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Using bidding for combat resolution

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larienna
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In one of my game, the players are allowed to attack each other by using influence instead of using troops. Right now, military combat are resolved with dices. I was thinking of doing the same with influence but cannot find way to do it.

The consequences of influence attack is that the defender must retreat and the attacker capture the city. No troops are lost on both side.

I was thinking that I could use a bidding mechanic to resolve these influence battles. I am not a big fan of bidding and auction so I am not sure if it's a good solution. There is also various variation to this mechanic like open bid, closed bid, etc.

The way it works is that probably each player would have an influence level which can range from 0 to 10. Player can increase their level during the game. So far I have 2 solutions:

A- Each player place a close bid up to their influence level, highest wins. ( problem, hard to evaluate the value of a bid)

B-Both players open bid after one another until somebody wins.

Result a: Both players lose their bid.
Result B: the attacker lose his bid.

I was also thinking that attacking by influence makes the defender lose only 1 unit, the rest retreat. It would prevent the defender from getting back in force.

Any comments?

Gogolski
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larienna wrote:... A- Each

larienna wrote:
...
A- Each player place a close bid up to their influence level, highest wins. ( problem, hard to evaluate the value of a bid)

Result a: Both players lose their bid.
...


I had a combat resolution like this for a space race game. It worked, but I thought it was a bit fiddly...
Players had small and big missiles on their ship, one player announces an attack.
Players take the attack- or defend-tokens and secretly select what they were going to fire to the other player.
Players reveal the tokens simultaneously and battle is resolved.
(The good thing about this is that the defending player could score a hit on the attacker.)

larienna wrote:
...
B-Both players open bid after one another until somebody wins.

Result B: the attacker lose his bid.
...


I think that should be "the winner" looses his bid. (Otherwise, it would be a nobrainer for the defender to bid all he got...)

larienna wrote:
...
I was also thinking that attacking by influence makes the defender lose only 1 unit, the rest retreat. It would prevent the defender from getting back in force.

I can't really comment on that, because I don't know how the value of influence compares to that of units, but it might just be the best solution if players have a different resource/commodity to loose.

kungfugeek
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Probably not bidding per se...

but what if the player's had a hand of influence cards, one card for each point of influence they have. And these cards interact in a rock-paper-scissors kind of way, but with probably 5 options instead of only 3. To make an influence attack, the attacker plays one of his influence cards. Then the defender has to play an influence card that counters the attacker's card. They go back and forth like this until one of them can't play anymore. They both lose the cards they played. For thematic reasons, the cards could be labeled things like Charisma, Leadership, Vision, Connections, Resources, etc.

It has the same back-and-forth feeling of a bid, but the outcome is less certain. The player with most cards might not win if he has too many duplicates, so they won't be able to be certain of victory just by outbidding the other player. But I don't know if that's something you want in your game or not.

Blake
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Diceless combat....

I've been more than a little drawn to two geeklists over at BGG that I think you might find useful.

DICELESS COMBAT MECHANISMS:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/5989

DICELESS COMBAT RESOLUTION SYSTEMS (AND DO THEY WORK?):
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/20206

Dune is on both lists, and appears to use a very interesting bidding mechanic to at least in part resolve combat. I also think Friedrich looks incredible (it uses a kind of "bidding" with cards). I think I'd just butcher any descriptions of these games so I've just left the links to where other people have already done a good job in describing how they work.

apeloverage
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Joined: 08/01/2008
this one looks interesting:

"When each character clashes against each other, the winner is determined by adding the number on each piece to the value of a card. Each player secretly selects which card they want to play, then reveal simultaneously. These cards are discarded and out of play until you use up your whole hand (9 cards), so saving important cards for later matchups is important.
The Light side also has a 'Noble Sacrifice' card which kills both characters in the fight, while Dark has an 'Eye of Sauron' card which cancels out the Noble Sacrifice. Some fights are bluff and guess work to play Eye of Sauron when they play Noble Sacrifice, or a higher number than them if you think they'll go for a number too."

There are any number of special cards you could add onto this system: cards that cause a siege rather than an immediate resolution of the battle, cards that cause the value of the other card to be ignored, cards that cause a bloodless retreat or the opposite...

larienna
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I do not want to use cards

first of all

Quote:
I think that should be "the winner" looses his bid. (Otherwise, it would be a nobrainer for the defender to bid all he got...)

That's exactly what I wanted, I just typed it wrong.

I don't want to use cards. I already used cards and it did not worked specifically for my game. Its afterward I realized that an open bid system is like a simplified card bidding system. It has the same mind games behind it.

Thank for the geeklist links, I am surprised that I already played that much games in these list: Lord of the rings (I own the game), games of thrones, vinci (that was really nice), dungeon quest, dune, condotierre, cosmic encounter, magic.

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