Skip to Content
 

Tower Defense Style Econ Game

9 replies [Last post]
Wed, 03/18/2015 - 23:52
Troy Boy
Offline
Joined: 03/17/2015

Hey Everyone, I'm new here.

I have made a few games just to play with friends/family and here is my newest idea and I wanted some input. Thanks in advance, you all seem very nice so far.

The name so far is called Tourist Trap!

It plays out just like a Tower Defense game. The tourists come down a windy road and players place businesses along the path to try and "win their business" (instead of the blowing them up haha). Tourist only have so much cash on hand, so to speak, so after they shop at 3 places they are removed from the board. (Tourists are non-playing tokens) Players compete to have the most successful business(es).

Here are the things I got so far:

At the start of a players turn, they roll the dice. Place a new tourist token on the board and move them X amount of spaces. Move all other tourists on the board the same number of spaces.

When a tourists stops, all businesses within 1 space compete for the tourists' business (basically receive money from them). In order to get money from the tourist a player using 2d6's must roll higher than the tourists "Win-over" value.

There are 3 types of tourists: Poor, Middle Class, and Rich.
To win-over a Poor tourist a player must roll over a 7.
Middle Class: over a 9
Rich: over an 11 (Though they are rich, they are also stingy!)
Each pay out a different amount.

But wait! If multiple businesses are competing for the same customer you must roll higher than the win-over value and everyone else's roll to get the cash.

Each tourist has 3 chips underneath them, similar to an Axis and Allies chip. If you win-over a tourist you get cash, depending on your business, and a chip. The chip symbolizes Reputation and every 3 Rep chips you get gives you +1 to all of your rolls.

You win by having a total of 15 Rep Chips on your businesses.

Here is a few miscellaneous details:

All businesses start out as a Generic Business. Basically a simple plastic building of your color.

As a business performs well you can 'specialize' it and turn it into a Movie Theater, Restaurant, Hotel, etc. Why specialize? A generic business can only hold 6 Rep Tokens, but a specialized one can hold 10. Also they will bring in more cash and possibly give bonus rolls to a certain class of tourist. Example: A casino will give a +1 to all rolls when competing for a Rich Tourist.

Roll doubles? Counts as an Up Sell! Brings in more cash.

-Here are some things to work out:

-What to spend $$ on? Besides more businesses...

-Do I do Cards that can give special bonuses?

-Simply way to get the board from being swarmed with Tourists. Right now they pop out every turn! (the board is roughly 20 spaces)

-Ways to effect the other players if at all.

Thanks for reading!

Top
Thu, 03/19/2015 - 04:47
#1
Sliverik
Sliverik's picture
Offline
Joined: 02/27/2015
I like the theme for this

I like the theme for this kind of game.

You didn't say it, but I imagine the board to be a "road" of spaces, and you can place the businesses on either side of the space. When the road does an angle, placing a business in it is strategic, as you will have to decide how to place your business.

How many places do you expect a player to have, during the game? How many specialised businesss? Will there be a way to make lose reputation points from the other players?

Top
Thu, 03/19/2015 - 05:22
#2
Soulfinger
Soulfinger's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/06/2015
Seems like a great concept

Seems like a great concept and an excellent implementation of the tower defense concept. I have a feeling that it would do even better as an app, being a TD game for all those people uninterested in shooting little men.

Top
Thu, 03/19/2015 - 10:31
#3
Supafrieke
Supafrieke's picture
Offline
Joined: 02/22/2015
Ingenious Theme...

I really like the theme twist! However, you've got a few things going on that I'm not grasping. Tourists are tokens drawn from a bag and can be of three classes? Or does the roll of the die determine the tourist type? Are the 7,9,11 values also the amount of money the Tourist spends? Rolling double does what exactly? How do the players spend this cash later?Specializing, buying new businesses, advertising?

As another commenter asked, whats the board layout? A single road with a start and end point? Are there alleys, side streets, multiple paths of any description?

Lastly, it sounds like quite a bit of dice rolling. Both the movement of tourists and competition for tourists are both random outcomes. What elements of the game do the players get to "control" other than the location of their businesses?

-- Yes, you can have flat pricing, auctions, or whatever for buying businesses and upgrades.

-- I'm always a fan of card play that modifies the base rules.

-- You can always roll more dice to determine if tourist come out.

-- Maybe allow players to slander each other? If the "Rep" tokens are more like online reviews, you could post bad reviews and put black/blank "Rep" tokens in other players buildings? Probably for advanced play. Simply doing the opposite is also good way to encourage competition, allow advertising to draw tourists to your less reputable business (give you a one time bonus on your dice roll).

Again, great theme to match with the idea.

Top
Thu, 03/19/2015 - 16:39
#4
Zag24
Offline
Joined: 03/02/2014
Interesting concept. Some

Interesting concept. Some suggestions of things to try.

Have a second roll once a customer has chosen a business, to see how much you earn and whether or not you satisfy them. Wealthy clients are hard to satisfy, but you earn the entire amount you roll. Poor clients are easier to satisfy, but there's a cap on how much you earn. You always earn the money but possibly don't earn a reputation chip.

i.e.
Wealthy: 9 to satisfy, no cap on earnings
Middle: 6 to satisfy, Max earn of 9
Poor: 4 to satisfy, Max earn of 7

If you roll an 8, you get $8 from either the Rich or Middle clients, only $7 from the poor ones, and a reputation chip only from the Poor and middle clients. This makes for a transition in the game -- when a store has no bonus, they'd rather get Poor or Middle clients, to earn more reputation. However, once you have a lot of reputation and satisfying those wealthy client is relatively easy, you'd rather get those clients so that you can earn money more quickly.

-------------

Multiple paths: There are a few forks and rejoinings in the path, and each customer chooses which direction to go at each fork, based on the total of the reputation on each path. (i.e. a tourist is more likely to go down a path with lots of high-reputation businesses.) This makes it desireable to own businesses on the popular path, but there is also more competition on these paths. If a path really has no businesses, then you might want to start one there because any tourist that walks down there will at least consider you.

This would require a change to how businesses compete. At the end of his move, the tourist should consider all the businesses that are the same distance from him, plus 1, or something like that. i.e. if the closest business is distance 2, then he'll consider all businesses within 3 of his spot. On the lonely streets, this gives you lots of opportunity to pull him in. On the crowded streets, there is always a lot of competition.

------------

Businesses have to pay rent or close: Rather than recalculating constantly the likelihood of a tourist taking a path, the paths might have inherent values for customers going one way or another that never changes. However, the preferred paths also have higher rents. Businesses have to pay each month an amount determined by the location, or they close and the location is up for auction again.

-----------
Just a few random thoughts. Feel free to use what works and ignore the rest.

Top
Thu, 03/19/2015 - 16:37
#5
Troy Boy
Offline
Joined: 03/17/2015
Sliverik wrote: You didn't

Sliverik wrote:

You didn't say it, but I imagine the board to be a "road" of spaces, and you can place the businesses on either side of the space. When the road does an angle, placing a business in it is strategic, as you will have to decide how to place your business.

How many places do you expect a player to have, during the game? How many specialised businesss? Will there be a way to make lose reputation points from the other players?

The board so far is shaped like an upside down Omega symbol, except more rigid. Yes you are correct, the tourist move along a road and you can place businesses on either side.

Corner spots are good but cost more to place a business there.

I'm thinking about 3-4 businesses per player. Everyone should be able to specialize once, if they are doing well they may be able to get one or two more.

So far the only way to lose Rep is to roll double 1's, symbolizing a bad experience.

Top
Thu, 03/19/2015 - 16:44
#6
Zag24
Offline
Joined: 03/02/2014
With my first idea, above,

With my first idea, above, that once a business pulls in a tourist he has another roll for satisfying the tourist, that gives something to spend money on (other than rent and new businesses): Items that increase this satisfaction roll. So reputation pulls customers in, but good equipment makes them happy.

Top
Thu, 03/19/2015 - 17:02
#7
Troy Boy
Offline
Joined: 03/17/2015
Supafrieke wrote:I really

Supafrieke wrote:
I really like the theme twist! However, you've got a few things going on that I'm not grasping. Tourists are tokens drawn from a bag and can be of three classes? Or does the roll of the die determine the tourist type? Are the 7,9,11 values also the amount of money the Tourist spends? Rolling double does what exactly? How do the players spend this cash later?Specializing, buying new businesses, advertising?

"Drawing the tourist" is still in the works. The latest idea i have would be using a deck of cards. The card would list the type of tourist and have a number on it, 1-6, that would indicate how far everyone moves. That would get rid of the dice rolling.

The money you receive depends on the business and how well its doing. A 'starting' business may receive $100 for a Mid Class. (double for Rich and half for Poor). This aspect I'm still trying to decide on. Middle Class im thinking will be the most common, while when a Rich tourist comes out people will be like "OMG! I need to win this roll!"

Rolling doubles basically means getting more money IF you also win-over the tourist with that roll. Example: If you are competing for a Mid Class shopper and roll double 5's, assuming you beat the competition, you would receive you normal pay plus an "Up Sell bonus", something like $50. I'm also debating on whether doubles should count as 'trump' as long as you rolled higher than the Win-over rate. Using the above example, even if someone rolled higher than you, the doubles would still win out.

Spending cash is still in the works. Ideally it would be used to specialize, upgrades, and advertising as you mentioned. I don't want people to be able to spend cash to increase the roll as this would help who ever is doing well run wild.

Top
Thu, 03/19/2015 - 17:27
#8
Troy Boy
Offline
Joined: 03/17/2015
Thanks Zag for the ideas! For

Thanks Zag for the ideas!

For rolling after you win a tourist over, it made need some tweaking. Here are a few more details about the game.

Multiple tourists will be on the board at a time and people may have multiple businesses trying to compete at different spots. You start rolling for the furthest tourist along and work your way back. If 4 people are playing there already will be lots of dice rolls each turn.

I like your idea because it involves something else to spend money on! I will give it more thought.

As for rent, I really wanted to implement the idea at first. I don't plan on the game lasting long enough to support much fluctuations in business success/failure.

Multiple paths- Friends have mentioned this too, but I need to work on the logistics of one path first :) Though when I get around to doing that... those are some solid ideas.

Top
Fri, 03/20/2015 - 02:56
#9
tuscansun
Offline
Joined: 02/11/2015
Troy Boy wrote: -Here are

Troy Boy wrote:

-Here are some things to work out:

-What to spend $$ on? Besides more businesses...

-Do I do Cards that can give special bonuses?

-Simply way to get the board from being swarmed with Tourists. Right now they pop out every turn! (the board is roughly 20 spaces)

-Ways to effect the other players if at all.


Hi Troy, your game sounds neat! So the first thought that came to my mind is to have players buy cards from a deck. And the cards could be like "remove one tourist from the board" or "take one rep coin from a tourist" or "add two rich tourists to the board" or something like that. Just my first thought. You'd likely have to limit cards to one a turn to make that work.

Maybe the first few turns, tourists show up, but after that you need to collectively have a certain number of advertising points for the board to be populated? Basically everyone working together to either keep the board populated or not. The number going up each turn I mean.

Just a few ideas, I'm really spit-balling.

Top
Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut