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Castle building game centered around dice

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ErnstFourie
ErnstFourie's picture
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Joined: 06/18/2014

Hi all,

I've been rolling this idea around in my head for a while now.

A game where you roll dice to build your own castle and attack other player's castles.

You'd have different types of dice, which help in different parts of the turn, like soldier dice, magician dice, builder dice.

The turn-structure would be something like:

Roll Dice => Keep at least one, reroll others (until you've kept all dice)

Take a Build Action => Not to sure about this, because you'd need seperate parts of the castle, so your castle can be attacked and you can attack other castles.

Take an Attack Action => This and the 'build action' would be dependant on the "buildings" your castle already has. For example, if you have built a barracks or a guard tower, when you start your turn, roll one extra soldier dice and one less builder dice.

The castle part of the game could be represented with a player board for each player, with space for building or room cards that you can build, maybe from a communally accessible card pile. Maybe from a few different decks with different themes. Each building you'd build would then grow your castle, and afford you different "abilities" in your turn, like more of one die, the ability to manipulate one face.

I like the idea of a fized dice pool, that you don't need to draft. Rather you'll start of rolling only one or two of each dice, and as your castle gets bigger, you'd be able to swap out which dice you get to roll.

The game would be fixed length, maybe 12 rounds (building your castle in year (12 months)).

Any insight or input?

Zag24
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Joined: 03/02/2014
Comments

I think that it's interesting, but you need some more to make it so that there isn't a single "correct" progression. Some random thoughts, which you should, of course, feel free to use or discard:

You start with a smallish "Command Staff" which means the number of dice you get to roll -- two, perhaps. However, there is a building available (mansion?) with a geometric or exponential cost, that expands your Command Staff, allowing you to throw more dice per turn. The building should become prohibitively expensive beyond, say, 5. So you start with a keep and a mansion -- Command Staff of 2. Your second mansion costs 4 builder points; your third costs 8; your fourth 16; etc.

Rolling builders allows you to build right away, with those number of builders rolled. These dice should be something like {BB, BB, B, B, B, (blank)}, where the B's are the number of build icons on that side, so the amount of building you get to do that turn. You need to allow for partially-constructed buildings that I get to finish next turn. However, you can't 'save' unused building points -- use 'em or lose 'em.

Rolling soldier dice gets you another soldier that you keep. So, as long as you don't attack and aren't attacked, your army could get bigger and bigger each turn. However...

Soldiers and builders have to eat. One of the building types should be a farm. You can't have more soldiers plus builders than you have farms. You could manage this just by having one row of numbers on the board. Each player has a farm counter and a unit counter which moves on the row. Any given player's unit counter may not pass his farm counter.

Each member of Command Staff needs food, too. Probably each one takes up two or even three farm's worth. (Those executive council members each have their own staff, because they are all self-important pompous fools, so each one consumes a fair bit of tax revenue / food.)

So there is some tension around whether to build more builder units, command staff, or go straight for soldiers and try to rush. Meanwhile, everybody has to eat, so you can't neglect farms.

In addition to Builder dice (one per Engineer's Office) and Soldier dice (one per training grounds), you might also have Militia dice, which have {BB, B, B, SS, S, S}. These might be slightly easier to get than either of the specialized dice, and you'll notice that, without the blank, they average slightly more units produced, though you have no control on the type of unit.

Good luck! Take whatever ideas there appeal to you.

ErnstFourie
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Joined: 06/18/2014
Thanks for the comments!

Wow, thank you for the reply.

I like the idea of dice that are split between soldiers and builders. I was thinking that might be a good way to start - each player starts with a bunch of peasants, which can serve as builders, farmers and militia. As the kingdom grows and the game progresses, you'd get access to more specialised units, like builders or soldiers.

I would like to avoid players having to keep track of too many different things, like food or the like. I think an 'age of empires' approach might be best. With buildings actually limiting the dice. You'd be limited to your starting dice until, for example, you build a 'barracks' or 'college', from which point you'll have access to a extra soldier or builder dice.

I like the idea of being able to 'rest' your army, keeping them in reserve. But with that too a simpler approach might be best. Maybe each military building has a number of soldier units it can house, which limuts your standing army so you xan't just indefinitely build an army for an all out attack.

One thing I'd like to explore is maybe having the building require other types of buildings, that could prevent players from only building the best each turn.

Maybe each building you build would provide you with a certain benefit or resource you'd need to build a future building. Say for example, you'd be able to build a 'blacksmith' with you starting rolls, which would provide you with [metal]. Building a stable would require you to have access to metal from one of your existing buildings, but in return would provide you with [horses], which would then again help you in some other way.

Maybe get some sort of building plan pool going, where you'd be able to pick from each turn. There'd be like a stack of buildings, and each turn you'd be able to draw a new set of building plans, from which you'd try and build something.

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