Deck builder 4X

hI Mzum -

Your first sentence had me hooked. A space opera game! It'll be like Star Trek, or the sci fi pulp of the '60s and 70s! Heavy on character and relations and light on the.....

Wait a minute. Controlling planets and ships? Ah man, it's an empire game, isn't it.

Okay what follows is a stream of consciousness about what I've read.

and go:

Is it a card game, or a board game? You mention a 'card based' game, but the focus of the action still seems to be the tactical board. Go for the throat! Ditch the board! You want travel lines between stars? Build them with the cards! They're practically tiles, anyways.

Do you anticpate a whole slew of cards for actions, or are players choosing, say, 3 of 8 cards that get recycled ?

Does each card have only one action or use? Why have separate income of rocks, if you have cards? Aren't they supposed to be the central element?

I suggest looking at some way to use the cards in multiple ways; a card you could spend on building a ship OR on creating influence OR on combat. Create situations where a player thinks, "Man I sure need to use it for combat now...but it's so good at spreading influence later....ought to keep it, eh?"

How are card executed simultaneously, in order? Do you mean revealed simultaneously, and then executed in order? Turn order, or card - value order?

Overall the core of what you seem to have started is a straight up combat over areas game. More areas mean more wealth, more wealth means more ships, more ships means more areas. And the cycle goes on. With only the one economic cycle to invest in (wealth converted into killer ships converted more area/wealth) winning will come down to an equation of (random card draws + reading right times to attack + random attack resolution = win!)

So the player's agency in this mockup is in timing their attacks when other players are instead 'spreading influence' or some such, and reading the odds in combat to the amount of ships they're pouring into the combat.

Is that what you're looking for?

end stream.

This did make me wonder if the tension and player chodice from a game like the one forming here could be also modeled with just the cards. Imagine three players each with a hand of cards. The cards say "attack left" "attack right" "Empire" or "Space ship"

Each turn, choose three from your hand and play in a stack. Simultaneous reveal of top card, then resolve in turn order (which goes around table or something, I don't know). Then resolve second card. Then third. Change directions if you like. I don't care yet.

• Empire - Planet with a value of 1-5. Place in front of you. Value is score at end of game AND it's defence value. Number of Planets out is total number of spaceship points you can play in a turn on a spaceship action. Also, at turn end, draw a number of cards equal to number of planets.
• Space ship - Value of 1 or 2. You may play an additional number of Spaceship cards from your hand so that the total value equals the number of planets you have in play. You must place them all in same area, if played on same action. Place next to one of your Empire cards, or in a separate "attack" pile. As they are in piles you may only see the number of cards.
• Attack left/right - Launch an attack against player on your left or right with some number of your Attack pile ships.

Attacks: Attacker wagers a number of their Attack pile ships and places them next to opponent's Empire planet. Maybe there's a random element for good measure. Opponent ships at a planet add to planet's defence. Reduce each side by casualties. If Attacker wins, he claims planet card and puts it in front of him, defended by the attacking ships that weren't killed.

Play until I don't care when.

Hmmm....Maybe I'll test this and let you know.

One of my ideas was turned as a civlization deck building game.

But what could help make it work is the limited space. In my case, it took only place in japan, and each player played a family that evolved over all time periods. Sure players can expand, but it's pretty limited.

Because the space is limited, it restrict the exploration and expansion, but makes it easier and logical to have a centralised management mechanic a bit like in "nations".

Else, "rune age" have some sort of "Expansion" through conquering cities and stronghold, but there is still a short limit of those. They only give additional resources that your centralised "government" can use. But those cities does nothing by themselves.

Still, I think "rune age" is a deck building game worth exploring. There are probably many mechanics you can get from there that could be reused in your game.