So while I am busy thinking and working on my games one reoccuring seems to happen with Antaire: Villages its end game and the victory point situation.
I will back peddle a little, especially since there has been a thread in the forums regarding plugins for games. I am working on three games, all with the Antaire theme. The first and most advanced game is my dungeon crawl game (Antaire: Dungeons), then there is this game, plus an adventure game. Antaire: Dungeons focuses on playing a character exploring a dungeon, Antaire: Villages is centered around building your village, and Antaire: Explorers is about exploring the land and looking for artifacts. A while ago I had the idea that you could expand upon your experience in Antaire: Explorers by playing Antaire: dungeons when looking for artifacts. This could be similarly extended that players could take on the roles of mayors from towns that are in Antaire: Villages that the parties visit in Antaire: Explorers. So ...
Taking the above into account it significantly modifies the elements in the Antaire: Villages game. Additional building types need to be added, garrisons for guards, inns for exploreres, market places for selling items, the list goes on. There may also be an additional element where the player controls a party of adventurers. Since in Antaire: Exploreres you can steal from a village (guards being the protectors) something similar could be in play for the game. Perhaps it distracts from the original intent of the game where there would be no combat between players, but if I the games are to provide an "extensible" experience between each other then this small form of combat would need to be included.
I am digressing. The gut feel. There end game scenario was for a player to build one of four wonders with advanced resource types. I could easily see a run away game experience happening, which we all know detracts from the game play. My gut tells me to remove the advanced resources, and multiple wonders from the game to prevent the run away scenario. In doing this I left without an end game solution. My idea is to have a single wonder that all players are required to contribute to firstly build the wonder, and secondly create the end game. Initially I am thinking that the wonder needs to be build and resources are "taxed" from the players each turn. They may pay more towards the wonder, and hence speed up the end of the game.
Now as I write I am thinking of other game solutions.
1. Have an event card drawn each turn (Villages is simultaneous turns), one of the events would be "Monach demands a Wonder" so there would be no tax until this card is drawn, also gives the players some time to start building their village.
2. Each player has a party that wonders around the table. Where ever the party is they may choose to steal a resource from the player, or purchase equipment (as in Antaire: Exploreres).
3. A party could figuratively search the wilderness for lost artifacts (essentially dungeon running, as in Antaire: Explorers, and should be added to Antaire: Dungeons - as campaign play)
4. Artifacts are returned as gold, which is used to purchase resources for the village or equipment for the party.
5. Village already has one two core attribute, storage/warehouse size, which equates to how may cards you can have in your hand, and number fields, which changes depending on the size of the village.
6. Buildings already work towards Victory points, so should artifacts found, and gold.
7. End game scenario is when the wonder is built, the scaling of the resources based upon players is essential here, and a nice challenge.
Nothing like tipping your game design on its head ...
