New trade game

I'm sorry I accidently posted the first part of this early before i finished typing the whole thing out. This makes it very confusing to dive right into what the board looks like (I was typing before I organized). I will finish talking about the board only because it will be even more confusing if i stick my board ideas later on in the article. It may be helpful to you if you skip this next paragraph, which is a continuation of my board ideas, and read it after you've finished reading the rest of my ideas. I'm very sorry for the confusion.

( I have decided to make these lines semi transparent because I feel that the board would look way too crowded if i had them non transparent. I also did this because I don't want people to think that the intersection between the diagonal lines is an actual space on the board to put their piece). In my first post I included a small portion of the grid ( please pretend that the red lines are just black). The board would have some sort of mountain range, a river with a few sub rivers and a lake with an island in the middle. once I talk about what the pieces are and how they move this will make sense. in twelve parts of the board there needs to be an open area to place your three starting cities at at least four have to be port cities though.

The Name- I was thinking some thing like Land of Trade, but In my opinion this is not very catchy or original so I am very open to ideas.

The Storyline- You are a leader of three cities on a fanciful, almost steam-punk, world (the reason i say this is because most steam-punk books involve airships, as does this game). You are not alone though and in this game you have at least two leaders up against you, competing for power ( the game is made for 3-4 players). you and your opponents can each produce one type of transportation vehicle but, to produce that vehicle they need certain resources that they don't have. To acquire these resources from the other players you most trade with them transporting your goods with your lone vehicle you have in the beginning. as the game progresses however you can acquire many vehicles and even make colonies to produce resources that your opponents are reluctant to give up. I still need to name each of the three nations.

The Object- To win the game, I thought some sort of quantity objective would be required. By this I mean you need to have in your possession a certain number of objects to win. (Maybe a certain number of colonies needed, or certain number of vehicles) I was also thinking that more than one objective could be used so that your opponent will have to guess what you are trying to do.

The Pieces- The cities are placed at the beginning of the game in one of twelve open spaces on the board. The cities are where you can build vehicles and by allowing opponent vehicles to dock in the four intersections your city touches, you can trade with them. The resources are an important part of the game that I may need some help with. I don't know exactly what types of resources I should include because I don't want this game to be similar to Settlers of Catan so bricks and ore are out of the question. I was thinking the resource cards of fabric, metal, wood, livestock, and manpower. The leader that gets the most of each type of resource card is the one that needs it the least (this promotes trading). For example The leader that can build boats, which require wood and fabric gets the least amount of wood and fabric per turn. But to build a boat the leader needs only two man power cards, so he gets the most manpower cards per turn.Another type of piece is a colony which can be put on any intersection on the board. I know the colony will need some of each kind of resource but I do not have any exact numbers yet. The colony provides a certain resource that is not readily available all the time. The vehicle pieces, like the colony pieces, i need some ideas on. I do not know how much resources they should cost to build and how much each should carry. There are four types of vehicle pieces, the caravan, the airship, the train and the boat. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. The caravan, which carries a small amount, can move very swiftly on roads but can not go through mountains and can not go over water. The caravan can be built with wood and livestock (I know it is not built with livestock but it needs to be powered somehow!).The caravan also requires 4 manpower cards. the airship can go over anything and can carry lots of resources but moves very slow and takes a lot of resources to be produced. The airship is built with fabric and wood and six manpower cards. The train can carry a good number of resources and moves very quick but it takes a lot of time to build train tracks. it takes 4 time to build a train track and 2 time to move. To build a train you need metal and wood and it requires 5 manpower cards. Finally the boat can carry an average amount of goods but can move swiftly throughout the rivers and the lake, but it can go over land only if a canal (which is very similar to a train track) is built. It takes two time to build a canal and two time to move To build a boat you need fabric and wood, and as mentioned before two manpower cards. other pieces include the roads,the canals, and the train tracks.

The mechanics- How the game begins is this each person takes turns placing there cities one at a time then they roll all 3 dice to see who goes first. During a person's turn they take all the dice and roll them, the number that comes up is the number of time they get they can use this to move their pieces or build canals, roads and train tracks. I am still formulating how you acquire resources and I am open to ideas about that. when roads, train tracks, and canals are built they stay on the board until the end of the game. To trade with other cities you need to move your vehicle (carrying the materials you would like to trade with) to one of the four intersections your opponents city touches. Now obviously, you an your opponent will negotiate for a trade long before you get to your opponent's city, but technically if this was a real trader coming in he could not inform the city he was coming until he got there. this being said vehicles have to wait 1 turn after reaching the city to leave with their goods. There is however an exception to this rule. Trains and caravans once they have reached an opponents city the road or train track will be connecting the your city to his for the remainder of the game. Because of this you and your opponent can choose to make this a trade route. the trade route allows you to move your vehicle immediately on your next turn instead of waiting. the downside of the trade route is the fact that it stays active for the rest of the game, giving you no way to terminate it.

So to sum up what I need is name ideas, Resource prices for colonies and vehicles, and ideas on how you acquire resources. Also if anyone knows of a game that is similar please tell me so I can alter accordingly. thank you all who took the time to read about this board game.

-thepurplebotanist

Thanks for the feedback heppu, that was really helpful. Do you have any suggestions on movement I'm kinda drawing a blank on what other forms of movement could be used. Thanks for bringing up the fact that the trading system could be unfair to those that are leading. It has caused me to rethink the object of the board game and has helped me come up with the name, A Mercantilistic Age (is it too wordy). The new objective would be to set up trade routes, (Turing this from an optional task to a required one) and amassing bullion (precious metals), which are both the main concepts of mercantillism. I am still pondering on how to obtain resource cards but i may have to add a few with the new objective of amassing bullion. Thanks for the help.

-Thepurplebotanist

Thank you very much, Mercantile sounds great. when heppu enlightened me on how the trading concept could cause bad experiences I brainstormed trading ideas and it hit me that mercantilism was a really good example of world trade. I knew I had to alter some of my ideas to make it work but it would allow the colonies to have a greater role in the game greatly reducing, if not eliminating the problems that my old trading concepts posed. I really wanted to capture what the new version of my game would be like,so I created the name A Mercantilistic Age. This name is much too wordy but I could not think of any other way to put it.By no means is my game done but thanks for helping me give it a classy and informative title.

-ThePurpleBotanist