Board Game Designers Forum

The goal of City States game is to lead your kingdom, or more likely yourself to glory. Glory is measured by VP (I figure you all know what that is), VP is obtained by trading "craft" with other Kingdoms, each kingdom generates its own kind of craft:
* Blue: Blue craft,
* Green: Green craft, etc
(Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green are the available kingdoms).

It not that simple though, Each kind of craft means something different to each empire, Example: For Green, Blue craft could make naval units, while for Blue, Green craft gets them 1 VP. Yet again there is another layer of complexity, each Kingdom is run by politicians, they bid influence points to control their Kingdom for a round (Each round consists of each Kingdom either producing or maneuvering, I will get back to those things soon). Influence point are gained by feeding your cities when it is your turn, and 10 per round for each politician anyway, food is earned by producing via farms. Influence points can also buy national identity cards which further the politician it belongs to.

Before each round politicians bid on control of their kingdom, if their is a tie, the players who tie bid again, if it goes on until they both run out then the kingdom does not go that round.

On the kingdoms turn (Which is decided by means of passing a card that shows who starts, in the beginning it is given to anyone by the barbarian player, if there is no barbarian player find some other way, the card gets passed around counter-clock wise throughout the game, the order of turns goes counter-clock wise starting at the kingdom with the starting kingdom card) it can either maneuver or produce, maneuvering makes it so that all units can move 1 hex, or on roads which will be explained later, and once every unit has moved it must be supplied with 1 food, any one that is not supplied will die (Decide), producing makes it so that each city produces its craft and farms their food, then units can interact (On either a producing or maneuvering phase) with other units or cities or whatever. Any unit adjacent to another can either be contacted (or traded with) or attacked (Attacking is easy one for one, 1 unit for 1 unit, 1 unit for capturing a city (Has to be on top of it), 1 unit for destroying something (Has to be on top of it)), trading is easy, you may trade anything within your power besides influence points because those are your influence upon your people, craft and food.

Next is building, building costs are: (City: 1 of each kind of craft, unit: 1 of your own craft only built upon cities and since only 1 unit per hex, only 1 unit per city, Road: 1 of your won craft (If a unit is maneuvering and it comes into contact with a road it gets plus 1 movement, so chains of roads are instantly traveled), Bridge: 3 of your own craft (Acts like a road but can only be built on water, blocks movement of ships, can be connected to roads), Farm: 1 of your own craft (Makes one food on the produce phase, the actual farms and roads are neutral, but if a farm is connected to another which in turn is connected to a city then the kingdoms city gets those resources, a unit on an unclaimed patch of farms gets all of the food produced by those farms, if a city is involved and there is a unit the city trumps the unit but if the unit is on top of a farm, it gets that 1 food produced by that 1 farm, a metropolis trumps a city, and since a city cannot be on a hex occupied by a farm or road- but we will get to the metropolis. Cities can be build on any hex that is not occupied by a road or farm, but with all other buildings- MUST have a unit on the hex you are going to build on, a city costs 1 of each kind of available craft or 8 of your own. Naval units are most likely going to be created by another kingdom's craft but that is yet to be decided.

Finally the last stage consists of upgrading cities and buying influence points/national identity cards. To upgrade a city to metropolis (which means it produces 2 craft instead of 1) you must spend 3 of any 1 kind of craft that isn't your own. 1 food=1 influence point, buy up! Then feeding cities-1 per city, 3 per metropolis NOTICE: this is after maneuver and buying influence points. Lastly any influence point you want to be spent can be used to buy national identity cards (I know I just can't get enough of 'em).

IDEAS FOR NAT IDEN CARDS:

• Irrigation, increase food production
• Sailing, increase ship movement
• Professional soldiers, increased military effectiveness

Nat Iden cards are put into a deck and shuffled and 5 are out at any given time, until they run out...

New players can join just by becoming a politician in any kingdom they choose for each round that has gone by they get +12 influence points, example: A player joins blue kingdom after 5 turns of play (Must join only at very start of round) he/she gets 60 influence points.

BARBARIANS!!!!! Barbarians are controlled by a player, they start out with a camp which acts a moving city that doesn't generate craft, it trumps units but not cities and here's the catch, to create a unit the camp needs 2 food, the camp does not need food every turn and units do not need food when they maneuver, but they cannot build, and there can only be one barbarian!