In 2 player games where you have elimitation, each player needs to remain in a position where they think they could still win even when losing, else the losing player will simply abandon.
In some tactical war games I player, players get more powerful over time and then the result of mid-game battle will advantage a player over another. And if that advantage is not rapidly reversed, it has a snow balling effect and the winning player cannot lose anymore.
Now what I want to do, is avoiding that the losing player has no possible way to retaliate during the last half of the game, so I was thinking of various mechanics to keep the losing player in the game. Here are a few decisions I made so far:
- Each player can only move 3 units per turn, so having a lot of units just give you a better choice of units, but not necessarily stronger attack capabilities.
- Players can produce units, and skip unit production to increase their production level if they control the right amount of cities. Production level increases the quality of units. Now I was thinking that once a level is reached, it cannot be dropped when the opposing player conquer cities. I could also make the level independent to what you control on the map. It would create the same syndrome as magic the gathering, that near the end game, you have plenty of mana to pull out strong creatures. It also allow easier retaliation near the end of the game
- I setup 3 objectives where 1 or 2 of the 3 objectives must be fulfilled to win. Making it harder to stall the game by defending a single. The 3 objectives are:
. Capture opposing factory: Prevent the enemy player to produce units.
. Destroy opposing leader unit: Reduce nb of movements per turn by 1
. Capture opposing command center: Prevent the use of command cards.
So losing one of the 3 objectives would hinder the player, making the game end faster. Having 3 objectives to defend makes it harder to cover all flanks, and might end the game sooner especially if only 1 objective must be fulfilled.
Do you have any other suggestions to keep the losing player in the game, or make the game end faster when a player is in a winning position.
Well, the problem with multiplayer game is that the positive experience of the winner is constrained by the negative experience of the loser.
A winning player for example, would like to experience capturing an opposing head quarters, but the losing player always surrender before it happens, so the winning player never has a chance to experience capturing an head quarter.
While the losing players surrenders because he is having a bad experience and think he had not chances to win.
But if the losing player could be in position of thinking he has a chance to win, he would continue to play, not hindering the experience of the winning player. That is a bit what I try to achieve.
When I play against a video game AI, the AI does not care about losing, but an human does.
Also, the idea that the losing player could come back in the game, keeps the winning player on his toes.