For a new game of mine, I have a simple war game idea where people rush to the center. Players spawn units and heroes that will try to control the center. Now if the spawning of units is fixed, it means that the forces on the battlefield will be symmetric and it could lead to dominant strategies. Here is a picture of the last prototype.
http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/uploads/Mainsite/GameIdea/GameIdea-DarkTo...
My idea was to use a random production system, so that the forces are different from a player to another. But that leads to a different problem where a lucky player will have more or better troops than an unlucky player. This is the thing I want to avoid.
So an idea of mine was that each turn, your production consist in rolling 5 dices which the following face configuration:
2x Unit
2x Hero
2x Choose
Each unit you roll spawn a unit on the board. Each hero you get gives you points to hire a hero. If you do not have enough points they carry over the next turn. Each "choose" face allows you to use this face for units or heroes.
With a system like this, there are no losses. So a player cannot be unlucky and have a weaker army. If they have weaker units, they will have stronger heroes. If they have weaker heroes, they will have more units. So it kind of counter balance itself and it will create various army configurations. I'll just have to make sure that one is not more valuable than the other.
What do you think?
Do you know other games that used a good random production system?
Heroes offer the option to attack which a unit group cannot do. The stronger the hero, the stronger his attacks and the higher his cost to summon him.
Heroes are currently rated 2-3-5-8. Since players rolls only 5 dice, it means that the level 8 hero will require accumulating success. So yes, players could go for a cheap 2 or 3 hero, or accumulate success and troops to get a better hero later.
Each players has their own 4 heroes. It is possible to run out of heroes if you lose them all, but I might have a prisoner exchange mechanic to get an hero back. Else if you lost all your heroes, the game should be about to end.
Because of this, I had another dice configuration idea:
3 unit
2 choose
1 hero
This time, there is a potential of 5 units and 3 heroes per roll. Units cannot be accumulated, but hero can. If all heroes are out, you can still accumulate points incase you get one back. But you will only be forced 1/6th of the time where you will not be able to change it as a unit.
Only hero points can be accumulated, the units are placed on the field immediately. The reason for the accumulation is to allow getting a level 8 hero with 5 dice. One of the faction will roll 8 Dice as it's special ability.
I somewhat found a solution to this. I knew that rush for the center would lead to run away leader syndrome. So each faction has a nemesis that can be moved by any players. A nemesis can only attack the matching faction and it wins all the time forcing the player to retreat. So the first player to reach the center is much likely to fight his nemesis first forcing him to find alternate ways to reach the center and giving time for the other players to block his path.
Up to now, the dynamic seems very interesting. Thanks for the feedback.