Need ideas for simple battle mechanics (Resolved)

How do you manage downtime in an 8-players game? What do the other 7 players do when you are rolling all those dices? (aside of rolling for defense themselves)?

I like the effort you are showing in the theming of the game, but I'll would use god abilities linked to the space in the board, opponent encountered, buildings/fortifications present, game turn (era) or whatever the like. Else, I'm imagining the next Risk Godstorm variant (with twice the rolls!).

Keep thinking!

• A deck of cards,
• a bag of tokens,
• secret player decisions,
• very precise timers,
...and so on.

Two that I think fit your game's theme nicely are a token bag and secret player decisions.

Token Bag:
Imaging a bag of tokens. It always has five white tokens in it. Other tokens are added to and removed from the bag, depending on what the challenge is (Monster, Quest, Feat of Strength (or Bravery, or Knowledge). The challenge tells you what colors of tokens and how many to add, and what the effect of each one is. Your character's skills and helpful items determine the number of tokens you get to pull.

For example:
• I'm about to fight a Hydra. It adds two black tokens and one red token to the challenge bag.
• If I draw a white token, we miss each other.
• If I draw a red token, I take one damage, return the token to the bag, and add a red token.
• If I draw the black token, I've killed the hydra.
• I have a base combat value of 2, and a prophecy that lets me re-draw (set aside, draw, then return) a token once per combat.
• Round one: I draw two tokens: white and red. I use my prophecy to set the red one aside, draw a white, and put the red one back. My result was two white, so nothing happens.
• Round two: I draw two more tokens. I get a red and a white. I take one wound for the red token. I also put it back in the bag, along with another red token.
• Round three: I draw two more tokens. I get a red and a black. I take one more wound and successfully slay the hydra. (yay!)
• At the end of the combat, I reset the bag to five white tokens.

Note that you don't have to have multi-round combat with this system. I just created an example like that because I liked the idea of emulating the hydra's splitting heads by adding tokens to the bag during combat.

Note that you could let players "pull their punches" and declare that they're drawing fewer than their maximum number of tokens in a round.

Secret Player Decisions:
Each challenge could have a non-participant write a number (or letter, or whatever) from a specific range down, then let the challenger take a number of guesses as to what the number is. The number of guesses is usually determined by the character's skill. Guessing the exact number would be a victory. Getting within (X) would be a tie. Missing the number entirely would be a loss (with wounds, etc.).

You could do the guessing "blind" or with hints. If the basic form is blind, then hints ("Is your number higher?" "Am I within two of your number?") could be an advantage that some skills/magic items give you.

For example: I've landed on an island with sheep. You have to pick three numbers from 1 to 20, inclusive. You also get to pick one letter from A to G, inclusive. I get 3 food for each number I guess correctly. After each attempt, I have guess an unguessed letter. If I guess your letter, the cyclopean herdsman finds me and eats half my crew. I can make as many attempts as I like. My character gets three guesses per attempt in challenges like this. On my first attempt, I guess 3, 7, and 12. None are correct. I guess "A" for my letter, which is also not correct. On my second attempt, I guess 15 and use my magic stone to ask a question: "Is at least one of the numbers within two of my most recent guess (15)?". You say, "Yes." My second and third guesses are 13 and 14. 13 and 15 are correct, so I get six food. I guess "G" for my letter and, sadly, I've found the cyclops. I lose half my crew, but I also gained six food.

Wrap-Up:
The bags of tokens feel thematically appropriate to me for reasons I can't completely explain. Token bags let you generate very dynamic and diverse challenges on the fly, and many players are not very good at understanding how probabilities work for token bags (while they're often pros at the odds of any given number on 2d6).

Player-generated targets feel appropriate in an "oracle / prediction" kind of way. It also encourages player interaction in a way that's more interesting than just rolling dice in opposition. It lets you have the challenger pose interesting questions and also has some of the "on the fly" flexibility that token bags have.

...and that's all I have for now.

I hope your game turns out the way you want it to!