I'd ask you to help me with your ideas for a Fantasy Empire building game. Any concept you think I should include, or thoughts on my concepts are welcome. Here's the outline of the game so far:
The Empire has fallen, and 6 Kingdoms are fighting to unify the world under their banner. The players need to collect Victory Points, and there are several ways for that:
- Military conquest: a certain number of conquered provinces provide a new point
- Diplomacy: forging an alliance with another Kingdom provides victory points for the initiator
- Questing: solving quests with heroes provides points
Each Kingdom will have 3 army types: a regular, an advanced and an elite army. Regarding the resolution of battles, I'd like your opinion on which method would you like more. Simple dice rolling, with bonuses added based on army type, terrain, etc. or a Tactics Card system, where players would use numbered cards to determine their army strength in each battle round, leaving place for more tactical battles.
Players could gather Gold from their provinces, and from Merchants they placed on other Kingdoms provinces.
There will be a Diplomacy Table: Kingdoms can increase their influence with other Kingdoms by placing Emissaries on their provinces. By using their Influence Points, players may make/force diplomatic actions such as peace treaties, trading agreements, and ultimately, alliances.
Also there'll be a Technology Tree, with 4 aspects: Warfare, Magic, Foreign Policies and Economy, each one having 2 branches (eg. for Foreign Policies there's Diplomacy vs. Espionage), where buying an upgrade on a level, will make it impossible to buy the other one.
The map will contain Quest Sites. A player may choose to obtain a quest from a site, drawing a Quest Card. After successfully completing the quest, from then on he gains the bonus provided by the quest site (eg. the Elemental's Isle will make it possible to recruit Elemental armies).
Heroes will have a common deck for all players called the Tavern. There are always 2 heroes at the tavern for hire, and any player may buy them. Heroes will have 4 stats: leadership, stealth, charisma and magic. A hired hero could be assigned different tasks, such as leading an army (based on leadership) or absolving a diplomatic negotiation (based on charisma). After the completion of the task, the Hero would return to the deck, or the player could extend the contract.
Some concepts I'd like to include but not yet thought over: espionage (incl. assassination, sabotage, etc), magic, city improvements
OK, so I've thought over the challenge (and battle) system, and now I'm considering the following.
Each player has an Action Card deck. There are Tactics, Mana, Stealth and Negotiation cards, numbered 1-4, and their number in each players' decks are dependant on the characteristics of their Kingdom (eg. Elves have more Mana, and less Tactics cards). Players draw an Action card from their deck each turn.
When a challenge occurs, the player who tries to accomplish something can use corresponding action cards to enchance the strength of their army, etc. He puts the card(s) down, but doesn't show them. Then the attacked/challenged player could use his own cards to counter the player. After that, they show the cards. In battle, the attacker adds the cards value to his armies attack rate, the defender adds it to their defense rate, and the higher total wins the battle.
What do you think?