about it all day, here's my system: 1. I'd keep the random setup option as a quickplay option for those who don't care. 2. Players randomly choose two tiles to start. Choose who goes first, and take turns drawing and placing tiles. All new tiles must touch a minimum of two sides to previously places tiles. Water tiles must touch at least one side to another water tile. Resource tiles may not touch more than one other copy of that resource. You may not place a tile so as to leave a fully enclosed hole. Finally, once all tiles are placed the players choose who places their first colony first, and the other player should get a bonus such as an extra resource card. Another thought was that the players would draw two tiles and place one at a time, creating a little more strategy to it.
@@Tayleron funny you ask, because that's what this week's video will be on! Haha great suggestions, I think you'll be happy with the system. Stay tuned this Thursday! 😀
Chess’ most defining feature is the King. So the victory condition should include taking an opponents castle, making it similar to Chinese Chess in that the capitals can’t move.
There already exists a game that is a mixture of Risk and Catan. It's called Viktory II. It has map exploration and dice combat, that emphasizes combined arms, fortifications/terrain and tactical maneuvering over mass-producing units of one type.
The following points aren't criticizing, but genuine questions I have about the design choices: Why not just have cannons to have "1 ranged attack" instead of moving then retreating? It seems more intuitive. Isn't the game going to be too slow and samey for the first turns? This is quite a "trait" people kinda of tolerated with Chess (but "solved" with chess 960) but it is seemed more as a problem on games like Scythe where people can just to the same thing every match. I think there should be some kind of threat early or some variation in addition to the setup or people might get bored. You also could borrow some of the infrastructure ideas from Pandemic, specially Iberia, where you can "teleport" units from port to port by discarding resources or to any other city by using pre-built railroads. It is one of the better uses I've seen of this mechanic. Another problem I can foresee is the Runaway problem, the player loosing won't have any blue shells and will probably experience a painful slow death like in games of Risk or Monopoly. The "wait a whole turn to capture" siege mechanic can lead to a bit of annoying bookkeeping. The harbors also can be a bit of a nuisance having to recalculate everything. I know those can just be minor issues, playtesting may be necessary. I also think you can explore multiple win condition possibilities so you can increase the variety of strategies, including adaptability, freedom and, ultimately, replayability to your game. Finally, MY PERSONAL PREFERENCES, from games I like: I really tend to prefer war games where combat is more of a tool than your only option to overcome challenges. I would really like to see a version where direct combat is a bit better for both sides so anyone be encouraged to do it, while also being a threat to both players. This balance can lead to some pretty neat decisions (see Eclipse). It just being winner-takes-all kinda of kills its own purpose in the game, as players will be too much calculating to just take the wars they can win. I hope this makes sense haha. But, as always, great video and great content! I really hope this succeeds! So many interesting concepts. Very entertaining and interesting to watch.
One of the issues is that the initial rules might be quite daunting. One way to solve that and the early rush is to take something from catan and 4X games: the unit rules are all listed on the cards but the cards are not all available in the beginning. Maybe put all the unit and upgrade cards face down on the table and you must pay a fee (maybe written on the back) to “unlock” that new tech. Once unlocked it’s available to everyone but first person to unlock it gets a free unit. This would also make future expansions packs easier too.
One simple rule to add to make sure all water titles are connected in some way, is add in the 'Construction Phase' "All Water tiles must connect at least one side to another water tile." This way players can assemble the board however they please, while also keeping the water connected so that navel battles across the map can be an option. I'd also recommend adding to the rulebook sheet for the game a couple colored pictures of pre-made tile formations. Similarly to Catan where players can get a feel of a balanced game by having pre-made tile maps that gives them a good idea of a balanced game. I would also love a google doc of all the rules, since I'm curious about how resource generation is done. Since that can have a very Huge factor on the gameplay and thought pattern of players, and also the feel of the game's tempo when playing. And if you want, since you already feature a dice, you can add numbers on it so that players can roll them for first turn.
Really interesting concept! It really looks like Catan + military conquest which is something I've wanted for a long time. A couple thoughts that I hope help: 1. Resource scarcity as a driver of strategy and source of replayability- The 6 different resources required for different units/buildings looks great for forcing players to expand to make sure they have access to everything. However, one element of Catan that I love that's missing here is the number tokens on each tile for determining when a tile generates its resource. I don't care about the tokens and rolling themselves but that mechanic introduces resource scarcity in a very interesting way. My experience is that it makes one resource scarcer than the others and bends that entire game's strategy around obtaining it. That leads to more unique decisions for that one game and increases replayability. I would try to find a better way to create that scarcity than 2 dice and tokens as that could create completely unfair scenarios where there's only one good place to get iron and whoever gets there first just automatically wins. But something else to force people to prioritize where they put their colonies would be good. And maybe your unit costs already create this, hard to tell without actually playing it. 2. Hidden information to create not obvious combat- I agree that dice rolling distracts and takes too long in strategy games. I also think that output randomness like "attack then roll for success" only creates bad feelings as we tend to take success for granted and get frustrated by failure. However, I feel like there could still be more depth of strategy to movement and combat than simply taking the other side's pieces chess-style. Having not played the game, it seems like there would be a lot of standoffs where players keep pieces just outside each other's range for a long time until someone gets a clear advantage (more pieces or better pieces) then it just becomes "smash them all together until I win" which becomes predictable and doesn't seem fun to me. One possible way to resolve that would be the ability to build cards (like development cards in Catan) with different one-use tactical abilities. Things like "1 minute man can immediately attack 2 spaces away" or "prevent enemy counter attack after this attack" or "when this unit would be defeated instead it retreats one tile". Effects that represent clever strategic decisions and give a way to win even with the smaller army and keep your opponent guessing. Or potentially tile-based effects to force players to consider where they have combat. Maybe cannons gain a range advantage if they are on hills. Or cavalry are slowed down by forests. Something to make people think about more than just smashing armies together when they have the advantage.
I'm going to say that you have a great game design here. Keep the combat as simple as you have done, for it'll keep the game moving, but it'll go faster too. For victory conditions, why not have 3-5 vital control regions. Areas that are of great importance to win the war. Finally, maybe see about adding 2 more armies? Either with the base game or as a future expansion. P.S. maybe team rules so multiple people can play together. Might make the game longer, but it'll allow more people to have fun.
Nice, love it! A skirmish type free-for-all version for up to 4 or 5 players would open up the game for a bigger audiance. The rules are crisp, the board style is also nice.
This looks clean! Having a single river of water dividing the board in two looks like a valuable gameplay element given your inclusion of explicit naval units; distributing water tiles randomly won’t work. I think you could place down water tiles first, then all other tiles randomly. Place one water in the center; players take turns placing one water adjacent to any water until all are placed. (This may result in a central lake, a dividing river, or potentially a field of islands in a large lake, depending on player approach.)
After that, players can place land tiles in some other manner. Here’s an idea to differentiate the game board from Catan: players take turns placing land tiles. On their turn, each player may place three tiles of the same type continuously, adjacent to any existing board tile. Or, they may place two tiles of any type adjacent to any tile. This makes players choose between placing more tiles overall, giving them more influence over board setup, and crafting more resource availability on their side of the board. Of course, you can also put tiles on the far side of the board, to interrupt your opponents setup. Allowing the free placement of 3 of the same tiles will result in little mountain ranges, forests, deserts, etc, and make the board look more intentional. Casual players can have fun being creative and making something memorable, while serious players will no doubt study opening moves trying to counter each other’s board setup. This is also to reinforce your game’s chess affinity.
One more idea to make the game more chess like: instead of a catan-like resource die, each player on their turn may declare any resource which touches any of their forts. They then harvest one of that resource for each matching tile adjacent to their fort; the opponent does the same. You may not harvest the same resource twice in a row. These are just my suggestions, you have an awesome design here! The aesthetics are on point. My suggestions are aimed at removing most/all RNG from the game, building a strategically coherent map while retaining the catan-hexagon shape, and generally strengthening the chess affinity while staying within the catan+risk gameplay elements. Good luck on your design, I’ll be interested to see how this develops!
perhaps the problem of water hexes can be solved as they do with the ocean in Catan: that instead of being separate hexes, there are several hexes together in shapes that are easy to arrange according to the map. Also the "river-ocean" like hexes must be arranged at the beginning of the game before accommodating the rest. If you want them to always form a continuous river, perhaps you can implement the rule that "river-ocean" tiles they must be put together. Or If you want lakes and rivers to be able to form, perhaps you can implement the rule that at least two must be together. Also to prevent the shapes from becoming strange and disadvantageous, it could be made a rule that in turn order, as in Catan, each player will take a river and place it; and the last player puts two (in this way the players themselves can control the level of homogeneity of water or even agree to make maps: an island type like Catan, a map of a river in the middle, a map of an inland lake, a map of quadrants, etc., etc. Regarding the war mechanisms, the chess-type mechanism seems excellent to me... however I am worried that the strategy will be reduced to who can gain the most resources in the early game (as in risk where the balance of power could easily be tipped to one person; especially in games where the people are new).... perhaps you could use a system symilar to "the game of thrones the board game" where everyone has character cards with battle points and special abilities, which everyone selects before a battle and are shown at the same time; the winner is decide by counting the points of the pieces that fight, those of the card and the abilities ; This is still a closed combat model that does not require luck and rewards those who avoid entering into fights the first time, that does not depend on luck and that adds a social factor to the game: being able to guess what card your opponent may choose; also it helps to keep the balance of the game because you could use your top cards and win battles... but then you would be trapped with worst cards and be atacked for more patien players, specialy if you are close to winning.
I love all the ideas and thought put into this, Sounds like a fun and exciting game! I feel like the combat, at least for me others may like it more, is a weak spot. Idk if you tried this and it didn’t work but maybe each unit has an attack stat, defense stat, range stat, and movement. For example the infantry could have maybe one attack into any touching tile, and would have one defense, or for defense the attack could roll and have to beat a cards defense stat on a d6, and if the attack fails, the defender has a chance to retaliate against the attacker and roll to see if they attack the attacker. so say an infantry has a defense of 3 and an attacker rolls a 2, the defending infantry can now try to roll an retaliating attack to see if they can kill the attacking unit. I think this would add some more thought and risk to the game where you now have to weigh in your odds. Also maybe walls can increase your defense bonus, and maybe this defense bonus can be mitigated if you have a frigate blockading the colony. I don’t know if you tested this already but I think it’s an idea that might be fun
As @JCPRuckus also mentioned, the solution to the water problem is to build the water first! Carcassonne's river expansion works like that and is a fun twist to the game. So for this, youll need some system for how the water tiles can fit together so they can form different water combinations! Could be cool if two bodies of water could appear too!
A different solution to the rush strategy problem would be that starting settlements have walls meaning a player would need siege equipment to attack, similar to Risk Europe, and then rush would also still be able to punish new colonies.
Regarding tile placement, you could scenarios in the rulebook which show various set up options. E.g. settling a coast, divided by a river, claim the bridge, claim the island etc.
I think it could be cool if the players participate in the building of the map. something like they both have equal amount of tiles, and take turns placing them into the board. players must start with water, and after all the water tiles are placed down they take turns placing the rest. this could open up a whole new aspect of strategy to the game before any battles take place. Players could focus on their own side of the board, to make a land filled with magnificent spots for colonies. Or they could set up lands built as strongholds, with mountains and rocks used as natural walls. Or they could forgo their own development to disrupt their enemies lands. Just a thought, but it sounds like a fun pregame back and fourth.
When this is ready I will definitely buy it! Looks so good. I am creating another game that is similar in mechanics, but not so similar. I love Catan and love strategic and wargame boardgames, so this is really appealing to me.
very cool. Stunning looking map. About the map, I like to play fog of war on catan, but wanted to randomize the board in an intentionally balanced or unbalanced way. it did this with a 1D6 die roll. for you this could look something like: no terrain type can ever be more likely than 5/6. when exploring a new block, 1D6 roll is the resource type that block is any block bordering this block now has +1 likelihood to be the same type a block boarded on 5 sides by wood has a 5/6 chance to be wood. TL:DR 1/6 chance to get wood gets wood, all bordering blocks now have 2/6 chance to be wood. player can then fine tune to taste _______________ can add another 1D6 to utilize bell curves, for even more tailored generation. with 1D6 The max probability can then be set for for map type, so a max counter value of 5/6 means all the wood will probably be in the same area's but a max of 2/6 means the the wood should be, fairly, well scattered. with 2D6 each of the 6 block types now has a 2/12 chance but that can be distributed to taste, and the + values for repeating last block type can filled into the bell curve from top or bottom as preferred. Want ore to be hard to find? roll's on 2 and 12 and its +1 to repeat fills from the bottom so if last block ore, 2,12 and 3 = ore or really easy if roll is 7 or 6 = ore if last block was ore +2/12 chance for more ore, at top of bell curve if roll is now 7,6, 8 or 5 = ore PS) if you like fog-of-war mechanic, let me get a discount on product, please 🙂 AND in book of rules explaining map generation, just credit map generation to the "Tsk method" which is exactly the sound you make when u don't roll any wood ;-P PPS) multiple win states? checkmate, board control, buy enough development cards, longest roads, reach X points you know that kind of thing?
Hey Julian. THIS IS AWESOME. Yes, please make this into a real game, I think lots of people would buy this! I have always been disgruntled with how in Catan, you are at the mercy of the dice. This game is a combo of many great things. I can also foresee that one round of this game could be finished in under an hour, which is great because currently there are no grand strategy games I like that can be finished in so short a time. Here’s the one critique I would say: I am not sure if allowing the defender to counterattack would be a good idea, because it seems like defending in this game is already very easy. With just a cannon and a couple of infantry, you could hold off a much larger force of enemies very easily. I think this would discourage attacking, I’m theory. And if that isn’t true (in practice, based off of your test gameplay) then I would still say that allowing an enemy counterattack in the middle of your turn could make the rules confusing. Why not just not have counterattacks, and then the enemy can attack on their turn? I just see allowing these instant counterattacks as limiting players on executing bold maneuvers-as they can be quickly checked. Just some thoughts, I may be wrong though in my way of thinking. Anyway, great video and please please consider selling these!
This seems like a really solid concept, you've clearly done a good bit of testing. I will say that, for me personally, I'd definitely want the ruleset to accommodate up to 4 players, which would probably have to balanced a little differently. I do think a semi-random, 'numbered' system for tile placement is a good idea, I like the way Catan does this, it keeps things fresh while avoiding a lot of the problems that can arise from true random placement. I also see a lot of potential for future expansion packs, if you decided to do so; something like leaders or faction-specific bonuses to create some asymmetrical play, new resource tiles and/or special units could easily be added for optional mechanics. Gonna sub to keep an eye on what you're doin.
I think an interesting way to spice up the trading mechanic would be to increase the trade in cost for resources that your opponent has lots of. I think it could make resource gathering more strategic.
I suggest ,bringing some industrial revolution mechanism where,you spent 5 iron,5 wheat,5 stone and 5 something else and be in the industrial era where you can build factories that produce double the resources from a colony you eant to be in but to balance every factory cost 3 of each type of recource, and if you develop enough you cand build one of these megaunits: a tank,a bomber,a flamthrower,an armored car ,a battleship,a submarine, a destroyer or a zeppelin,and to balance it if you choose one the other players cant choose the one you got and if you want one megaunit it will cost you 5 of each type of recources but the megaunit as of its name will survive and be better at combat than the other normal units.Also if you want you can add that if you have 3 or more facories you unlock rifleman which is an upgraded musketman,breechload artillery which is an upgraded cannon,the frigate becomes a torpedoboat or any naval ship you want that idnt a megaunit,and the cavalry remains the same,also if you have 2 or more factories you can build train tracks which cost you 2 iron and 1 wood ,and lets you travel further in one turn than roads.And if you want you can make the map bigger because of this indutrialization if you add it.Hope i gave some ideas for the game,cant wait to come out!
Suggestion/house rule with the cannon, you could say the cannon can take any adjacent piece and advance to its hex if the controlling player chooses. This is a thematic change which doesn't affect gameplay.
Question: If you see this - who knows. Would you consider making the game... expandable? Here are just some thoughts I had watching this. I will also note that I am an avid "Total War" player and some ideas I have sorta come from playing that game. Also, fairly familiar with the Civilization Series. Forgive me if this is a long post... everyone has been warned. 1. Victory / Setup: Going to address these both because I feel like these play hand in hand. I would propose making two or three different Victory Conditions that all players involved choose to agree with at the start of the game. For example: Frontier Victory: Control four colonies and maintain control for X (probably 1) turn after the fourth colony is taken. Total Domination: Completely Eliminate your opponents from the game, conquering and removing every piece your opponent has from the board. (You could make it a tad easier that is a player goes 2 turns without controlling a colony then they are eliminated.) (Another optional rule you could include is that any troops reaming after their defeat could be enlisted into the victors unit pool - but it does not allow you to train additional units from their reserves.) Objective Victory: You could also include victory objectives that could, in theory, act as alternative accomplishments to be victorious. This could be something like... A. Own three Colonies with Walls. B. Own three Colonies with Harbor's C. Own a Colony with a Wall, A Colony with a Harbor, and a Colony with both a Wall and Harbor. For example. This sorts of conditions would be secret objectives each player could have at the start of the game. A possible twist you could include is that the objective has to be declared when you meet the conditions and should anyone prevent you from wining in 1 turn rotation, you loose that objective and can no longer obtain victory with that card. The Last idea I have here is "Capital Conquest". At the start of the game, a flag token is placed in your first colony and marks it as a "Capital" that if it is captured and held for a duration of time (two turns?) then the opposing player who owned it is eliminated. To make it a tad harder and prevent early game capital rushes, capitals could add a bonus to the defense so maybe without a wall you need to meet the walled capture conditions and with the wall then three pieces (1 inside and 2 outside) are necessary to secure the capital. And if for any reason two players both loose their capitals at the same time to each other, then they just swap control of each others capital and the game continues. Game Setup: I would base this on the number of active players in the game. So, example, the small grid you just had in this video could be a two player game. Then, for each additional player up to 4 (maybe?) you would add tiles to make the map bigger. Map Design: I think this could be simplified with taking a note from Twilight Imperium where you just pre-design maps for players to follow based on player count. This is what Twilight Imperium does and it works well. You could also allow people to "free build" maps and just make suggestions on how to design a good playable map. Such as all water tiles having a guaranteed connection to another water tile. Map Tiles: Totally optional but just a random thought. Something else you could include to make the maps more interesting is have hazard tiles. Maybe as an optional inclusion and also based on the number of players playing as to how many are present. Hazards could be things like a Volcano that could include a die with three different faces (three blank, two with smoke, one with smoke and fire). If a piece controlled by a player is within 1 tile of this location, the die is rolled at the end of the turn. if two smoke tiles are rolled within 1 turn rotation, there is an eruption that removes all pieces around the tile from the board. If an eruption is rolled (smoke and fire) same effect but within a two tile radius. 2. Flexibility: I am all for having a game with set core rules and stuff. But something I would like to propose to be considered is letting this game be open to either explorative modifications / expansions by yourself and / or your community. I personally am a suto game designer (working on two card games) and in general a creative person. I have lost count of the number of custom MTG cards I have made for kicks either on my own or with friends. I even have a friend that I regularly hang out with where we revel in taking board games and playing them beyond the confines of the rules. For example, we played a game called Res Arcana that is basically resource production / management and decided to just include every piece we could from the box in the game and not restrict ourselves. For example, I think each player usually gets 6 artifact cards and we instead just split it in half between us. We also removed the point limit cap and decided to play until we got board. Fun stuff. Given that players like this exist and it can be fun to explore why games like this use specific rules and suggestions can be entertaining for some. And for others, they either like creating stuff or like trying out new things. And I think the more ways you can give for optional expansions to the game to let people further customize how they want to play might be worth considering for longevity. Board games in general have good re-playability but you still don't want to run into a situation where the gameplay gets stale or too repetitive. And it could also be a fun way to interact with your community. The easy option here is that your community could be permitted to either post or share their expansion ideas for you to work on yourself when you either find things you like or get enough of a demand for it. Another option you could allow is for the community to have a "Community Expansion Collection" that could be free (still need to get the base game to play though) print files could be offered for free for new models / pieces. If you are open and willing to consider it, you could allow players to market expansions but they have to meet a set of conditions. A. A proof of concept is given to you of gameplay with the modified rules. B. The total production cost is provided to you. C. Their market price is provided to you. D. Etc, etc, etc. Not trying to cut that short but I know it would be a process to set up which is why I understand not wanting to deal with it or why board games in general do not bother dealing with it. Especially when one has to consider the cost of tile and plastic production and so forth. How you go about it would be up to you and what you work out with your legal team should you consider it. I know for a fact one of the main reasons I would like to suggest this is that I can guarantee I would play this game and I know for a fact I would be considering ideas and additions before the first game even ended. It would be really cool to be able to participate in the community of a game similar to how modders do in video games. Cooler if I can further benefit from the work even if it meant obviously giving a cut of the profit to you and so forth. So I am throwing this out here. 3. Ideas: Forts / Castles A defensive structure (maybe 3 max per player) that would only allow the recruitment of basic units like a colony, but also be able to remove an opponents units within 1 tile range of the fort if they pass by or end in range with maybe a max use of 1 per player turn. (but can only target pieces of the active player). Removing could require 2 cannons to end a full turn cycle present 2 tiles away from the fort. If needed, could maybe "balance" this with 1 of those cannons being removed when the fort is removed. Watch Tower A defensive structure that increase movement of nearby friendly units by +1 when moving (but not to attack). Maybe moving to then attack could be okay but playtesting would be able to confirm or deny this. Anyway, removing them would be the same as removing other pieces. Maybe with a limitation of 3 + 1 per player. (to accommodate for map size). Unique Resources Think of the hazard tiles I mentioned but the opposite? Unique, rare, 1 per map tile that a bonus effect when trading. They can be traded at better deals than standard resources and the scarcity encourages player interaction to secure them. For example, gemstones could be a resource that takes up a trade value of 3 of any other resource. So rather than trading 5 fish for say 1 resource, 1 gemstone + 2 resources of the same type could = 1 resource of the chosen type. I am not sure how well this would effect the game's market ... without playing the game as is its hard to tell ... Random Question: Is this playable on Table Top Simulator by chance? Overall: I love the idea of this game. I honestly feel like this could be a literal "DM Handbook" like thing but for Table Top Strategy Board Games that could be easily expanded, modified, or altered to fit the desired play length and style of the players. Probably not at all what you were going for, but I think the base game is a very good at offering a wide range of customization as it currently stands. It could be argued that games like Twilight Imperium have similar capabilities except that I do find them MUCH harder to "expand" with ideas. Usually because the game mechanics as provided are already so complex that it would be more work than it was worth to try to do something as basic as adding a unit. This though, I love this. I really do love this. I love that it is simple and easily reproduced. I like that the rules are quite simple and player friendly. That to me is the best part of the game. I am more than happy to further discuss these thoughts if you would like and your welcome to reply with your thoughts on what I said. Again, apologies for the long post. I got flooded with inspiration just on this video alone haha.
Sorry for the third comment but I had a thought that was completely seperate from my others: Different tiles could have different effects on units in them during combat. - Wheat tiles: Faster movement for cavalry because of wide open terrain. - Rock tiles: Cover from ranged shots due to rocks to hide in. - Forest tiles: Slower movement for cavalry, can't be shot through by artillery. Maybe hides units in it? - Etc.
Perhaps one way to stop an early sweep from one player (as in wiping them off the board early on) would be to either have a grace period in the first few turns (where combat units may not be deployed, or at least moved from their starting locations) or to expand the game size significantly. I think that while the second solution would work fairly well, it would make the game more of a drag and overall more bulky, part of the appeal for me to this game overall is that it is fairly light, in comparison to some other games, while still boasting complexity (I'm looking at you tiny epic kingdoms) . To me, grace periods seem like a worthwhile thing to test.
The game looks and sounds very fun but I do have a few recommendations: First, add more players. Instead of a 1v1, make it a 4 player free for all (or even a 2v2 match if you want. Maybe this can be a separate kind of "game mode" if you will). I think 1v1 limits the game drastically. You should have the option to play 1v1 for sure but making the game for 2 to 4 players would be ideal. Second, adding onto the first point, increase the size of the map. From the few glances I got of it, the map seems woefully small, even for just a 1v1. If the point is to get 4 colonies, then the map has to be able to comfortably hold 7 colonies (4 for the winner, 3 for the loser) and with the three spaces apart rule, it doesn't look like there's enough room. You shouldn't need to expand it 4x for four players because in no world do 13 colonies get put down. Regardless, the idea is to expand the board size and have set tiles that are used for all games, some only used for 3-4 players, and some only used for 4 players. Alternatively, you could add more tiles of each type and then just NOT use all of them. This could give some crazy variability to certain games and make it so that not every game is the same as the last. For example, I don't know how many of each tile there are but let's say that instead of 58 tiles, you pack 70 or so (just a random number as an example) so that you have 12 extra tiles. These extras are left out at random so that some games you'll have possibly less wood tiles so less of that resource or there's more water so naval dominance becomes more crucial, etc etc. Third, one other guy commented on the different strategies in games like this: Rush, Resource, and Defense, and how they orient like a game of rock, paper, scissors. However, as he pointed out, Defense isn't worth it so Rush tends to reign supreme and that's what you see, so you need a way to make Defense more desirable without unintentionally making it the new OP strategy. My advice is to tweak the combat rules slightly so that it's more difficult to take towns even if they don't have a wall. Since I like the combat rules and how only one unit can be in a single space at any time, my idea is something similar to the Support action from Diplomacy where you need two attackers to take a colony and then either one of those must be a ship/cannon or a THIRD unit must be a ship/cannon in the case of walls. You could also just overhaul the entire combat to be similar to Diplomacy but I like how simple it is right now (can you tell I'm a fan of Diplomacy?). Obviously, play testing would be needed but it's just an idea. Fourth, and this one is a skeptical rule that I'm not sure would work very well, but since you can take towns and just convert them to your color, why not add a rule for being able to do that with ships? Say you have a convoy ship (a frigate with a land unit) and it attacks an enemy frigate. What if you have the option to either A) sink the enemy frigate as normal or B) essentially commandeer the ship by sacrificing the land unit and turning that ship into your own ship? I think it would be a neat little maneuver especially if the map ends up being very naval heavy.
a few things I would like to add, if nobody else did already; I think it would be cool to consider a version of the game with different "races" (elves, or some other way of distinguishing groups), and letting them be slightly different (like age of empires 2, or age of empires dawn of the modern world). this would change the feel of the game a lot, and make it a lot more complex, so it would have to be heavily considered. having developments. this would probably not work well alongside the above suggestion, but it would be something like research development in axis and allies, where you could increase some benefit (range, resource collection, etc.) for an investment. (maybe with risk of getting nothing, maybe not) one other thing to consider is the expected price of the game. this game sounds awesome and complex (which I like a lot better than many of the simple - in strategy - games I've played recently), but more pieces and complexity often mean higher costs, which limits the feasibility of people to buy the game. (there are quite a few games that I thought were cool, but were too expensive for me to take the risk on) do you have a discord, or some other community discussion for the game development? that might be a great way to get a larger audience opinion for the final touches of the game.
So, I saw chess was an inspiration for the game what if you brought in King and Queens as the monarch and if a colony is over taken with a King or Queen in the colony then they would be captured. If you return the King to one of your colonies you win. (Which gives the incentive to build your colonies far away from each other.) Queen can create posts three to four tiles from their location to create soldiers to try to save the king. If saved it goes back to a colony. If there isn’t a colony to go back to then it stays there until a colony is built and gives the opponent a chance to win the game the same way by capturing the King to win the game.
Idea for Resources: Leverage resources against waging war.... So that war is very costly. When troops are not fighting, they are harvesting/collecting resources. So, there is an equilibrium/balance. Whatever that number is, let's say 5 war units = 5 resources that can be collected (10 total). So, if you increase one more troop (now 6), you can only collect 4 resources, etc. Because you are drafting from the pool of workers. But that's not all. You must have 10 units total at all times for the max balance. You can have 1 war unit, and 9 worker units (not represented by figurine, but perhaps by a side token), but if you go to war and lose 2 units, the total now is 8 (from original 10). You continue the game that way. Those two lost war units can be replaced from a pool of 6 work units remaining for example (if you had 2 war and 8 worker units). It might sound complicated, but having a side token counter of war and worker units can help. A sliding ruler/line can also track the total units that are left as a full resource. If the ruler goes down to 0 available units, even if you have resources, the war is over. That means the country has to wait years to repopulate the land.
This looks like it has the potential to be a great city builder-combat game. My thoughts are: The combat is a little light. I would think a dice hit-base system could perhaps work. Also, for combat, i am confused on what happens when multiple units are on the same hex. Concerning win conditions i think another option could be a victory point system like catan. So similar goals to what you have here now but more rushing for resources and space as a first choice rather than rushing for settlement conquering first. I look forward to seeing where this goes!
You mentioned the problem of rushing towards the opponent and eliminating them before conquering the defined number of colonies. What comes to mind is what Distraction makers calls the Strategy Circle.
You have Rush, Resource, and Defense. These are the three main archetypes of any strategy game.
Rush beats resource, since resource committed their resources to producing more resources, and Rush just put it all into attacking. This is the secret behind Zerg Rush in Starcraft and the issue you seem to articulate.
Resource beats Defense, since Defense commits resources to not losing, rather than looking toward the future. Eventually, a Defense strategy will be overwhelmed by Resource.
Defense beats Rush, since the defensive options are more efficient than aggressive options and allow the player to not be as worried about the opponent's attacking units.
From what I can tell from this video (it being the first I've watched about your game), the defensive options seem to be more expensive than being worthwhile, especially since your rush and resource strategies almost seem to overlap. When this happens, the game devolves into a mono-strategy. I don't know how familiar you are with Magic the Gathering - the Commander format specifically - but in Commander, the rules changes from other formats (being 4-player rather than 2 and 40 life each rather than 20) have basically denied Rush from being part of the cycle. As a result, the Resource strategy has run uncontested and imbalanced the basic gameplay of most Commander games.
I bring this up as an example of what happens when you neglect one of the three prominent strategies. It can be an intended effect, but you asked for comments.
👍🏼
Very good insight! I think an easy solution would be to have your first settlement start with walls. This would make it so a rush strategy can still punish any early expansions, but can't completely knock a player out of the game without getting cannons first.
@@hunter5284Was literally about to comment this. This does allow for building cannons in your starting colony though, so maybe upping the price of cannons slightly or requiring stone for other things could make a rush less possible.
Another thing would be to make taking a colony raze it to the ground rather than capture it, meaning the attacker would have to build a new one along with a new harbor and walls.
@@Halrax_38 or just require 2 walls to start making cannons?
@@nophlast4237 maybe, yeah
Dude when this goes to market I’ll buy it! One thought I had was ether make it 2-4 players or if two friends have the same game they can combine it to make the game 2-4 player. Do what you think best, but I know playing with more people is always fun! Keep up the good work man!
@@thatkid6735 that's nice to hear, I appreciate it! The goal is to make it a 4 player game for sure.
If it does have up to 4 players you can take inspiration from the european edition of risk where if theres less than 4 players each person at the beginning of the turn order try to buy the armies that arent being played by a person and whoever pays the most controls them for that turn
@@badberserker-e1y oh that does sound fun, definitely have to think on that.
@@julianbirkewhen you make it 4 players, could you include the colour purple please?
@@de_g0od or cyan/aqua?
Look at Clash of Cultures for map generation. It uses hexes in 4-hex diamonds, and has rules that causes water tiles to bunch up into rivers and inland seas. Additionally, it has a rule that you can move from water to water around the outside of the map, as if the map were surrounded by an ocean
How about the two players take turns to place all of the water in a continuous blob. Then the other terrain pieces are placed to fill out the over all shape. While a square map is easy to visualize, a hexagon, or a rectangle could also be challenging. The two players would have to agree on a shape at the start.
@@benanddadmechanical6573 I think this could be the way to go. Each player taking a turn to build out the map, with the stipulation of water needing to touch.
@@julianbirke I would be careful on player choice for placement if there isn't a frame or rules keeping the board of the game as a square. The further the shape strays from a square or vaguely circular shape, the harder it will be to form colonies that remain far from each other, as well as not on the edge tiles. It would still be possible, but could restrict gameplay.
@@joe7176 This could be mitigated with some simple rules for the placing of the tiles. For example a maximum distance between the two tiles farthest apart from each other, or that after a certain amount of tiles has been placed, the remaining tiles must be placed so that they border at least 2 other tiles.
@@julianbirke I’d advise against this, or at the very least have the terrain pieces comprise multiple tiles. I’ve noticed that games that have players construct the map before a game as part of play (Twilight Imperium especially) become dominated by the setup. If a player gets dealt a bad hand or is not good at map building, they lose before getting to play the game you’ve actually spent time to design
This would be an instant buy for me! Looks amazing and really intriguing. Hope this will be going into retail
@@MrNicktwin much appreciated! That is the goal, really just need sufficient play testing before that happens.
@@julianbirkeIf one was interested in playtesting, where could I sign up?
The best way to find solutions to some of your questions would be researching similar games. I'd argue that this game is actually most similar to not risk/catan, but...
- Scythe: Gain resources by putting your units onto the appropriate hexes. Multiple ways of scoring/moving towards the win condition means that you can't go all-in on a single objective. Variable combat elements mean it's risky to do early aggression, better to build up forces and score in other ways.
- Twilight Imperium 4th Edition: Scoring system are randomly revealed cards, that generally require you to spend resources (that you get by controlling hexagons). Because of limited resources, fighting is inevitable. This game has a ton of mechanisms to draw from for some of your design questions, highly recommend.
- Eclipse: Has a lot of interesting technology ideas to draw from, a way to modify units and change up the balance on a game-by-game basis so that X unit build doesn't always beat Y unit.
These are all great games, but are probably way more complex than what he has in mind!
@@ACatienza I do have to agree with Josiah on this, I have nothing against those games but I would like to make this a pretty simplistic game that's quick to learn. I think there's definitely inspiration I can pull from though.
@@julianbirkeYour game made me think of a simpliefied version of Hellenica. Might hold some inspiration for you.
I like this idea a lot! For what it’s worth, I think the chess like battle mechanic is brilliant. At first I was thinking it was just a Catan copy until that mechanic. The combination of the two makes me really want to play it! Good job!
@@philippersson5931 I appreciate it!
I have some ideas,
1) allow players to playertrade if they are 3 or less tiles away, encourages building closer to other players, or if you have a road leading to them
2) allow pieces on tiles with roads move an extra tile since its easier to move on roads
3) expand the board to allow 4 players
4) new ship, the galleon, a ship that replaces the attacking role of the friget, costs 2 wood 1 iron and a cannon, can attack the same way as a cannon but only move 1 tile no return, it cannot transport units, to compensate the friget can transport inits, is more manuverable and if withing 1 tile of a port can allow trade with the player who owns the port
5) a new way of combat, pieces can only be attacked by certain pieces,
A cannon by a galleon, horse or cannon
A galleon by a cannon or galleon
A friget by a cannon or galleon
A gunguy by anything
A horse by anything but a galleon
This balances combat so that you need a bit of everything
I did a ten minute prototype once in a similar direction but I used Carcassonne mechanics, making tile placement and "exploration" a part of the experience.
I bring it up because one iteration might be helpful for your setup step: each player started with a home tile and then expanded from there. We color-coded tile edges to indicate the types that could be attached, essentially blue was water, red was mountain or hills and green was anything.
Our water tiles either had 3 blue sides connected to each other opposite green sides or 2 blue sides with a shared vertex, or 2 blue sides opposite the hex. We had the most of the 3 blue sides ones, because those were basically "beach fronts"
This mean you could create long and meandering rivers or coastlines easily or you could create narrow passageways and straits with the parallel blues.
Simple edge highlighting for color coding can help control the logic of a map while not locking it into a given orientation.
I would highly recommend to bring the design to tabletop simulator, my game saw rapid improvement as to how quickly I could change things in playtests.
Hmmmm for taking care of the early game rush. I have two ideas, exclusive of each other:
1. Friction rule - no combat until both players have 2nd colonies. The early game turns into developing and massing armies, eventually til conflict becomes inevitable. Alternatively you could do: No combat until either player creates a second colony.
2. State carrying capacity - players can only build 3 units maximum until they have a 2nd colony.
@@carloreytansiongco8741 I have considered similar rules to the "friction rule". My thought was, why not just start the game with 2 colonies instead though?
I will say, some play tests where fun, when the game is sort of building up to a large war. It's as if people are first settling the map and then fighting starts as land becomes more scarce.
I do like the idea of limiting the amount of units to the number of colonies though, I'll have to think on that!
@@julianbirke So for this, I think you hit the nail on the head about how designing around the goal is better then fumbling with additional rules. One strategy I think can solve these problems would be to go from 4 colony's to instead 7 colony's (or 6 depending on playtest and also scaling up with more players)! This way the player's are incentivized to let their enemy scale up in power before enacting full war against them. And killing off your opponent early actually causes you yourself to lose the game, since you used up to much of your nations resources and people, in a war that doesn't benefit enough to cover the costs. Causing your nation to spiral die and eventually die out.
For pieces I was thinking instead of your settlement having a wall (or maybe putting more walls into the box), whenever capturing an enemy settlement you place down your walls instead of there's? Or maybe you could not change that and instead have it be another resource the player keeps track off. Figuring out which wall from their city's their willing to lose in order to capture an opponents colony.
And of course you could also differ to a classic design of VP (victor points), players gaining 3 points from each colony, then they could spend 3 of any of the same resource to gain 1 VP. Incentive to gain more resources, spending more resources, and of course taking your opponents colony for VP and to generate more VP.
How do the different military units interact with each other? Is it one to one, or more of a rock paper scissors?
Could players "tech up" to being able to invade colonies?
@@devincross2205 Given the example provided, it is currently 1:1. All that changes between units is movement, similar to chess.
What if after the colony falls, the victor plunders some resource cards from the defeated (if available), and the defeated rolls the die in the attempt to place a military man on an adjacent unoccupied resource tile the colony once stood sort of as a retreat. And since the player is still close by, the victor can attempt to chase down the defeated or leave him to continue to try and build a new colony. This could then add strategy where to person can decide if he wants to destroy the colony to gain more resources or advance his overall victory depending on if his opponent has a stock pile of resources.
Going to have to watch this one on the way home from work tomorrow.
I hope you enjoy!
Awesome, it's certainly looking good and the nice pieces certainly help its table presence. I also love some streamlined board game rules and the simplicity is great as well. And additionally as everyone else here I'll just toss in my 2 cents...
Aesthetics - Sea vs land needs more contrast, as does Stone vs Iron
Comeback Mechanism - Infantry killed respawn in a colony or next to a colony, When an opponent builds a colony draw a card, If there's a 3+ player mode a respawning comeback mechanism is necessary as in so many classic wargames the first person to lose is dogpiled which is no fun
Incentivizing Expansion - First colony is cheaper? Start with cavalry? One resource is much rarer than the others?
Nerfing Cannons & Blockades - When captured they're permanently kept by the other player, When surrounded by an Infantry & Cavalry they're Immobilized (incentivizes unit diversity), And imo but the economic deprivation tactic is maybe too brutal so for each turn blockading you must discard a card
Map Variety - Perhaps a hex that just gives 1 VP? A Deep Water Port which gives double harbor bonus, Impassable Mountain which creatures chokepoints, Or perhaps make 1 of the resource hexes much rarer than the rest
The Heretical Suggestion, Reintroducing Dice - Units can always take another single unit, but can roll 1d6 to take on two units but if it fails it's destroyed (obviously), taking on an Infantry + another on a 4-6, Cavalry + Cav/Cannon on a 5-6, Cannon + Cannon on a 6. Imo this would only add to the combat experience because it allows someone unpredictably to push their luck or be reliable & transparent, Maybe just put a "adding dice variant" in the back of the rulebook and giving the game a few d6 wouldn't add too much to its cost
Another incentive against dogpiling is Adrenaline's excellent kill reward system, where the reward for killing a certain player goes down per death
Thinking about gameplay loops, where positive loops help players who are ahead and negative loops help players who are behind.
Generally games should have negative feedback loops either helping behind players or hurting ahead players in order to prevent snowballing.
Some ideas:
Colonies should be destroyed rather than captured, forcing the attacking player to defend the tile long enough to rebuild the colony (and any walls and/or harbor).
Starting colonies should have walls to prevent rushing and taking it.
Having to move a long distance to eliminate players means players who are behind can instead focus on troops rather than roads or ships.
Limiting hand size to ten cards (or some other fixed number) means players with three colonies will likely have to discard cards after harvesting, and so have more choice of what to do but can’t completely outproduce players with one or two colonies.
Side note: might want to change name to settlements, outposts, or another name with less problematic connotations.
What if the water hex tiles were on a seperate board that gives an outline of where the land tiles go? Possibly a neoprene mat. Then place the land tiles on top of the water mat. This would make the land tiles more stable (they wouldn't slide around on the neoprene) and it should eliminate the battle issue that comes with randomizing the tiles. You could build two main (or more) islands with an ocean in between them. I believe this would also give a cool 3D effect as having the water lower than the lands. Just a thought. Nice production and explination. I wish you all the best with your game design.
I was thinking something similar, where there is a "board" with an inner frame of water tiles and the other tiles are placed inside the frame. When placing a water tile, it must be adjacent to another water tile. Not sure if my next idea is already part of the tile placement. Have each player draw a tile (like with Twilight Imperium) and place it adavcent to another tile or the water tiles along the frame (using the water tile placement rule when one is drawn).
Oh and for a victory condition I recommend another faction maybe yellow their are 3 victory types conquest where you take all your enemys land or build victory with 4 or maybe 5 Of your own settlements not conquered settlements
I love the idea, I have to print it on paper and try the combat strategies to give you some feedback. The game looks easy enough to learn how to play and, it would put players into interesting situations where decisions have to be made.
Some Ideas that come to my mind:
- Bigger map + more players: This could be a nightmare in balancing and combat mechanics. For 3 players it is always complicated.
- Towns and improvements: every time the player builds a town they can select a special power card that improves some actions. (Stonemason: Every time you have to pay 2 or more stone resource cards, one of them may be of any other resource)
-Tactic card: Every time you build a wall you may learn a tactic for your armies. Tactics allow special movements for your units, like flank attacks, retreats, and some others.
-Factions: Factions may change a bit some units, buildings, or other rules to add more variety to every game and make it more replayable.
All those suggestions add more complexity to the game, which I don't know if that's something it needs.
During early covid days, I made a similar concept. Catan, but with some improvements on the luck of resource accumulation, and initial placement and also adding in combat similar to risk.
It used a regular d6 die to collect from a space around each settlement corresponding to a 1 for the top right hex and then going around in a clockwise rotation for all 6 hexes surrounding a settlement.
This gave you more resources and that made it perfect to spend on troops. Troops rolled different dice and sometimes had different rules like horses had more movement, priests convert enemies when they roll higher instead of killing them, wizards roll a d20 but can’t be on the same space as other troops to form an army, and other fun little things. Plus each player could choose different fantasy factions (dwarves, gnomes, goblins, Sasquatches, etc.) and there were special peoples cards to give more bonuses. Definitely had some issues but was fun! Hope your game can answer some design flaws in my system and give the world its long awaited risk-catan hybrid
The answer to the water problem is either to build the water first, or after building everything move swap all water tiles not in the largest body of water with the closest tile adjacent to the largest body of water starting with the furtherest (with any luck this will connect some of the closer ones without having to move them).
It would be nice if mountains formed mountain ranges too.
Just an idea for the tile setup.
18 Water players evenly. If the number of players does not allow the tiles to be distributed evenly, add a few other tiles of a random type to the water tiles. Now in turn order the players will each place one water tile down on the board, the only rule is, you must set the water tile next to another water tile. If you have a non-water tile you can place it anywhere touching any tile already placed. After all those tiles are placed you could then begin randomly placing all the other tiles for the game.
This setup would make your ocean and landscape unique and different each time. Possible islands or complete divides could drastically change each game. There would be an issue of making the water area too big, and thus making the board not symmetrical. So, I would suggest a frame type situation similar to Catan where they wouldn't be able to place tiles outside the bounds which are set.
For the water tiles, rather than having them be individual single tiles, perhaps you make the pieces be connected together in bigger clumps (maybe groups of 4, arranged in various formations such as 4 in a line, or 4 in a cluster, or a left hand turn, whatever), and when building the map, all of these tiles need to be touching each other, or perhaps they would need to touch at least 1 other tile. This should enable players to build rivers which span the board, lakes which are surrounded by land, or oceans which span to the edge of the map.
Maybe you can divide the map tiles into three categories:
- sea (water tiles)
- universal (wheat, woods, hills)
- high grounds (mountain, stone)
The central area of the map will be made from 12 sea tiles together with two random universal tiles put together in random positions but creating symmetrical circle (so islands, peninsulas and other interesting "water-related" structures can be formed). Then, all around the tiles you put 16 more randomized universal tiles. They create the 2nd layer section of the map. Then, you put the high ground tiles mixed with universal ones to form the corners of the map. It should look something like an egg: inner part, middle part, and the external part.
Alternatively, you can also divide the map kinda like neapolitan ice cream. This way, the resource distribution is going to be less equal which might lead to some interesting plays.
I absolutely love the system you have for resource harvesting. My biggest gripe with Catan was no matter if I put it on something that's statistically likely to be rolled a lot or not, I never seemed to get much of anything in a lot of games. This system seems much more consistent, really only punishing players that don't sprawl out to get a bunch of resources.
I also always love seeing / hear game developers express excitement to see how players play the game!
Nice work. You inspired me to build one. Victory conditions:
Loot - count up tiles where units were beaten. Or gain 1 resource for each win.
Skirmish - how many back-and-forth volleys occurred for a win (ex. 2-3 my guy beat your guy who beat my guy))
Blitz - most units taken by a single unit VP
Add some Plague tokens to block tiles off like the Robber in Catan
Add Flag tokens to mark battlefields taken for VP
The least used mechanic is traps.
Like Root make a Trap system so a lone unit can become 2 under certain conditions.
Mountains could be Vantage Points to make 1 unit 2.
Each land unit could gain +1VP for wins on logical tile types (Cannon on Mounts, Cavalry on Hills, Rifles in Fields)
Love where the game is going; can't wait to see where it ends up! You obviously have done some playtesting, and I applaud you for your commitment!
Some ideas for alternate win conditions:
I think it would be interesting to win by building a certain amount of any infrastructure (roads, ports, walls, roads, and colonies) and not just colonies, or controlling 2 of each resource. That way, positioning, not just pure conflict, is also important. I really like how the positioning of the pieces is a major aspect of the game and I think this win condition would expand upon that aspect of the game.
Some ideas for map building:
If you want to do map building, you could have the players design it, but have incentives for placing certain tiles net to each other (ie, each water gets you 2 gold for each water you place it adjacent to; mountains get you one gold if it is next to no water, 1 gold if the forest, field, or pasture tile you placed is next to no other resource of the same type. Then the player with the most gold gets priority for picking where to start).
Keep it up, excited to hear the next installment!
TL:DR "What if I remade Catan but it didn't suck" Only kidding, I try to absorb as much game dev as I can on youtube. Actually finishing one of my game ideas is on my bucket list for sure~
This is a very interesting concept!
I have a couple of questions/ideas.
Have you thought about player mats with upgrades? A game like Windward comes to mind, or Root. A board that explains most of they rules and helps you organize materials. This would also give the option of using resources for upgrades. Like making 2 roads per stone, calvary can sack a walled city, being able to attack from a warship like a cannon and move back (so it can attack units near the water), calvary moving an extra hex, also an upgrade that makes it so the enemy needs 2 canons/ships around to sack. These sorts of upgrades could make defending easier and could help defeat the 'blitz attack' strategy that you were talking about in the video as being a possible problem.
This would also allow you to get rid of the cards and instead have resource trackers on the mats, and of generating constant resources. Making the game have a little more of a resource management aspect. This could also incentivize some colonies to become really juicy targets. The colonies or settlements could even be numbers (on the board piece) and correlate to a mat that shows what the colony is producing for you.
Do you have any thoughts of expanding this game for more players? I could see this as a VERY fun game with 3 players or more. Though I am sure how a map is made would need to be redone. In fact, I wonder if the random tiles is a good idea as it can lead to heavily unbalanced games over just creating a couple of maps to use over and over? People could create or print their own if you give the proper dimensions... this would allow reprints and new map packs to come out.
As for 'special tiles' that would be important to get. You could always add mines, that can get you gold that can exchange as any other resource? Or a high point that is harder to take, like it gets the rules of being 'walled' naturally?
I like the concept of the game. I look forward to being able to play it!
Adding a player board would really weaken the game. The board fulfills that role, which means that players need to interact more.
@@Tom_a_youtube_commentor a board or mat wouldn't change how players interact in anyway. It would just change the need for cards as resources and allow for upgrades or abilities to be unlocked.
Nothing about the core gameplay would change at all.
Would definitely buy this! Love the premise and the way you combine the best parts of many games.
This is very intriguing. My son and I play all sorts of board games, and frequently attend Protospiel. The win condition is combat centric. It would be difficult to consider alternative win conditions without that playtesting. It would be nice to see you put out a playthrough video... though... you may be holding off at this stage for proprietary reasons. Regarding the water tiles... perhaps rather than individual hex tiles... you could have all water tiles connected as a group of 3. So anytime water tiles are placed, there are always 3 water tiles connected minimum. Again... without playtesting it is hard to make suggestions... and that's okay. I feel like the outside edges of the map would see less action and therefore less importance. I'd love to be able to build lumbermills or stone quarries in resource tiles outside my colony to boost resource gathering... and perhaps tie a victory condition to some sort of expansion of your empire with a certain number of them. Just brainstorming! I subscribed so I can keep tabs on your progress!
Risk, Catan and Chess are 3 games I enjoy playing (mainly Risk)
You should implement a mechanic that allows you to steal 1 or 2 random cards of your opponent every time you conquier a colony
I'm exited about your project and will buy the game once it will be out for sale
such an elegant design, as much as i know tweaking for balance is inevitable and more iteration during playtesting is helpful, i hope you don't overcomplicate or add too much to this, it seems like a perfect base to build off of in expansions, i'd be seeking out publishers asap and getting this to market coz you've got a real hit on your hands here!
Polytopia mixed with Catan, I love it!
I want to play this, RIGHT NOW! This is actually so cool. As a fan of Catan, who always wanted to a combat system this would be perfect! I love the idea, and the balancing seems fair. Instant purchase if available!
Wow 🤩
Really nice game
One of my first thoughts was to get some special hexes for the game
Like an old ruin which makes building a colony easier or which is better defended
Also a neutral trading post would be cool
Like a place where you can trade 1 for 1 but you have to move with a kart or other vehicle from there to a colony
To establish a trade route
Really cool, I love how you kept the combat simple. It lets the game be more about the resources and tactics than luck or anything.
The only thing I'd like to see is an expansion to 4 or even 6 players, I'd love to see how that could play out. But I understand why you've kept it to two for now.
Great work on the video too, clear, concise, and my interest is piqued.
Following for more.
This looks awesome man! I’d love to play this but i hope you don’t feel the need to rush, take care of yourself and God bless you!
It looks really interesting, and the rules are so much more simpler and easier to understand than Risk's rules.
Me and a group of friends love getting together to play risk a couple times a year, but we hate how long and dragged out it can be. I think what youre doing is amazing and can't wait for it to release. My only thought during your video was it'd be cool to have a bigger map, or even leave it up to the players by having set map sizes, i.e "16 tiles, 32 tiles, 64 tiles". I'm not the greatest at explaining my thoughts but I'm hoping you understand what im getting at here. Love the work so far, keep it up.
I like the idea of combining the colonizing system from Catan and Risks war warfare, really makes it very diverse and complex! Hopefully it gets released!
I LOVE THIS IDEA! I honestly love that you use chess/checkers attack gameplay because rolling dice or other methods are super boring. Even in the more fun games like the card game War it is boring if you don't feel like you have control over positioning.
I am not a huge fan of Catan yet but I also have had an idea of a game like this but more like monopoly, except with a manueverable board. You could buy properties or infrastructure and profit off from your opponent using it or from upgrading it or a dice roll maybe.
My only concern is that it seems that comebacks would be rare and difficult. Other that that the game looks really good and like something I would play 👍 Subbed
@@jan_Linaso1178 that is true. I didn't mention this in the video but I'm actually working on a system that can add surprise "maneuvers" Incorporated into the resource cards. I think this will help add some strategic luck into the game and may be enough to spark a comeback, if played well.
This is a good thing to note. Usually in games like these a nice thing to do is to try and make things harder for players that are winning, rather than easier. One thing you may want to try is some sort of tax type system which would make the costs of having a larger empire bigger.
@@mistercookboom1899 perhaps something like the catan knight activation, making you spend resources to move units around, or make the the first move on the turn free, but others cost resources
Hey, Julian. You can solve the setup problems by grouping the tiles. Instead of individual hexes, they can be groups of 7 hexes. This way you ensure sea tiles together and the cities will be at least 3 hexes away from each other in just by placing them on center of the tiles.
Ive obviously commented to soon and now I know there are no colony on tiles 😅
Very cool. I like how the resources are built into the tiles, a genius decision for sure. I’ll continue to watch, looks very fun.
So glad I found this! The math behind trading is so simple yet so effective and puts both ports and port blockades to a good use. I've been trying to make up a similar game but just couldn’t decide why naval supremacy would ever be necessary or how blockades should work out. I love your solution!
I don't know how the algorithm new EXACTLY WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. Will surely buy this when it's done! Thank you for bringing the idea to life and I wish you best of luck.
I do hope that in time you can create a version for 5-6 players (I know it's a lot, but it's our usual party size)
@@user-vt8bq3jo5e that's awesome, love to hear it! I appreciate the support. I would love to have a 5-6 player version. That'd be lots of fun!
This looks really cool. I think this game will really benefit from having a really simple elegant pool of units and combat system. I think small and simple deep mechanics almost always make games better than complex shallow mechanics. I think you really found something cool here. I also really like the look of your game. it is great fun to get into the imaginative mindset of roleplaying an empire and i think you've build a world with just enough suggestion to put players in that mode without hitting them with so much lore that you do all of the Role playing work for them. That might just be my taste though- i like trimmer thematic experiences.
A few notes:
1. Map size: 4x games all suffer from a fundamental problem. There is no map size which does not have a pretty game breaking drawback for this genre. If you go for a small map where players can interact with each other right away than you are going to miss so much opportunity for players to build empires big enough and unique enough to show off your clever combat system. The game will be over before it starts. Also RNG will impact the trajectory of the game a huge amount because the game wont be long enough for RNG to equalize and treat all players roughly fairly. Ok but if you go with a larger map you are going to increase the amount of time before players actually engage with one another and a larger and larger chunk of the game will be bogged down with sim-city beaurocratic game play. When players do interact it is more and more likely that the winner will be already obvious because one player will have snowballed more than the others. Any the larger the map is the less RNG in die-rolls and map distribution matters. So every player will have a roughly interchangeable empire and experience and your game will lose a lot of its interest and replay ability
You can mitigate this by adding some kind of trade, diplomacy, exploration mechanics for players to engage in before they contact one another and some mechanics which mitigate snowballing by slowing down the leader somehow in the first phase of the game. Eclipse Second dawn is *the only* 4x game I am aware of that has a compelling solution to this problem with the genre and even that isn't perfect. Dont get me wrong - this genre rocks despite this difficulty and i am excited to play your game in its current form but I think if you can find a clever way to deal with this it would really make it something very special. And all that said- there is something to be said for letting a simple elegant game be simple and elegant and not trying to add mechanic after mechanic to fix every single problem. At some point the new mechanics become a problem in themselves.
2. Win condition: you are absolutely right to spend a ton of time refining your win condition. I like that your current idea is so concrete, thematic, and tight. The trick I think is to find a win condition which will mean that players feel like anyone has some chance at winning if they are cleverer than their opponents right up until the moment the win condition triggers. Then that goal also has to be interesting enough to motivate players to explore your mechanics in the most fun way they can.
3. Player count- If this is a more than 2 player game, how do you stop the phenomenon where weak players get steam rolled and strong players just get ganged up on. I think most adversarial multiplayer games feel Samey because they all end up becoming gang-up-on-the-leader sims. You can mitigate this by separating players spatially on the map but then some players will lose without being able to confront the leader at all. This is a tricky problem.
4. Do you have problems breaking through dug-in battle lines. I am thinking a bit about the interactions between your three units and i am not sure what players could do to break through a stalemated front. This is like a more complicated version of the problem with risk where at some point two players are just chucking units at each other until the player with the slightly better economy wins. Not that that's a bad thing in itself its just that the actual process there can get tedious. What if you could speed it up by dropping your surplus resources to give cannons +1 range, infantry +1 health or cavalry +1 movement for one turn. It would have effectively the same feeling, but it would speed up the trench warfare.
5. Maybe asymmetry could be cool. Idk, your game is really elegant and i think that's sweet so maybe asymmetry would ruin that but it also tends to add some character or replayability. Id say almost the same thing about not-combat player interactions (ie diplo victory or something)
Ok sorry for the spammy response. I think you are unto something really cool so if any of this is helpful ill be psyched but mostly i just want to say this is cool keep going.
This looks great! I love the production value of all the tiles and pieces, they look fantastic. I also like the simplicity of it, it looks really intuitive to play but I can imagine you'd get a lot of interesting strategic depth out of it.
Couple of minor bits of feedback
1. The Mountain tiles look quite similar to the Stone tiles - maybe add some more snow on the Mountain tiles to make it easier to differentiate?
2. For fixing the water setup so they clump together - maybe use larger groups of water hexes (e.g. groups 4 connected water hex tiles) instead of individual water tiles. I would still use randomised placement for these and a mix of random hex group shapes but this would mean there are no landlocked individual water tiles and every water tile has a few connected water tiles.
3. It might be interesting to see if this system could be expanded to more than 2 players? It would lose the chess-like nature of 2 player but I can imagine playing this on larger board with 4 players would feel really epic!
@@BrendanHead I appreciate it, thank you so much! Feedback on mountains is noted, I'll think on how I can make them stand apart more.
That would be a great idea for the water tiles. The unfortunate thing is that, I'm not aware of a manufacturer that will print like that. I'm sure it could be done but it would probably be costly.
The goal is definitely have it be a 2-4 player game. I actually have 2 other colors but I usually just use the 2 for demonstrative purposes. It is pretty epic with 4 players ⚔️ lots of different fronts to consider!
I’d happily buy this game. It’s a perfect combination of some of my most favorite games. The only small feature I think would be a perfect addition is a little reference card like in catan, to show you what resources are needed for each thing.
Infantry are good against cannons. And Calvary cannons are good against walls . Calvary are good against cannons and ships are good against all land unit.
On the issue of early aggression. You could take some inspiration from HOI4. Holding occupied colonies requires of resources to control the population. At the end of each recourse phase a play must spend one or two food(wheat or fish) to prevent an uprising. This could last something like 6 turns. If during those six turns the player does play 2 or 3 times the colony flips back to its original owner.
I think this would go some way to balancing the zerg rush tactic. If you don't want this to play as much of a role in the mid to late game, you could have it so if cav take a colony the control time is 4 turns and the cannon is 2.
I hope this is of some help. It looks like a fantastic and timeless game. I am really excited to play. : )
I like the idea though I don't think having a rule that involves doing something for X turns is good gameboard design since counting those 6 turns would be annoying to do outside of digital. I would personally rather implement your idea by having a consistent low cost of maybe 1 food per turn, that can be removed by paying some bulk cost, like the cost of a settlement, almost as if you're "replacing" that settlement with your own.
Have you considered using the historical era of Pike and Shot combat as inspiration for the combat system? Historically, there would be groups of pikemen and groups of musketeers working together, each with their own role to play. I think it could be represented as something like this:
- Pikemen: Move 2, kills units in the same tile, but dies alongside enemy unit if it charges another unit. Cavalry charging into pikes will die without killing the pikes. Prefers to stay braced. This both simulates histotical realities (getting Last Samurai'd if you charge an enemy gun-line, or trying to take a cav charge while unbraced) and creates an interesting play pattern where can either use your pikes conservatively to try and screen away enemy cavalry from charging your cannons and muskets if you think you have a ranged advantage, or send them charging in sacrificially to try and clear a hole for your cavalry to be able to charge into the enemy ranged units. Could cost 1 wood to represent the long logs used to make their pikes and 1 iron to represent the armor they wear.
- Musketeers: Move 2, kills units in adjascent tiles. Maybe Pikemen could take 2 shots before dying due to their armor? Maybe worth testing. Can only attack adjascent units once per turn. Moving them into melee with another musketeer kills both, moving into melee with artillery kills the artillery but not the musketeer.
- Cavalry: Move 3, kills units in same tile unless it charges a pikeman.
- Artillery: Move 1, kills units 2 tiles away once per turn.
This is what I've always wanted as a board game, and I'm so excited someone has decided to do it!
Incredible game!
A little question, though: When someone conquers a colony, what happens to its roads? Do they have to change side? Can they, despite being orange, be used by blue?
Also, 7 roads and 2 bridges are enough for the game to flow? Can they be destroyed, so that you can cut supplies and etc.?
That's a really interesting core system. I'm always on the lookout for games that are deep and accessible. Like Scythe but better. This one could be a winner.
I like How you justify setting the exchange rate from 5:1 for a different resource by making that cost lower when building ports. Personally it would be great to see more interactions between infrastructure and fighting units.
1. Perhaps if the canon had the ability to destroy bridges.
2. Another cool feature would be to have a single unit called the worker which you could place on a tile next to a colony that could harvest 1 of the resources it’s on each turn and could easily be killed by all attack units.
3. One last thing would also be to add a bit more randomness like a bandit like in catan or maybe a natural disaster function. But again that’s just more complicated in the end. I think what you’ve created looks really fun and very playable indeed.
This is a really cool idea. Subscribed! These rules seem simple to grasp, yet provide room for strategic depth and sound really fun to play.
Disclaimer, I play tabletop wargames so the rules below could be way too granular and complicated for this scale of game. Feel free to disregard.
My first thought was that the attack of cannons and cavalry seem switched:
- Cavalry have greater attack/movement range, but can't hit and run
- Cannons have short attack range, but can move after attacking
This seems to be due to the concept that pieces are "captured" like in Chess, where you move on top of the enemy piece to remove it. I think to differentiate the cannon as a long-range unit, you could do the following:
- keet its slow movement
- cannons are the only military piece that does not "capture" enemy pieces through movement
- cannons attack at 2 range, but must stay still (if they move, they cannot move into a hex with an enemy on it)
Then for cavalry:
- they can move/capture 3 tiles of total movement, can they can capture at any of the 3 steps they make (so move 1 to capture, then move 2, or move 2 to capture, then move 1)
- only can capture one enemy piece per turn
Finally for Musketmen:
- 2 movement range instead of 1.
This makes cavalry uniquely able to flank and reflects the movement capability of cavalry, but still prevents them from outrunning cannons if they overextend themselves. Cannons would still be excellent defensively, and very powerful, but would require protection by Musketmen to not be overpowered by cavalry.
Then you also have a nice "3, 2, 1" rule for cavalry, musketmen, cannons.
For guaranteeing bodies of water are of a certain size, you can set a minimum group size, such as “all water tiles must be part of a body of water at least 6 tiles large”. To keep this rule if tiles are randomly placed, can have isolated water tiles or small groups move to water tiles closest to them, which can create random bodies of water
The chess-type combat looks fun! Maybe the sides of water tiles can have restrictions regarding what they can connect to, like a side that must connect to water, another that must connect to land, and a third that can connect to anything. Even if most sides on most water tiles can connect to anything, it might make it so water tiles would be more likely to form rivers and lakes (kind of like Carcassonne but with more flexibility).
This is the board game that I must have it's simply like the strategy games I play on mobile nice easy and fun
this seems really elegant, it's beautiful.
Have you settled on tile set up rules yet? I watched this earlier and been thinking about it all day, here's my system:
1. I'd keep the random setup option as a quickplay option for those who don't care.
2. Players randomly choose two tiles to start. Choose who goes first, and take turns drawing and placing tiles.
All new tiles must touch a minimum of two sides to previously places tiles.
Water tiles must touch at least one side to another water tile.
Resource tiles may not touch more than one other copy of that resource.
You may not place a tile so as to leave a fully enclosed hole.
Finally, once all tiles are placed the players choose who places their first colony first, and the other player should get a bonus such as an extra resource card.
Another thought was that the players would draw two tiles and place one at a time, creating a little more strategy to it.
@@Tayleron funny you ask, because that's what this week's video will be on! Haha great suggestions, I think you'll be happy with the system. Stay tuned this Thursday! 😀
Chess’ most defining feature is the King. So the victory condition should include taking an opponents castle, making it similar to Chinese Chess in that the capitals can’t move.
There already exists a game that is a mixture of Risk and Catan. It's called Viktory II.
It has map exploration and dice combat, that emphasizes combined arms, fortifications/terrain and tactical maneuvering over mass-producing units of one type.
Awesome, I think a cool idea would be adding little magnets to each tile to make them connect to each other.
The following points aren't criticizing, but genuine questions I have about the design choices:
Why not just have cannons to have "1 ranged attack" instead of moving then retreating? It seems more intuitive.
Isn't the game going to be too slow and samey for the first turns? This is quite a "trait" people kinda of tolerated with Chess (but "solved" with chess 960) but it is seemed more as a problem on games like Scythe where people can just to the same thing every match. I think there should be some kind of threat early or some variation in addition to the setup or people might get bored.
You also could borrow some of the infrastructure ideas from Pandemic, specially Iberia, where you can "teleport" units from port to port by discarding resources or to any other city by using pre-built railroads. It is one of the better uses I've seen of this mechanic.
Another problem I can foresee is the Runaway problem, the player loosing won't have any blue shells and will probably experience a painful slow death like in games of Risk or Monopoly.
The "wait a whole turn to capture" siege mechanic can lead to a bit of annoying bookkeeping. The harbors also can be a bit of a nuisance having to recalculate everything. I know those can just be minor issues, playtesting may be necessary.
I also think you can explore multiple win condition possibilities so you can increase the variety of strategies, including adaptability, freedom and, ultimately, replayability to your game.
Finally, MY PERSONAL PREFERENCES, from games I like:
I really tend to prefer war games where combat is more of a tool than your only option to overcome challenges. I would really like to see a version where direct combat is a bit better for both sides so anyone be encouraged to do it, while also being a threat to both players. This balance can lead to some pretty neat decisions (see Eclipse). It just being winner-takes-all kinda of kills its own purpose in the game, as players will be too much calculating to just take the wars they can win. I hope this makes sense haha.
But, as always, great video and great content! I really hope this succeeds! So many interesting concepts. Very entertaining and interesting to watch.
One of the issues is that the initial rules might be quite daunting. One way to solve that and the early rush is to take something from catan and 4X games: the unit rules are all listed on the cards but the cards are not all available in the beginning. Maybe put all the unit and upgrade cards face down on the table and you must pay a fee (maybe written on the back) to “unlock” that new tech. Once unlocked it’s available to everyone but first person to unlock it gets a free unit. This would also make future expansions packs easier too.
One simple rule to add to make sure all water titles are connected in some way, is add in the 'Construction Phase'
"All Water tiles must connect at least one side to another water tile."
This way players can assemble the board however they please, while also keeping the water connected so that navel battles across the map can be an option. I'd also recommend adding to the rulebook sheet for the game a couple colored pictures of pre-made tile formations. Similarly to Catan where players can get a feel of a balanced game by having pre-made tile maps that gives them a good idea of a balanced game.
I would also love a google doc of all the rules, since I'm curious about how resource generation is done. Since that can have a very Huge factor on the gameplay and thought pattern of players, and also the feel of the game's tempo when playing. And if you want, since you already feature a dice, you can add numbers on it so that players can roll them for first turn.
Really interesting concept! It really looks like Catan + military conquest which is something I've wanted for a long time. A couple thoughts that I hope help:
1. Resource scarcity as a driver of strategy and source of replayability- The 6 different resources required for different units/buildings looks great for forcing players to expand to make sure they have access to everything. However, one element of Catan that I love that's missing here is the number tokens on each tile for determining when a tile generates its resource. I don't care about the tokens and rolling themselves but that mechanic introduces resource scarcity in a very interesting way. My experience is that it makes one resource scarcer than the others and bends that entire game's strategy around obtaining it. That leads to more unique decisions for that one game and increases replayability. I would try to find a better way to create that scarcity than 2 dice and tokens as that could create completely unfair scenarios where there's only one good place to get iron and whoever gets there first just automatically wins. But something else to force people to prioritize where they put their colonies would be good. And maybe your unit costs already create this, hard to tell without actually playing it.
2. Hidden information to create not obvious combat- I agree that dice rolling distracts and takes too long in strategy games. I also think that output randomness like "attack then roll for success" only creates bad feelings as we tend to take success for granted and get frustrated by failure. However, I feel like there could still be more depth of strategy to movement and combat than simply taking the other side's pieces chess-style. Having not played the game, it seems like there would be a lot of standoffs where players keep pieces just outside each other's range for a long time until someone gets a clear advantage (more pieces or better pieces) then it just becomes "smash them all together until I win" which becomes predictable and doesn't seem fun to me. One possible way to resolve that would be the ability to build cards (like development cards in Catan) with different one-use tactical abilities. Things like "1 minute man can immediately attack 2 spaces away" or "prevent enemy counter attack after this attack" or "when this unit would be defeated instead it retreats one tile". Effects that represent clever strategic decisions and give a way to win even with the smaller army and keep your opponent guessing. Or potentially tile-based effects to force players to consider where they have combat. Maybe cannons gain a range advantage if they are on hills. Or cavalry are slowed down by forests. Something to make people think about more than just smashing armies together when they have the advantage.
I'm going to say that you have a great game design here. Keep the combat as simple as you have done, for it'll keep the game moving, but it'll go faster too. For victory conditions, why not have 3-5 vital control regions. Areas that are of great importance to win the war. Finally, maybe see about adding 2 more armies? Either with the base game or as a future expansion.
P.S. maybe team rules so multiple people can play together. Might make the game longer, but it'll allow more people to have fun.
Nice, love it! A skirmish type free-for-all version for up to 4 or 5 players would open up the game for a bigger audiance. The rules are crisp, the board style is also nice.
I would love to play this game! Keep developing
This looks clean! Having a single river of water dividing the board in two looks like a valuable gameplay element given your inclusion of explicit naval units; distributing water tiles randomly won’t work. I think you could place down water tiles first, then all other tiles randomly. Place one water in the center; players take turns placing one water adjacent to any water until all are placed. (This may result in a central lake, a dividing river, or potentially a field of islands in a large lake, depending on player approach.)
After that, players can place land tiles in some other manner. Here’s an idea to differentiate the game board from Catan: players take turns placing land tiles. On their turn, each player may place three tiles of the same type continuously, adjacent to any existing board tile. Or, they may place two tiles of any type adjacent to any tile. This makes players choose between placing more tiles overall, giving them more influence over board setup, and crafting more resource availability on their side of the board. Of course, you can also put tiles on the far side of the board, to interrupt your opponents setup.
Allowing the free placement of 3 of the same tiles will result in little mountain ranges, forests, deserts, etc, and make the board look more intentional. Casual players can have fun being creative and making something memorable, while serious players will no doubt study opening moves trying to counter each other’s board setup. This is also to reinforce your game’s chess affinity.
One more idea to make the game more chess like: instead of a catan-like resource die, each player on their turn may declare any resource which touches any of their forts. They then harvest one of that resource for each matching tile adjacent to their fort; the opponent does the same. You may not harvest the same resource twice in a row.
These are just my suggestions, you have an awesome design here! The aesthetics are on point. My suggestions are aimed at removing most/all RNG from the game, building a strategically coherent map while retaining the catan-hexagon shape, and generally strengthening the chess affinity while staying within the catan+risk gameplay elements. Good luck on your design, I’ll be interested to see how this develops!
perhaps the problem of water hexes can be solved as they do with the ocean in Catan: that instead of being separate hexes, there are several hexes together in shapes that are easy to arrange according to the map. Also the "river-ocean" like hexes must be arranged at the beginning of the game before accommodating the rest. If you want them to always form a continuous river, perhaps you can implement the rule that "river-ocean" tiles they must be put together. Or If you want lakes and rivers to be able to form, perhaps you can implement the rule that at least two must be together.
Also to prevent the shapes from becoming strange and disadvantageous, it could be made a rule that in turn order, as in Catan, each player will take a river and place it; and the last player puts two (in this way the players themselves can control the level of homogeneity of water or even agree to make maps: an island type like Catan, a map of a river in the middle, a map of an inland lake, a map of quadrants, etc., etc.
Regarding the war mechanisms, the chess-type mechanism seems excellent to me... however I am worried that the strategy will be reduced to who can gain the most resources in the early game (as in risk where the balance of power could easily be tipped to one person; especially in games where the people are new).... perhaps you could use a system symilar to "the game of thrones the board game" where everyone has character cards with battle points and special abilities, which everyone selects before a battle and are shown at the same time; the winner is decide by counting the points of the pieces that fight, those of the card and the abilities ; This is still a closed combat model that does not require luck and rewards those who avoid entering into fights the first time, that does not depend on luck and that adds a social factor to the game: being able to guess what card your opponent may choose; also it helps to keep the balance of the game because you could use your top cards and win battles... but then you would be trapped with worst cards and be atacked for more patien players, specialy if you are close to winning.
I just randomly found this video before bed, this looks amazing though and I'd love to buy it some day!
Listen I need this. Please release the game or the 3D models and prints, I’d buy it regardless of the format! This is awesome
I love all the ideas and thought put into this, Sounds like a fun and exciting game! I feel like the combat, at least for me others may like it more, is a weak spot. Idk if you tried this and it didn’t work but maybe each unit has an attack stat, defense stat, range stat, and movement. For example the infantry could have maybe one attack into any touching tile, and would have one defense, or for defense the attack could roll and have to beat a cards defense stat on a d6, and if the attack fails, the defender has a chance to retaliate against the attacker and roll to see if they attack the attacker. so say an infantry has a defense of 3 and an attacker rolls a 2, the defending infantry can now try to roll an retaliating attack to see if they can kill the attacking unit. I think this would add some more thought and risk to the game where you now have to weigh in your odds.
Also maybe walls can increase your defense bonus, and maybe this defense bonus can be mitigated if you have a frigate blockading the colony.
I don’t know if you tested this already but I think it’s an idea that might be fun
As @JCPRuckus also mentioned, the solution to the water problem is to build the water first! Carcassonne's river expansion works like that and is a fun twist to the game. So for this, youll need some system for how the water tiles can fit together so they can form different water combinations! Could be cool if two bodies of water could appear too!
A different solution to the rush strategy problem would be that starting settlements have walls meaning a player would need siege equipment to attack, similar to Risk Europe, and then rush would also still be able to punish new colonies.
I’ve thought of this and I’ll post my version once I find it.
Regarding tile placement, you could scenarios in the rulebook which show various set up options. E.g. settling a coast, divided by a river, claim the bridge, claim the island etc.
I think it could be cool if the players participate in the building of the map. something like they both have equal amount of tiles, and take turns placing them into the board. players must start with water, and after all the water tiles are placed down they take turns placing the rest. this could open up a whole new aspect of strategy to the game before any battles take place.
Players could focus on their own side of the board, to make a land filled with magnificent spots for colonies. Or they could set up lands built as strongholds, with mountains and rocks used as natural walls. Or they could forgo their own development to disrupt their enemies lands.
Just a thought, but it sounds like a fun pregame back and fourth.
When this is ready I will definitely buy it! Looks so good. I am creating another game that is similar in mechanics, but not so similar. I love Catan and love strategic and wargame boardgames, so this is really appealing to me.
The rules remind me of Mare Nostrum. Very interesting work!
very cool.
Stunning looking map.
About the map, I like to play fog of war on catan, but wanted to randomize the board in an intentionally balanced or unbalanced way.
it did this with a 1D6 die roll.
for you this could look something like:
no terrain type can ever be more likely than 5/6.
when exploring a new block, 1D6 roll is the resource type that block is
any block bordering this block now has +1 likelihood to be the same type
a block boarded on 5 sides by wood has a 5/6 chance to be wood.
TL:DR
1/6 chance to get wood
gets wood,
all bordering blocks now have 2/6 chance to be wood.
player can then fine tune to taste
_______________
can add another 1D6 to utilize bell curves, for even more tailored generation.
with 1D6
The max probability can then be set for for map type, so a max counter value of 5/6 means all the wood will probably be in the same area's but a max of 2/6 means the the wood should be, fairly, well scattered.
with 2D6
each of the 6 block types now has a 2/12 chance but that can be distributed to taste,
and the + values for repeating last block type can filled into the bell curve from top or bottom as preferred.
Want ore to be hard to find? roll's on 2 and 12 and its +1 to repeat fills from the bottom so
if last block ore, 2,12 and 3 = ore
or really easy
if roll is 7 or 6 = ore
if last block was ore +2/12 chance for more ore, at top of bell curve
if roll is now 7,6, 8 or 5 = ore
PS) if you like fog-of-war mechanic, let me get a discount on product, please 🙂
AND in book of rules explaining map generation, just credit map generation to the "Tsk method"
which is exactly the sound you make when u don't roll any wood ;-P
PPS) multiple win states?
checkmate, board control, buy enough development cards, longest roads, reach X points
you know that kind of thing?
Man I am hyped! Looking forward to regular uploads ;)
Hey Julian. THIS IS AWESOME. Yes, please make this into a real game, I think lots of people would buy this! I have always been disgruntled with how in Catan, you are at the mercy of the dice. This game is a combo of many great things. I can also foresee that one round of this game could be finished in under an hour, which is great because currently there are no grand strategy games I like that can be finished in so short a time.
Here’s the one critique I would say: I am not sure if allowing the defender to counterattack would be a good idea, because it seems like defending in this game is already very easy. With just a cannon and a couple of infantry, you could hold off a much larger force of enemies very easily. I think this would discourage attacking, I’m theory. And if that isn’t true (in practice, based off of your test gameplay) then I would still say that allowing an enemy counterattack in the middle of your turn could make the rules confusing. Why not just not have counterattacks, and then the enemy can attack on their turn? I just see allowing these instant counterattacks as limiting players on executing bold maneuvers-as they can be quickly checked. Just some thoughts, I may be wrong though in my way of thinking.
Anyway, great video and please please consider selling these!
Reminds me of a board game version of sid Meyers civilization, looks awesome!
I'd recommend checking out Civilization: a new dawn. It's an amazing board game based on civ6
this development process being collaborative is so so sick!
This seems like a really solid concept, you've clearly done a good bit of testing. I will say that, for me personally, I'd definitely want the ruleset to accommodate up to 4 players, which would probably have to balanced a little differently. I do think a semi-random, 'numbered' system for tile placement is a good idea, I like the way Catan does this, it keeps things fresh while avoiding a lot of the problems that can arise from true random placement. I also see a lot of potential for future expansion packs, if you decided to do so; something like leaders or faction-specific bonuses to create some asymmetrical play, new resource tiles and/or special units could easily be added for optional mechanics. Gonna sub to keep an eye on what you're doin.
I think an interesting way to spice up the trading mechanic would be to increase the trade in cost for resources that your opponent has lots of. I think it could make resource gathering more strategic.
I suggest ,bringing some industrial revolution mechanism where,you spent 5 iron,5 wheat,5 stone and 5 something else and be in the industrial era where you can build factories that produce double the resources from a colony you eant to be in but to balance every factory cost 3 of each type of recource, and if you develop enough you cand build one of these megaunits: a tank,a bomber,a flamthrower,an armored car ,a battleship,a submarine, a destroyer or a zeppelin,and to balance it if you choose one the other players cant choose the one you got and if you want one megaunit it will cost you 5 of each type of recources but the megaunit as of its name will survive and be better at combat than the other normal units.Also if you want you can add that if you have 3 or more facories you unlock rifleman which is an upgraded musketman,breechload artillery which is an upgraded cannon,the frigate becomes a torpedoboat or any naval ship you want that idnt a megaunit,and the cavalry remains the same,also if you have 2 or more factories you can build train tracks which cost you 2 iron and 1 wood ,and lets you travel further in one turn than roads.And if you want you can make the map bigger because of this indutrialization if you add it.Hope i gave some ideas for the game,cant wait to come out!
Suggestion/house rule with the cannon, you could say the cannon can take any adjacent piece and advance to its hex if the controlling player chooses. This is a thematic change which doesn't affect gameplay.
@@Gattninja so it would function the same way, just not have to bother physically moving it?
@@julianbirke that is correct.
Question: If you see this - who knows.
Would you consider making the game... expandable? Here are just some thoughts I had watching this. I will also note that I am an avid "Total War" player and some ideas I have sorta come from playing that game. Also, fairly familiar with the Civilization Series.
Forgive me if this is a long post... everyone has been warned.
1. Victory / Setup: Going to address these both because I feel like these play hand in hand. I would propose making two or three different Victory Conditions that all players involved choose to agree with at the start of the game. For example:
Frontier Victory: Control four colonies and maintain control for X (probably 1) turn after the fourth colony is taken.
Total Domination: Completely Eliminate your opponents from the game, conquering and removing every piece your opponent has from the board.
(You could make it a tad easier that is a player goes 2 turns without controlling a colony then they are eliminated.)
(Another optional rule you could include is that any troops reaming after their defeat could be enlisted into the victors unit pool - but it does not allow you to train additional units from their reserves.)
Objective Victory: You could also include victory objectives that could, in theory, act as alternative accomplishments to be victorious. This could be something like...
A. Own three Colonies with Walls.
B. Own three Colonies with Harbor's
C. Own a Colony with a Wall, A Colony with a Harbor, and a Colony with both a Wall and Harbor.
For example. This sorts of conditions would be secret objectives each player could have at the start of the game. A possible twist you could include is that the objective has to be declared when you meet the conditions and should anyone prevent you from wining in 1 turn rotation, you loose that objective and can no longer obtain victory with that card.
The Last idea I have here is "Capital Conquest". At the start of the game, a flag token is placed in your first colony and marks it as a "Capital" that if it is captured and held for a duration of time (two turns?) then the opposing player who owned it is eliminated. To make it a tad harder and prevent early game capital rushes, capitals could add a bonus to the defense so maybe without a wall you need to meet the walled capture conditions and with the wall then three pieces (1 inside and 2 outside) are necessary to secure the capital. And if for any reason two players both loose their capitals at the same time to each other, then they just swap control of each others capital and the game continues.
Game Setup:
I would base this on the number of active players in the game. So, example, the small grid you just had in this video could be a two player game. Then, for each additional player up to 4 (maybe?) you would add tiles to make the map bigger.
Map Design:
I think this could be simplified with taking a note from Twilight Imperium where you just pre-design maps for players to follow based on player count. This is what Twilight Imperium does and it works well. You could also allow people to "free build" maps and just make suggestions on how to design a good playable map. Such as all water tiles having a guaranteed connection to another water tile.
Map Tiles:
Totally optional but just a random thought. Something else you could include to make the maps more interesting is have hazard tiles. Maybe as an optional inclusion and also based on the number of players playing as to how many are present. Hazards could be things like a Volcano that could include a die with three different faces (three blank, two with smoke, one with smoke and fire). If a piece controlled by a player is within 1 tile of this location, the die is rolled at the end of the turn. if two smoke tiles are rolled within 1 turn rotation, there is an eruption that removes all pieces around the tile from the board. If an eruption is rolled (smoke and fire) same effect but within a two tile radius.
2. Flexibility:
I am all for having a game with set core rules and stuff. But something I would like to propose to be considered is letting this game be open to either explorative modifications / expansions by yourself and / or your community. I personally am a suto game designer (working on two card games) and in general a creative person. I have lost count of the number of custom MTG cards I have made for kicks either on my own or with friends. I even have a friend that I regularly hang out with where we revel in taking board games and playing them beyond the confines of the rules. For example, we played a game called Res Arcana that is basically resource production / management and decided to just include every piece we could from the box in the game and not restrict ourselves. For example, I think each player usually gets 6 artifact cards and we instead just split it in half between us. We also removed the point limit cap and decided to play until we got board. Fun stuff.
Given that players like this exist and it can be fun to explore why games like this use specific rules and suggestions can be entertaining for some. And for others, they either like creating stuff or like trying out new things. And I think the more ways you can give for optional expansions to the game to let people further customize how they want to play might be worth considering for longevity. Board games in general have good re-playability but you still don't want to run into a situation where the gameplay gets stale or too repetitive. And it could also be a fun way to interact with your community. The easy option here is that your community could be permitted to either post or share their expansion ideas for you to work on yourself when you either find things you like or get enough of a demand for it. Another option you could allow is for the community to have a "Community Expansion Collection" that could be free (still need to get the base game to play though) print files could be offered for free for new models / pieces. If you are open and willing to consider it, you could allow players to market expansions but they have to meet a set of conditions.
A. A proof of concept is given to you of gameplay with the modified rules.
B. The total production cost is provided to you.
C. Their market price is provided to you.
D. Etc, etc, etc.
Not trying to cut that short but I know it would be a process to set up which is why I understand not wanting to deal with it or why board games in general do not bother dealing with it. Especially when one has to consider the cost of tile and plastic production and so forth. How you go about it would be up to you and what you work out with your legal team should you consider it. I know for a fact one of the main reasons I would like to suggest this is that I can guarantee I would play this game and I know for a fact I would be considering ideas and additions before the first game even ended. It would be really cool to be able to participate in the community of a game similar to how modders do in video games. Cooler if I can further benefit from the work even if it meant obviously giving a cut of the profit to you and so forth. So I am throwing this out here.
3. Ideas:
Forts / Castles
A defensive structure (maybe 3 max per player) that would only allow the recruitment of basic units like a colony, but also be able to remove an opponents units within 1 tile range of the fort if they pass by or end in range with maybe a max use of 1 per player turn. (but can only target pieces of the active player). Removing could require 2 cannons to end a full turn cycle present 2 tiles away from the fort. If needed, could maybe "balance" this with 1 of those cannons being removed when the fort is removed.
Watch Tower
A defensive structure that increase movement of nearby friendly units by +1 when moving (but not to attack). Maybe moving to then attack could be okay but playtesting would be able to confirm or deny this. Anyway, removing them would be the same as removing other pieces. Maybe with a limitation of 3 + 1 per player. (to accommodate for map size).
Unique Resources
Think of the hazard tiles I mentioned but the opposite? Unique, rare, 1 per map tile that a bonus effect when trading. They can be traded at better deals than standard resources and the scarcity encourages player interaction to secure them. For example, gemstones could be a resource that takes up a trade value of 3 of any other resource. So rather than trading 5 fish for say 1 resource, 1 gemstone + 2 resources of the same type could = 1 resource of the chosen type. I am not sure how well this would effect the game's market ... without playing the game as is its hard to tell ...
Random Question: Is this playable on Table Top Simulator by chance?
Overall:
I love the idea of this game. I honestly feel like this could be a literal "DM Handbook" like thing but for Table Top Strategy Board Games that could be easily expanded, modified, or altered to fit the desired play length and style of the players. Probably not at all what you were going for, but I think the base game is a very good at offering a wide range of customization as it currently stands. It could be argued that games like Twilight Imperium have similar capabilities except that I do find them MUCH harder to "expand" with ideas. Usually because the game mechanics as provided are already so complex that it would be more work than it was worth to try to do something as basic as adding a unit. This though, I love this. I really do love this. I love that it is simple and easily reproduced. I like that the rules are quite simple and player friendly. That to me is the best part of the game.
I am more than happy to further discuss these thoughts if you would like and your welcome to reply with your thoughts on what I said. Again, apologies for the long post. I got flooded with inspiration just on this video alone haha.
Sorry for the third comment but I had a thought that was completely seperate from my others:
Different tiles could have different effects on units in them during combat.
- Wheat tiles: Faster movement for cavalry because of wide open terrain.
- Rock tiles: Cover from ranged shots due to rocks to hide in.
- Forest tiles: Slower movement for cavalry, can't be shot through by artillery. Maybe hides units in it?
- Etc.
Perhaps one way to stop an early sweep from one player (as in wiping them off the board early on) would be to either have a grace period in the first few turns (where combat units may not be deployed, or at least moved from their starting locations) or to expand the game size significantly. I think that while the second solution would work fairly well, it would make the game more of a drag and overall more bulky, part of the appeal for me to this game overall is that it is fairly light, in comparison to some other games, while still boasting complexity (I'm looking at you tiny epic kingdoms) . To me, grace periods seem like a worthwhile thing to test.
The game looks and sounds very fun but I do have a few recommendations:
First, add more players. Instead of a 1v1, make it a 4 player free for all (or even a 2v2 match if you want. Maybe this can be a separate kind of "game mode" if you will). I think 1v1 limits the game drastically. You should have the option to play 1v1 for sure but making the game for 2 to 4 players would be ideal.
Second, adding onto the first point, increase the size of the map. From the few glances I got of it, the map seems woefully small, even for just a 1v1. If the point is to get 4 colonies, then the map has to be able to comfortably hold 7 colonies (4 for the winner, 3 for the loser) and with the three spaces apart rule, it doesn't look like there's enough room. You shouldn't need to expand it 4x for four players because in no world do 13 colonies get put down. Regardless, the idea is to expand the board size and have set tiles that are used for all games, some only used for 3-4 players, and some only used for 4 players. Alternatively, you could add more tiles of each type and then just NOT use all of them. This could give some crazy variability to certain games and make it so that not every game is the same as the last. For example, I don't know how many of each tile there are but let's say that instead of 58 tiles, you pack 70 or so (just a random number as an example) so that you have 12 extra tiles. These extras are left out at random so that some games you'll have possibly less wood tiles so less of that resource or there's more water so naval dominance becomes more crucial, etc etc.
Third, one other guy commented on the different strategies in games like this: Rush, Resource, and Defense, and how they orient like a game of rock, paper, scissors. However, as he pointed out, Defense isn't worth it so Rush tends to reign supreme and that's what you see, so you need a way to make Defense more desirable without unintentionally making it the new OP strategy. My advice is to tweak the combat rules slightly so that it's more difficult to take towns even if they don't have a wall. Since I like the combat rules and how only one unit can be in a single space at any time, my idea is something similar to the Support action from Diplomacy where you need two attackers to take a colony and then either one of those must be a ship/cannon or a THIRD unit must be a ship/cannon in the case of walls. You could also just overhaul the entire combat to be similar to Diplomacy but I like how simple it is right now (can you tell I'm a fan of Diplomacy?). Obviously, play testing would be needed but it's just an idea.
Fourth, and this one is a skeptical rule that I'm not sure would work very well, but since you can take towns and just convert them to your color, why not add a rule for being able to do that with ships? Say you have a convoy ship (a frigate with a land unit) and it attacks an enemy frigate. What if you have the option to either A) sink the enemy frigate as normal or B) essentially commandeer the ship by sacrificing the land unit and turning that ship into your own ship? I think it would be a neat little maneuver especially if the map ends up being very naval heavy.
a few things I would like to add, if nobody else did already;
I think it would be cool to consider a version of the game with different "races" (elves, or some other way of distinguishing groups), and letting them be slightly different (like age of empires 2, or age of empires dawn of the modern world). this would change the feel of the game a lot, and make it a lot more complex, so it would have to be heavily considered.
having developments. this would probably not work well alongside the above suggestion, but it would be something like research development in axis and allies, where you could increase some benefit (range, resource collection, etc.) for an investment. (maybe with risk of getting nothing, maybe not)
one other thing to consider is the expected price of the game. this game sounds awesome and complex (which I like a lot better than many of the simple - in strategy - games I've played recently), but more pieces and complexity often mean higher costs, which limits the feasibility of people to buy the game. (there are quite a few games that I thought were cool, but were too expensive for me to take the risk on)
do you have a discord, or some other community discussion for the game development? that might be a great way to get a larger audience opinion for the final touches of the game.
Looks great, cant wait to test this
So, I saw chess was an inspiration for the game what if you brought in King and Queens as the monarch and if a colony is over taken with a King or Queen in the colony then they would be captured. If you return the King to one of your colonies you win. (Which gives the incentive to build your colonies far away from each other.) Queen can create posts three to four tiles from their location to create soldiers to try to save the king. If saved it goes back to a colony. If there isn’t a colony to go back to then it stays there until a colony is built and gives the opponent a chance to win the game the same way by capturing the King to win the game.
Idea for Resources: Leverage resources against waging war.... So that war is very costly. When troops are not fighting, they are harvesting/collecting resources. So, there is an equilibrium/balance. Whatever that number is, let's say 5 war units = 5 resources that can be collected (10 total). So, if you increase one more troop (now 6), you can only collect 4 resources, etc. Because you are drafting from the pool of workers. But that's not all. You must have 10 units total at all times for the max balance. You can have 1 war unit, and 9 worker units (not represented by figurine, but perhaps by a side token), but if you go to war and lose 2 units, the total now is 8 (from original 10). You continue the game that way. Those two lost war units can be replaced from a pool of 6 work units remaining for example (if you had 2 war and 8 worker units). It might sound complicated, but having a side token counter of war and worker units can help. A sliding ruler/line can also track the total units that are left as a full resource. If the ruler goes down to 0 available units, even if you have resources, the war is over. That means the country has to wait years to repopulate the land.
This looks like it has the potential to be a great city builder-combat game. My thoughts are: The combat is a little light. I would think a dice hit-base system could perhaps work. Also, for combat, i am confused on what happens when multiple units are on the same hex. Concerning win conditions i think another option could be a victory point system like catan. So similar goals to what you have here now but more rushing for resources and space as a first choice rather than rushing for settlement conquering first. I look forward to seeing where this goes!
This looks really fun! Going to rewatch and think more about it. Great art style too
@@eirik9454 I appreciate it!