I am working on a game and thinking to convert it into an area of majority game with around 8 large territories instead of 45 small territories. The game detail so far can be see here:
http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/index.php?n=GameIdea.GameIdea-WrathDarkPr...
For example, I want the game visually to look to something like this:
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/2402939/eight-minute-empire-legends
Players will control various generals that comes with their set of units in their army. As for example, I am currently using:
Medusa: Minotaurs, Harpies, Chimera + Hydra
Lucifer: Imps, Cerberus, Demons + Behemoth
Loki: Fenris Wolf, Valkyrie, Giants + Nidhogr
Dr Frankenstein: Flesh Golem, Puppets, Automated Armor + Colossus
So thematically, I want the various units of each general to be present in the game. But so far, the only way those units can influence the game is by giving them combat stats and using them during combat resolution.
But lately, I have been interested in using more simple combat system that requires little combat stats. Which gives me no possible permutation of unit stats, so all armies would look alike mechanically.
So instead of complexifying combat, I want to justify the presence of various units type, so I wanted to find other ways they could influence the outcome of the game.
Another approach could be to give global stats to the general's army like : Attack, defense, mobility, intelligence. But the problem with that, is that the various minions theme does not appear in the mechanics.
So I am posting this thread to brain storm a bit how a variety of unit minions could influence the game besides combat. So far there is no restriction to the components that can be used besides the fact that it must not take too much space and that there will be at least 8 generals, so any unique components will be multiplied by 8.
So for example, it could be an board with list of units and cubes on it. I could be action cards that uses those units, or simply unit cards like in rune age:
https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/972509/rune-age
But a rune age deck building mechanism would not work as it would take way too many cards.
If you have any suggestions or know any other game that could potentially solve this, let me know.
I want to use dice for combat resolution possibly the roll 3 dice system explained in another thread. Still I had an idea to use cards in another way. Here is the answer I left on Board Game Geek
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Maybe I missexplained something, armies on the board appears ONLY as a generic amount of cubes. So a territory could have 5 of your cubes, but they do not represent any units in particular. This is why I don't have that many options. The only exception is the General's pawn and the Great Beast pawn which are unique units with a marker of their own. Else, battles are just X cubes vs Y cubes.
I was thinking something like that. First, each general will chose on his turn one of the available Assignments (like puerto rico roles) that gives possibly a number of combat, movements and new units. I though that players could play an additional card from their hand that would give a +1 or +2 to combat, movement or new units plus a special effect for movement, combat and placement of new units. This would give a different gameplay to each general, and the card's name would reflect the various thematic elements of the game like for example "Imp Spies".
I could possibly only need 6 cards per general, for a total of 48 cards. You spend a resource to draw a card, but the resource pool is shared between players and you do not know what you will draw, so you are never sure if you should spend your resource to draw cards or let other generals draw cards.
The card design of 8 minute empire is interesting, I might be looking for something similar.
The game is mostly a solitaire or cooperative game, so having hidden cards could be a way to draw a card and not look at it until your next turn (in solo mode). This way, you cannot plan too much in advance.