I would really like to make a fast card game that would have empire-building and battles, but with really in depth strategy, but able to be played anywhere with it's small size. I thought a good theme would be Ancient China, and definitely want to have role selection (like in San Juan/Puerto Rico). A cool mechanic I was thinking of was to have building buildings and recruiting soldiers (things like that) should take a few turns to do, and have officers assigned to the project boost the production time or production amount.
For example: An officer has a Political (POL) score of 1, and wants to build a market. Someone else chose the Develop role, so he does not get a privilege. Normally, a market takes 2 turns to build without bonuses, but since the assigned officer has a POL 1, it is reduced by a turn. Showing the turns to build could be accomplished by this: A 4-turn building would be the card is flipped over. A 3 turn building could be shown by turning the card to its 3 turn side, and for each subsequent turn, flip it to the 2 turns, then 1 turn, and then it will be done. Example on the page.
Some other roles could be to research, outfit soldiers with weapons, recruit, drill soldiers, search, harvest, etc.
I would love plenty of ideas and feedback, and ideas for how it could be accomplished, or new themes!
I hadn't gotten any reception, so I was thinking of closing it down, but thanks.
To feNix's reply, I wanted roles that would represent what the Emperor would like to happen to take over warring provinces (etc. this is for thematics). The officers I had thought about you would have to have an officer available to perform a role, and you must apply his stats to it. I have thought about roles and have come up with these below. By the way, if you have played Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI, alot of the ideas will come from this. It is basically RTK card game. I wanted to keep the officers shuffled aside and players can recruit them later, but roles are separate.
To rcjames14, I definitely want to make it a military Three Kingdoms period game. The reasoning is that I find this more fun (IMO) and an economic game is too similar to San Juan or In the Year of the Dragon. The tableau will have all the cards laid out Dominion style, except for events, officers, and target cities which are random decks. As much as I like your idea, I don't really want to base it around that. Thanks for the suggestion. AS for what it follows most, I personally think this is going to develop into something different than all of these games
To Pastor_Mora, your first idea is what I was more going for, as you will see below in the roles. Each character will have special abilities later, but I want to keep it simple right now. I like RTK very much as well, thanks! I don't really understand what the second idea is saying, but I wanted better or worse stats to contribute as to how long something takes or how much it costs to play a role.
8 Roles
Develop(POLitics)- Build a building. Pay for the gold, place listed amount of turns for the card. You must add the stats in, so if your POL is -1, then you have to add an extra turn to build it. Privilege- reduce cost by POL
officers must stay assigned to this until the building is done so they do not refresh at the beginning of the round.
Merchant (POL)- Trade Food for Gold or Gold for food on a 2:1 ratio. Receive additional of your choice based on POL. once again, if it is negative, you get less. Privilege: 1:1 ratio
Recruit (WAR)- Recruit 1000 troops+1000 for each Barracks and point of WAR you have Privilege: Received troops are doubled. Must have a Barracks. Negative WAR decreases troops gained
Drill:(WAR)- Each group of troops you have has 1 Will equal to the amount of troops (No Will when recruited) So for example: 3000 troops could have a max of 3 Will. Troops are placed into groups when you recruit them. Will can be spent in battles for special abilities, such as a unit armed with crossbows could perform Incinerate for 2 Will, which could do 1000 damage now and 1000 damage next turn. Negative WAR decreases Will gained
Outfit:(INTellect)- Produce 1000 of one type of weapons for one gold each 1000: Spears, Pikes, Bows, or Horses if you have a Smith(S,P,B)or Stables(H) You get an additional +1000 for each Smith/Stables and INT point. A Smith is required to produce Pikes, Spears, or Bows, and Stables for Horses. Privilege: Produce an additional type, split however you wish. (Ex: 2000 Pikes and 1000 Spears, 4000 Horses and 2000 Bows, etc.) Negative Intellect decreases Armaments made.
Research(INT): Research a tech. Pay gold and it takes turns to research like a building. You can buy higher level techs if you have the prerequisites, but prerequisites are only in a chain, so no huge tree. For example- The Crossbow tech branch goes from Drill Bows---- to Counter Fire------ to Powerful Crossbows-----to Elite Bows (highest)
Privilege: techs cost less equal to INT. Negative increases time.
Inspections(LDRship): Gain 1 order in your city +LDR Privilege:Order doubled. Order is important. Low order causes officers to leave and Bandits to appear, while higher order increases harvests. At the end of the season, you get food and golds for markets and farms, but have to feed troops and pay officers. Also, your order decreases and can cause bad things to happen. An event card is also redrawn. The Emperor(first-player card) is passed and unattached officers refresh, and role selection starts. After all players have picked a role, gold coins are added and target cities can be attacked (or you can attack other players).
Search (LDR): Choose between gaining 1 gold or paying 4 gold to draw an officer. Privilege: Gain 3 gold, Pay 2 to draw 2 pick 1 officer. Add 1 gold each or subtract one recruit cost each for LDR points. Negatives cause more expensive recruits or less gold.
Whew. I also want to go over what I was thinking for combat. Soldier groups must be paired with an officer to attack a city (or player). A group can arm themselves with weapons, but the group size can then only be matched on a 1 for 1 basis with weapons. For example: 1 group of troops contains 5000 troops. I would like to arm them with crossbows, but I only have 2000 Bows. Therefore, my group size can only be 2000 troops. You can also choose not to arm them (they just have swords, but base troop stats are bad. The stats are ATK, DEF, RNG, MOV.
ATK: Attack is paired up against DEF to determine how much damage is dealt.
DEF: defense is same
RNG: range is how far a unit can attack. All have 1 except for Bows which have 2. Enemy cannot attack back, even with Bows (until tech is researched)
MOV: move is how many spaces the unit can move. Most have 1, horses have 2.
1000 Troops with just swords have ATK1 DEF1 RNG1 MOV1
Each +1000 adds +1 ATK +1 DEF (cumulative)
Weapons just add a bonus (not cumulative)
Spears adds +2ATK (+3 vs Horses) +1 DEF (+2 vs Horses)
Pikes add +1 ATK (+2 vs Spears) +2 DEF (+3 vs Spears)
Bows add +1 ATK +1 DEF +1 RNG
Horses add +1 ATK (+2 vs. Pikes) +1 DEF(+2 vs Pikes) +1 MOV
Each point of WAR the commanding officer has adds +1 ATK
Each point of LDR the commanding officer has adds +1 DEF
For example: 5000 troops with Spears with an officer that has 1 WAR and 0 LDR vs.
6000 troops with Pikes with an officer that has 2 WAR and -2LDR
The total would be 8 ATK 6 DEF (Spears: 5 for the troops, 2 for the Spears, 1 for the WAR DEF:5 for the troops, 1 for the Spears)
to 10 ATK 7 DEF (Pikes: 6 for the troops, 2 for the Pikes, 2 for the WAR DEF: 6 for the troops, 3 for the Pikes, -2 for the LDR.)
The result is that the Spear group would take 4000 casualties (10 ATK-6 DEF) and be left with 1000 troops, while the Pike group would take 1000 casualties (8 ATK-7 DEF) and be left with 5000 troops.
If both players are unable to do any damage to each other, both players take 1000 casualties.
Of course, special abilities and tactics using Will weren't included, but I 'm sure you get the picture. The combat isn't as hard as it looks, just spelling everything out wit lots of numbers makes it look terrible.
I will go ahead and stop here, tell me what you guys think!