I am a new game designer and working on my first game. It is a medieval strategy/wargame where turn order is very important. 6 Cards are revealed each turn that affect different territories. In order, players can take one card to keep and use later. Once a card is taken, no other player can take it, so if a player wants a card, he must be first in the turn order to ensure that he gets it. Often times, two or more players will really want a card, which makes the turn order vital.
Right now, players use an auction to determine turn order after the 6 cards are revealed. This works fine, except that some of the cards, when taken, trigger auctions between the players for them. The player taking the card, however, has a distinct advantage in the auction, so taking the card is very valuable.
Every turn begins with 6 cards being revealed and then an auction for turn order. The winner of the auction goes first, and then the remaining players go in clockwise order. Players can negotiate to combine bids to win the turn order (one player and the player to his left could bid together to get 1st and 2nd turn). One or more auctions can then immediately follow the auction for turn order, depending on the cards that are revealed and taken. Finally, players get to place and move armies to invade or defend their territories.
The currency in the game is Influence, which is represented by poker chips. Each player gets chips at the end of every turn based on the territories they control. So some players have more Influence than others. What I like about the current scheme is that if a player bids to get turn order, he will have less Influence to do other things. Likewise, if that player allows another player to go first, he will have more Influence to overcome possibly the advantage the other player gets in going first. I should also add that Influence is the currency players use to place and move armies to attack and defend territories. So a further consideration a player must make when bidding for turn order (and bidding on cards that trigger an auction) is whether he will have enough Influence left to perform all necessary military actions.
I guess the one thing I am concerned about is Analysis Paralysis. Is it just too difficult for a player to digest the possible outcomes of two auctions almost back to back? A player will have to decide how much he is willing to pay to go first, but this decision will be based on a supposition of how a second auction will play out. In addition, a player will also have to consider how much Influence he will need to perform all the military actions he wants to perform. This will also be based on suppositions of what the other players will do militarily.
I have only playtested this solitaire (which doesn't work so well in a bidding game, I might add), so I'm not sure how a group would work with this. But from your experience, does this seem to you like it could be a problem? And if so, what other nifty mechanics are there to determine turn order? Any mechanic would have to make a player opting to go first suffer some sort of consequence for doing so. Also, I am not married to the idea of players going clockwise from the first player, so variable turn order is an option.
Any and all help and comments are much appreciated!
Wow! Thanks for all of the suggestions. Here are my thoughts:
I looked at the bidding system in Amun-Re and like it, except that it could be difficult to implement in my game. In Amun-Re, from what I gather, each card has ascending bids printed on the card. The problem with this in my game is that it is hard to know exactly what players will be willing to pay - in fact, I think it will change significantly as the game progresses. If fixed amounts are printed on each card, those amounts might work well in some rounds and be absolutely unreasonable in other rounds. With that said, it has spurred on some thinking about how I can set up a system that will auction multiple items at one time, which is what Amun-Re's system does.
As far as bid modifiers go, I believe that is an excellent point. What I think I will do with that is create some cards that will give players bid modifiers for future auctions. This way, a player can get one of these cards to use in a later turn, allowing a player in a future turn to win a card that might be really important to that player.
Finally, the auction where players bid on each card secretly is very intriguing to me. You're right that ties will need to be addressed, but the basic mechanic could make for some interesting decisions and strategy. Again, this mechanic accomplishes what the Amun-Re mechanic does: auctioning multiple items in one mechanic.
I think that is the direction I need to go in. Too many auctions might bog down gameplay. Having everything resolved in one auction will make for a faster game and also a more streamlined and elegant system of play.