Village economy game

I'm with you, I like building my city/castle/base but I don't like massing up armies to take out my opponent before he takes out me. I also like your end game achievement idea with points for building and accomplishing certain things. What setting are you thinking? From the few buildings you mentioned I pictured medieval times with castles. To me, it would be fun to create castles and the economy that goes with them.

I'm also digging the race to build a wonder idea but I would add this to it. Have multiple wonders which all require different requirements to build. If these requirements are well balanced it will give players multiple strategies to aim for. I would also include some mechanism by which a player might be greatly tempted or even forced to change their plan and shoot for a different wonder, this should force players to diversify (a problem I'm currently struggling with in a current design) as well as help stem the possibility of a master strategy or a single, possibly easier to build, wonder always being the best choice.

Shure...

If you have the wonder as a "first to build it winns" then it will be ok. Even if there is difrent wonders that recuiers difrent resorses, this enabeling several strategies and so on.

If you have a "winner is the one with most VP at the end of the game" this would also be ok. And both would proboly be very nice games. But if this game ends when some one builds the wonder (or one of them) then it would be to easy to just optimice the game from start to finnish. And this might be fine in it self but then you need som thing random in the game or it will probobly become broken. And if the random is to smal then you run the chance of the game being a "the one best strategy" in the game or that "firstplayer always wins". And to mutch random in a game then you will not apeal to sertan people. And depending on how you want to design the game this would ither be fine or not... Games that end like this can very often be analasis paralasis prone due to the fact that you can calculate every thing. Take Poerto Rico for instance, to avoid this you have hidden vp chits in the game. But the game youre describing have no sutch mecanic (atleast none that you menchend). You buld a building and you get x points for it. Very easy for every one to calculate. And hidden buildings is not realy an option I think. One other way around it would be to do like in Ticket to ride, have hidden objectives that score at the end of the game. But I do not think that would fit very well with what youre looking for thematicly.

So in short I think the problem is the vp system.

So that leaves me with the third option that I think is ok. The game not ending if some one builds a wonder, have som other "game ender" like a fixed nuber of tyrns. The game ends when a player developed al empty land in the sorounding contry side. Or som other thing. Here player can build wonders, as manny as they like or can manage. But you have to have a difrent system to decide who the winner is. Maby have a nice system that is to complexed to be analised (if there can be one that is not to complex to operate) like a "the winner is the one with the most prosperous city" then you can have difrent things that indicate how prosperous youre city is. A good examel of "to comlex to analise" would be Le Havre. There is extremly litle random things in that game exept the first turn there is onley the special buildings of witch there is 6. And even they can be vued and planed for by the players. And in a short game they are not included so then there is no random thing exept for the first turn. That game could be analised so you and every player could play "the best game". By the way at my gaming club we reshuffle al the goods tiles and place them face down after eatch turn (if you have played the game you will know what i mean). But the game is not analised becaus you would probobly need a computer to keep al that info in order. So you might argu that it is to complexed to be analised.
I think the easiest way to do this is to give the player manny options to chuse from, and make them hard to evaluate. Also having them vary, like the goods offers in Le havre, adds to this effect.

Or you can try and make the design incorperat a simular mecanic (the effect of it not literaly the same) as Caylus uses. The random starting order of the houses and the fact that th eplayers can manipulate how manny turns the game will be played in (to a certan extent ofcours). This I think keeps the game from being analised to mutch. Also ofcours you can argu that there is so manny options so that the game also have a "to complex to analise" feel to it.

I hope that this clarifies what I ment with my earlier remark... If not then just ask me and I will try to explain it difrently.

I was thinking in the GDS contest when I read this :)

My advice regarding wonder-building is that you need to mind that if it takes some turns to complete, your game could be over before it actually ends.

You say you don't like massing up armies, so I don't expect much direct interaction between players. So, say I'm 4 turns away of completing my wonder (and win) and the next player is 3 turns away. Will there be a chance for me to alter this? Might that drive me to just pull-off from the game? If you skip direct interaction, long term objectives may kill the tension of the game. If you use Events to counter calculations, players may feel they were just saved (or not) by a lucky strike (not too glorious).

On the other hand, if you allow multiple wonders, they may be seen not as magnificent. Only just an improved building. And they won't bring into the game what they are supose to (majesty or grandeur, don't know the word).

If you like the Euro style, you can add a common enemy (say, the Golden Horde) that requires a number of armies levied by ALL players. Say, if you don't have 15 armies by turn 15, the Horde wipes everyone out. This may lead the winning player to spend more on armies (to secure his victory) while other players use their resources to catch up with him. This common threat works as a balancing element.

Keep thinking!

I was also trying to create such a village building game and I don't like the fighting part too. I had the same problem with massive resource distribution and there are some of my solutions:

1. Do not make it a resource collecting game. My first version was to have a given amount of resources produced in each turn, which can be used for playing cards/building (like tapping in MtG). The resource nodes will not be destroyed this way, only by using cards or changing them to victory points.
2. Shift the resources to a work commodity. This was meant to introduce workers to game, which could be assigned to do some work. Each building would have a certain amount of work to be done while building it. I had an idea to include worker happiness to the game.
3. Do not work with resources entirely. This looks stupid, but can be possible, but you want it to be somewhat realistic.
4. Do not change the amount of the resources, but their quality. In later stages of the game you could use the same commodities in the same amount to buildings, which would be unable to build earlier, because they have some preresquites. This variant is close to the Age of Empires PC game with the idea about ages. Or you might change them with certain buildings (e.g. Brick works or Lumber Mill) to an another commodity.

I had another suggestions, but i forgot them in the meanwhile. Do you know the game Settlers of Catan, the Cardgame? Its really close to this game you want to create. It was my main inspiration. At first, I wished to change that game, but i also wanted to make it somewhat different and there it is.

I was refering to a possible slippery slope issue (see the reply subject), and that was this month GDS theme.