In my game, I have 9 unique god cards. They currently each have a different intimidation value and a special text ability which balance the intimidation value (ex: a low intimidation value god will have a better special ability).
The problem is that in my game, there are already knowledges that gives special abilities. On my point of view it feels likes if there are too much special abilities to think about.
I tried to solve the problem by setting a special focus to god abilities. For example, they can only be used at the beginning of the turn and they are one time use abilities (they do not change rules permanently).
Still, I was trying to look for different options. Could I replace these abilities with something else. I thought of many having god stats ( like a character) but they don't seem to be many things in the game that could be influenced by a stat.
I also tought of having a random success. At the beginning of your turn, you may use your ability, if you fail your roll bad stuff will happen (ex: lose units or VP), else your ability works.
By forcing to use it at the beginning of the turn, it lowered the possibility of actually forgetting this ability which is generally the case when you have too much special abilities.
Any ideas on replacements or it looks fine like this?
The primary use of gods is to create an unbalance at the beginning of the game so that all players have a different intimidation value.
The secondary use of the god right now is curretly a one time use ability at the beginning of the turn. That is the thing I might want to change.
I had the idea of paying for executing the ability with troops or victory points or even have a random success. (You only pay if you fail).
I also have the special temple buildings built when a new kingdom enters in play. I thought either of the god's ability is active when the temple is in play or either the cost higher when the temple is not in play.
I also just thought that maybe special abilities could be applied multiple times if you pay victory points to activate it. You could double the cost everytime you use it in the same turn. Not having a temple could double the cost or add a probability of faillure and still pay the points.
Still, all the methods above implies that I use special abilities. I was trying to see if I could use something else.
Scoring more points could be interesting, but there is already 3 knowledge that does that and there is not 9 possible ways to award bonus points.
By the way, I have rewritten the rules of my game, but I did not update the demo yet. I made some playtest recently and changed a few rules so I want to wait until everything seems finished before putting time to write the demo rules.