I am trying to design a system where all the actions of the players are taken simultaneously. Some actions does not create any problems but others could create conflicts. My basic idea is that a player can perform any action within it's range of influence that is determined by the cities and heroes. All the hexes surrounding them are part of the player's influence range. But even with a system like this, the influence range of players can overlap, so 2 players could perform actions on a target which are inside both players area of influence.
One solution I found is that I could give a unique value to each city and hero token. The token with the highest value would always have priority. So for example, if 2 cities control the same area, the city with the highest value have access to that shared hex. Heroes always have higher values than cities. So in the previous example, the player would have to mobilise a hero in the area to temporarily gain control of the hex. Else, it can always be possible to negotiate with other player to get access to the hex.
First I though that this mechanic would be hard to apply, but since the priority value could be placed directely on the city/hero token, it would be easier to compare since the values would be side by side.
What do you think?
Here is the latest picture of the prototype I made.
http://bgd.lariennalibrary.com/uploads/Mainsite/GameIdea/GameIdea2010032...
Simple, I have a city with 12 your city has 18. you have priority. If I place my hero with value 32, he has priority.
Yes and no, let just say that the values would have been distributed evenly between players. So All players would have weak and strong values.
I am not sure yet. Maybe around 8-12 per player, and 4-7 per NPC. Great total of 48-95 cities on the whole board. Each player will have between 5-8 heroes in average. Consider that all cities/heroes have only an influence range of 1 hex. So a target hex can be overlapped by at most 7 units.
Another idea that I just had is that overlapping cities hexes could be locked. But if you move a hero in the area, the hero has priority over the cities. But If there is 2 hero then the hex is locked again. I could also use fleets and make sure it's the number of items that has priority (ex: a player with a hero, city and fleet has priority orver a player with a city and a hero)
The first part of the turn is the "Individual actions" where players move their heroes to increase their influence range. It's during this phase that players not happy of the unit placement could decide to engage the enemy in battle to gain control of certain areas.
When the influence range of the players has been resolved, the players can now simultaneously perform a series of actions in a certain order all at the same time. Some actions has no impact on other players (ex: grow a city) while some actions could have an impact (ex: colonize). But since the target hex to colonize must be inside a player's range of influence, then there is no conflicts.
Right now, cities cannot touch each other. I intended to use the overlapping mechanic to determine what can be attacked by a player. Still attacks are managed in a difference phase because they actually change the area of control. Area of control also made sure that there can only have 1 unit in each hex, so no stacking is actually possible.
(^_^). Unfortunately, there would be too much overlapping situation, having a mini auction would take too much time.
This is actually a good idea.
There is too many action to actually have action tokens like in games of throne or starcraft.
-------------------------------------
Right now, I think that counting the quantity of tokens around an area would be much more easier to implements. Ties are still possible, maybe another mechanic could become a tie breaker.