The last mechanic I need to handle in my semi-cooperative space 4x game is population growth.
Currently, each player has one home planet that has every population slot filled with a population counter (which represents a population of people). Each population slot indicates what resource is produced if there is a population counter present. Every planet has a limited number of population slots which represents the size of the planet and the abundance of resources on that planet.
So, for example, a small planet can have two population slots where one slot is to produce money (to buy things) and the other slot to produce production (to build things). If two population counters are on these two slots then the planet can produce both money and production.
Now when colonizing an uninhabited planet with a colonizer ship, the ship is destroyed and 1 population counter is placed in an available slot.
In the game, I want players to be able to increase the number of population counters in a colony or even on a home planet in the event some of the population counters die off.
But how to do this in a simple way that produces interesting decisions has been challenging so far.
As this is a 4x game that has a lot going on, I want the overall mechanic to be fairly simple yet satisfying.
Here are some of the ideas I have so far:
1. Every planet which has at least one population counter can produce only one more population counter for that turn.
2. A colony cannot increase population itself and a population convoy (like a colonizer ship) must depart from the home planet to the colony to add a population counter. Maybe if the colony reaches its maximum number of population counters, it then can act as a home planet and create population counters for other planets.
3. Add a food population slot on some planets. For every food population slot occupied, it allows for the population growth on one planet (or maybe one population counter). This may involve some tracking and a little book keeping unfortunately.
4. Have a food population slot on some planets and if the slot is occupied it will produce a food resource (tokens or something) which can be spent to buy a population counter. Right now I have three main resources: money, production and research. I would have to add another resource of food.
With adding the food resource, I want to avoid some type of food upkeep mechanic whereby players must have X amount of food for Y population counters to avoid starvation and so on.
Which of these ideas sound sensible to you? Do you have any other ideas?
Thanks,
--DarkDream
For game purposes (let's put the question of realism aside for now), I am envisioning that every turn there is the opportunity for a population counter to be added due to growth.
On average there are around 3-4 slots on each planet.
If I were to go this route, I would at least limit a planet to only gain one population per turn. It would be possible to do further limits, like only X amount of planets can gain a population.
Every turn, each player has around 4-5 action tokens which can be spent to activate a population to produce a resource. I am thinking that an action token can be spent on producing a population counter instead of spending it on resource production. How does that sound?
2) I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish with this rule.
I was trying to limit the population growth issue which I intuitively felt and as you pointed out for 1.
3) I would simply include "food" as a part of the production counter system and instead of producing a spaceship or mining facility (or whatever production is used for), you may instead produce a population counter and add it to a planet.
Yes. This is definitely a viable option and I will seriously consider this.
5) Similar to #1, but with limits... for greater interactivity, you could actually have specific worlds that produce a population counter every turn and you have to load it onto a ship and send it out to the frontier to start or add to a colony. Constant streams of population flowing out to your planets.
In a similar vein, maybe you could have a population slot on some planets. Those planets that have this population slot occupied by a populsyion counter can produce a new population counter as you outlined.
How does that sound?
2) I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish with this rule.
Yes. That is a good point against it. I was perhaps thinking you could only produce extra population counters if you have a large population to begin with. Another problem, is that you could have a small planet, say with two population slots, which could fill up in no time and be a great population exporter relative to a far larger planet with more slots which would take a huge amount of time to fill up and begin to export population counters which does not seem quite right.
For a boardgame I'd keep the economy simpler with just food though.
I think food (or at least surplus food, since you don't want to have starvation) should be a storable resource (ie you want resource cubes or something to represent it, and it should be carried over between turns - high tech refrigeration/preservatives and all that.). Then you should give each planet a food cost to expand its population - either the same for all planets, maybe becoming more expensive for larger populations, or some planets could be more expensive because of the difficulty of colonizing them (gas giants, frozen rocky worlds, etc). In addition, you should be able to freely move population between worlds, except of course that you lose ownership of a world if population is at zero. The number of transport ships you have might also be a controlling factor. Food should also be transportable between worlds, perhaps at a cost (either in food itself, or whatever currency you have). That gives the players lots of possible ways to tweak the running of their empire in relatively simple ways.
Yes. This sounds like option 4 which is elaborated a little. I want to avoid having another resource, but if I do include it, these are some good ideas.
Thanks,
--DarkDream