I know the season system has been done before and agricola is similar (and very basic compared to) to my original idea but here is my take on it:
You would have 4 cards to represent the seasons and rotate them 90 degrees each turn (so 4 turns per season) then just place the finished season on the bottom and cycle through them.
The object of the game is to make the most money by the end of 5 years/10years so 20 season changes or 40 depending on how long you want the games to be. Each season change would have a (1/6 chance - d6 roll of 6) to trigger a world event.
Energy of your player is the limiting resource. Players have the choice to move along the grid spaces, train in a discipline, forage items, hunt animals (if they have the proper weapons or armor), craft items (such as armor/weapons), farm, visit the marketplace to sell/buy items to other players, and try the "stock market".
Each time a player moves, crafts/farms, forages, hunts etc they use 1,2 or 3 energy depending on the activity. If energy hits 0 they lose the next turn to recover. Otherwise, to replenish energy they need to cook meat from animals or cook food from foraged seeds that were farmed and consume it.
They also lose 1 energy per turn naturally. Players play at the same time and announce when they are finished for their turn so no doing nothing during your opponents turns!
You can only do each energy draining action (besides moving) once per turn but energy will run out fast!
Now while keeping energy up the player wants to make money by selling unused foraged item, trophies, crafted items such as an old bow, sword, armor, extra hides, food and so on. There is the stock market and world events for each season that can produce money such as the tournament in summer (duel players to earn top prize).
The stock market system would be a limited supply of stocks available to purchase at the marketplace that give dividends at the culmination of each year (after winter) and also count toward your final money total at the end of the game. However, world events (drawn from the world event cards) such as stock crashes, lowering AND gaining of certain stocks can alter their final value. Also trading for stock or any of your items is encouraged!
Other world events would include snow storms in the winter to drain more energy to travel since the terrain is more treacherous on movements or limit the available foraged items or animals during a season. Also, supply and demand world events could allow crafted or foraged items to sell for or cost more or less at any given time at the marketplace. World events would either be an instant change that turn or last a period of time (4 90 degree rotations like for a supply demand event) A good example of a 4 turn event would be a worldwide sickness event which would require each player to produce medicine (poss cooked item) from farmed items OR possibly buy it from marketplace if others sold it previously otherwise they would lose a turn by the end of the event to recover from the sickness.
Getting back to the player duels, if the summer world event for the tournament is drawn the players can meet in the middle town on the map and duel each other by rolling dice and adding their fighting skill to the roll for a final score.
How do you increase fighting you ask? Training can be completed, using energy of course, in fighting,crafting, foraging, cooking, hunting etc. Each time you train your skill goes up which normal yields better results in the corresponding discipline (ie increasing farming yields more crops, fighting helps in events or versus special creatures).
Just another example of a game play decision would be hunting. To hunt you could choose to craft a bow (need foraged wood and then need to be crafted) to hunt elusive game (deer, birds) and/or a sword (forage ore and craft the sword) to hunt aggressive and more dangerous animals (wolf, bear). The deer would provide hides to sell or use for light armor and meat for food when cooked. Wolves would provide furs for warmth in the winter seasons and meat as well.
So basically, the players have to balance energy use, food consumption and money making to win the game.
I did not elaborate on all the aspects of game play but just asking for your opinions on the concept of the game.
Thanks as always!
