I had an idea yesterday that combines various ideas from many games. The core idea would be to make a lower scale map (not the whole world) that plays as a solitaire game a bit like pocket civ. You control a kingdom where you expand and explore, eventually meet outside invaders and try to deal with it.
A great source of inspiration is my Starcraft Invasion solitaire variant. Some picture can be found here:
http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/index.php?n=Guide.StarcraftInvasions
I am not really interested in the mechanics of starcraft but rather the complexity and amount of details that the player needs to manage which are much more convenient to play as a solitaire game. Plus the outside invaders that you must constantaly deal with.
So the concept could be that you explore a map with hex tiles like catan and eventually meet up opponent wizard by drawing certain tiles like in "interspace". Then you need to manage your kingdom until you fullfill one of the 5 victory conditions.
Mean while you'll research spells and since the game will be much more detailed it will make the design and casting of spell cards possible due to the increased amount of things that can be influenced by a spell effect.
Now solitaire game are not really popular, but I don't think it will be possible to play multiplayer because it could be too heavy and require too much pieces. So there are 2 game play options I came up with.
A. Each empire could be controled by 2 players, one manage the civilization, the other manage the magic. I was already thinking in using 2 deck of cards, one for spells and one for civ (like card driven war games, it reinforces the theme). So having 2 players to play 1 kingdom could make sense.
B. Use a second empire like Pocket Civ 2 players. Each side can never attack each other but rather influence themselves indirectly through the use of spell or manipulation of foreign empire. Both sides would be racing for victory. While in single player, you race against a clock.
With both options, the game could accomodate up to 4 players which could probably give an interesting experience.
What do you think?
