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How to prevent a game to become repetitive

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larienna
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I have playtested today my fallen kingdom game and there is a bug where the game becomes repetitive. Not only my game have that bug, all other games that looks like mine that I got inspired from (Britania and Vinci) also have that sort of repetitive boring situation where you invade to kick people out to eventually decline and invade again.

So I was wondering what could prevent my game from being repetitive and promote a bit more of long term strategy considering that I want a political map that changes every turn.

Soime ideas

Solution A: make some rules or objectives change with the passage of time due to the evolution of the people's culture.

Solution B: Have a climax at the end of the game.

Any suggestions?

lucasAB
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Miltary coup d'état actions

During our games of risk, we got tired of wiping players out because the game would become boring after enough players were wiped out. And as most of you know, the more the merrier. To prevent "boring-ness" in our games, we allowed military coops(or coup d'état in French). These actions would allow players to start up a new army somewhere on the map, and possibly serve another player. We had all kinds of rules that would allow players to usurp other player's supremacy over a county just by starting up revolutions and coops.

Maybe you want to add something like this into the game, that would allow players to jump back into the game after being "wiped out". Maybe you could create a system that would allow players to hop in at any time during the game. Maybe you earn points as you play, but by being wiped out, your score resets. So you could hop into the game at any time and compete for being the first player to reach x number of points first! I'm starting to like this idea already...

I don't know if you can implement this idea into your game, but something like this could make the game different and more exciting after every play.

Lucas

TheMob
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Can you make the game

Can you make the game shorter? ...like start from a situation where some of the waves have already been done?

Or perhaps have turn marker that says that after 30 turns the game ends.

Or - if it's even possible - add random events (like drawing event cards) in the middle of these waves. Whenever somebody does something that's normally repetative, a random event would give good or bad stuff to him... this would mean that even doing the "same thing", it might be different since you get to draw a card. (Or alternatively - instead of drawing, you could play extra card or something)

SiddGames
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Change the Theme on the Fly

If this spanned enough time (can't recall if I've read anything on what your game covers), wouldn't it be interesting if the first "waves" were military, but as society progressed, the next waves would be cultural invasions -- not fighting, but art and language and maybe diplomacy, for example -- and then the last wave(s) would be economic -- not fighting or culture, but industrialization and modernization.

That would be an ambitious game, maybe, heh, but it would be interesting to start the game with military conquests, then switch to non-violent "conquests" and then finally, who could develop their economy the best.

End of Time Games
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If I was in your situation, I

If I was in your situation, I would go back to squar one and brainstorm. I don't know what your creative process is but If I were you I would stop "thinking" so much. There is a place in the process for thought and analysis. Stop thinking about those other games and what they did. They were repetetive and that is not what you want. Learn not to think. Contemplate about what your original intent for the game was. What did you like about the idea or what inpired you about it. This is not necesarily thinking.....it's just resting your mind on what makes you like your game idea or what you want to do. Then when the ideas come then go back over the process as you know it best. Your subconcious knows exactly how to make your game the best it can be and the information is not locked in your analytical part of your brain. Your analytical brain only contains "known" information- other games you know about and what you have done before. This "non-thinking" process is an important part of the process and that is where I would be going right now...or another game and come back to this one later.

I think there is something sweet about arriving at that special idea that just came up in a flash that was so not exactly like the other games but fit your own game precisely.

End of Time Games
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Revisiting the first game ispiration....

I want follow up on the previous comment. Know, my first game idea happened when I was driving my car. I had no thought or interest in board games or design at that time. It just came in one thought. I'm sure lots have had this expereience.

There is no denying that in game design thought and analysis, playtesting are all necessary parts of the process. But, the way I aproach the rest of the process is the same. I like to revisit the original moment of ispiration for a game. I see it as a moment unfolding and expanding. More pictures are added to the first one....the game grows. It develops like film in a camara. I have perfected this process for myself. I use the same process in all my creative processes. I can start a painting and come back years later and finish it with the same sense of freshness and energy about the subject. I'm revisiting the same moment in time.

I hope this helps because it can save a lot of pane if understood and applied. I always know that if I am ignoring one game and paying attention to the other.....one game is not jelious because the other is getting the attention. It's all being created at once. The game not getting the attention is still being worked on at the same time.

ReneWiersma
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As I recall, Vinci doesn't

As I recall, Vinci doesn't really have a "story arc". Basically, you start a civilization grab as much points as you can before it peters out, and then you start a new civilization. Rinse, repeat. Vinci stays interesting because each time you have a different civilization with different abilities, each combination which creates different challenges. Even so, just before the game becomes boring it ends.

So, perhaps the easy solution is to make your game a little shorter and everything will be fine. You could try and incorporate a semi-random ending trigger to make the last few turns a bit more exciting.

If that for some reason doesn't work you should try to find a way to get a story arc in your game and I think both your solutions would work towards that goal. Perhaps you could give each player some kind of overarching goal that is scored at the end of the game, or some resources are carried over from one "civ" to another (or whatever kind of entity you have in your game).

larienna
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First comments to your

First comments to your comments:

Quote:
Maybe you want to add something like this into the game, that would allow players to jump back into the game after being "wiped out"

This is the core of the game. It's the concept of always kicking people out an comming in that becomes repetitive.

Quote:

Or perhaps have turn marker that says that after 30 turns the game ends.

Or - if it's even possible - add random events (like drawing event cards) in the middle of these waves.

I already have random event cards, still they are not used at their full potential. And there is also an adjustable turn limit.

Quote:

wouldn't it be interesting if the first "waves" were military, but as society progressed, the next waves would be cultural invasions -- not fighting, but art and language and maybe diplomacy

Seems interesting, it has some similarities with the new idea I'll explain below.

Quote:

So, perhaps the easy solution is to make your game a little shorter and everything will be fine. You could try and incorporate a semi-random ending trigger to make the last few turns a bit more exciting.

This is a solution that was proposed, but not by limiting the number of turns, rather by speeding up everyturn. I think I can manage to simplify a few things. (in the last playtest, we did not manage to play a lot of turns)

Now the new idea I got is technology. Players can spend ressource/time to develop a technology. Developping a technology gives you points at the end of the game but it gives a special ability to all players. So as technology get's developped, all the rules of the game changes. So it could be a way to prevent repeativeness since the rules are not the same.

In was thinking in having 3 ways to score points: Military conquest or surrender, technology and something else related to city controling. Then each of these categories has a limited number of awards. When all the awards of a certain type are given, each other types of awards are doubled.

OK, I have explained badly. For example, let say all the conquest trophies are exausted, the next time a player develop a technology, he will develop 2 technology instead which also double his scoring. So this have the situation where a simple move can dramatically increase the number of points you get and it speed up the game really fast to make it end.

The only problem I have right now with this mechanic is that all awards seems to be distributed evenly everyturn, which mean no award will get depleted before the others. The second problems is I don't know if the number of awards should be adjusted with the number of players ( ex: 3P=9, 4P=12, 5P=15 trophies and technologies) or if should be fixed ( 10 trophies and technologies).

The idea behind 3 way to score is to get 3 path to victory.

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