In my dudes on a map game, I'm trying to create interesting and thematic objectives as a victory condition instead of a point system. I have at least two objectives, but I'd like 3 or 4 to give a few asymmetrical paths to victory.
To help visualize- this is a light-medium dudes on a map skirmish game (think Kemet, Cry Havoc, Blood Rage, Inis, Cyclades, Clockwork wars, Hyperborea, etc.)
The map is made up of roughly 40 hexes.
I don't have a strong theme at the moment, so my terminology is lacking, but the hexes are made up villages, capitals, and one royal capital. Each capitol resides over a region (6 villages) and the royal capital resides over 4 regions.
The first 2 objectives are, in simple terms ONE: at the start of your turn control 1 region (7 adjacent territories) or TWO: at the start of your turn control 3 of the 4 regions capitols.
The idea I had for a third (and maybe fourth) uses the Royal Capital (again, for lack of better terminology at this point). You can move one of your armies into the city and all your units (up to 8) become "workers" that can be placed at various places on a separate, smaller, Capital board. The purpose of this objective would be to simulate a political victory over a military victory.
The trick is- I don't want a heavy worker placement game to make a currently manageable rulebook unmanageable. I'm wondering if it's possible to simulate a deep enough mini-game in a "king's court" or "noble's houses throughout the city" or what-have-you to get yourself voted as king.
The other trick is- this is an area control game, and I don't want to take away from that, so the area control outside the "Royal Capital City" has to influence this worker placement mini-game somehow.
So think about that first before you read my thoughts below. I'd like some "untarnished" ideas or examples if you have any.
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My current thought is- within the city are various Noble houses- each Noble house has a "home territory" associated with a hex outside the capital. your "workers" can move around and "talk" to the nobles (placed on their Capital space). If you are controlling a Nobles home territory when you "talk" to them, they turn to your side. You can lose control of the territory, but unless the player who controls that territory talks to the corresponding Noble, that Noble still remains "on your side" Once you control a majority of Nobles at the start of your turn, you win.
I know it's hard to judge without playing a game- but how "heavy" does that sound based on your gut feeling? Does it sound like it would dominant the game or be one piece of it?
Yes, you got the idea down.
I'm still percolating the implementation in my head. I did a playtest using this and it was functional. It's not quite to the level of being fun and interesting yet but I think the potential is there.
There needs to be some interesting decisions- at least in my playtest it was always obvious where the "workers" in the city should go. One decision I added is players have a limited number of move actions, and you can either use them to move units in the city OR your troops outside the city. But it still needs to iterative work.