I know The the civ genre has been done before, but I got an idea and I wanted to throw it out there to see what people thought... if it sounds fun... etc.
The game takes place on a board. There is a central area on the board which consists of a 10x10 grid of 1.5" spaces. Around the edge of the this central area is a monopoly-esque track, but the spaces are empty. Players will build the "track" themselves using a deck of cards and their hand of cards, and move along that track (no dice, players choose which space as long as its not occupied and they're moving forward) with a action pawn.
Players start with 4 cards in their hand, and one village on the board, in their corner, as well as one warband, or army.
On your turn, you may play a card onto an empty space, then move onto it, or move onto an existing card that is vacated and take the action listed on the card.
The corners of the track are for picking up more cards, or discarding cards you don't want, or replacing existing cards on the track if the next segment of the track is full.
So as you move around the edge of the board, the track fills up with cards as the game goes along and more actions become available to players.
The center of the board is a randomly generated landscape that is revealed as you explore it. As you move your warbands, you draw and place tiles on the board. If you encounter water, you have to go back to the previous space.
Certain cards will allow you to gather resources from terrain surrounding tribes you've established. With those resources you can raise more warbands, establish more tribes, and upgrade your warbands for combat with other players.
There will be different goals you can pursue to end the game.
- Victory by renown (game ends when all renown tokens are taken)
- Victory by annihilation.
- Victory by placing all tribes on the board and all tribes surviving until your next turn
That's the basic description of the game, hopefully it makes sense. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Seems like you'd need some constraint (like a cost or ability) to limit the outer track movement.
Beyond that, I think it would be crucial to make the two layers cohesive. As a mechanical concept, it certainly would be the sort of game I'd look forward to playing.
Any chance of finding a theme that achieves all that, but is startlingly fresh for the civ/4x genre?
The current constraint is that player must stop on the corner spaces. Then on their NEXT turn they can move ahead again. Players are constantly leapfrogging each other as you can only move one card ahead on your turn.
Once you've landed on a corner, that's your move for that turn. So you're essentially using a whole turn just to move to the next corner. However, if there a play you really want to do on the next segment, you can skip all the way to the next corner if you like, that way you get the first pick of the next segment, since players are not allowed to occupy the same cards.
Before you move off a corner, you're allowed to pick up and place a card on the next segment, or pick up and discard a card, then move onto a vacated card.
I was trying to think of a different theme for the game, but so far haven't come up with anything. I've already playtested it once with a friend, and it worked fairly well and was fun. Hopefully that in of itself is ok for now. A possible re-theming is always there though if I find something else that would work.