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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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Currency and how the 'building' bit of the game works.
At this stage I'm still throwing around ideas and I don't have a fully working model, but I'm not too concerned that's how my designs evolve, I have some ideas, add some more and more and more, then try to make something structured out of it. Then distill things down cutting things out until the cut makes things worse.
So 'currency' - by this I mean how you 'buy' cards to add to your deck, although I'm also thinking about other currency in the game too.
I've decided I want a fairly easy setup/tear down - so having a set of cards you randomise each game from a large pool is not what I want. Rather I'd want all the cards to be used with 4 players, and remove some (at random) for less players. Also as each player has their own deck I don't want to make cards cost discarding cards to play either, as tracking that is going to be difficult with 4 players (of course its much better if all players play by the rules and don't need to be reminded, but there's no point in designing a game with mechanics that easily allow someone to 'cheat').
So where does this leave me? I've decided to go with no direct costs for any cards at all - and instead use the cards themselves to get more cards into your deck. I've already settled on an 'explore' deck, so now I have the action cards, technology cards and achievement (scoring) cards in another deck. But as I want to have a Barbarian phase and an Empire Phase I've split them into 2 types "Barbarian" and "Empire", so there are 3 common draw decks and then each player has their own deck to which these common cards are added as the game goes on.
So how do you get explore cards - well mostly you won't. The explore deck I want to represent you scouting/exploring finding stuff and hopefully land to add to your empire. So it will have events/obstacles for you to overcome and then area cards that you can add to your deck. Once you draw an area card there will be an invade cost to then put it into play (now part of your kingdom/Empire) and a bonus for doing it.
So to draw these explore cards there needs to be a basic action card in everyone's starting deck called Explore. Play it to flip cards from the Explore deck until you either find an area or reach an obstacle you can't (or won't) overcome.
What about the Barbarian and Empire cards - again another basic action card (called Advance) will add a card from one of these to your deck (if you are a Barbarian then it's a Barbarian card, if you are an Empire then it's an Empire card).
So now I have 2 basic cards, but that hardly makes a viable deck. I've decided I don't want multiple cards of each type, rather have a variety of options for the players each turn (you'll play some cards and then discard the rest, refreshing your hand each turn).
These cards (and associated actions) represent the direction you as the leader are taking for your people this turn (so Explore means the Kingdom is putting effort and resources into exploring new areas rather than doing something else).
Should these cards just be played and do the action or does there need to be a 'cost'? From a theme point of view I want your kingdom/empire to have a population and a standing army, so that needs representing and also how 'rich' you are in either gold or raw materials etc. And rather than just have these as stuff to collect actually have them used in the play of cards.
So for example to 'invade' an area you'll need to commit (and spend) some military - representing men killed and also a garrison to keep control, protect the area etc. But different areas will have different invade requirements.
Rather than have multiple resources (such as I used in Omega Centauri) I'm just going to have generic 'resources' which will represent gold, grain, cloth etc.
I'm also going to have basic actions that don't require cards - so if you have a hand of chaff (or rather nothing that is situationally useful now) you don't just do nothing, ditch your hand and draw and hope the next one is better. Instead there will be a set of actions that are generally useful most of the time - but if you have a suitable card then it's likely playing the card will be better.
Next on the list is how to move from a Barbarian to an Empire - is it an action card with a high cost you have to save up for? Or just based on turns, or a progress mechanic like in Civilization where you advance each turn if you've met the requirements.
More on that next time ... Stage 5
Or look back at Stage 3
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Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
