A game idea with Gods and Civilizations

Dr Mayhem,

I have tried a few similar ideas earlier and they have indeed gone down the drain by being too overburdened by rules and strange mechanics. This game is aimed at being as simple as possible while still being fairly meaty. The mechanics this far isn't that complicated, but I can still do many bad design decisions to turn it into an unplayable monster. The reason I brought the idea up here is to get input from other game designers so that I could avoid the more obvious pitfalls.

The game this far will require pawns in several colours to represent each player's believers (my prototype will probably use RISK tokens or something similar), VPs in a few colours (I'll snatch these from E&T if possible), nation cards (where VPs accumulate and you put influence tokens (the RISK tokens once again)).

The game would probably have to be action card driven to reduce the rule burden, probably by allowing the same card to do different things when played (similar to Hannibal where you could move armies, raise armies or playa special event with the same card). Some actions would cost divine power (like creating a Prophet or Missionary), but others would be free and always available (move nomads). The resolution of events should be swift and easy, but I'm not quite there yet as I have only pondered the theme, scoring and a few basic mechanics this far.

I will probably make some 'shadow rules' and then put together a playtest prototype by scavenging other games for parts and play it with a few friends to see how the games feels and if there are some fundamental flaws in it. I will then clarify/write rules as we go along playing and then go back to design phase to incorporate the new rules and streamline the entire game before playtesting again.

I will check out your game as soon as I get home from work, it is always very interesting how others have tackled the same issues that's giving me trouble now.

I did some major thinking last night and today and I'm more and more leaning towards a more abstracted game, cutting much of the religious chrome in favour of playability and a heavier focus on the civilization building. I will most definitely keep the scoring process (the civilizations are getting the VPs and they are only distributed to the controlling player when he loses control of it, gaining a certain percentage of the VPs depending on his influence) as it can lead to an interesting subgame where the players challenge each other for dominance and either strike a deal (readjusting the influence markers, bribing eachother and/or changing controlling player) or head for civil war (where the country will lose VPs until the war is resolved, a long civil war where both sides are evenly matched and won't give ground will lead to the destruction of the civilization and the emergence of new nations from the ashes of the old empire).

I also like the mechanic that will make large heterogenic empires become weaker and weaker the more it grows to finally crumble to dust from within. That will force players to balance their civilizations between small, homogenic nations (you won't get many VPs with it, but you'll be able to keep a high percentage of them and won't face many dangerous challenges from the other players) and larger civilizations that will be more heavily contested must will generate more VPs.

Good advice, I was thinking about using cards similar to how they are used in 'La Citta' for example where each player plays one action card each turn and perform one action that is mentioned on the cards they play. There would be a limited amount of different actions, say 5-8 different actions or so, but I might as well skip the entire action card system and allow each player to choose between all of the 5-8 actions each turn instead of being constricted by the cards in his/her hand.

If I can streamline the game to some 4-5 possible actions, then the action cards would probably only be a complication and I could go for summary cards for each player where all the actions are very clearly defined. I currently in a very good streamlining mode, throwing out a lot of neat but probably useless quirks and pieces of chrome, so I might drop the whole action card system before long (it's a lot of job construction those cards in the first place, so it might well be for the best after all).

Abstraction will give a simpler gave that will appeal to more casual gamers, but if you abstract too much then much of the theme and meat will be lost. It's the difficult taks to walk that fine line between too much abstraction and too much chrome, I don't want another chess variant nor do I want another 'Campaign for North Africa'.