I have a few game design that are of epic nature and it is always a problem to determine how much stuff a player can do during his turn.
A common solution is to count the number of cities/planets you control, totallise the resources they give you and spend it like money on various actions. But I find the precess too complicated since there are much more things to think about since it is an epic game and I don't want player to calculate their income all the time.
So my idea is that instead of accumulating ressources to perform actions, or giving a fixed amount of action per player, I designed some sort of universal system where stuff in the game give actions instead of ressources to do actions.
Most of the game is composed of cards. Each card has the following information :
- Type: Building, Capital cities, Hero, etc.
- Cost: The action required to place this card into play. For example, a building needs a "build" action. A hero needs a "recruit" action, etc.
- Actions Performed: The actions than can be performed by using this card. For example, an hero could be allowed to build, train and mobilize army.
- Special ability: Some card only have special abilities that could power up the effect of some actions, or remove some restrictions. (ex: you can now use colonize action to colonize forest)
Most card can be used once. So you either use the actions available on the card or use the special abilities it gives you with another card's action. This mean that when a card is used, you tap it so that it makes it easier to know what action and special abilities you have left.
At the beginning of the game, you will get 2 cards from your wizard which can do all actions in the game, and you get 1 card from your capital city which could do more restricted actions like: Build, growth, colonize, train, etc.
When you expand your empire, new capitals will come into play which will increase the number of city card you get. You will also gain heroes which are going to mobilize your army and maybe do some civil action according to their skills.
So with a system like this, I elliminate the notion of cost since everything cost an action of different type. There might be some restriction in the game or imposed by some races that could be lift up when they build some building, new a hero with an ability, develop a technology, etc.
I also wanted to have a very flexible system where I could have a huge variety of heroes, buildings, etc. I think I can do it with a system like this.
What do you think?
There are some stuff which are going to work like this, but not all of them.
For example: if you want to build a wonder or an Artifact, you will first play the Foundations or the Prototype card. And then on your next turn, you can play the Wonder/Artifact card.
As for city expansion, I once thought of having a price to expand. What I was thinking is that the race would determine where you can expand or not. Now, The terrain type say that you can grow this city up to this size and beyond that size you need to have a special ability to make it grow.
For example, elves could easily make capitals in forest. But they need some buildings or advances to build in desert. And since the cards are one time use, this special ability is going to be used once per turn. So the elves would be slowed down if they expand in desert, but the price to expand stay the same.