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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

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Mon, 07/12/2004 - 08:18
Brykovian
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I normally don't like to start a post with a disclaimer, but I think it's necessary here ...

Disclaimer: I know that this forum is a "Board Game" design forum, focussing on games played interactively between people at the same location, normally across a table top. And I know that this is *not* a computer game forum ... And yet, the game I'm putting up for discussion this week is intended to be a computer game. However, I feel that the game itself has enough boardgame-like qualities that I would get very valuable feedback from having board game designers look at its design. So here it is ...

I have posted the design details, including a related narrative, in a thread on my website's message board. You can find the info here:

http://www.mwgames.com/MessageBoard/viewtopic.php?t=139

If you want to get to the "good stuff", scroll down through the first 4 posts ... past the posts marked "Narrative, Part 1" and "Narrative, Part 2" ... you'll find a post that starts "Okay ... here's the design in a nutshell". And then I use another handful of posts to detail out the design concepts and what players will be able to do during their turns.

I am *not* looking for help in how to technically implement these ideas in a computer game -- for the most part, I have that worked out ... or I'll get figured out as I need them.

What I *am* looking for help on is the normal board game game-play stuff ... are there enough interesting decisions? does the game seem balanced? Are there too many turns (or not enough) for each quarter in order to allow the "board" to change enough between polls? etc., etc.

Finally, I think it would be interesting to try and port this game's concepts into a tabletop version, but haven't had any good thoughts on how to do this. There seems to be too much accounting involved (which makes it a nice candidate for a computer game) ... If you have any ideas on how to make it playable as a tabletop game, I'd be very happy to hear them.

Thanks for the help!

-Matt

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Mon, 07/12/2004 - 10:49
#1
rkalajian
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

It seems like you have a pretty solid design there, and it will be exciting once you have something working to demo. As far as balance I think I would need to play it a few times to see how well everything works out.

Concerning a tabletop version. While it may be a bit complicated to play out on a table, i'm sure you'll find ways to make it a bit easier. I, for one, wouldn't mind taking the time and effort to play out a game like this in a tabletop version.

Keep up the good work!

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Mon, 07/12/2004 - 15:37
#2
DarkDream
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Brykovian,

I think you have an interesting set of ideas there. Here are some of my thoughts:

How do players get credits? In campaigning, one thing to campaign for is money. I would tie the amount a city donates to a campaign equal to its favor for a company.

It seems to me that certain cities should randomly be more or less partial to differing messages. To make things interesting a city could be receptive to a blue, green and yellow message. Another city just yellow. When you create an agent, or series of agents, some have a speciality with a certain color. With the combination of agents or one that fits a city just right, you can convince the city more (more favor). Each player starts off with having a strength to begin with for a certain color.

You can also have another type of agent that is so convincing that it can go ahead and change the cities receptiveness to certain colors (for example change a green, blue, yellow city to a green, green, yellow one). To prevent this from happening you can have special units (at a fee) to prevent these people getting through to the city.

Also to make things interesting, players can try to steal an agent by offering a lot of credits and a die roll is determined if the agent will join the other player.

Also I would consider players having special goal on cards. For example, if they can get enough favor for a particular city, they can get a huge credit influx of money or a free agent or something.

Just some ideas.

--DarkDream

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Mon, 07/12/2004 - 17:40
#3
Brykovian
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Thanks for the kind words, rkalajian ... I think the ideas would need to be greatly simplified or some sort of component or other device would need to be used to make the book-keeping easier in order to move to the tabletop ... I haven't found the ticket yet. ;)

DarkDream ... The answer to your original question ("How do players get credits?") is that they start with 20 and get 10 at the start of each turn. I think the credits need to be steady and consistent for all players, so there isn't as much of a chance for the rich getting richer. For an in-theme answer, think of it as the mother company giving each director a budget with a steady supply of funds ... the planet/cities can't fund the different companies until after the votes are done and the contract is signed (at the end of the game).

However, your other comments were really interesting -- about cities having pre-conceived "leanings" toward one player or style or another. And the idea of the agents having different types of styles that play toward one area or another is very interesting to me. Having certain "special duty" agents as well -- for changing a city's leanings or blocking off an area from other players' agents could add some interesting flavor and decisions to the game.

Thanks for those ... I'll let them purculate in the back of my head for a bit. ;)

-Bryk

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Mon, 07/12/2004 - 23:28
#4
GeminiWeb
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Nice idea Brykovian. A war of propaganda?

I'll start with a few questions/assumptions. My apologies if its all in there and I've missed it.

FAVOUR

Is favour only assessed on vote turns and, as such, is not cumulative over time (the masses are notoriously fickle), or does favour accummulate over time (the masses are very loyal)? This will have a big impact on how well areas can be challenged.

If it accummulates, there is no reason (at least in a computer version) that is has to be strictly additive. That is, you might want to downweight old turns scores (e.g. current favour = 0.5 x favour earned this turn + 0.5 total favour from last turn i.e. 0.5 x favour earnt that turn + 0.5 x total favour earned turn before).

If it doesn't accummulate at all, will this encourage certain strategies and/or encourage player order effects (e.g. rushing in agents into opponents broadcast areas the turn before a poll to turn those areas over or building a station in the middle or enemy territory just before a poll)?

... Another option might be to have levels of favour which are 'purchased' according to accumulated points. Different levels will determine how readily a population might be swayed. ...

OPPOSING AGENTS

What happens when an agent goes into an area receiving signals from than one other player? For example, player A and B both broadcast to the area. Does player C's agent reduce content gathering on both stations or one?

Is it possible for an agent to 'outdo' an opposing station and take the favour there? (It doesn't appear so). The example would be if there was a station with P=4 and an opposing agent with C=6. I'm assuming that the station would still generate its broadcats of 1 ...

POLLS

With a computer, I don't see why a square couldn't split its votes across players depending on their respective favour scores, either proportionally or some weigthing applied to favour higher favoured players.

If the population keeps increasing and there is a multiplier for the quarter number, will past results be insignificant?

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Tue, 07/13/2004 - 08:10
#5
Brykovian
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Good questions, GeminiWeb ... I'll take them in order ...

GeminiWeb wrote:
FAVOUR ... Is favour only assessed on vote turns and, as such, is not cumulative over time (the masses are notoriously fickle), or does favour accummulate over time (the masses are very loyal)? This will have a big impact on how well areas can be challenged.

The favor only matters at the time of the poll. So, as you stated, the people are fickle. It does make some sense to keep a running average, perhaps, and at the end of a turn re-calc the current favor, giving the previous average some weight (perhaps 2/3rds) in the new average favor.
Quote:
If it doesn't accummulate at all, will this encourage certain strategies and/or encourage player order effects (e.g. rushing in agents into opponents broadcast areas the turn before a poll to turn those areas over or building a station in the middle or enemy territory just before a poll)?

Yes ... these pre-poll out-maneuverings will likely happen. I don't think that's a bad thing, since I think it adds tension as the next poll approaches. Turn-order effects could play a roll ... perhaps the turn order is re-randomized each turn? Not sure if that would help since the final turn before a poll would be crucial no matter what. The idea here is that your company is able to adjust its marketing approach, and perhaps drop in a week's worth of strong ads right before the poll takes place.
Quote:
Another option might be to have levels of favour which are 'purchased' according to accumulated points. Different levels will determine how readily a population might be swayed.

I'm not exactly sure I follow you on this one ... can you flesh this out a bit?
Quote:
OPPOSING AGENTS ... What happens when an agent goes into an area receiving signals from than one other player? For example, player A and B both broadcast to the area. Does player C's agent reduce content gathering on both stations or one?

If a square on the map is contained within 2 different station's content gathering areas, then an agent on that square will effect both stations. Two birds -- one stone. ;)
Quote:
Is it possible for an agent to 'outdo' an opposing station and take the favour there? (It doesn't appear so). The example would be if there was a station with P=4 and an opposing agent with C=6. I'm assuming that the station would still generate its broadcats of 1 ...

It's possible ... but, as you assume, a station will always be able to generate a level of 1, just by being there, even if the opponent's agents would mathematically drag its programming level below 0.
Quote:
POLLS ... With a computer, I don't see why a square couldn't split its votes across players depending on their respective favour scores, either proportionally or some weigthing applied to favour higher favoured players.

Oddly enough, I'm trying to base it, in a way, on the US electoral college system. You completely win or lose an area -- in this case, a square. It gives the players a bit of strategic option along the lines of "there's no way I can win that area, so I'll simply not put *any* resources into that, so that I can use those resources elsewhere, where I have a chance."
Quote:
If the population keeps increasing and there is a multiplier for the quarter number, will past results be insignificant?

The last poll will definitely be the most important ... statistically more important than the first two combined. However, those early polls are there to encourage players to develop early. In a game with a tight race going into the final poll, that first poll's results might make the difference.

Nice work! Thanks. :)

-Matt

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Tue, 07/13/2004 - 08:30
#6
Brykovian
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

DarkDream ... You got me thinking down some interesting lines. It might result in some significant changes ... it also might be opening the door to turning this into a tabletop game.

I'll post again when I've had some more time to think about it. :)

-Bryk

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Tue, 07/13/2004 - 14:02
#7
Anonymous
Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Brykovian wrote:
DarkDream ... You got me thinking down some interesting lines. It might result in some significant changes ... it also might be opening the door to turning this into a tabletop game.

I'll post again when I've had some more time to think about it. :)

-Bryk

I'd agree with the suggestion that giving cities preferences towards certain colours would be interesting.

Mechanically it sounds fun, and I enjoy playing computer games of these types. I've been playing President Forever and Presidential Election recently, and find these "deploy resources to win popularity" games, even though they *sound* dry when you first hear about them.

My main suggestion would be regarding the theme. While business games can be interesting, the mechanics of winning contracts via persuading popular opinion doesn't "feel" like a business scenario, even if it is in a fictional future universe. I'd have thought the mechanics of this game were better suited and, speaking subjectively, would be enhanced, by a political and/or electoral theme. That could just be a bias towards my own interests, but the mechanics here almost jar, for me, in a game with a business theme.

Best wishes,

Richard.

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Tue, 07/13/2004 - 15:40
#8
Brykovian
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Good point, Richard ... but for some reason I personally was avoiding the elect-an-official type political game. (I truly don't know why I'm avoiding it ... but my gut doesn't want me to go there. ;))

However, my initial idea was that the planet was deciding on what type of formal government to put in place, and the players would all be representing a specific type of system/ideology. But then I thought -- how likely would the settlers use a purely democratic voting style for choosing potentially a non-democratic style of government? I suppose stranger things have happened in the past ... it could happen in the future. :)

Instead, I shifted it to a marketing effort on behalf of a development corporation. Once the money issues are aside, it does come down to making yourself more attractive to the decision makers. (And, in fact, the money issues could be one of the issues that is used to make a bidding company seem more attractive.)

Instead of abstract "colors", as DarkDream suggested, I've been thinking of having 3 or 4 general issues (Company Strength, Expertise, Investment Agressiveness, and Customer Service, for example). Each city would have pre-decided leanings towards the importance of each issue. These leanings would then factor into (as in multiplier) the favor scoring. Each player would start with a "company reputation" for strength/weakness on each issue ... and agents would also be rated for their effectiveness in promoting the company with respect to each specific issue.

Another thought -- somehow related in my brain, although it may not seem so when viewed on the outside of my skull ;) -- is that instead of rolling dice and having the player pick from those dice to custom-build each agent, the player would instead have a pool of "available agents" to choose from. Each turn the pool would change slightly as agents became assigned to other projects and new ones became available.

This then lead to another related thought (again, only related in my brain, probably) ... that only the issue ratings would need to be randomly adjusted between agents. Movement, influence range, etc., could all be the same thing, since the same in-theme technology would be used for each person.

This will need to bake some more ... but I like where it's headed.

Thanks for the good, idea-inspiring comments.

-Bryk

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Tue, 07/13/2004 - 16:36
#9
DarkDream
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

The idea I presented yesterday about how cities have certain tendencies or slants towards certain ideologies has been cooking in my brain a bit.

I hate it when you get a decent idea and your brain refuses to leave it alone!

The basic gist of the game I understood from you, Brykovian, is that players are competing to influence the populace. By having certain cities having certain slants, you can really start to introduce interesting decisions.

As I envison it, and to keep the game simple, each city has a "spectrum" of beliefs or preferences. For example, the spectrum would be the following colors Red, Orange, Yellow and Green. A "green" city would have almost opposite beliefs to a "red" city (weird how this works, it's almost like I'm talking about the Green environmental political group against the Reds or the communists). An "Orange" city would respond to a message from a "Red" agent more than than a "Green" one (the distance of the message from the target would score less favor points).

As a note, I don't think a city should have an all or nothing scoring of points. For example, a "Red" message to a "Red" city could score 5 favor points, a "Orange" message to a "Red" city would score 3, a "Yellow" message to a "Red" city 1 point. A "Green" message to a "Red" city zero points.

Not only that, is the more agents you can send to a city, the more favor points you can get. For example, a player could send 5 "Yellow" agents to get the same influence of 1 "Red" agent (the yellow message appeals to some in the city, but because of the lack of them they need to be found). Also a city should have a limit of favor that can be gained from it to make competition fierce.

It seems to me that distance is a factor in getting agents to a city.

The strategic possibilities that opens up for something like this is manifold. With each player's company having a slant (Red, Yellow or whatever), you have a tendency to produce these sort of agents. Now players need to consider whether to send a lot of agents to cities that are not so receptive to their message or simply concentrating on cities that do respond to their message well (if this doesn't sound like campaigning, I don't know what is).

Now to make it really interesting, you have special agents that can actually change a cities color one grade up or down. Now all of a sudden, a "Red" city has changed to a "Yellow" and the player that has a lot of "Yellow" agents there all of a sudden gains a lot of favor while the other players with "Red" agents loose some.

Also like I said before, players should be handed out "goal" cards, where if they can get a certain amount of "favor" from a city, they gain a special agent or something.

I like the "color" idea better than 3 or 4 general issues as it makes things simpler. I do agree with you, Byrk, that random agents would be really no good. Each company, like you pointed out, would have available agents that are, for the most part, have a slant that is near the company's own slant.

I think there is a decent game here in these ideas.

--DarkDream

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Tue, 07/13/2004 - 18:55
#10
GeminiWeb
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Back again - got to love the time difference for those of us down in Oz!

As before, I'll try and add some structure to my thoughts, but no promises ...

TURN ORDER EFFECTS

Interesting side option would be to cycle through players within a turn so that each player does an action and passes play to the next player. Cycling continues until all players have acted (which is like the activation method for Dungeon & Dragons minatures game where players activate two minatures at a time).

Interestingly enough, this may actually work better as a boardgame and can introduce strategies to try and get the last actions in a turn by building up the capacity for more actions (e.g. hoarding $'s and/or having lots of agents).

AGENTS WINNING OVER STATIONS

Tempting to have the option for agents to gain the favour against a station, particularly where two agents were cooperating. However, you might make it that the effected station still broadcasts its 1, but in a much smaller radius around the agents (including overlaps between agents) it is possible for agents to score favour among the populace in those respective squares.

ASSESSING FAVOUR AND BOARDGAME POSSIBILITIES

Please excuse the following in particular - there's a fair bit of 'type while I brainstorm' happening ...

As I currently see it, it doesn't matter what the favour levels are - it just matters who has the most favour, which is only scored 4 times in the game. As such, I'm wondering if it might be possible to do somthing like ...

Each square has a population counter, representing both its population, and the number of votes to be won. (This could possibly hold 4 values corresponding to the growth over the 4 quarters ... although I'd be tempted to throw in a way for randomised growth, such as new centres popping up [as in a new suburb or town] ... possibly handled through cards or die rolls ... and then update the counters each quarter ... but I digress!)

At the scoring round you just go through each square on the board and add the appropriate score to the most favoured player. This should be obvious in most cases. .... Note that it would reduce book-keeping more if you could just give them the population counter ... but that means the population counter is no longer on the board ... arrgh ... but you get the idea ...

I admit this is a pain for a 40 x 40 board (6 players) as it means distributing points for 1600 squares if all squares were populated (even 400 squares for a 2 player game is too many!). (At the moment its not clear how much of the board will have population on it).

This comes to the next idea ...

This might be simplified if instead of allocating votes at the square level, it was done at an electoral region level ... assess total favour for each player ... winner takes all. Could even introduce rules for getting those electoral boundaries moved (crayon on board?) ...

However this also has its own problems and could take away some of the small level maneouvers and tactics ...

RELATED WAS ALSO FAVOUR POINTS BUY VOTING LEVELS

Favour is not an all or nothing thing for the population. For example, having a favour of 1 in a square will only net you one vote in that square (with the rest possibly undecided) ... 2 to 3 favour could net you 2 votes and so on. This might lead to situations, such as playing your agents in the centre of cities to boost your votes but then enemy agents might start swaying the border populations (particularly if they can 'take the area') or enemy agents might make last minutes runs into opposing cities ...

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Wed, 07/14/2004 - 00:17
#11
Brykovian
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Here's where I see this possibly going with tabletop considerations ...

I think I will stick with 4 marketing issues, since I'd rather this be more thematic and remain in the "selling your company" mode than abstract (such as the colors), which lended itself better to a political ideology mode.

In the tabletop version, each city would have its own small game board with the 4 issues listed to the left of a 4 x 4 grid (issues down the side, quarters across the top) and enough room for players to put stations and agents in play on the board. There would be 2 cities for each player in the game (2 to 4 players in a game).

To determine the importance of each of the 4 marketing issues for each city, small tiles would be put into a bag and randomly drawn out to be placed on the city boards. For each city, there would be 4 tiles added to the bag -- numbered 1 through 4. A "1" would mean that an issue wasn't very important to a city ... a "4" would mean that an issue was most important. All tiles are added to the bag, and then for each issue in each city, a tile is drawn from the bag and put on the board in the proper spot on the issues/quarter grid.

Each player will get a "company reputation" card to start the game, which will give them anywhere from a -2 to a +2 on each of the 4 issues. In each case, all 4 per-issue adjustments will sum to 0. For example, a player may have Issue A: -2, Issue B: 0, Issue C: +1, Issue D: +1.

Agents would be represented on cards as well, with ratings in each of the issue areas. Over the course of turns, the Players would play agent cards onto cities, and at quarterly poll time, the player would then combine the sum of their company reputation with each of the agents' ratings for an issue to see their strength on that particular issue. Whichever player has the largest number for an issue wins the number of points shown on the tile for that issue in that city.

After the quarterly poll is conducted and the scores are written down, 4 more tiles per city are put into the drawing bag and a tile is drawn for each issue in each city again. This time, the newly drawn tile will be in the second column of the issues/quarter column. Now each issue is worth the sum of the 2 tiles showing for it ... likewise, a 3rd tile is added for the 3rd quarter, and a 4th tile for the file poll. This should cause the importance of winning a particular issue in a particular city to change over time ... and still keep the later polls more important than the earlier polls.

What about stations? Well, I'd need to find a way for cities to be geographically related to each other, in order to be able to easily call one city the "neighbor" of another. By spending the cash to build a station in a city, the agents in that city will add their ratings to each of the neighboring cities as well.

Or something like that ... obviously, I'm still working on this ... but I had to get this much off my chest.

Now ... how to make related changes to the computer game ...

I like that each city would have an importance rating for each of the issues. Each square on the map could do some sort of distance-based average from the different cities to see what exact importance it would give to the issues. I still plan on keeping the population distribution idea from the original concepts, so the importance of an issue would more likely be a percentage/multiplier of the population -- win an issue within a square and get the product of the population x the issue importance x the quarter for the number of votes.

Agents would be done using a pool of available agents, as I mentioned in an earlier post. It will cost a good deal to first assign an agent (need to fly him/her to the planet and get him/her setup with materials, etc.) ... and then a smaller cost each turn that he/she is assigned. Agents that aren't selected from the pool (especially the higher-skilled ones) may not be available in the next turn since they might be assigned to some other project. New agents will become available through the game.

The rest is still a bit jelly ... ;)

-Bryk

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Fri, 07/16/2004 - 00:43
#12
Brykovian
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Thanks a lot to the folks who have made comments here ... you gave me good things to think about. I should be able to re-adjust the design of the computer game over the next several weeks and maybe even get a good start on a tabletop version ... I'll post more here when I get something significant finished and up on my site.

And, as I exit with this week's design, I highly encourage anyone who's not sure if they should sign up for a slot here on the GDW. I've found these sessions to be extremely helpful in moving some of my designs forward.

Thanks again!

-Bryk

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Fri, 07/16/2004 - 09:27
#13
rkalajian
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

Well good luck with the game. I don't know what it is, but for some reason the whole concept of this game has got me anticipating :)

Hope everything works out!

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Wed, 08/25/2004 - 13:47
#14
Brykovian
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Game #36: Circles of Influence by Matt Worden (Brykovian)

I've posted the adjustments I'm making to the design of this one, thanks to this workshop process.

You can see the updates here:
http://www.mwgames.com/MessageBoard/viewtopic.php?t=155

-Bryk

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