Worker Placement with Conventional Turn Structure

This doesn't seem particularly complicated to me, although you have to break from the traditional mold of variable-turn-order worker-placement mechanics.

Players pick up their workers at the beginning or end of the following turn (end would make things a little fiddly, I know). If an opponent wants to go there, maybe they have to outnumber the other workers to eject them? IE: Instead of putting two in the love shack, you have to put three.

I'll admit to skimming your entry before writing a reply so forgive me if this concept has been mentioned.

If removing the idea of a conventional "turn" is what you are looking for, you could always have a set of cards for phases and each player chooses which he wants (only those chosen can be performed) to perform that round (in which all players act simultaniously ala Race for the Galaxy: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28143/race-for-the-galaxy). If cost is an issue, instead of using cards for each phase, you could use a die and then consult the phase/turn order card mentioned below.

Alternately you can just have a card that shows the turn order and each player acts simultaneously through all phases.

As for end game, depending exactly on how you define the end (total points after a round, or after certain conditions are met (eg. most buildings), everyone would be allowed to complete all phases for that turn and then once a "victory condition" is met, everyone compares their progress to determine the winner.

Just some thoughts.

Well then maybe Stone Age ( http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34635/stone-age ) would be more helpful. =}

On your turn, you can place one worker. At the start of the game, you can place workers from your supply. When you have placed all your workers, from then on you must move a worker each turn: take him off of one space and put him somewhere else. This will open the worker's old space for another player to use on their turn.

Simple enough, but it will take some careful balancing. Usually in WP games, there are a few locations that are more valuable than most of the rest. Players will want to claim such a space, and then camp on it to keep others out. You'll need a mechanism to prevent this.

The simplest way is to give each player only one worker. (See Le Havre, where you are not required to move your one worker every turn, but he does you no good until you do move him.) But unless (as in Le Havre) there are other things going on in the game, this could be dull.

If players have multiple workers, they need an incentive to move off of a valuable space. Suppose that, when you first place a worker at a location, you get an immediate strong benefit, and a token is placed on the location. On your next turn, any worker that doesn't move and that is on a location with a token can remove the token to receive a lesser benefit. Workers on exhausted locations receive no more benefits until they move somewhere else. Now your players have an incentive to keep their workers in motion: it's okay if they sit for a turn, but after that they are useless until moved. (Better: make your workers two-sided, and flip over the workers instead of placing and removing tokens: easier to do, and fewer bits to manage.)

That still breaks down with more than two workers, because (assuming you can move only one worker each turn) at most two workers each turn will receive a benefit. The third could still just sit and block a valuable space. But two is (perhaps) more interesting than one, and the system can be tweaked for more. For example, allow the players to move more than one worker per turn; or allow more than two states for a worker (use a d3, for example, to get three states for three levels of benefit).

If you allow two moves per turn, you could have an "eviction" space: move one worker there, and that allows the player to move a different worker to any space, evicting the previous tenant back to the owner's supply. Normally you would get two strong benefits per turn by moving two workers, but using "eviction" gets you only one: but it's one you really want. That keeps players from using it every turn, yet allows them the option and gives them another way to mess with their opponents.

Shooting from the hip, here. Hope some of it's useful!

. . . last night that came up with an interesting way to approach things that are being discussed here.

A game could have two phases (maneuver/battle, plant/harvest, order/ship, etc.) represented by two boards/areas/sets-of-tiles/whatever. So in the first phase, players take turns placing them in the first area, then when the second phase happens, they just move them to the second area. Rinse and repeat as many times as needed.

This could be done, really, with as many phases an someone wanted (I wonder if Colonia is like that, at all.)

I guess it was my solution to people blocking spaces.

So anyway, I really like this idea the more and more I imagine the possibilities. Feel free to tell me that tons of games have already done it to death, since it was the product of me being asleep, and not actually researching anything!

:D

Gogolski: I really liked your delayed idea too. Sounds like it would mesh really naturally with any sort of technology research in a game. Might make a neat contrast between strategies where one could get something quickly, or a few things slowly.

Schamnthony: I'm not sure what's going on in that picture you linked, exactly, but you've obviously put quite a bit of thought and effort into it! Keep up the work:)

I was thinking more about my idea of phases today, and came up with an idea where the placement of what you take in one round defines when you get to move your guy on in the next round. That obviously doesn't have much to do with maintaining a conventional turn order, though;)

I think that even without official round ends, phase changes could just happen when all the workers were placed, or something.

I'll keep thinking; thanks for the stimulus!

Put it in 2 phases:

1st phase is worker placement. One player at a time, one worker per turn.

2nd phase, players choose which of the worker placement to activate/remove.

You need to have multiple areas that have actions associated to them. Each area has 1, 2 or 3 spots for workers, 1 per player color.

Give the 1st player to activate a region a bonus for doing so plus the action associated with the area.
2nd player gets only the action associated with that area.
3rd player gets the action and some sort of penalty (money, vp, keeping the worker on the spot, etc...)

So now the incentive is to place your workers but also to be the 1st one to activate those workers before the others, all done in conventional player order.

My 2 cents.....

It depends.

Maybe players won't have the same number of workers to place each turn.
If one gets stuck because it was the last worker activated in a region, it will have to stay there.

So if one player places it's last worker, and he had one worker more than the others, the player on his right would start the activation phase.

OR you can have the player bid for 1st player advantage.

And even if the 1st player is the same in both phases, that player gets the advantage of activating only one area, not all of his workers.