I want to design a system for a civ/space conquest game that has no action system. In fact I want to do the opposite of Eclipse. I want the player to be able to do everything they want in a turn. But still, restrictions are required to prevent players from taking the whole galaxy on turn 1, but I do not want these restrictions to be a limited set of actions. So I am searching for alternative restrictions.
I have analysed the game "Viktory II" which has some solutions to the problem above. In that game, the empire growth is fixed. You can colonise or upgrade X cities per turn. So I call this a Fixed value restriction. It's essential else the player could conquer the whole map in 1 turn. For the military aspects, there is no resources and production, each city allows the player to maintain a certain number of units of each type. So at the end of the turn, the player place all the units he can maintain even if all his units were dead.
So far that makes 2 restrictions:
- Fixed value every turn
- Maintenance level determined by a variable of fixed value.
I'll add a thrid one that is the variable value. For example, the more the game advance the higher value Y becomes allowing players do to more each turn than they could do at the beginning of the game.
4th the Lock/Unlock. Certain game elements can give the player access to certain things. Like unlock new buildings or new units.
I was wondering if any of you had other restrictions ideas?
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Example of implementation of the system above
- City/colony growth(Fixed): You and colonise a fixed number of times each turn.
- Buildings(Variable): Production level allows to place/replace a certain number of buildings each turn. Production levels is determined by buildings. More production make the player more flexible in building configuration. Buildings would be similar to the latest civilization game but the city/colony design is for the whole empire.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/844738/sid-meiers-civilization-the-bo...
- Technology(Variable): You would gain a variable number of points every turn determined by the buildings and technologies.
- Armies(Maintenance): The empire size will determine the number of Fleet/Armies that can be placed on the baord.
- Configuration of Army/Fleet(Unlock): Technologies or buildings restrict the parts/equipment available, but there is no restrictions to the amount of part/equipment changed to a ship/unit in a turn.
- Mobility(All): All armies/fleet can move once each turn. But players will not move them all at the same time.
What do you think?
I have tried many systems in the past, the newest idea is the buildings configuration of Cities/Colonies which seems to work nice.
Resources are indeed a restriction, but for the design I want to make, there will not be spendable resources that accumulates from turn to turn. Resources are compared (ex: produce less than your production level) but many mechanics could use the same production level without hindering each other. So if for example production can be used to make buildings and units, then if you have 10 production points, you get 10 points for buildings and 10 points for units. Any unspent points are not accumulated or cannot be used for other purpose.