Combine Victory and Resources (was: Twisted Terrain control)

I think it basically makes sense, with you having to spend your victory points in order to potentially gain more victory points. Medici, for example, uses that direct connection.

There is a basic flaw that can arise from such a direct connection: runaway leaders and "fallaway" losers. If you are doing well then you'll earn a ton of money and do very well, and if you're doing poorly then you'll struggle hard to earn any money and will continue to do poorly compared to the others, possibly even being caught in a downward spiral wihere every turn you have less and less money as your territory is eaten away by your competitors.

In a simple game like Medici -- where you can do a pretty good job of figuring out just how much of a gamble it is to raise your auction bid or drop and hope for something better -- you have less of a problem. There just aren't that many unknowns and you're less likely to make a big mistake (or let someone else have a huge advantage). In addition, the entire game takes 45 minutes, so runaway leaders and fallaway losers (a) don't become that obvious until very close to the end, and (b) aren't as frustrating because the game will end soon, anyway.

It's very common in game design to separate victory points from economic resource in order to give the designers some control over the runaway/fallaway problem. This allows for easy adjustment for inflation, allows you to put brakes on the leader and propel the loser, and lets you do a ton of adjestments to nearly every aspect of the game.

I don't know how conscious game designers tend to be when separating victory points/conditions from the economic model, but it's a very handy tool, and some games just can't work without it.

From your description, I imagine you'll have runaway leader and fallaway loser problems, probably pretty big ones. You may be able to come up with clever ways to solve it, though!

-- Matthew

Hello Fhizban,

Is your game designed to be played by more than two players simultenously? This could have an impact on how you will address the "Runaway leader" situation mentionned by Matthew. Furthermore, if there are more than two players, separating money from victory points could create another nasty effect on your game, the "Bash the leader" effect. That is, as soon as someone takes the lead in victory points, all other players ally themselves to reduce that player's strength to a point where he is no longer a threat, for a certain amount of time. Then another player takes the lead, and fall victim of the same issue. We have experienced kind of situation too often in the game "Mare Nostrum".

Jeb

PS: Here's an interesting post that addresses two of the issues mentionned so far:
http://www.bgdf.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=3312&highlight=bash+leader

A possible option, at the end of ever round, the player that has the least in each category (say gold, units, territories) get a card that they can use to buy or pay for a certain number of golds worth of whatever. For example, if I have the fewest units, then I get the 'Rally Troops' card that allows me to spend 10 'gold' to buy units that turn. The card goes away at the end of the turn, so if I don't use it (or all of the 'gold' for that matter) then I lose it.

Another option, is to make things more expensive depending upon how many you already have. For example, if I have 10 units, buying another will be significantly more expensive than if I only had one.

A third option, would be to make things progressivley more expensive to purchase in a SINGLE turn. This technique is used with great success in quite a few games. For example, a unit might cost me 1 gold. The 2nd unit would cost 2, the third 4. the fourth 8th, etc. This would make it incredibly hard for a person to run away with the game, but they would still be accumulating gold to use as victory points at the end of the game.

A final option I just thought of was an upkeep costs for your units. Think of it as the cost of feeding/supplying your army. Let's face it, in wargames you need units to win, so having an upkeep cost will make it hard to maintain a large army, even if you're doing well. You can scale this however you want, but the simplest method would be 1 gold per unit. Of course, if you used this method, then you'd have to modify your gold payout mechanic (perhaps pay more gold depending upon how many adjacent hexes in a group you controlled ).

A different scaling method might be something staged. Like if you have up to 3 units, you pay 1 gold; up to 5 you pay 3 gold, etc. Obviously this will need to be tweaked to fit your particular game but you get the idea.

Hope this helps!
-Darke

By the way, I think the use of currency as VPs is not inherently bad, as long as you have mechanics in place to mitigate the runaway leader problem as Fastlearner suggested.

I do something similar to this in a game of mine, and though it works nicely in theory, during gameplay, because its more fun getting stronger and fighting against the other players, most players don't worry so much about using their resource for VP. Maybe its just the balance, though I have been changing my system, because for the type of game I am trying to make, it just doesn't work (though it could work well for other types of games).

Having a single resource in a game, and using it for both VPs and strengthening yourself in the game is a tricky one, unless there are other aspects of the game which influence your decision between either gettig stronger, or scoring VPs

Heh, I'd like to see how this develops, because it is similar to how I was working VPs. This is what I had (its a game about Vampires, kindof...) -

You gain Blood at the start of each turn from having thralls in villages, and also through combat. At the end of each turn, you may spend a certain amount of Blood depending on how many villages you control. i.e. if you control 3 Villages, you can spend up to three Blood. The number of VPs you score is then mulitplied by a factor depending on the phase of the moon. i.e. for every point you spend during the Full Moon you get 4VPs, but you cannot score during the New Moon. After you spend any Blood you want on Vps, you must discard half your total Blood.

So that seems fairly straightforward, but during gameplay, most players don't bother scoring so much, though of course it can do with more tweaking and playtesting.

Because Blood is the only resource in the game, and is used for a variety of other other things, most players would rather save their Blood to spend on other things.

But, in saying that, the last few game I have been tweaking thigns a bit and it seems to be working a bit better. I also had planned to have a player gain a special ability every 10 points they score (first player to 40 points wins), though I haven't created these yet. It may be worth me doing so, and trying it out.

Also though, the game is meant to be strong on conflict, and scoring points in this way is not as exciting as it should be. I think the system does work, but just not for my game, without some serious tweaking anyways...

Sorry for the ramble, hope it helps in some way ;)

Oh, this just gave me another idea! How about having some strategic markers, which when captured (by either side) initiate a scoring round based on how much gold is in the bank. Some markers may have additional VP bonuses to the capturing player. In any case, this mechanic creates great tension, since as opposing forces move towards the score markers, both players are torn between developing their forces and topping up their bank for the looming scoring event.

Love that idea, a wave effect on scoring rather than the standard bombs or even-keel. Offers opportunities to maneuver and score when others aren't, at a cost, but that might still allow you to win. It would be especially nice if you tend to score at the expense of others (area control, that kind of thing).

Sweet!

Sweet!

Cheers ;) Indeed, the plan is that during the build up to the Full Moon, players will be trying to gain and hold as many Settlements as possible during the phase of the Full Moon. At the moment it doesn't work quite as well as it should, and so I am thinking it may not be the best option for this game. But yes, it is a fun one, and could be adapted to other games.

One possible consequence of being able to freely buy VP's, however, is that a richer player can, in theory, invest heavily in units for one turn, and then spend as many resources as they have in excess of the next highest player on VP's there after, and the rest on units, thus assuring that they keep parity with their nearest competitor in game-affecting pieces, while slowly building VP's. A VP limit would have little effect on such a situation.

This assumes, of course, that VPs have a fixed cost. If a VP could be purchased for, for instance, one-third of a player's resources, it would balance the more powerful players more effectively. Sure, a losing player could buy VPs for 3 resources instead of the 12 resources it costs their opponant, but if unit buying is linear (i.e. 3 resources for infantry), a richer player could still storm the opposition militarily, is they could get ahead in VP's enough to win.

This would make a valid strategy of staying small, which is something almost no game attempts. A nation that invests very little on military may be vulnerable, but if there are bigger, and more threatening players on the map, your little kingdom might just represent a military commitment that brings in resources that make buying VPs even more difficult. So the small players would gain a measure of security from their very smallness, if there were two or more larger rivals in the game.

Let me think more on this. I feel the game-wheels grinding into motion here...

I have a game where the player has to mine resources (there are 3 types) and sell it in a market. When you sell a resource it reduces the value of the resource (demand is lowered) and if you buy a resource (there are other uses of resources than just selling so you might have to buy them if you don;t have access to them through mining). The value you pay or get paied is the final value of the resource after the removal or addition to the market.

So for example:
If the market for Resource A is currently at 40 gold and you sold 3 (with 5 gold increments on the market tracker) then you would recieve 25 gold for each which is a total of 75 gold.

If you then bough 10 resouses from the Resource B market which is at 10 then you would have to pay 60 each totaling 600 gold.

Each turn a player could move 1 market 1 increment as they wished.

S you might just use 2 resources: Troops and Victory Points. Each turn the player can move one "market" tracker 1 increment as they desire (other effects/events could move the market trackers too). They can "spend" Gold buy Troops, which increases the cost of buying troops (there is less people and so costs your economy more) or spend it on Victory Points, which has the same effect.

this way iff players rapidly buy troops for conflicts then the costs will skyrocket and equipping armies will become harder, and the same with victory points.