My game consists of four 'years', each of which goes through a Political Season, Campaigning Season, and Harvest Season.
During the Political and Campaigning Seasons, players take turns to perform certain actions. The turn order in the Campaining Season is determined by the order in which players passed during the last Political Season and vice versa.
Now, during these seasons there must be a limited number of turns players can take. They shouldn't be able to just keep the season going indefinitely. My question is: How do I limit the number of turns players can take before they are forced to pass?
I've playtested or thought about several potential solutions:
1. Every action costs something and when players run out of resources they have no choice but the pass. However, this doesn't really work with my game because some actions are (and should remain) free.
2. A timetrack where the player who is furthest back on the track get to play their turn. This doesn't work either, because it will create a situation in which players could get two or more turns in a row, which doesn't fit my game.
3. Players have a number of cards or command tokens, and each action costs one card or token (or more).
4. My current solution is a circular timetrack (with parallel tracks - one for each player) in which after every turn your pawn simply moves one step further. The timetrack tells you when the Political Season ends and the Campaigning Season begins. The circular nature of the track very nicely fits the idea that each round is a "year", with one year naturally being followed by the next. It also allows for varying turn orders each season, because if you're the first player to pass, your pawn is moved to the inner lane of the circular timeline, and the inner lane always moves first.
The one shortcoming with this system is that players always have to move their pawn at the end of their turn. This is constantly forgotten. It's usually easy to correct this, but it's annoying to keep reminding players to move their pawn on the timetrack...
What other ways are there to limit the number of turns per round, while also preserving a variable turn order from round to round?
Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback, Let-off studios and Quest.
There are some actions that can only be taken once (by one player) each round. Much like the power actions in Terra Mystica. Specifically, during the Political Season, only one player can play the Trade Caravan, while in the Campaigning Season only one player can hire the Mercenaries. The (un)availability of these actions is shown by a marker.
This does not apply, however, to more generic actions such as marching or sailing with your armies or besieging cities. These can be performed as often as you like - until the Campaigning Season comes to an end, that is.
These actions are free in the sense that they don't cost resources, but they still take "time", and that's the limiting factor. To answer your question thematically: The Campaigning Season in the Ancient Near East lasted all summer. During summer you can march your armies around as much as you want, but inevitably, eventually it will be September and your troops wanna go home for the harvest.
I get your solution, but I guess I didn't explain the problem well enough, so you misunderstood it.
The challenge is not to limit the number of actions players can take during a single turn. The challenge is to limit the number of turns during the round (Season).
During the Campaiging Season, for instance, players take turns and perform one action per turn. But I don't want the Campagining Season to last forever, so the number of actions/turns must be limited somehow.
Your proposed solution is something that I thought about: players get a certain number of Command Tokens (CTs) and each action carries a certain cost in CTs. But thematically I want to have each action take the same amount of "time", so that each action would cost 1 CT. But then you might as well keep track of the available CTs on a track, which would be equivalent to my timetrack.