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"Evil Empire" Cooperative fantasy world domination simulation board game. *New Title*

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Theseus Gaming
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Evil Empire Map

Hello folks, been toying with this idea for a little while now because it sounds so good in my head. So, I figured I would jot my ideas down here to see what you all think. As always, comments and critiques are not only welcome but appreciated!

The premise of the game is that the Dark Lord has died and the Evil Empire is now being run by the Lord's high council (the players). Each player has a role which determines which aspect of the Empire they oversee (military, diplomatic, resource, and construction).

The game board will be round, the center containing a world map surrounded by stones. This represents a scrying pool which the council uses to look upon the world in order to plan their nefarious deeds. The faces of the stones will contain markings to represent a calendar and the number of turns before the game ends and the players lose. Certain events will also happen at different times throughout the course of the game, which will be marked on the calendar.

Outside this stone circle will be a section of the board containing all the player information, such as the responsibilities of the different roles, their numerical trackers (for resources, population, etc.), and each player's influence. Influence is important because if one player gains enough of it, they will become the new Dark Lord and have an even bigger say in the happenings of the Empire.

At the end of each round (after all players have taken their turn) there is a council meeting where all the members gather to deal with the Empire as a whole. During this time subjects will bring issues to the council. The players must discuss the issue and decide the best way to solve it with a vote. Depending on how each problem is solved, one of the council members may gain influence. So at times you may have to strike deals with the other players to vote your way in exchange for favors, resources, troops, etc.

This creates a dichotomy of game play. Even though the players are all working together to conquer the world, they are working against each other to gain the most influence to become the next Dark Lord. I was even thinking about being able to sabotage other player's efforts to stop them from gaining influence and being able to assassinate another player to take on their role (or become the Dark Lord if they are the current one). This wouldn't eliminate a player as they could be brought back to life by magic or some such.

Why wasn't the first Dark Lord resurrected? Well, because his body was stolen by the forces of good, of course. Did I mention the forces of good? No? Well, the forces of good are pretty much every other nation and kingdom in the world. They are not fond of the Evil Empire, and will send armies and heroes to fight you back to your fortress in an attempt to rid the world of the council and the Evil Empire once and for all.

Being a fantasy world, certain territories will contain different races which, when conquered, can be added to your army. If you take over the Orc village, you can start training Orcish Warriors. If you control the dragon roost, you can train dragons into your army, and so on. Haven't created the mechanics for conquering territories yet. Trying to come up with something new instead of just being a Risk or Small World clone. Was thinking about using tokens to represent units and each would have a strength of d4, d6, or d8. Multiple units in the same territory form an army which would give you a pool of the different dice strengths. Rolled together, you would need to be able to beat the defense value of the territory to take it over.

If you've read this far, congratulations and thank you! I didn't mean to type so much but it all just came pouring out once I started. Going to start fleshing this out a bit more. Oh... and here's a crude sketch of the world map, which I drew half way through typing because I thought my description above needed a visual aid.

Orangebeard
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Gameboard

Right off the top, I love the gameboard/concept even in its rough skectch format!

I would like to hear more about the "responsibilities" of the individual players. It sounds like a very interesting concept that the players work together, but there are also obligations that must be met and only a single player at the table can meet that obligation.

Is there a ring or marker that moves from stone to stone to track time? Is it like a marble moving around a track?

Theseus Gaming
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After reading back through, I think I was a little unclear about the game board (that's what I get for posting in the wee hours of the morning). They're not actual stones, if that the impression I gave. It would just be part of the image of the board, made to look like stones to convey the scrying pool concept.

Yes, to answer your question, there would be a token you move along the stone images to track time in game. At the end of your turn you would move the token to the next stone which will bring you closer to the end of the game and might contain a World Event, Enemy Action, or Crisis which you would resolve before the next player's turn.

As far as the roles are concerned, every player would be able to perform general actions like attacking, so that the roles aren't too limited. Their separate responsibilities would be akin to:

High Commander - chooses which military units to train and which territory they are first placed
Ambassador - dispatches diplomats/spies
Quartermaster - chooses which players receive the resources generated each turn
Master Mason - chooses where to build structures and defenses throughout the empire

ThisIsMyBoomstick
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This sounds really cool!

For real, I'm liking the sound of this. It really does seem like it would be an enjoyable game to play with your cutthroat friends!

I really don't have much in the way of criticism because at its current stage, your idea sounds great! I am definitely eager to hear more.

Theseus Gaming
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ThisIsMyBoomstick wrote:
For real, I'm liking the sound of this. It really does seem like it would be an enjoyable game to play with your cutthroat friends!

I really don't have much in the way of criticism because at its current stage, your idea sounds great! I am definitely eager to hear more.

Thanks for the compliment!

I've got a system for the combat now. As stated before, the units you recruit will have a die associated with their strength (d4, d6, d8). I'm thinking up to five of each included in the game for creating the dice pools for your armies. Each territory (aside from your keep/starting territory) will have a Defense and Attrition Value.

Defense is the number you must beat with your dice pool roll to conquer the territory. Attrition is the damage your units take in return. When assigning damage to your units, you must kill whole units before putting damage on another one. This prevents you from spreading damage out to keep individual units alive. The idea is that you should lose a unit when ever you attack, with a chance of failing to conquer the territory.

When enemy units and heroes appear, they must be defeated before you can check your attack against the territory. Enemies also have a Defense and Attrition Value which works in the same way as a Territory's. So, when you roll against a territory with enemy units present, you collect your dice pool and roll it. Using the values rolled, you must assign damage to the enemy units which kill the enemy unit and remove the dice used from the pool. If all the enemy units are killed and the remaining value of your pool is greater than the territory's defense, it is conquered. If not, you must retreat and attack again on a later turn.

I'd say you choose your own casualties after checking to see if you have killed any enemy units and conquer the territory. Also, damage wouldn't be accumulative. If a unit (your or an enemy) takes damage but doesn't die from it they don't keep the damage. It's assumed they've had time to rest and heal before the next attack.

Was also thinking about units have special rules, such as Dwarves being able to mine and move through mountains (which would be impassable to other armies). Also, rules to provide bonuses for attacks in the form of rerolls, extra damage, healing, etc. Just now thought of a necromancer unit who can resurrect fallen allies during an attack, creating undead units.

I'm now working on more of what's happening with the world map. Thinking now about having it take place on one continent instead of

questccg
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I agree... interesting

Your game sounds interesting...

The stones mark "Events" that will occur during the game. One idea is to simply mark a stone that it has an event and that "Events" could be from random draw (cards).

As an estimate, there are 64 stones and therefore 64 turns to a game. Fixing the number of turns for an approximation of how long it takes to play would be something of interest.

Personally I think the goal of the game should be more solidified: "gain the most influence to become the next Dark Lord." As such no player is the Dark Lord until the end of the game... I think your assassination part and reviving is superfluous to the game's design...

As for player roles, I would use something like San Juan or Puerto Rico, roles are drawn at the beginning of each turn. Each ROLE should have a connecting RESOURCE, a way to compute each player's victory points (or influence) on each turn.

At the end of each round, you said that player's would get together to "deal with the Empire as a whole." I'm not certain what you had in mind - however I would tend to think that this would be a chance for dealing with "the forces of good" and the other factions on the board such as the Orcs or Dragons according to their "personalities". An example would be that Dragons are gold hoarders and will conquer to gain more wealth. Orcs are more brutes and will try to conquer "the forces of good"... I think playing the other forces in your game might be what you meant by "deal with the Empire as a whole". Notice that each one of these is expansionistic in nature (including "the forces of good"). Each race which can be conquered could also have a card which describes how they behave.

I kinda like the idea that the "Evil Council" likes seeing "the forces of Good" get raided by the "Orcs" or the "Dragons", etc.

You might want to consider one ending: the player with the highest influence is named the "Dark Lord". Players still play their turns and need to work together when it comes to determining the actions of their "Evil minions". That's something to consider: the other factions are there to battle against the "forces of good". As such the player's act upon the other factions not their own troops... "The Evil Council" OVERSEES the actions of it's evil doers.

So a player's turn could be "Choose a role" and "Choose an Evil faction" (2 cards). The cool thing about this is that each player will strategize which role and faction should be chosen to score the most influence points on that particular turn.

You could have an *outer ring* around the board that indicates how much influence each of the players have.

Note: You would have to find a publisher to produce this game. I cannot see it being a "self-published" game. Kinda like "Dragon Valley" (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/87200/dragon-valley).

questccg
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Other "Good" races

Theseus Gaming wrote:
Was also thinking about units have special rules, such as Dwarves being able to mine and move through mountains (which would be impassable to other armies). Also, rules to provide bonuses for attacks in the form of rerolls, extra damage, healing, etc. Just now thought of a necromancer unit who can resurrect fallen allies during an attack, creating undead units.

What you could do for better replayability is have 3 "Good" races: Mountain Dwarves, High Elves and Human Barbarians. Players choose ONE "Good" race at the beginning of the game. Each race would have it's own "personality".

Human Barbarians could be expansionist, Mountain Dwarves in the middle and High Elves could be builders (protect their territory - slower expansion). Newcomers to the game can start with the High Elves while experienced players can play the roving barbaric hordes! :D

Also for this TYPE of game, you might want to allow the number of players to be higher such as 6. You sample board seems to be configured for only 4 players...

Theseus Gaming
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QuestCCG: To clarify some things I'll address your comments in order,

The calendar would work much in the way you were talking, I didn't mention cards before but this was always the idea. There will be three types of these world event cards: Enemy Actions, Disasters, and Imperial Matters.

Enemy Actions will dictate how many units the enemy nations receive and if they send units to attack your Empire. These may also be assassins who will come after the council members directly.
Disasters would be random events that have a negative impact on the Empire. Such as droughts, plague, storms, etc.
Imperial Matters would consist of situations the council has to deal with. The idea behind these are subjects come to the council with problems and they debate the best course of action to take. The cards will have a description of the problem and usually two choices the council votes on. Each choice will benefit one player, usually with a reward of influence. The key is to talk (or bribe) the other players into voting your way. The choices may also have positive or negative repercussions on the Empire. So, you might have to talk someone into doing something that is bad for the Empire but good for you personally.

The main goal of the game is to defeat the forces of good, which will be represented by four enemy nations. I'm thinking about scaling the map down to add more detail to the landscape. Instead of being a world, like in the image I posted here, it will be one continent with the Evil Empire's fortress near the middle. You send your armies out to conquer neighboring territories with the goal of taking over the four enemy capitols. Once you've conquered an enemy capitol, you will be allowed to train their units and heroes to serve in your army. When you've taken all four capitols, the Evil Empire has prevailed and the players all win.

Each role in the game will have a number of tasks that, when completed, will gain that player influence. The High Commander, for example, is in charge of the military so whenever he conquers a territory he will gain influence. Any player can send armies out to attack but only the Commander will gain influence from it. Whenever the Master Mason builds all the structures needed to upgrade a city he will gain influence for it. When the Ambassador succeeds at diplomatic missions or assassinations he will gain influence. The Quartermaster will gain influence from setting up trade routes. These are just some examples but I think you can see what I'm getting at. There will be more tasks to gain players influence when the game is finished.

So, it will be pretty easy for a player to gain enough influence to become the Dark Lord before the game is over. This is kind of the point of the game, the Empire needs a Lord to lead them to victory and everyone on the Council wants to rise to that position. There will be benefits for becoming the Dark Lord, so everyone will be cutthroat about getting there and staying there. Even though everyone is still working together to win the game.

The "end of each round" thing was kind of confusing, sorry. It was replaced by the world events on the calendar. Each player's turn will consist of them taking their number of actions. Actions will include exploring territories to find resources or unique items; attacking territories; moving units; building structures in cities, your keep, or walls around a territory to block the enemy from invading, and so on (still working on all the particulars).

After a player completes their actions, you would move the marker on the calender and if there is a world event, you would draw a card and resolve its effects. Once the marker has made it all the way around the board, the game would end in a loss for all players. This could be explained as a prophecy that foretells of a champion who will rise and defeat the Evil Empire and you are working to prevent the prophecy from coming true. Or, that it is only a matter of time before the forces of good find the council's weakness and use it to stop them.

The rest of your comments I agree with, about the game feeling like you are overseeing the aspects of running the kingdom, instead of going out and doing everything yourself. I think the way things are going, this theme will be conveyed well. Though, roles I see more as being chosen or randomly dealt out at the beginning of the game and there are ways of changing your role through the course of the game.

The races I mentioned would be represented by the different nations. The Evil Empire I see as being mostly human, dark elf, orc, and goblin. The other nations could consist of Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Dragons, etc. You would only have access to specific units when you start the game. As you conquer territories, make diplomatic arrangements, and enslave the other nations you will gain access to new units based on who lives where you are attacking. In this, you are sort of building a technology tree of what units you can recruit to your armies. This tech tree will grow as you take over more of the world. It does offer some replay-ability in how you go about conquering the world, which nations you attack first, and which units you use.

I was thinking about adding two more roles but can't think of other aspects of managing the Empire that would seem dynamic enough. Perhaps a Master-at-Arms who oversees the creation and distribution of weapons and armor to units? Oh, or an Archmage to direct magical affairs and research for the Empire... could even have a Domestic Adviser who is in charge of keeping the masses happy and preventing riots or rebellion?

Knicksen
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Suggestions

Hi,

Interesting ideas. As I am further down the road with my current design and with it having a similar theme, a few suggestions:

1) Your map sketch looks like my map / board (not complaining).

http://www.bgdf.com/node/7930
or on the blog:
http://magic-maelstrom.blogspot.co.uk/
http://magic-maelstrom.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/at-last-four-rounds-in-one...

2) I started out with too many cards and options for players to cope with. Consistent feedback was for simplification. I originally had weather and weather effects on movement / combat, this got dropped form what is now the standard game. Try to get the core of the game working, then you can add things back in or make them add-ons.

3) For your council idea, I assume you are thinking along the lines of a Kingmaker parliament, Dune Harvest Expansion spice carve-up or Junta office allocation, where resources or decisions that affect players are decided either by a 'council leader' (or could be communally), but always in the best interests of individual players? lots of good opportunity for whinging about how badly you are doing and how much more you need to be given x than your opponents - can you expend [points / influence] to get good stuff?

questccg
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Theseus Gaming

Theseus Gaming wrote:
QuestCCG: To clarify some things I'll address your comments in order,

The calendar would work much in the way you were talking, I didn't mention cards before but this was always the idea. There will be three types of these world event cards: Enemy Actions, Disasters, and Imperial Matters.

Okay having random cards seems like a *fun* way to go (I like cards!) :)

Theseus Gaming wrote:
The main goal of the game is to defeat the forces of good, which will be represented by four enemy nations. I'm thinking about scaling the map down to add more detail to the landscape. Instead of being a world, like in the image I posted here, it will be one continent with the Evil Empire's fortress near the middle. You send your armies out to conquer neighboring territories with the goal of taking over the four enemy capitols. Once you've conquered an enemy capitol, you will be allowed to train their units and heroes to serve in your army. When you've taken all four capitols, the Evil Empire has prevailed and the players all win.

That was missing in your post. You mentioned that the players could lose but not how. Now I understand, "A great Hero has come to power to rule over the nation..."

Theseus Gaming wrote:
Each role in the game will have a number of tasks that, when completed, will gain that player influence. The High Commander, for example, is in charge of the military so whenever he conquers a territory he will gain influence. Any player can send armies out to attack but only the Commander will gain influence from it. Whenever the Master Mason builds all the structures needed to upgrade a city he will gain influence for it. When the Ambassador succeeds at diplomatic missions or assassinations he will gain influence. The Quartermaster will gain influence from setting up trade routes. These are just some examples but I think you can see what I'm getting at. There will be more tasks to gain players influence when the game is finished.

This all makes sense. Looking great so far...

Theseus Gaming wrote:
So, it will be pretty easy for a player to gain enough influence to become the Dark Lord before the game is over. This is kind of the point of the game, the Empire needs a Lord to lead them to victory and everyone on the Council wants to rise to that position. There will be benefits for becoming the Dark Lord, so everyone will be cutthroat about getting there and staying there. Even though everyone is still working together to win the game.

I am a little unsure about a Player becoming the Dark Lord before the game is over... How will you manage that? How do competing players try to *dislodge* the Dark Lord in power? The end goal is to "Defeat the forces of Good". So at least now you have a clear end goal for the game...

Theseus Gaming wrote:
The "end of each round" thing was kind of confusing, sorry. It was replaced by the world events on the calendar. Each player's turn will consist of them taking their number of actions. Actions will include exploring territories to find resources or unique items; attacking territories; moving units; building structures in cities, your keep, or walls around a territory to block the enemy from invading, and so on (still working on all the particulars).

Sounds good to me!

Theseus Gaming wrote:
After a player completes their actions, you would move the marker on the calender and if there is a world event, you would draw a card and resolve its effects. Once the marker has made it all the way around the board, the game would end in a loss for all players. This could be explained as a prophecy that foretells of a champion who will rise and defeat the Evil Empire and you are working to prevent the prophecy from coming true. Or, that it is only a matter of time before the forces of good find the council's weakness and use it to stop them.

A clear end game. That was missing in your earlier posts. This clarifies things.

Theseus Gaming wrote:
The rest of your comments I agree with, about the game feeling like you are overseeing the aspects of running the kingdom, instead of going out and doing everything yourself. I think the way things are going, this theme will be conveyed well. Though, roles I see more as being chosen or randomly dealt out at the beginning of the game and there are ways of changing your role through the course of the game.

Well you could consider choosing them each turn. This allows players to get a feel for the other roles (aside from the one that was chosen). And you have 4 roles, so this means at most a 4 player game... I would go for 6 because this game has the depth for a larger amount of players. You could still play 4 players, but you could also have the extra 2 spots in case 6 players are at the table. More than 6 seems excessive...

Theseus Gaming wrote:
The races I mentioned would be represented by the different nations. The Evil Empire I see as being mostly human, dark elf, orc, and goblin. The other nations could consist of Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Dragons, etc. You would only have access to specific units when you start the game. As you conquer territories, make diplomatic arrangements, and enslave the other nations you will gain access to new units based on who lives where you are attacking. In this, you are sort of building a technology tree of what units you can recruit to your armies. This tech tree will grow as you take over more of the world. It does offer some replay-ability in how you go about conquering the world, which nations you attack first, and which units you use.

Humans are part of the Evil Empire? I thought those were the *Good* guys! How are you going to differentiate between units? Like you only have so much token colors, probably enough for the various factions. How will you be able to tell a unit is a Dragon and another is an Orc???

Theseus Gaming wrote:
I was thinking about adding two more roles but can't think of other aspects of managing the Empire that would seem dynamic enough. Perhaps a Master-at-Arms who oversees the creation and distribution of weapons and armor to units? Oh, or an Archmage to direct magical affairs and research for the Empire... could even have a Domestic Adviser who is in charge of keeping the masses happy and preventing riots or rebellion?

Well finding the extra Roles is not all that hard. Basically you can use something similar to San Juan. For example if one player wants to trade goods, he can only perform one trade UNLESS he has the *Trader role* which allows him to trade 2 goods... You could use some variant of this.

And on the adding "minions" to your forces, could you implement something like a *Deck Building Card Game*??? At first your deck has no "Dragons" (Example). But then you conquer a keep that as occupied by a Dragon. So you add 1 Dragon card to your deck...

This way you would have a Deck and that could dictate which baddies you can use...

Like I said earlier, very interesting game... Keep up the good work!

Theseus Gaming
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More info on Unit Tokens:

Since all units are available to the players to use, they have to include both allied and enemy stats. The top facing will have an image of the unit as well as their Attack Die, Health, and Attrition. The bottom facing will have their resource cost as well as any special rules.

Units will also have colored borders to differentiate Faction. The Evil Empire's units will have a red border, while the other Nations will have Blue, Green, Yellow, and White. So once you conquer an enemy Nation you may use units that match the Nation's color. There could also be a number of Independent Faction Units, such as the Orcs and Dragons, that will require you to conquer a specific territory to use.

New Mechanic - Infamy:

As you take actions against the enemy Nations, you're infamy with that Nation will grow. As you gain more infamy, that nation will become more active in trying to stop you. They will create more military units and send them after you more frequently.

This will give the Ambassador more to do with their role, such as sending diplomats out to reduce your infamy with a Nation. There will also be ways of conquering territories through diplomacy or trade, not just attacking. Though, if your infamy is too high, diplomacy might not work.

Theseus Gaming
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After hammering out more details on how this game will actually play, I've come to some conclusions:

1. Combat needs to be more interesting and dynamic, since it's a large focus of the game (conquering the forces of good to win). I haven't come up with a solid system yet, I'd still like to keep the units having different dice to represent their strength. Thinking there needs to be a variable system for how much damage the enemy deals to you. Maybe flipping the actual unit tokens and having different damage values printed on either side?

2. This game need to be EPIC! I'm talking, something you not only play but talk about long after the game is over. To achieve this, I'm thinking about implementing a campaign system. The first stage of the campaign would be sort of a tutorial town, where the Dark Lord is still alive and leading the Empire against the forces of good. You would still act as Council, directing the affairs of the Empire but influence would then be used to buy favors from the Dark Lord.

You would start against one enemy nation, placed randomly on the map. You're goal is simple, to take their capitol, and the game will probably only last an hour or two. Once you've conquered them, you keep their capitol as a city for the Empire in the next games you play. Each game after the first would add another enemy nation, so in your second game you would have two enemies to defeat. In this game, though, you would be able to use the units of the nation you conquered in your previous game. So every time you play, you gain more units to recruit into your armies. The nations you fight in each game could be randomized as well, adding further variability.

When you play for the fourth time, fighting four enemy nations at once, the Dark Lord is slain during the final battle (whether the players win or not). In the story of the campaign, this cripples the Evil Empire and they lose their control over the territory they've already conquered. From this point on is when the players use influence to vie for the position of Dark Lord. You're also given the option of setting the difficulty for individual game sessions. Go up against all of the enemy nations, at once, for a real challenge. Or continue as a campaign, conquering each of them in succession. This offers a wide range of replay options that can be furthered through the release of expansions and user created scenarios and campaigns.

Really excited about getting this to the play testing phase, just need to figure combat out...

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