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Civilization Deck-Building Card Game

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Sun, 08/21/2011 - 19:43
Empires
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I would really like to make a Civilization building Deck-building card game, but I need a little help with mechanics.
I want to have a card type called Citizens that stay in front of you and add resources to your discard pile at the start of your turn. The resources are put back in the mains supply after they are spent. The main supply is called the market and contains new citizens, resources, buildings, and units.

The five types of citizens are:
Farmers- Farmers produce food and food is used to buy new citizens. New citizens cost 3 Food. You start with a farmer at the beginning of the game.
Workers- Workers produce Production. It is used to buy Buildings and units. Units are used to fight other players, and buildings give you bonuses and VPs at the end of the game.
Merchants- Merchants produce Gold which is used to buy other resources, buildings, and units outright without the regular resources. However, it costs more to do this than if you had got the citizens in the first place.
Scientists- Scientists produce Science which is used to buy technologies. I don't really know what to do with Technologies.
Artists- Artists produce Culture which buys Wonders which are like Green cards in Dominion. They don't do anything for you until the end of the game where they give you lots of VPS.

I also have no idea how to do combat with units.
Buildings can give you small bonuses like- Granary- If in your hand at the start of your turn, all of your Farmers produce an extra food. They also have small amount of VPS.

I don't know when the game should end, either.

To sum up what I need help with:
What Science an Techs should be used for
How Combat should work or if there should even be combat
How the Game should end

Any other ideas you guys have and your thoughts would be great!

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Sun, 08/21/2011 - 21:25
#1
questccg
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civ-TYPE vs civ-LIKE

Empires wrote:
To sum up what I need help with:
What Science an Techs should be used for
How Combat should work or if there should even be combat
How the Game should end.

Well if you are making a civ-TYPE game, I think the MOST important things is to focus on how it is going to be DIFFERENT from the original Civilization game.

I think many civ-LIKE games borrow similar elements for the original like multiple paths to victory (tech-tree, military, culture, population, diplomacy, etc.)

I have played the original so I am very aware about what is in the game. Being able to stay away from something similar might be difficult. But I think it can be acheived if you think up of a "theme" for your game. Your game can still be a civ-TYPE game WITHOUT it being a civ-LIKE game (different feel).

You could for example, pick ONE of the paths to victory and make it all about that.

For example: You are one of Leonardo Da Vinci's apprentices. You must help Leonardo unlock the secrets of life... And you can take the concept from there. This would be a "tech-tree" type of game in which players try to be the first player to acheive a specific goal. You can add elements such as the Illuminati and forms of spying and conspiracy among the different players.

That is just one example, but the "theme" could make for an interesting and very UNIQUE game experience. So my suggestion is to think up a theme based on the various paths to victory and build your game from there.

This will help you avoid making a game "too" similar to the original and help you come up with a concept that is fun.

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Sun, 08/21/2011 - 21:36
#2
questccg
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San Juan

questccg wrote:
This will help you avoid making a game "too" similar to the original and help you come up with a concept that is fun.

Take for example "San Juan" which is STRICTLY a card game. It is all about building building that give you access to resources or give you certain bonuses (during the game or at the end). It could be considered a civ-TYPE game without it "feeling" like civ-LIKE game. And it is a very unique game.

It is sort of a "lite" version of the board game called "Puerto Rico".

You can download and play a free version that is written in Java:

http://www.compoundeye.net/jsanjuan/screenshots.html

Good luck with your game, hope it is a success!

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Mon, 08/22/2011 - 04:32
#3
ilta
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Citizens:How easy is it to

Citizens:
How easy is it to shift citizens from one thing to another? Perhaps you might consider having a few slots for citizen cards rather than only one. That way you can pursue a straight-up cultural victory, or a military/economic victory, or a completely balanced approach, or whatever.

Techs:
It seems like techs might get played in front of you and offer permanent modifiers to make your citizens more efficient or effective. I would encourage you to check out "Innovation" for a fabulous and highly thematic way of making a game out of techs. Obviously you would need to be inspired by it rather than incorporate it into your game; if it were just one fifth of your game it would take forever!

Possibly you have a limited number of techs that are available to you at a time, with older techs getting replaced over the course of the game. You would also need to come up with a way for players to have purchasing access to only a limited number of era-appropriate techs at a time.

Combat:
I like combat. Obviously it should be about taking other players' stuff, or simply destroying it so they can't use it. It might be tied to techs, so that more powerful military options become available if you have techs X and Y on your board. Again, "Innovation" is a handy thing here; you can put the military options right on the techs if you don't want to create "army" cards.

Game End suggestions:
- When the final tech is drawn.
- When any player generates [some high number] of a resource on their turn.
- When a game-end card, previously shuffled into the bottom portion of a common deck, is revealed.
- When any of several high-level cards are activated.
- When a pool (or several pools) of resources is depleted.
- When a player believes he has a certain threshold number of VPs (and if he's wrong, he loses even if he has the most!)

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Mon, 08/22/2011 - 06:37
#4
Cogentesque
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I like the idea of the

I like the idea of the citizens - I have never played the Civilization card game (didn't know there was one actually) but if there was , I would agree with the others here that it would be very good to stay away from it, otherwise you will simply make a clone.

I think a better analogy is like dominion but with static cards. Eg: the market place has all standard cards in it, but whenever you "play" a civilian, they always stay on the table - thats cool. Of course then there are cards that effect differnetly depending on the type of X civilians or Y civilians and others that effect the opponent depending on how many (whatever type) civilians he has.

I don't like (personal preference) combat that ruins things. Combat systems that destroy stuff that you have spent a long time to create. The game then feels like it would never be the best: I will never be able to get 100 civilians and the best cards and the best "wonders" as I am always fighting a battle. It makes it seem a lot like a struggle. This is if you take things away that I have made. Now if you only "limit" things that I have made, I like that better. For example, you could do a "resource" thing similar to Magic the Gathering does mana. So farmer produces 1 "food" per turn it is in front of you. The food can only be used that turn then vanishes away, to be produced next turn again. If you have a special card: Bumper Crop - Farmers get an extra 2 resource this turn" then you would have 3 food, enabling you to buy a new type of villager say. But combat-wise I have a "Spearman" and every turn it stands out, it takes 1 food resource away from YOUR team. So you still have the farmer, but he is being battled by the enemies spearman, nullifying his standard "one resource / mana " per turn but allowing the "bumper crop" card to still activate. This way of course your enemy is focussed on taking you down, but wastes the fact that he could have had his own farmer instead of a spearman.

I really love the "win more" cards in Race for the Galaxy. This could apply here: so for example they would cost 10 "mana/resource" cards that say "Industrial Farming: at the end of the game, you get an extra VP point for every farmer civilan you have and 2 VP extra for every farming related technology you have" and of course "Militaristic State: You get an extra vp from every war-based unit on the field and every war-related building improvement" this gives players a goal to work towards "Right, this game I am going to try and be a development maker and hope to get the Development card!".

Artists: need a "place of work" like, an art-house / a town office / music school / theatre (whatever is appropriate for your theme) and then the building is also constant perhaps; "Artists may store there VP resource points in this building, all VP's on this card at the end of the game count towards your final score" or seomthing like that: enabling a civilian to store their resources. If that happens to be too unweighted and broken: then perhaps the artists have to make up there VP points - 1 point every 3 turns of play - so they would have to build up three thirds of a "Theatre piece" or a "Symphony" over the course of three turns, and the theatre piece/symphony would count for 1 vp each.

Winning: love the idea of a game end card, Literally pull it: "THE GAME HAS ENDED!" or "THE GAME ENDS WHEN THE FIRST PERSON BUILDS A NEW TECHNOLOGY" or somethign like that: similar to the helicopter evac card in the game Zombies!!!

You could even have a few different variant game cards to give the game a different campaign and increase replayablilty: "first person to acrue 10 civilians", "Game ends after 10 turns", "game ends once tech X and Y have been discovered" each of those would push people into a certain mind set and perhaps change the attitude they would approace the game with.

Sounds fun :)

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Mon, 08/22/2011 - 19:05
#5
Empires
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ilta wrote:Citizens: How easy

ilta wrote:
Citizens:
How easy is it to shift citizens from one thing to another? Perhaps you might consider having a few slots for citizen cards rather than only one. That way you can pursue a straight-up cultural victory, or a military/economic victory, or a completely balanced approach, or whatever.

I never had said there was only a slot for one citizen. You can have as many citizens as you want down in front of you. I have decided to change the citizens so that they are part of your deck and you produce the resources from your hand at the end of your turn instead.

Having Techs in front of you seems good. I would do that. As for combat, Mostly it would be about stealing resources from enemies discard pile and making players set aside citizens from their hand for a turn or so unless they have soldiers too.

For the game end, I think it should end after such and such buildings, wonders, or techs run out.

AS for the people that said it was a clone, I have never seen a Civilization-themed deck-building game and I thought that the deck-building idea was unique. Yes, it has some elements from the computer game, but it is not a copy from other card games out there. If it is, please point it out to me. And it will not be called Civilization.

Thank you Quest CCG, I actually own San Juan, and I see your reasoning behind what you have said about that being a deck-building card game.

Additional ideas are welcome!

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Thu, 08/25/2011 - 03:19
#6
feNix
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My two cents.

First off, as far as I know, there is no Civilization deck-building board game, is there? I think questccg was referring to the computer game, no?

Anyways...

I agree with ilta's comment about tech producing modifiers. I was also thinking that you could have some buildings that need a certain level of tech before they can be produced. If you have multiple units then maybe some units are only available after you reach a particular tech level.

Sort of like going from slinger to archer to rifleman.

Of course, going back to ilta's idea about the modifiers, the units could simply receive a "level" in their stats. Say, take 2 food away instead of 1.

As far as combat goes, while I don't go for it all that much, I'm not averse to having it. Oh, sure, I'll get as frustrated as the next guy when something that I had just built gets destroyed. Destruction isn't the only part of combat, tho. So, if you want to go the non-combat combat way, I guess you could just say that they're your conquered lands and the resources you take are taxes or something.

You could also have units capture opposing citizens, buildings and tech for your own use. Units be used for defense as well, I'm guessin'. So, if your opponent has the same number of units as you, you're not gonna be able to grab his brand new granary. Unless, perhaps, you've researched better weapon tech.

Are players going to have their own tableau where they can put citizens or will cards be put into a used pile once after a player's turn?

I'm a fan of various goals as well and like Cogentesque's idea. Perhaps you could have a small set of cards that the player picks at random listing the goal. This would, I believe, give your game more replayability as well.

I like the sound of your game and hope to see it finished. (Unlike mine. o.O)

Good luck and have fun, Empires!

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