Side Project: Pillars of Civilization (52 standard deck game)

I like the idea, but I think the tricky part would be to make the cards meaningful without requiring excessive reference to a player aid (which would end up with me feeling "Why don't I just have a custom set of cards printed?").

How do you imagine card face values coming into play? For example, is the Ace (or King?) of Spades always the most powerful military card, and what can I do with it that I can't with the 4 of Spades? If higher values are always better is there a way to balance luck to the draw?

You could perhaps do something like Lost Cities where cards have to be played in sets of ascending/descending order so the highest card isn't the "strongest" and might actually be the worst card for you to play, depending on the rest of your set.

One idea for "locking" cards might be that this is "Writing history": at the end of the game, reveal all such cards and the players who wrote the most history in each suit get a bonus to their scoring for that suit (e.g. the most Culture history doubles their Culture points, but by playing Culture cards face down as history, you are reducing your chance to score that way at all, so you have to balance it).

Interesting premise. I look forward to seeing what you do with it.

How come you selected Spade for Military? I would have thought Club, a weapon, would be a good Military. Similarly, Spade, a tool for building, could be good for Gv't. Just a thought.

Hrm. Seeing this example changes my sense of the game a bit -- I did not realize it was a trick-taking game. I guess I thought the player interaction would be less direct, focused mostly on the end scoring accounting.

I get what you're saying about spades and clubs. Looking at the Wikipedia entry about card suits, it appears that etymologically, you're on safe ground calling spades *spears*. The Spanish and French and histories of those cards had weapons in that category, though the club was also there as a mallet or a cudgel.

Here's some thoughts to add some depth to the choice of cards: maybe higher cards are always stronger, but there is a downside to being the leader in each suit. There could be an array of cards face up that can be taken and added to your civilization, but you're wary of taking one that's too high (and, in thematic terms, "overextending" your civ and leaving it vulnerable).

So the highest military card makes you the military leader with some advantage for being so (military cards played in attack are +1 value?), but it also means your civ is currently the most "aggressive" and therefore liable to being attacked by other tribes that you've made angry with your imperialism (think the fall of Rome). So I could take that King of Spades at the start of the game but I'll spend the whole game getting attacked by barbarians as the cost of it. Perhaps the player with the lowest military gets to make a "free" attack with barbarian forces by drawing a card from the deck at random and using that against you.

The highest government card would also have an advantage (managing your hand? building?) but would also mean the most corruption due to a sprawling bureaucracy. Maybe the player with the lowest government/least corruption nominates one of your face-up cards each turn and you draw a card from the deck; if the card is lower than the one that was nominated you lose that card, or lose your highest government card perhaps.

The highest economy card could work by allowing more cards to choose from, having a larger hand size, making cards 1 point "cheaper" to build (maybe if you have to discard cards to pay for building). But your conspicuous wealth attracts pirates and you lose a card at random from your hand every turn (which might not be terrible, but might be a King you've been saving for the right moment).

The highest culture would attract immigrants to your civ, allowing trade of low value cards for high value perhaps, but a bigger population means a bigger criminal element meaning you have to pay a militia by discarding cards at the end of your turn or lose a card from your face-down collection as the criminals steal priceless relics of the past (i.e. your "history" as I talked about in my earlier post).

I hope some of this is of use to you! I wonder whether it could be played across a few hands, with your civ's progress in each "Age" (hand) being noted on some sort of score sheet? Having printed sheets (something like Roll Through The Ages) to record achievements on might offset the abstract nature of the cards themselves.

The idea for playing several Ages was partly spurred by the idea of there only being one deck, and the cards running out quickly (particularly with more players). By having a scoresheet to track progress, you might not need differentiated card backs because you could note on the score sheet who did what.

As for the other ideas, I was thinking more of the cards being lodged rather than locked, so that everyone can see who the leader is in each suit. If you currently lead military with a 6 of Spades I could play safe by lodging a 5 of spades (I'd be slightly weaker than you, but not have to deal with barbarians) or I can take the lead with a 7 for the bonus.

Your idea for locked cards could work alongside that, of course, and creates more interaction. Perhaps military actions target lodged cards and culture actions target locked ones?