Greetings
I started to design a civilization game a few months ago, which developed into a nice streamlined game, but some problems appeared. Now I have 2 game designs, and I wanted to know which do seem best to you:
In each design, players have to fill their cities with workers and create laws to manipulate those workers. Each worker represents a guild/clan/faction they have joined by having a number of icons on the side of their card. A city is under control of a guild/clan/faction when more icons of that faction than of any other faction are in that city. Laws can only be used if a cerain guild/clan/faction is in control of the city.
DESIGN 1:
Each player starts with 3 cities and 3 cards in his/her hand.
On each turn, a player may place any number of workers from his/her hand in a city, or place a law in a city by looking at the top 3 card from the law deck and choosing one, or use coins to destroy any number of his/her workers.
Then, all other player may clockwise place a worker in the city, thereby try to have the city be controlled by another guild.
At the end of each turn, the active player draws or discards cards until their hand limit is reached, and divides 3 coins in his cities.
DESIGN 2:
Each player starts with 3 cities and 1 coin in each city.
In each round, piles of 5 cards are revealed equal to the number of players. Then each player may clockwise choose a pile. If he/she wishes to choose a pile thats already been chosen, he/she must discard one of the cards of that pile.
When all players chose their own pile, they may distribute the workers and laws of that pile between any city of any player clockwise. They may choose the order in which they are distributed themself. When a worker/law enters the city, that city pays 1 coin from that city. If the city has no coins, the worker/law is placed on top of the main deck.
At the end of the round, each city gains coins equal to the number of coin icons on the workers/city/laws.
These are the designs, please post your opinion in the comments. And be gentle, this is my first post on BGDF :P
Coins in design 2 are used as follows:
Whenever a worker or law card is placed in a city, that city has to pay one coin. If that city can't, the worker or law is placed on top of the main deck again (so it will be reused in the next round).
So coins can both help or delay you: when a worker you don't want in a city will be placed in it, and the city has no gold, the worker will leave the city instantly. But the same is true for a worker you DO want in the city. So in Design 2 I hope to have the players balance their economy in a way that encoureges them to control who will enter their city.
I hope that cleared your point