Area control game with features similar to Chess and Risk

Hi gxnpt. Thanks alot for the inspirational input and for answering my first question: I am indeed reinventing the wheel, at least to some extent :o)

The road network in the game you share is more nimble and easier to map design. The pieces mentioned are also well suited to this layout. You have the bishop, ambassador (rook) and wizard (queen) as well as the king. Warlord is referred to as “common”, so perhaps a pawn like unit. Interesting that only kings and warlords can capture provinces, just as in the rules in my game where only the slow moving kings and pawns can capture provinces.

I think it creates a good gaming balance when you only can capture provinces with the slow-moving units, and thus the best attack may be a blitzkrieg with the fast moving units leading the charge, and the slower moving, province capturing units following up. I wonder though, what constitutes a province in this game, is it 3x3 cities also, and how does the income system work? What is the name of this game, and is it publicly available? Thanks again.

Wob, Thanks for your 3 points of improvement suggestions. They made me think the following:

1)Great idea to substitute one starting pawn for a king and making it a losing condition to lose the king. This may also put a reasonable time limit on the game. I will definitely try both variants in testing to see how different players will play in the two different rules. I agree that at first glance the king seems like nothing more than a fat pawn and weak compared to its cost. However, the king’s manoeuvrability compared to the pawn’s is greatly enhanced. It can actually reach most destinations double as fast as a pawn. For example a pawn’s range in 4 moves is 40 squares whereas a king’s range in 4 moves is 80 squares. It is easy for the long range units to hunt down pawns, but the king escapes them easier. And the king can both flee and pick up new provinces as he goes. Needs testing to see if players will buy the king.

2)Agree not to make exception to rules. I will drop the exception and see if any players will choose a starting location in France.

3)I will stick to my 3-tier resources and unit system. If I only use one resource type in the game, then there is no element of achieving milestones in the game to unlock more advanced units, since they’re available with the basic resource. It eliminates the excitement about advancing in the game to unlock better units. It would be like being able to purchase dragons in the first couple of turns in Heroes of Might & Magic. The only reason we buy troglodytes and hobgoblins is because dragons and titans are not available to us yet. Otherwise we would just wait 2-3 turns more while accumulating money to buy them. Upfront access to all units tends to make the lower level units obsolete at the start of the game. (In this game the pawn has special flagging ability which avoid its becoming obsolete, but that is another matter). Perhaps the income system can be confusing to newcomers to the game, but I don’t think it should be difficult to learn. Analysis paralysis is inevitably a feature of this game, as the mechanics are designed to allow for deep tactical and analytical considerations. I think it is okay that the game confronts players with challenging tactical decisions which causes some degree of analysis paralysis, but it is not okay if the income counting each round causes to much bookkeeping and analysis paralysis. Again, I need testing.

Hello everyone!
The past week I have been thinking: “How can I make the map look as good as possible before I print prototypes for play testing?” I want to share with you some of my detours on the way as well as the latest map version, which I’m quite satisfied with compared to earlier map versions.

- What do you think of my latest board map?

The first map I shared at the outset was the one named "board map" above.

(side question: How can I paste images in the middle of the text? I seem only to be able to attach images to the top of the post. This is inconvenient, as I in this post refer sequentially to 3 different images.)

From here I wanted to make the underlying map look realistic, and to make the tiles & squares become more transparent and blend in with the map underneath. I wanted the map itself to become more visible, also those locations under the game grid. The difference in colour of the various nations in the game grid must still be clearly recognizable. Instead of the blank map of Europe, I wanted something more alive and colourful, so I choose to take a google earth map of Europe. I resized and rotated the map, so it could fit the square-tiles pattern I had already made. When I copied the grid pattern I made it partially opaque, so the map details underneath were partially visible. Mostly I wanted the outline of the sea shore to be visible and unaffected by tile overlay. When I began, I imagined that this map would look great with the dark blue and dark green satellite background, while the game tiles would contribute with the colours of the rainbow, and in a brighter tone than the google earth background.

Boy was I dissatisfied with the result - se "google earth board version" above.

This map seemed to me more ugly and un-playable than my first map. I got all the colours I wanted but it simply didn’t work. Beside that the colours didn’t fit, the 3x3 provinces fitted badly to the map, giving a feeling that the underlying map makes no sense and gives no contribution to the game play.

Then I figured, if I took an old fashioned drawn map with a white-ish colour as the background, it would be easier to make the colours of the tiles work the way I wanted. I found an old french map from the 18th century, and began to fit my ready made pattern of 3x3 square provinces on top of the map. By this time I realized that my current tile pattern did not fit this map either, no matter how I stretched and rotated. Even when I got it to fit somewhat, the rigid 3x3 square province system could never fit to the map details to the degree which I wanted.

Since I already saw the necessity of rearranging the relative locations of provinces and countries, I decided to make another change, which not only was a cosmetic change, but also a fundamental change of the map mechanics. I decided to dump the 3x3-square-province system, and instead I made individual, irregular provinces, effectively reducing rigidity from 3x3 to 1x1. That enabled me to place each square to fit the most with the seashore borders of the underlying map. After placing all the squares I wanted inside the seashore borders, I started to outline the borders between countries, and once that was done I coloured every square according to its country. ONLY THEN did I split the countries into provinces by grouping squares into provinces on an individual and irregular basis.

See "latest board version" above.

The benefits of this change are squares/tiles fit much better with the underlying map, making the board much more clear and beautiful (in my subjective view). The drawback is that now the flag squares of each province has to be marked/identified individually, since the shapes of the provinces are now individual, whereas earlier the 3x3 square provinces allowed for the assumption that the flag square was always the province’s central square.
I also found what I think is a solution to the problems with sea travel mentioned in earlier posts. I invent white, neutral, sea squares, which are placed as extension to land squares, in patterns that allow for the desired sea travel between countries. Since the sea squares are extensions in the same pattern as land squares, there are no need for special rules to govern unit movement over sea. I think this solves the difficulty I had earlier, of properly allowing for sea travel in a clear manner.
I still haven’t split all of the countries into provinces, and I haven’t marked flag squares yet, as I have no clear idea yet on what they should look like.

I really take to heart all the advice I got here about focusing of getting the game play tested, and I’m aware that at this stage the game badly needs play testing. But I’m currently travelling, and far from printing equipment and play testers, so I choose to focus for now on what I can do to improve the game with my laptop only.

When I look at the board I suspect that perhaps the board is too big (that is, there are too many squares/provinces), and this will compound the challenge with analysis paralysis, as has been pointed out by contributors on this forum. I played a lot of chess on tournament level, and I believe we chess players are so accustomed to deal with analysis paralysis (AP), that we have a blind spot for it. So I’m eager if non-chess players will find joy in my game, or there will be too much AP for them to deal with.
I think about also making a smaller map for play testing, which will be small enough to play a game in half to one hour. (That said I’ve no clear idea how long time a typical game would take on the current map).