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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

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sedjtroll
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I guess I'm up again. I have posted about this before, and I made a few journal entries about it, so it might sound a little familiar. I have what I think is great framework for a game, but I'm getting stuck on the specifics. I was hoping you guys could help me turn this framework into a complete game.

[Edit: here's another Journal entry with info that might be helpful. If possible this week, and especially with some of the commments from this thread, I'll put together a proper rulebook. Thanks for bearing with me.]

The game:
The Three Kingdoms is a cooperative/competetive Area Majority tile laying game loosely themed after Lord Of The Rings. Each player represents a Fellowship of Elven, Dwarven, and Human Lords vieing for political and military power. Players gain followers of each race and either play them as armies onto the board, hold them as followers in hand, or turn sets of them in for 'Alliance Tokens' (VPs) under an imminent threat of Orc invasion. When Orcs appear, players drive them back individually or work together to defeat them. Players participating in the defeat of an Orc tile are awarded Alliance Tokens (VPs). Bonuses are scored at the end which reward evenly supporting each of your Three Kingdoms.

Here's a link to a thread that describes it pretty well.

The rules (such as they are):

The parameters:
Players have their 3 lords and need to balance the power of each in order to score well.

Players compete with other players both Politically (based on followers in hand) and Militarily (based on Armies on the board). Thus managing your followers becomes important- do you hold them or play them to the board?

Score is not completely dependant on board position... Followers can count toward political power (off the board), military power (on the board), or VPs directly (trade in one of each follower for a VP).

Board is open but bounded, like that of Tigris & Euphrates, so space for tile laying diminishes over time.

Tiles relate or give bonuses to the different races.

Tiles include Orc tiles which hinder all players income/production/accumulation of followers. They serve as a source of VPs as well as increase tension as the game goes on and usher in the game end.

Let me know what you think,
Thanks,
Seth

Yogurt
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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

Hi sedjtroll:

Thanks for letting us have a look at the game. This is the first time I've seen Three Kingdoms, so please pardon any gaps in my familiarity with it.

By the way, I had to add "www" to the rules link to get it to work.

My favourite idea in Three Kingdoms is the way followers are generated. It's well suited to a fantasy theme, where you're raising armies that have close to the land.

There could be a risk of a runaway success with this rule. Someone lucky enough to have a 3-space region and then draw 2 more forest tiles would get 12 (3+4+5) elves in three turns. Then again, perhaps it would be bad strategy to keep picking forests like that.

A fantasy war theme raises certain expectations, and I think the gameplay might be too austere for its theme. There's no sense that the darkness is sweeping across the land. Orcs pop up, stay put, and wait for the armies to come crush them. You're racing other players to get a piece in the battle, so it's these players who are your rivals, not the orcs. The orcs could be picnic baskets. (It's also curious that there are three competing three-race Fellowships. Three different factions are able to set aside their racial differences, but can't agree on how to fight the orcs?)

There's no thematic reason why a 3-race alliance is so powerful. My 12-elf army can't defeat an orc, but a three-unit elf, human and dwarf can?

So I suppose I would support a re-think of the theme. Either that or change the way battles are fought, making the orcs deadly.

The game does feel a lot like Tigris, especially with the way conflicts are resolved between merging regions. (Small question: what happens in case of ties?) As you refine the game, try to push it in a different direction. The armies are the key here, as they're the most un-Tigris element.

Small point: I'd like it if, during merges, the less-strong Lord were converted to a unit, rather than being removed. It seems nobler. Otherwise, I imagine the losing leader being dragged off to prison or the graveyard.

There were a few things I didn't understand.

You wrote:

> Players compete with other players both Politically
> (based on followers in hand) ...

I'm keen on this idea, but I'm not seeing it in the rules. When are the followers in the hand used? To make alliances for VP? I thought those were taken from the board. I'm sure I'm missing something here.

I also missed references to these rules:

> Tiles relate or give bonuses to the different races.
> Tiles include Orc tiles which hinder all players' accumulation of followers.

Could you elaborate on these?

Thanks again for the chance to workshop Three Kingdoms,

Yogurt
Tim Mitchell

sedjtroll
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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

Mel Brooks wrote:

"Yogurt the powerful! Yogurt the magnificent!"...
"No, no... just plain Yogurt."
yogurt wrote:
Thanks for letting us have a look at the game. This is the first time I've seen Three Kingdoms, so please pardon any gaps in my familiarity with it.

Thanks for taking the time to reply! I know it's a pain to read the journal entry and post rather than simply a rulebook, but I don't actually have a rulebook, and I didn't have time to type it all up again this afternoon. Thanks for bearing with me.

Also, in general the games in the GDW aren't games anyone's familiar with, so I'm glad you hadn't seen it before :)

yogurt wrote:
By the way, I had to add "www" to the rules link to get it to work.

Hmm... odd, I didn't. *shrug* who knows how these computers work nowadays!

Quote:
My favourite idea in Three Kingdoms is the way followers are generated. It's well suited to a fantasy theme, where you're raising armies that have close to the land.

What I forgot to put down (maybe I'll edit it in) were the main things I wanted help with- one was the method for generating followers. Also weather there should be another resource type in the game, like Gold, which could be used in different ways. In that case maybe the tile played generates a follower and the surrounding tiles generate Gold or vice versa.

I think I'd like the 'production' to be based on where you place the tile, so as to give players a reason to place tiles different places. Tigris acheives this in a way by giving VPs to a player for placing a tile where they have a Leader. I guess what I have now is similar- whoever owns the Lord in the region gets the followers of that type. In other words whenever a tile is added, the lords in the region are affected. I think the best way to make it different is to make itdepend on the adjacencies. That way the board matters and it's always different.

Maybe the key is to make the tiles NOT directly related to the races, but more INDIRECTLY related. Like a Tavern- would be good for the Dwarf and human lords but not for the Elf lord or something- but could bring in income*

* I think the best way to handle income in this game is to have it occur when tiles are placed, rather than per turn- so you don't have to keep track of who gets what income each round (especially when the board gets full)

So what I'm saying is, I could use input on the best way to handle "income" - followers or otherwise.

Quote:
There could be a risk of a runaway success with this rule. Someone lucky enough to have a 3-space region and then draw 2 more forest tiles would get 12 (3+4+5) elves in three turns. Then again, perhaps it would be bad strategy to keep picking forests like that.

Something along those lines might be possible, but I think the way it will turn out is that having lots of Elves doesn't matter too much compared to haveing a few elves...

I guess it would mean that you would have a strong (politically) Elf lord, but unless yu play them to the board your Elf lord might still be vulnerable Militarily... That's the theory anyway.

The idea is that you have to get income in all three races to really succeed. How can that be made to come across?

Quote:
A fantasy war theme raises certain expectations, and I think the gameplay might be too austere for its theme. There's no sense that the darkness is sweeping across the land. Orcs pop up, stay put, and wait for the armies to come crush them.

Actually, in one of my incarnations, maybe not the one I linked to (oops!), the Orcs would spread. Each round, or maybe when Orc tiles are drawn, or at some other interval the Orc tiles would generate Orcs which would infest the neighboring tiles, changing them from 'normal' tiles to 'Orc tiles' (which would in turn generate more Orcs). The idea was that the Orc tiles would create an expanding threat and take over regions, until they're driven back. I think there was also a rule about losing an army to kill the Orc token.

I understand what you're saying about the impotence of the Orcs. Do you think my above description would make it better? What would give the Orcs a more 'dangerous' feel?

Quote:
You're racing other players to get a piece in the battle, so it's these players who are your rivals, not the orcs. The orcs could be picnic baskets.

Well, that's obviously no good! So I guess that's question #2 (Question #1 was "How should Income work?")... How can the Orcs act as a hindrance and a common enemy?

Quote:
(It's also curious that there are three competing three-race Fellowships. Three different factions are able to set aside their racial differences, but can't agree on how to fight the orcs?)

The story is that there's an alliance in general, and within the alliance there are different political sects...

The Three Kingdoms refer to the kingdom of Elves, the kingdom of Men, and the Kingdom of Dwarves. There has long been an alliance between these three kingdoms, but within the kingdoms there are varying political sects. In this game each player represents a sect and the Fellowship of Elven, Human, and Dwarven lords that rule over that sect.

Quote:
There's no thematic reason why a 3-race alliance is so powerful. My 12-elf army can't defeat an orc, but a three-unit elf, human and dwarf can?

Hmm... you bring up a good point. The idea was to say that the strength of the alliance could defeat an orc tile. I never thought about brute force I guess. My only justification would be that an Orc Tokens and Army tokens represent troops in a somewhat nebulous way, not 1 troop each. The Orc Tokens could be 'driven back' (defeated- removed from the board) by any army, but to remove an Orc TILE (which generates Orc tokens) you'd have to work together.

Quote:
So I suppose I would support a re-think of the theme. Either that or change the way battles are fought, making the orcs deadly.

Of the two, I think I'd prefer to make Orcs more dangerous.

Quote:
The game does feel a lot like Tigris, especially with the way conflicts are resolved between merging regions. (Small question: what happens in case of ties?) As you refine the game, try to push it in a different direction. The armies are the key here, as they're the most un-Tigris element.

I agree, it feels a lot like Tigris in some respects. In some ways it's supposed to, but obviously it would be better if it weren't so transparent!

The ways it's supposed to be like Tigris is in the 'scoring for different flavors' thing- which I think I've disguised rather well. You trade in sets of followers for VPs which is similar to the scoring in T&E. Also there is/should be a bit of bonus scoring for tiles on the board where your Lords are- again based on sets, so it's important to have a balanced region for scoring purposes (but it may be good to have an unbalanced region DURING the game, as you mentioned at the beginning). Also the Lords concept is a lot like T&E, and therefore the conflict mechanic. IF the Lords are on the board, THEN there need to be th 2 types of conflicts just like T&E.

Perhaps a decent fix for this is to go for the other idea mentioned at the bottom of the post I linked above (original message in this thread)... that instead of players having Lord tokens on the board, they 'buy' (by spending followers) control of one of the three Lords- then there's only 1 of each lord, and maybe that makes a lot more sense thematically (as you mentioned as well).

Quote:
Small point: I'd like it if, during merges, the less-strong Lord were converted to a unit, rather than being removed. It seems nobler. Otherwise, I imagine the losing leader being dragged off to prison or the graveyard.

I'm thinking the 'only one of each leader' idea might be better for the game, so this concern may become moot.

Quote:
There were a few things I didn't understand:

> Players compete with other players both Politically
> (based on followers in hand) ...

I'm keen on this idea, but I'm not seeing it in the rules. When are the followers in the hand used? To make alliances for VP? I thought those were taken from the board. I'm sure I'm missing something here.
The followers in hand are supposed to represent the political strength of each of your lords. In the rules I linked (or maybe the rules I didn't... Oops again!) they were compared during a political conflict (an internal conflict) to see which Lord gets to stay in the region. In the likely change to to Lord structure mentioned above, you would 'spend' the followers to gain control of the Lords. Your other options are to spend the followers for VPs, or to play them to the board to be controlled by whoever controls the appropriate Lord.

Quote:
I also missed references to these rules Could you elaborate on these?

> Tiles relate or give bonuses to the different races.
> Tiles include Orc tiles which hinder all players' accumulation of followers.
In the rules it just says that the tiles are 'Elf tiles' or 'Dwarf tiles'. That's sort of Generic, and I think there ought to be different types of tiles as well. Income (followers or otherwise) would depend on the type of tile being played.

Orc tiles would be a special type of tile which hinders production and somehow threatens the players, like by spreading Orcs. Originally the idea was that tiles adjacent to an Orc tile (or an Infested tile) simply don't produce followers. Of course this really depends on how the Income turns out to work.

Quote:
Thanks again for the chance to workshop Three Kingdoms,

No problem! TRhanks for your time and comments!

- Seth

jwarrend
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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

Seth,

I think yogurt makes some good points, particularly the thematic oddity that these 3 races can't work together, yet we're separately building factions in which they do just that and with no difficulty whatsoever!

I think it might be interesting to build the theme around the racial tensions more dramatically. Such as, the problem with an imbalanced army is that one race starts "oppressing" the other, or the underrepresented won't fight, or whatever. I don't know what exactly you could or should do, just saying that bringing out this aspect of the theme more could be very interesting.

I don't think it's in theme for there to be player vs player combat. Perhaps instead, armies could "fracture" along racial lines. So, the player with the most elves in his army gets the elves of the other player, and so on. (since, it's inconceivable that elves would fight against other elves, no matter how good a general you are).

Your current p vs p combat rules are confusing: it sounds like the losing general is just yanked from the board, but do his forces go as well, or does the winner get control of them? That seems pretty high-stakes, but I guess it might be ok thematically; the stronger general "takes control" of the army.

Another function for orcs you might consider is having the tiles be "orc generation sites" and the black cubes being the orcs themselves. So, wiping out orcs requires one level of military commitment, but wiping out their generation sites (and removing an orc tile) requires something additional. And, if players don't wipe out the orc tile, it creates more orcs on the next turn or something like that.

Perhaps each orc tile adds as many orcs as there are adjacent orc tiles. So, a cluster of 3 orc tiles would produce 9 orcs! This could add some nice tension between choosing to try to fight against large groups of orcs and areas of large orc creation potential.

Perhaps there are some special tiles in the bag that say "Orcs produce", and these tell you when orcs are added. Or maybe on a player's turn, he rolls the "orc die" and it tells whether orcs produce or attack or add new spawn sites.

Perhaps there are special areas on the board that represent "Alliance citadels", and the orcs move towards these. Giving the orcs some sort of AI like this could increase the tension associated with fighting the orcs or with their "spawn" sites.

There are a bunch of random ideas for you. The bottom line is that I think the game should be all about fighting the orcs, and perhaps a fair bit about managing the racial tensions in your army, and much less about jockeying for political power or fighting with the other players. Make the enemy so powerful that there will be a fair number of games (say, 20%) that the players will lose outright.

Just my thoughts. I think this could definitely be a good game, and look forward to reading more about its development!

-Jeff

Yogurt
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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

Having orcs that spread and spawn is definitely a better approach. It also works for me to give tricolour armies an added power (destroying spawning points), while leaving other armies with some power too (shifting or removing orc cubes). Presumably you would need a large army to clear out the orcs before removing their spawning point.

Rather than have the players competing for political power, I'd give them a more concrete goal. Perhaps each player is responsible for protecting certain types of locations on the board (for example, one player must protect villages, another shrines, another farms). Everyone wants to beat the orcs, but each player has different priorities on where to fight first.

I'm not sure whether you'd want these locations printed on the tiles, pre-placed on the board, or placed by players or fate during the game.

Surviving locations give VP at game end or a few times during the game, perhaps with bonuses for clusters of locations of the same type.

> instead of players having Lord tokens on the board, they 'buy'
> (by spending followers) control of one of the three Lords

Yes, that's excellent. It was the competing lords that made the game too reminiscent of Tigris for me and thematically odd.

Lords should make it easier to move troops of that type, but you don't want to lock players out entirely, just because they can't win a Lord's ear right now. So perhaps you can move 1 elf if you're out of favour or 3 if you're in favour.

I wouldn't add another resource, such as gold. The followers are the resource of the game. They're produced, managed and invested.

Give each player a mat with the three lords. Followers "in your hand" are actually placed, visible to all, on the appropriate lord. Whoever is keeping the most elves on their mat gets the Elf Lord bonus. However, the pieces you drop onto the board or discard in a tricolour "alliance" must come from these pools, weakening your influence in the council.

By the way, I would try to integrate the bonus for discarding a tricolour alliance into the game more. Perhaps you can shield a village from destruction if you discard one of each colour cube from your player mat. If you don't have the cubes available, then the opportunity is lost. More tension and theme than being able to discard an alliance whenever you like.

> How should Income work?

As before, when you place a tile, you generate new units that reflect the terrain and the number of contiguous tiles of the same terrain. Placing the fifth forest in a row gets you 5 elves.

You can either place these units on the tile you just turned, in which case anyone will be able to control them, if they have the appropriate Lord's ear. Alternatively, you can take some followers onto your mat.

This way, when a player gets a tile, he or she has to decide "do I place it where I need troops on the board right now, or do I place it elsewhere for a bigger reward in my hand?" If the tiles have the villages/shrines etc on them, then there's another decision to make.

I like Jeff's idea about the problems of an imbalanced army. Perhaps you subtract the difference between the most and least represented races from the total strength of the army (a variation on the "Trade Winds" mechanic). Or not. Anyway, the racial conflict element is worth exlporing.

Yogurt

sedjtroll
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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

jwarrend wrote:
I think yogurt makes some good points, particularly the thematic oddity that these 3 races can't work together, yet we're separately building factions in which they do just that and with no difficulty whatsoever!

I thought he made some great points as well, and so do you! However I was confused by the comment he made, and nopw that you've made, quoted above. I must not have described it properly (my fault for not compiling the thougts into one coherant document) but I never intended that the three races "can't work together". The whole idea was that there's an alliance between the three races. Originally it was all to be more political (no orcs!) and you wanted to support your own lord of each race. Then I thought of the Orc stuff which I thought was definitely the way to go. But never was the game about tension between Elves/Dwarves/Men. It was supopsed to be about tension between Your candidates vs My candidates vs His candidates- like an election.

The important point was SUPPOSED to be that you wanted to balance your three kingdoms in order to score well. There might be some game reward for loading up on Elves (for example), but the scoring would reward a balanced situation better.

Quote:
I think it might be interesting to build the theme around the racial tensions more dramatically. Such as, the problem with an imbalanced army is that one race starts "oppressing" the other, or the underrepresented won't fight, or whatever. I don't know what exactly you could or should do, just saying that bringing out this aspect of the theme more could be very interesting.

Indeed this might be more interesting. I'm not sure how it would work exactly- sounds like basically a more thematic way to explain the scoring for a balanced alliance. Right now I have that scoring but no real thematic reason for it. Maybe some good reason that that the races would have to work together even if they don't really want to would be a good explanation, and would create some tension. I'm a little afraid thatmight be too much for the game though.

Quote:
I don't think it's in theme for there to be player vs player combat.

The PVP combat (as of now) is just the same as T&E. It's not really combat where you kill the other guy and take his troops. It's more like the Elves in a region follow the best Elven general in their region. If a better one comes along, they join him. That's the military 'combat'. The political 'combat' is also just like T&E, you can take over control of the Elves by having a Politically stronger Lord (as evidenced by having more followers). This occurs only when you play your Lord in a region with a Lord already there.

This is all EXACTLY like T&E, which may be the problem... It ought to be different somehow. When I came up with it I WANTED it to be just like T&E in that respect, because I was trying to use a good part of that game along with new interesting twists with the followers as resources.

It's becoming clear though that the T&E similarities are too much, or not interesting enough, and the '1 of each lord' model is looking better and better.

Quote:
Perhaps instead, armies could "fracture" along racial lines. So, the player with the most elves in his army gets the elves of the other player, and so on. (since, it's inconceivable that elves would fight against other elves, no matter how good a general you are).

That's exactly what I've got at present.

Quote:
Your current p vs p combat rules are confusing: it sounds like the losing general is just yanked from the board, but do his forces go as well, or does the winner get control of them? That seems pretty high-stakes, but I guess it might be ok thematically; the stronger general "takes control" of the army.

Yeah, just like T&E, your Elf Lord comes in and 'takes over' the Elves in the region.

Quote:
Another function for orcs you might consider is having the tiles be "orc generation sites" and the black cubes being the orcs themselves. So, wiping out orcs requires one level of military commitment, but wiping out their generation sites (and removing an orc tile) requires something additional. And, if players don't wipe out the orc tile, it creates more orcs on the next turn or something like that.

Hmm... I must not have been clear, because that's EXACTLY what I have. Problem is I linked to several ideas, and that was just one of them. Again, my fault for not being more organized- but then, that's what I'm hoping will come out of this GDW session- which way to go so I can organize the best ideas!

So to make it more clear, the orc generation idea I had was that Orc tiles generate Orc tokens (at some interval, dunno how often) on each adjacent tile. Orc tokens 'infest' a tile, meaning it's treated like an Orc tile, and spawns more orcs.

the current idea is that any tile would only have 1 Orc cube on it at a time, and by moving armies onto those tiles you 'kill off' the orc and fre the tile of infestation. You probably have to sacrifice the army to do so. That's what I'm calling "Driving Orcs back".

To defeat the Orc TILES, it takes cooperation of all three races, which might mean cooperation between 2 or 3 players, to move an army of each race onto the Orc tile. When this is done, those three armies are removed along with the orc tile, and an Alliance cube (VP) is awarded to each lord in the region. Meaning you might have the Human and Elf Lords n a region, and I might have the Dwarf Lord there, so together we kill off the orc tile and you get 2 VP and I get 1 VP. Under the probable new rules this might have to change up.

Oh, and of course the reason you'd want to kill off the Orc tile is that (a) it spreads Orcs, which kill Armies, and (b) Regions with Orc tiles in them don't produce (that was the rule before anyway).

Quote:
Perhaps each orc tile adds as many orcs as there are adjacent orc tiles. So, a cluster of 3 orc tiles would produce 9 orcs! This could add some nice tension between choosing to try to fight against large groups of orcs and areas of large orc creation potential.

That might make too many orcs. I guess this depends on the combat mechanics which aren't really set in stone yet. I WOULD like there to be a good reason to have to commit armies to the board.

One reason for that was the T&E reason- so you don't get taken over. And another is the Orc fighting, done with Armies, which leads to scoreing. There was also going to be a bonus for orc cubes (you keep the ones you kill), but I probably forgot to mention that.

Quote:
Perhaps there are some special tiles in the bag that say "Orcs produce", and these tell you when orcs are added. Or maybe on a player's turn, he rolls the "orc die" and it tells whether orcs produce or attack or add new spawn sites.

Those are good ideas. I might prefer to just say that Orc tiles, when drawn, also make the other orc tiles produce- combining the two tile types. I might also clarify that Orc tiles don't produce unless they are adjacent to non-orc tiles.

Quote:
Perhaps there are special areas on the board that represent "Alliance citadels", and the orcs move towards these. Giving the orcs some sort of AI like this could increase the tension associated with fighting the orcs or with their "spawn" sites.
This is a great idea. I was thining there might be some locations on the board which would have some meaning, but hadn't thought of what they might mean. I hadn't thought of the Orcs having an AI though. I just thought of them spreading mindlessly. Maybe the AI thing would be very interesting.

Quote:
There are a bunch of random ideas for you. The bottom line is that I think the game should be all about fighting the orcs, and perhaps a fair bit about managing the racial tensions in your army, and much less about jockeying for political power or fighting with the other players.

I guess what I'd like to know is what's the difference between 'managing racial tensions in your army' and 'jockying for political power with the other players'? The intention is that "Armies" are followers on the board, and "Political Power" is followers in your hand, and one of the key points in the game is to decide how to divvy up your followers with respect to those. The impetus for this I figured would be control of the pieces on the board, as well as income of followers... maybe the problem is that control of the board is unclear or unimportant!

I'll also note that your last statement sounds more like a multiplayer solitaire situation to me, which isn't really what I'm going for.

As I mentioned, the game wasn't suposed to be about racial tension, but the opposite. But maybe you're right, maybe adding the tension will give good reasons for the things I want to have happen (make it work to balance your followers).

Quote:
Make the enemy so powerful that there will be a fair number of games (say, 20%) that the players will lose outright.

This is a decent idea as well. The game end isn't clear to me right now, it could be that the Orcs ALWAYS win, and the game ends when they finally overcome all the players... but that's probably NOT best. Another idea is that the orc tiles RUN OUT after a time, and the players either weather the storm and then someone wins,m or they succumb and the Orcs win. This is where your suggestion would come in.

Quote:
Just my thoughts. I think this could definitely be a good game, and look forward to reading more about its development!

Thanks for sharing your ideas! I think they will help me put this game in perspective.

- Seth

sedjtroll
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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

yogurt wrote:
Having orcs that spread and spawn is definitely a better approach. It also works for me to give tricolour armies an added power (destroying spawning points), while leaving other armies with some power too (shifting or removing orc cubes). Presumably you would need a large army to clear out the orcs before removing their spawning point.

Well, as for size of armies, I'm envisioning them to be somewhat small really- 1 Elf Army is 1 Elf cube on the board. 1 Orc cube per tile, max. Maybe even 1 cube of any race max per tile. Then you move an army onto an infested tile and remove both it and the orc from the board. That's what I've got so far... may not be exciting enough.

Quote:
Rather than have the players competing for political power, I'd give them a more concrete goal. Perhaps each player is responsible for protecting certain types of locations on the board (for example, one player must protect villages, another shrines, another farms). Everyone wants to beat the orcs, but each player has different priorities on where to fight first.

This is a very interesting idea. I'm not sure if it's instead of politics, but perhaps in addition to it. My view on politics in this game is that your followers are used for 2 different types of strengths- "Military" (on the board) and "Political" (in your hand). The idea is that you have to decide between the two with each follower- or you could spend the follower for VPs.

Quote:
I'm not sure whether you'd want these locations printed on the tiles, pre-placed on the board, or placed by players or fate during the game.

Me neither :/ Probably pre-printed, or better yet, on tiles with indicators of where they should go for a 'normal' setup (which would allow for variety if you want to randomize it).

Quote:
Surviving locations give VP at game end or a few times during the game, perhaps with bonuses for clusters of locations of the same type.

This sounds good. I ahd intended the scoring to come from various places:

1. Mid game you can trade in Alliances for VPs, once per turn. So the more often you do that, the more points you get... but the less power you have during the game.

2. End game you might control certain regions (this is relevant to the T&E version) in which you would have "Elf" tiles, "Dwarf" tiles, etc. You'd get points for each 'set' of tiles (1 of each race) in your region. Thus you score well for having a 'balanced' region, but there was to be an in-game benefit to having clumps of Elf tiles, or Human tiles, or whatever.

3. Mid game you can earn VPs by defeating Orc tiles.

4. End game you can earn a bonus for having defeated the most Orc cubes.

Quote:
> instead of players having Lord tokens on the board, they 'buy'
> (by spending followers) control of one of the three Lords

Yes, that's excellent. It was the competing lords that made the game too reminiscent of Tigris for me and thematically odd.
That's what I'm leaning towards, but a lot of what I have is based on the game being very similar to T&E in some respects. I think even with the similarities it'd still be a very different game.

Quote:
Lords should make it easier to move troops of that type, but you don't want to lock players out entirely, just because they can't win a Lord's ear right now. So perhaps you can move 1 elf if you're out of favour or 3 if you're in favour.

You have a good point, I don't know how to treat "control" of a Lord in this model... maybe you pay the Controller of a lord to move an army of that type (this would work if there were Gold in the game). Maybe there are a lot of Orcs in a place where there are a lot of Elf armies, so i might 'buy' control of the elf Lord with my Elven followers so people wanting to fight the orcs would have to pay me to use 'my' elf armies. or else I could fight them without paying.

Quote:
I wouldn't add another resource, such as gold. The followers are the resource of the game. They're produced, managed and invested.

That was my initial intention, but I think there may need to be a commodity as well.

Quote:
Give each player a mat with the three lords. Followers "in your hand" are actually placed, visible to all, on the appropriate lord. Whoever is keeping the most elves on their mat gets the Elf Lord bonus. However, the pieces you drop onto the board or discard in a tricolour "alliance" must come from these pools, weakening your influence in the council.

This sounds like a fine way to do it. I was interested in the 'spending' of followers so you couldn't also score points for them later.

Quote:
By the way, I would try to integrate the bonus for discarding a tricolour alliance into the game more. Perhaps you can shield a village from destruction if you discard one of each colour cube from your player mat. If you don't have the cubes available, then the opportunity is lost. More tension and theme than being able to discard an alliance whenever you like.

The intention was that you could only do that 1x/turn, so you had to make the choice each turn- do I take my VP? Or do I need my Followers? I had envisioned a relatively low number of followers for each player at a time, so not getting that Alliance VP a couple of times might really make a difference.

Quote:
> How should Income work?

As before, when you place a tile, you generate new units that reflect the terrain and the number of contiguous tiles of the same terrain. Placing the fifth forest in a row gets you 5 elves.
I like the idea of tile placement creating income, and I also liked the idea of it creating 2 incomes- one for the player placing it, and one for the controller of the appropriate lord(s) in the region. But I could never figure out what specifics were best.

Quote:
You can either place these units on the tile you just turned, in which case anyone will be able to control them, if they have the appropriate Lord's ear. Alternatively, you can take some followers onto your mat.

This is interesting. Very interesting. I'll have to think about this one a lot.

Quote:
This way, when a player gets a tile, he or she has to decide "do I place it where I need troops on the board right now, or do I place it elsewhere for a bigger reward in my hand?" If the tiles have the villages/shrines etc on them, then there's another decision to make.

I like it!

Quote:
I like Jeff's idea about the problems of an imbalanced army. Perhaps you subtract the difference between the most and least represented races from the total strength of the army (a variation on the "Trade Winds" mechanic). Or not. Anyway, the racial conflict element is worth exlporing.

I am still thinking that an "army" is just a single cube on the board, controlled by the player with control of the appropriate Lord (or the appropriate lord in that region).

Thanks again for your comments!
You guys are already helping me out, and it's only Monday! :)
I think this will be a very beneficial GDW week.

- Seth

DSfan
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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

I have been looking over The Three Kingdoms for awhile now, and I think it turned out to be a pretty cool and interesting game.

It seems like a game I would play to get away from pure combat board games.

Quote:
Rather than have the players competing for political power, I'd give them a more concrete goal. Perhaps each player is responsible for protecting certain types of locations on the board (for example, one player must protect villages, another shrines, another farms). Everyone wants to beat the orcs, but each player has different priorities on where to fight first.

I like the sound of giving players different goals, I think it would add tension to the game, and give players a bigger objective.

One way you could do this are add cities to the board such as Minas Tirith. Players could either help protect these cities which Orcs are usually attacking (This is what they go after) or go after Orc spawning points, both giving you VP's.

I also like the idea of the thematic oddity that 3 races can't work together. For this you could let players decide if they wish to work with other races which allow you to help defend more cities.

An example would be: You cannot defend Lothlorien (Elven City) unless you are Elves or team up with Elves (Maybe bribing, letting them help you, etc...)

Like I said before I like the main idea of the game, and it sounds fun to play.

Good luck,
-Justin[/i]

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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

Seth,

I must be incredibly dense, but I continue to be confused about the basic definitions of spatial aspects in the game.

So the game is played on a board a la T & E. And you place tiles on the board. And then there's something called a "region". Is that just a group of tiles?

Let's assume it is. Now, the moving pieces can only move on tiles. Does that make the game's spatial aspect too restrictive? Not to mention that it's thematically odd. If we're all in a geographical region, why can we only move on certain places in that region?

To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that thinking of this as a tile game is helpful to what you're trying to do. What if the board was just a grid, and instead of placing tiles, there were board features that you placed that are source sites for units, but that were placed with lower frequency and with less restrictedness in determining movement potential and such. It might move the game in a different, less-Tigris-like direction to imagine how the game could work with similar concepts but no tile laying.

-Jeff

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jwarrend wrote:
I must be incredibly dense, but I continue to be confused about the basic definitions of spatial aspects in the game.

*shrug* Maybe ;)

Quote:
So the game is played on a board a la T & E. And you place tiles on the board. And then there's something called a "region". Is that just a group of tiles?

Yes, a "region" is a clump or group of interconected (contiguous?) tiles. I'm certain I said that somewhere, but again, my stuff was all disorganized so I'm not suprised if that statement was missed. You seem to have figured it out via context though.

Quote:
Now, the moving pieces can only move on tiles. Does that make the game's spatial aspect too restrictive?

I don't think so, because the moving pieces is only a small portion of the game. You only move them to fight orcs. Maybe it would be best if in fact you don't move them, they just sit there in a Region and when orcs invade they kill off armies until there are none left, THEN infest tiles.

The controller of a lord (or, a lord in the region) could 'move' an army of the appropriate type onto the Orc tile (or any infested tile, as they are considered Orc tiles), and when there is one of each army then the Orc tile dies. Maybe the orc tiles should start with black Orc armies on them, and when the Orc army is gone the tile is dead and doesn't generate Orcs anymore...

Does that sound any better?

Quote:
Not to mention that it's thematically odd. If we're all in a geographical region, why can we only move on certain places in that region?

The different clumps of tiles are different Regions within the Kingdom, or that was how I was looking at it.

Quote:
To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced that thinking of this as a tile game is helpful to what you're trying to do. What if the board was just a grid, and instead of placing tiles, there were board features that you placed that are source sites for units, but that were placed with lower frequency and with less restrictedness in determining movement potential and such. It might move the game in a different, less-Tigris-like direction to imagine how the game could work with similar concepts but no tile laying.

Hmm... this is an interesting idea. I might agree with you, as some of the Tile Laying was what was giving me problems.

So in a design where there were a static board, what would yield income (gold or followers or both)? How would the orcs come into play?

Good thoughts. Keep them coming!

Yogurt
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I'm looking forward to the new rule book you mention. We've thrown a lot of competing ideas into the air.

More about discarding tricolour alliances from your mat... To recap, your original idea is to let players discard them for VP once on any turn. I suggested that they be spent to protect villages, saving VP indirectly.

Quote:
I had envisioned a relatively low number of followers for
each player at a time

Playtesting will tell, but I think the bonus for laying similar tiles (which I still like) will lead to lots of cubes. Players are canny.

Quote:
so not getting that Alliance VP a couple of times might really make a difference.

If the board is 10x10, three players drawing a tile a turn will each get 33 turns. That's a lot of opportunities to discard a tricolour alliance, especially if cubes do turn out to be rare. You may never have to face the choice "do I spend my last dwarf to make an alliance?"

I know in my gaming group, this is exactly the sort of planning for the future that we are terrible at. Yes, we should be saving for retirement, but we never do. Maybe next turn.

So those are two reasons why I like the idea of having use-it-or-lose-it moments.

However, I suspect my real problem is that discarding three cubes for straight VP is dry thematically. What are they doing? Being allied, okay, but come on humanoids, there's a war on! Go fight!

Quote:
the moving pieces can only move on tiles. ... it's thematically odd.

I did wonder about that too. I like the tile-laying income mechanism though, and it would be a very different game without it, so I might try to save tile-laying.

You could simply have a set board with pretty hexes and then have the tiles or chits you turn over be recruiting tiles that show who lives where. You'd lose the sense that your troops are tied to the land, but the income function would remain exactly the same and movement would open up.

A fixed board would make the idea of having villages/shrines easier too, because they could be set out at the game start.

For replayability, I'd have a few board elements that do change. Maybe some impassable lakes and mountains that are in different places each game.

It would be nice if the tiles on the board had some other purpose other than recruitment, but I have no ideas there yet.

Quote:
Maybe it would be best if in fact you don't move them,
they just sit there in a Region

I thought this was a ridiculous idea at first. What would be left for players to do? But it moves a lot of the action into the "airdrop" part of the game. Where do you send reinforcements? Decide well, because they'll be there forever.

If the orcs always took the path of least resistance toward their target citadels, then players would still be choosing where to fight, shaping the path of the battle. They'd be guiding ooze. You'd need a lot more cubes for this to work though, since so many would be twiddling their thumbs. And you'd need a new use for the tricolour alliances on the board. But it's an idea I haven't seen before, and it's intriguing.

Tim

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Quote:
And you'd need a new use for the tricolour alliances on the board.

Replying to myself.

If orcs follow the path of least resistance, then one obvious use for alliances on the board is that they can be tie breakers. If an orc has the choice between two tiles with 3 cubes each on them, it will attack the one with the fewest races.

Not quite as heroic as destroying a spawning point, but there it is.

Oh, it just occurred to me that if there's no movement on the board, then what do lords do?

Tim

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yogurt wrote:
However, I suspect my real problem is that discarding three cubes for straight VP is dry thematically. What are they doing? Being allied, okay, but come on humanoids, there's a war on! Go fight!

Well, the discarding of the cubes could be said to be 'strengthening your Fellowship" or whatever. I agree it might be better to have an in-game use of it, which might also 'fix' the "when do you trade in" thing. Rather than 1x/turn max (which I'm not too excited about, that was just my initial thought), it would be "whenever THIS happens you can discard some guys to score points"

Quote:
You could simply have a set board with pretty hexes and then have the tiles or chits you turn over be recruiting tiles that show who lives where. You'd lose the sense that your troops are tied to the land, but the income function would remain exactly the same and movement would open up.

Hmm... what if teh game had 2 parts, an initial 'setup' part where players (relatively quickly) lay out the board 1 hex at a time, then after the board is done they start to play. The tiles would lay out the differnt regions (contiguous clumps of like tiles). So there could be several small forests, for example, and 1 large Plains. I'm not sure how the 'Income' or the Orcs would work then.

Quote:
For replayability, I'd have a few board elements that do change. Maybe some impassable lakes and mountains that are in different places each game.

This could work fine.

Quote:
Quote:
Maybe it would be best if in fact you don't move them,
they just sit there in a Region

I thought this was a ridiculous idea at first. What would be left for players to do? But it moves a lot of the action into the "airdrop" part of the game. Where do you send reinforcements? Decide well, because they'll be there forever.
In this case I was thinking that they wouldn't be "on a particular tile", but "In a particular region"/ Kinda like Caballeros in El Grande- or Farmers in Carcassonne. They're int he whole region, so they don't HAVE to move. Maybe you could do things as actions like take armies back off the board (probably a bad idea)- or move them to another region somehow, but it wouldn't be like troop movement. where they move around their region. There COULD be a movement from a Region onto a neighboring Orc tile in order to defeat it.

Quote:
If the orcs always took the path of least resistance toward their target citadels, then players would still be choosing where to fight, shaping the path of the battle. They'd be guiding ooze. You'd need a lot more cubes for this to work though, since so many would be twiddling their thumbs. And you'd need a new use for the tricolour alliances on the board. But it's an idea I haven't seen before, and it's intriguing.

This implies that the armies are in particular hexes, which could maybe also work. If they're in particular hexes then it makes more sense to allow them to move from hex to hex.

Hmm... more stuff to think about. Thanks again for the comments.

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Quote:
In this case I was thinking that they wouldn't be "on a particular tile", but "In a particular region"

Yah, I totally missed that. I was confusing Regions for hexes.

I thought you were suggesting that armies might never move from their hexes, and I was trying to figure out how that might work. A neat idea, this misunderstanding, but probably for a different game.

Tim

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I suppose an Area Majority aspect of the game could be explored. It's already been suggested that there could be 1 Lord of each race, and a majority holding of that lords followers gives you 'control' of that Lord. That could work out pretty well. I'm thining maybe the best way to handle that would be that to use (not sure what that means atm) Elf armies on the board you'd have to pay the Elf Lord.

Is there also an 'on the board' use of area majority? In the original case of each player having a lord of each race, there was sort of an area majority effect in that if your Elf lord was in the region with the most Elf armies, then it was stronger than other elf lords (and could take them over- sort of).

In a 1-of-each-lord model, I'm not sure there's any meaning left to what is on the board and where. That could be bad, because playing Armies to the board needs to be pretty important- both to make an agonizing decision about what to do with your followers as well as to fight orcs.

Any thoughts on this?

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Quote:
For replayability, I'd have a few board elements that do change. Maybe some impassable lakes and mountains that are in different places each game

Maybe the board would be fixed. Land would consume (be) most of the board with maybe a few water or mountian spots here and there. Alliance cities would also already be on the board.

Now the players each start off with a few water, a few mountian, and a few orc spots. Since players know where the Alliance towns are players can place Orc spawning points either far or close to the towns (Farther away would make it an easier game, while closer would make it harder).

The host player (or whoever) can place 1 water tile. The rest must place a water tile next to a already existing water tile (Creating lakes or rivers). Mountians could be placed anywhere.

After setup
Each player (During the Orc phase) players flip a card from the Orc Movement deck.

On the card is either arrows pointing North, South, East, or West, or a no move card, where orcs do not move this turn. You must move every orc (on the board) in said direction. These cards could also have a coordinate on them telling them which orcs on a certain spawing point move.

Cheers,
-Justin

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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

My first impressions from reading the journal only:

It looks like an easy game to teach and to play. Simple choices but big potential for strategy. Most of the gameplay depend on emergence: the content of the tiles and what defines a territory, the mechanics of connecting regions. Unfortunately, you have not talked about that much. It would be nice if we could have some sketches!

I really like the way you're using the same tokens to represent military and political power. It's elegant.

The fact that you must play an Orc tile when it's up is great. A special action or reward could be to skip that rule once, effectively passing the chore to the next player.

The theme is weird and not very original. Who is the player exactly? What does he represent? I think I got it... they have many lords who control all three races? (Not listed in the component btw) I have a hard time believing multiple armies of mixed race fighting against each other.

The races should have special/specific actions associated with them. Maybe even combos like "an army composed of only green/red can do that".

For the endgame, anything could work well. Will the VP be hidden?

Right now, I think the base idea is great. But it's not a game yet. It could be taken in so many directions! My advice is to work on a crude prototype to define how the tiles work and the regions and the connections.

Good luck

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hpox wrote:
It looks like an easy game to teach and to play. Simple choices but big potential for strategy. Most of the gameplay depend on emergence: the content of the tiles and what defines a territory, the mechanics of connecting regions. Unfortunately, you have not talked about that much. It would be nice if we could have some sketches!

Thanks for the comments hpox. You're right, it would be nice if more of the game were better defined. That's sort of what I'm hoping will come out of this GDW session, a better definition for the game. I'll try and put it all together before the week is up and maybe get some sketchs in!

I don't know how far I'll get though, as work is piling up at the office :/

- Seth

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sedjtroll wrote:
In a 1-of-each-lord model, I'm not sure there's any meaning left to what is on the board and where.

If it's costly to move cubes from hex to hex, but players need to protect certain hexes, then it matters a lot if the cubes are currently close to where you need them. Think about the game Tikal. I end up stranding my grad students all the time in that game, accidentally leaving them too deep in the jungle to be useful.

In your game, if I can only move two cubes one hex a turn, then it becomes very important to (1) either paradrop troops to where I need them, (2) get the movement bonus from the lord, (3) shut down spawning sites in areas where I am running out of cubes.

Tim

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yogurt wrote:
If it's costly to move cubes from hex to hex, but players need to protect certain hexes, then it matters a lot if the cubes are currently close to where you need them.

I tink I see what you're saying. Restricting movement of armies makes placing armies useful - but only if there's reason for them to be on the board. This supports a tile laying system, where an important tile can come up and you'd want to protect it.

"Protecting" a tile would need to be defined. Probably something like Orcs don't infest tiles with Armies on them or something. Or if an Orc infests an 'important' tile, then that tile is removed from the board (instead of you being able to 'rescue' it by killing the Orc on it).

Quote:
Think about the game Tikal. I end up stranding my grad students all the time in that game, accidentally leaving them too deep in the jungle to be useful.

I've never seen Tikal, but I think I know what you're saying.

Quote:
In your game, if I can only move two cubes one hex a turn, then it becomes very important to (1) either paradrop troops to where I need them, (2) get the movement bonus from the lord, (3) shut down spawning sites in areas where I am running out of cubes.

I'm not sure about that last one, but I think I know what you're saying overall.

Thanks again!

hpox
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Game #66 - The Three Kingdoms by Seth Jaffee (sedjtroll)

sedjtroll wrote:
That's sort of what I'm hoping will come out of this GDW session, a better definition for the game. I'll try and put it all together before the week is up and maybe get some sketchs in!

Of course, that's what the GDW is for. Will the tiles have restrictions in connecting them? How big will be the regions? Typically, how many regions do you want?

What do you find on a tile? A general type (forest, lake, river, swamp, mountains, village, castle) or combo of them with a path? How do you delimit the regions, is that directly on the tile? Or maybe it's defined by your "trains" of armies connecting to your lord. It could be weakly defined like in Go, and sometimes strongly defined... like in Go! Strong influence where your Lord but also where your armies are, but less. The type of the tile could affect the armies, your lord, your choices during that turn. The choices thing could be cool.

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hpox wrote:
Will the tiles have restrictions in connecting them?

My intention was that the tiles wouldn't have restrictions on placement, but some placements would be more beneficial than others. i had considered some restrictions to placing Orc tiles so you couldn't use them to hurt opponents. In one model I said you'd have to put an orc tile in a region where you have at least 1 leader, so no matter what it hurts you at least a little. More recently in another model I suggested that the Orc tiles be contiguous and they grow from an initial predetermined starting location. But in general, no restrictions on tile laying.

Quote:
How big will be the regions?

As big as they get. In threory they could all merge into one big region spanning the entire board. In this respect it's very much like Tigris & Euphrates where groups of tiles make up a Kingdom. I'm calling the kingdom a "Region" in this game.

Quote:
Typically, how many regions do you want?

However many there are. I imagine there will be 3 or 4 main ones that people bicker over, and maybe some smaller ones as well. Again, this aspect is similar to T&E, so if you've played that I imagine it would look similar with the tiles on the board.

Quote:
What do you find on a tile? A general type (forest, lake, river, swamp, mountains, village, castle) or combo of them with a path?

This I'm not too sure of. For the proto I made a while ago, I just made the tiles Red, Green, Yellow, and Black. I imagine they will have something like Forests, Plains, Mountains, and then other tiles like Mines (a mine entrace depicted), Taverns or Villages, Shrines or Statues, etc.

Quote:
How do you delimit the regions, is that directly on the tile? Or maybe it's defined by your "trains" of armies connecting to your lord.

I was thinking that a group of tiles would be a region, so it would be delimited by the tiles in that group.

Quote:
It could be weakly defined like in Go, and sometimes strongly defined... like in Go!

Indeed it could! I'm not sure I know what that means.

Quote:
Strong influence where your Lord but also where your armies are, but less. The type of the tile could affect the armies, your lord, your choices during that turn. The choices thing could be cool.

This sounds interesting, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

- Seth

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Quick note: I was just reading an overview of Feurio, a firefighting game, and thought of Three Kingdoms, because they both have tile-laying, unit placement, and spreading threat elements. The games are quite different, but it might be worth looking at if you haven't seen it before.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/22290

hpox
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About the last two comments:

Go is a great game; It's almost a perfectly designed game in my opnion. You should learn more about it. :) (Yeah that wasn't really helpful...)

About the choices and what I meant. There could be a few "key" strategic tiles that give a special choice or a bonus during your turn if you "control" it.

For the influences; I meant that your lord and armies could have different strength depending on their position relative to each other.

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