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Common Enemy balance

6 replies [Last post]
Wed, 07/14/2010 - 02:23
dabuel
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Joined: 04/13/2010

In my game, the players are fighting each other but are also under attack by a common enemy. A lot of stuff is going on in the game, but during one phase "Faction Cards" are pulled from a deck and shown face up.
These Faction Cards can be either events affecting a specific player, a general event or an event involving the Common Enemy.
My problem:
I want the players to pull some, but not too many, of the Common Enemy cards each turn (they are about 20-40% of all cards in the stack). If too many are pulled, then the enemy gets too strong and if too few, then the enemy gets to weak.

My thoughts:
* I want to avoid having a separate deck for the Common Enemy, and would prefer to have one common "Faction Deck".
* Let´s say 3 cards are pulled. One way of doing it is to pull the cards one at a time and if a 2nd Common Enemy card is pulled, it is immediately removed and a new card is pulled. This could work, but I'm not a 100% satisfied. Any other suggestions?

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Wed, 07/14/2010 - 03:28
#1
Black Canyon
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Joined: 05/30/2009
Two-part cards

If you can fit all of the information onto a card, why not put information for the common enemy on every card? You'd follow the general or player specific event and then you could have some sort of rules for how often you also follow the common enemy event on each card.

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Wed, 07/14/2010 - 04:50
#2
DogBoy
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Joined: 12/15/2009
When you flip multiple common

When you flip multiple common enemy cards, you could just ignore the extra ones. That avoids tedious replacement flips, and varies the number of events per turn.

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Sun, 08/01/2010 - 04:14
#3
Marx
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Joined: 06/02/2010
Black Canyon wrote:If you can

Black Canyon wrote:
If you can fit all of the information onto a card, why not put information for the common enemy on every card? You'd follow the general or player specific event and then you could have some sort of rules for how often you also follow the common enemy event on each card.

I was about to suggest the same thing. If a player has three cards, he would trigger both the card's event and the "common enemy" event on the card, but ONLY on the first event card played. Stronger common enemy events might be associated with stronger faction cards, to enact some sort of balance.

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Sun, 08/01/2010 - 12:32
#4
simons
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Joined: 12/28/2008
This might make for a really

This might make for a really complicated setup (depending upon how many common enemy cards you have), but you could also do something like the Pandemic. Basically, divide the deck into some number of piles. In each pile, shuffle 1 (or 2 or 3...) Common Enemy cards. Then, place each pile on top of the other. That way, there is still some randomness, but common enemy cards occur at a fairly controlled rate.

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Sun, 08/01/2010 - 16:44
#5
Redcap
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Joined: 07/26/2008
Depending on the type of game

Depending on the type of game it is, you might want the random element to make some plays harder or easier than other times. So with you 40% you said it mostly works, meaning I assume, that some games are harder then others. I personally like games that are difficult and are not neccessarily beatable every time I play. So I personally would like the game if I barely won one game, and then died close to the end on another. It would make wins more satisfying and make the game not something that becomes a formula to win, rather it would require players to have to react to random elements.

I don't know all the mechanics of your game, but I think I would stick with the original formula. I think it is better to err on the side of too difficult more than too easy though. You could also tell the players how many enemy cards to add to the deck to dictate the level of difficulty if you wanted.

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Sun, 08/01/2010 - 18:28
#6
dnddmdb
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Joined: 01/06/2009
Variable Effects

Place three variants of the same effect on a card, each with varying power (i.e. 1. Destroy 3 buildings. 2. Destroy 2 Buildings. 3. Destroy 1 Building). Then when cards are drawn, use the ability on every card equal to the total number of Common Enemy cards drawn. If two cards were drawn, then you use the "2" abilities, etc.

So if only 1 card is drawn, you get 1 strong effect. If three are drawn, you get 3 weak effects, which should equal one strong effect.

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