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Really want to make a quick, compact, card game (San Juan-esque), based on Ancient China

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Empires
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Building example

I would really like to make a fast card game that would have empire-building and battles, but with really in depth strategy, but able to be played anywhere with it's small size. I thought a good theme would be Ancient China, and definitely want to have role selection (like in San Juan/Puerto Rico). A cool mechanic I was thinking of was to have building buildings and recruiting soldiers (things like that) should take a few turns to do, and have officers assigned to the project boost the production time or production amount.

For example: An officer has a Political (POL) score of 1, and wants to build a market. Someone else chose the Develop role, so he does not get a privilege. Normally, a market takes 2 turns to build without bonuses, but since the assigned officer has a POL 1, it is reduced by a turn. Showing the turns to build could be accomplished by this: A 4-turn building would be the card is flipped over. A 3 turn building could be shown by turning the card to its 3 turn side, and for each subsequent turn, flip it to the 2 turns, then 1 turn, and then it will be done. Example on the page.

Some other roles could be to research, outfit soldiers with weapons, recruit, drill soldiers, search, harvest, etc.

I would love plenty of ideas and feedback, and ideas for how it could be accomplished, or new themes!

feNix
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Tell me if you like this.

I like the idea of roles but was thinking that maybe it could be changed up a bit.

You speak of officers, well, how about this?

1. You can requisition an officer (pick a role) so that he comes to help you with your project. (Engineer +DEVelopment, Lobbyist +POLitics, Colonel +MILitary, Economist +TAXes)

2. You have a small deck of officer cards that you shuffle at the beginning of every game. Each player draws an officer. At the beginning of each turn when players choose a role is when the difference is notable. Officers have a stat pertinent to each role. So, for example, if I drew General Xiang, he might have stats of ENG: 1, POL: 2, MIL: 3, ECO: 2) The effect of the role chosen would be multiplied by the stat.

Sound interesting?

rcjames14
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Classes of Cards and Resources

feNix wrote:
You have a small deck of officer cards that you shuffle at the beginning of every game.

I like this idea a lot. It has the potential to interact with role-selection in an interesting way. However, I feel like the resource system needs to be fleshed out some more before you commit to an additional deck of role cards which players would draw from. Is the game modeled after Puerto Rico, San Juan or Race for the Galaxy? I sense that Empires wants something like San Juan. But, if it's closer to the Race model, these role cards could be a special class of 'leaders' in the general draw pile which you have the option to deploy on a specific phase for a card cost, but they would modify future costs. However, if Puerto Rico is the model, then the interaction between leaders (in your hand) with roles (on the table) and resources (in your tableau) might be handled differently.

What are the resources and where are they?
Do the roles provide resources, or simply modify them?
What is being built and how does that infrastructure contribute to resources?

Empires wrote:
I thought a good theme would be Ancient China, and definitely want to have role selection (like in San Juan/Puerto Rico).

What do you think about a semi-cooperative game that models monument building in medieval china rather than the Warring States period? I have been working on a game called Beijing for a few months now which I think might actually work much better using this resource rubric than the one that I'm currently using. But it would not be states fighting as much as prestigious families seeking to curry favor with the emperor competing to improve the capital city. So, it would need some adaptation (especially if it is to be different enough from San Juan). I have some ideas about how to bridge the gap which I'd love to share if working together on a more economic (less warrish) theme sounds interesting to you.

Pastor_Mora
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Interesting

I'm very much a fan of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms setting, so your idea sounds very appealing to me.

In terms of mechanics, however, in a card game it may not be too simple to keep track of an action resolution from one turn to the next. I'm thinking two ways to address this:

- One would be to make the action resolution instant, but more powerfull with a more skilled character. For instance, you can produce +1 units (armies/resources/upgrades) for each skill level of the character that performs the action. So a character with a skill level of 2 can produce 2 units, while a character with a skill level of 3 can produce 3.

- The other would be to have a numbered arrow in each side of the character card (as a turn track) and rotate it 90 degrees per turn, so when the card is straighten up again, the action is completed. Having two characters with the same skill (say, building, or drilling, or whatever), the character with arrows in all sides of the card is less efficient, because it will take 4 turns for him to complete his action, whereas a character with arrows in the top and right sides only needs just 2 turns to complete the assignment.

My 2 cents. Keep thinking!

Empires
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Wow, thanks everyone!

I hadn't gotten any reception, so I was thinking of closing it down, but thanks.

To feNix's reply, I wanted roles that would represent what the Emperor would like to happen to take over warring provinces (etc. this is for thematics). The officers I had thought about you would have to have an officer available to perform a role, and you must apply his stats to it. I have thought about roles and have come up with these below. By the way, if you have played Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI, alot of the ideas will come from this. It is basically RTK card game. I wanted to keep the officers shuffled aside and players can recruit them later, but roles are separate.

To rcjames14, I definitely want to make it a military Three Kingdoms period game. The reasoning is that I find this more fun (IMO) and an economic game is too similar to San Juan or In the Year of the Dragon. The tableau will have all the cards laid out Dominion style, except for events, officers, and target cities which are random decks. As much as I like your idea, I don't really want to base it around that. Thanks for the suggestion. AS for what it follows most, I personally think this is going to develop into something different than all of these games

To Pastor_Mora, your first idea is what I was more going for, as you will see below in the roles. Each character will have special abilities later, but I want to keep it simple right now. I like RTK very much as well, thanks! I don't really understand what the second idea is saying, but I wanted better or worse stats to contribute as to how long something takes or how much it costs to play a role.

8 Roles

Develop(POLitics)- Build a building. Pay for the gold, place listed amount of turns for the card. You must add the stats in, so if your POL is -1, then you have to add an extra turn to build it. Privilege- reduce cost by POL
officers must stay assigned to this until the building is done so they do not refresh at the beginning of the round.

Merchant (POL)- Trade Food for Gold or Gold for food on a 2:1 ratio. Receive additional of your choice based on POL. once again, if it is negative, you get less. Privilege: 1:1 ratio

Recruit (WAR)- Recruit 1000 troops+1000 for each Barracks and point of WAR you have Privilege: Received troops are doubled. Must have a Barracks. Negative WAR decreases troops gained

Drill:(WAR)- Each group of troops you have has 1 Will equal to the amount of troops (No Will when recruited) So for example: 3000 troops could have a max of 3 Will. Troops are placed into groups when you recruit them. Will can be spent in battles for special abilities, such as a unit armed with crossbows could perform Incinerate for 2 Will, which could do 1000 damage now and 1000 damage next turn. Negative WAR decreases Will gained

Outfit:(INTellect)- Produce 1000 of one type of weapons for one gold each 1000: Spears, Pikes, Bows, or Horses if you have a Smith(S,P,B)or Stables(H) You get an additional +1000 for each Smith/Stables and INT point. A Smith is required to produce Pikes, Spears, or Bows, and Stables for Horses. Privilege: Produce an additional type, split however you wish. (Ex: 2000 Pikes and 1000 Spears, 4000 Horses and 2000 Bows, etc.) Negative Intellect decreases Armaments made.

Research(INT): Research a tech. Pay gold and it takes turns to research like a building. You can buy higher level techs if you have the prerequisites, but prerequisites are only in a chain, so no huge tree. For example- The Crossbow tech branch goes from Drill Bows---- to Counter Fire------ to Powerful Crossbows-----to Elite Bows (highest)
Privilege: techs cost less equal to INT. Negative increases time.

Inspections(LDRship): Gain 1 order in your city +LDR Privilege:Order doubled. Order is important. Low order causes officers to leave and Bandits to appear, while higher order increases harvests. At the end of the season, you get food and golds for markets and farms, but have to feed troops and pay officers. Also, your order decreases and can cause bad things to happen. An event card is also redrawn. The Emperor(first-player card) is passed and unattached officers refresh, and role selection starts. After all players have picked a role, gold coins are added and target cities can be attacked (or you can attack other players).

Search (LDR): Choose between gaining 1 gold or paying 4 gold to draw an officer. Privilege: Gain 3 gold, Pay 2 to draw 2 pick 1 officer. Add 1 gold each or subtract one recruit cost each for LDR points. Negatives cause more expensive recruits or less gold.

Whew. I also want to go over what I was thinking for combat. Soldier groups must be paired with an officer to attack a city (or player). A group can arm themselves with weapons, but the group size can then only be matched on a 1 for 1 basis with weapons. For example: 1 group of troops contains 5000 troops. I would like to arm them with crossbows, but I only have 2000 Bows. Therefore, my group size can only be 2000 troops. You can also choose not to arm them (they just have swords, but base troop stats are bad. The stats are ATK, DEF, RNG, MOV.
ATK: Attack is paired up against DEF to determine how much damage is dealt.
DEF: defense is same
RNG: range is how far a unit can attack. All have 1 except for Bows which have 2. Enemy cannot attack back, even with Bows (until tech is researched)
MOV: move is how many spaces the unit can move. Most have 1, horses have 2.

1000 Troops with just swords have ATK1 DEF1 RNG1 MOV1
Each +1000 adds +1 ATK +1 DEF (cumulative)
Weapons just add a bonus (not cumulative)
Spears adds +2ATK (+3 vs Horses) +1 DEF (+2 vs Horses)
Pikes add +1 ATK (+2 vs Spears) +2 DEF (+3 vs Spears)
Bows add +1 ATK +1 DEF +1 RNG
Horses add +1 ATK (+2 vs. Pikes) +1 DEF(+2 vs Pikes) +1 MOV
Each point of WAR the commanding officer has adds +1 ATK
Each point of LDR the commanding officer has adds +1 DEF

For example: 5000 troops with Spears with an officer that has 1 WAR and 0 LDR vs.
6000 troops with Pikes with an officer that has 2 WAR and -2LDR

The total would be 8 ATK 6 DEF (Spears: 5 for the troops, 2 for the Spears, 1 for the WAR DEF:5 for the troops, 1 for the Spears)
to 10 ATK 7 DEF (Pikes: 6 for the troops, 2 for the Pikes, 2 for the WAR DEF: 6 for the troops, 3 for the Pikes, -2 for the LDR.)
The result is that the Spear group would take 4000 casualties (10 ATK-6 DEF) and be left with 1000 troops, while the Pike group would take 1000 casualties (8 ATK-7 DEF) and be left with 5000 troops.

If both players are unable to do any damage to each other, both players take 1000 casualties.

Of course, special abilities and tactics using Will weren't included, but I 'm sure you get the picture. The combat isn't as hard as it looks, just spelling everything out wit lots of numbers makes it look terrible.

I will go ahead and stop here, tell me what you guys think!

larienna
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It's seems I am not the only

It's seems I am not the only one who had ideas for a R3K board game. I am currently playing R3K6 and I seem to have a semi working game on my head. I am currently writing a draft of the mechanics but they are not finished yet. The page can be found here, who knows I might finish by the time you read this.

http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/index.php?n=GameIdea.GameIdea-ThreeKingdoms

I do not intend to make a card game like San Juan, but the game I idea I have has a lot of cards in it, so it might give you a few ideas.

Pastor_Mora
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The 1 Ton. Pocket Card Game ;)

Last time I've checked, San Juan consisted on little over 100 cards (two regular decks), but what you are looking at here is nowhere near that, even if you are thinking of just a 2-player game. Plus, I can envision a lot of tokens to keep track of troops and weapons of different kinds.

I clearly see ROTK XI pictured in your mind, since you are almost fully replicating the actions (and techs) the videogame has to offer, but sincerely I see this as a recipe for disaster. As it is, this game will not even be close to being quick or compact.

My advice would be to focus on what mechanics you are after. The role selection presented (as I understood it) is far from the variable phase order dynamic in San Juan / Race. It seems to me that you'll benefit more from an action-point allowance system (Tikal), that in fact is what ROTK XI uses. That will lead away from a quick game, but closer to the description you just gave of your idea.

And yes, like Eric and many others, I've also designed a R3K game (Risk-style ROTK XI boardgame version) a couple of years ago, but Koei didn't fancy it. It practically took me a whole year to finish it. Then a Chinese publisher approached me with an idea for a retheming of Runewars to the R3K setting. That's where I drew the line. The R3K plot is so rich that it can very easily become overwhelming (plus, I sensed a pirate version incoming and not much that I could benefit from my work).

Final and most important advice: Keep it simple.

Empires
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Lets cut out the quick and the compact.

To larienna: I looked at your idea, and it seemed very interesting. I did'nt realize so many other people had R3K ideas.

To Pastor_Mora: Well, we are going to get rid of the quick and the compact. I am thinking more Dominion size, with a simple board to designate players armies and object cities. I know what I want to do, I just can't put it into words all that much. I'm a terrible orator. I don't think it will be as many cards as you are saying: it most likely will be:
-30ish officers
-8 roles
-20ish events
-20ish victory cities
-buildings and techs to buy in the tableau: probably 5-10 per type(7 buildings, 6 techs) depending on how expensive they are, so maybe 200?
-troops and weapons will just be in basic storage piles(cards)
- each player will have placeholder cards that represent where armies on the board correspond to what group of soldiers.

What do you mean by "recipe for disaster?" :D
I actually didn't want to use the Action Point system. One of my main goals was to not use that and do a role selection game. At this point, I am not looking for a quick game, but more of a Three Kingdoms strategy game based with cards. I'm sorry if what I was thinking of isn't anything like what anyone else thought, but it was what I was trying to go for. Maybe when I have some actual components down and starting to get the game played I will see what my problem is. Thanks again everyone.

larienna
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Converting Rune Wars to R3K

Converting Rune Wars to R3K is actually an insult to R3K. Rune wars does not even have 1/10th of the R3K content. In fact FFG has a lot to learn from turn based video games.

Empires
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I have never played Runewars

I have never played Runewars, but I love FFG's games. Isn't it like fantasy TI3? True, R3K has tons of depth. Where did this part about Runewars come in though?

larienna
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Rune wars is the successor

Rune wars is the successor of battlemist which has been inspired by the old twilight imperium. Besides the fact that there is combat, I really is no relation with r3K. Second, in runewars, there is way less cities than in R3K. There is even less hex than the number of cities in r3K. So I really don't see how it could be converted unless you represent only a portion of china. But then, it won't be fun.

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