Was it ever decided/fixed or whatever about universal factories?  I am wanting certain neutrals to start out at 1 army and increase by +1 per turn until a max of like 10-15 is reached.  Encouraging players to take them before they get too big.  I didnt want to limit the location when it was possessed by a player though.  Is there a certain combination that allows slow growth by neutrals up to a point of X?

I did a search on factories but couldn't determine the current status.  Sorry if this is clarified somewhere I haven't looked yet.

There's never been a setting or request to have a setting to maximise the factory size - the only way to do this is to set a territory maximum.

Universal Factories will support a 'Universal-N' configuration where Neutrals aren't added to - this is in the dev codebase which should go out this week.

I would have used what Severene is asking for on the Gunslinger board.  (To allow players to retake their lantern.)

He (I think) and I would also need a setting "factory add only if neutral" also.

Hmm so that sounds like an additional Factory setting - 'Neutrals Only'.

Much more important to me -- though perhaps related and maybe there's a way to combine -- I'm pretty sure I have asked for a button/box that makes it such that the factory that does NOT apply to neutrals.

How about all of the above?

Factory for players only.  Factory for neutrals only.  Factory for either.

Plus add a limit for the factory for either situation that is not dependent on the territory limit.

I had a thought for one board where neutral factories would rise rapidly then slowly degrade.  Sort of an ebb and flow kind of map where neutrals produced walls that slowly came down over time.  So imagine a factory that increased by 5 per turn until a max of 30 then reduced by 1 after reaching that limit.  Just a thought.  Im sure thats way too difficult to manipulate in comparison to the other changes requested.  Plus I really dont need that for the board Im currently working on.

BTW - Kudos Tom, Im loving all of the awesome options on the map designer.  Its making it really a lot of fun to create maps here.

Severene, I think what you want is doable (if a bit complicated) in the current system.  You would need some 'hidden' territories/factories that are used to control the other factories.  Ed had done something similar with territories/factories that act as turn counters, but I'm not 100% sure how it works.

Such things may be possible Ozy with hidden territories, but it would be much less complicated for designers and players to not use hidden territories.  I started trying to do that with the Gunslinger board and gave up

+1 to Severene's list.

Factory for players only.  Factory for neutrals only.  Factory for either.

Plus add a limit for the factory for either situation that is not dependent on the territory limit.

Also -

One more issue that Sev would have, that I wouldn't have for Gunslinger since it is 2 player, is when/how to factory bonus gets applied.  If he wants to add  1/turn to a neutral then what triggers adding that +1?  It can't be the territory itself since it is neutral and neutral never gets a turn - so it would have to be another territory, but then who owns that?   (and what if it was unowned because of a boot)

This would call for (I think) some sort of turn counter, where actions happen on a new turn.

Such things could be "programmed" with hidden territories like Ozy said, but then capitals have to be used in order for eliminations to happen, and (if capitals are in use) then random territories can't happen.

Maybe add a counter after the last player takes their turn for neutrals to take a turn and just do nothing except build up troops on factories or whatever.

Im not really understanding using hidden territories with factories.  Does somebody have an example?

I thought Edward Nygma had a map with hills where the game winning capital moved from hill to hill or something like that, but now I can't find it, so maybe it had problems.

There are definitely limitations and confusions, but let me try and give a "simple" example of how this might work.

Lets say you have territories called: Wall, Up1, Up2, Up3, Down1, Down2, Down3.

We are setting up a wall that rises for 3 turns, and falls for 3.  Where the rising and falling takes place at the beginning of the 1st players turn.  You can have the Up/Down territories visible to players, or try to hide them behind an opaque board image.  You might be able to position them off the map so they are completely invisible - I'm not sure if anyone has tried that.

To rotate through the positions, you create factories.  Up1Up2Plus, Up2Up3Plus, Up3Down1Plus, Down1Down2Plus, Down2Down3Plus, Down3Up1Plus.   And another set with Minus instead of plus.  In the initial setup, you start Up1 with 1 unit & the rest with 0 units.

Up1Up2Plus has the Up1 territory as its member, and grants +1 to the Up2 territory.  Up1Up2Minus has the Up1 territory as its, and grants -1 to the Up1 territory.   At the beginning of the first turn Up1 loses its unit and Up2 gains a unit.  You set up the rest of the factories similarly, and now you have a single unit that 'rotates' through the Up & Down territories, one at a time.

Now you add factories to actually affect the wall, for example a factory called Up1Wall, has the Up1 territory as a member and grants +N to the wall.  Similarly for the rest of the up territories, and the same thing but -N for the down territories.  On each turn depending on which up/down territory is active (i.e. has any units) the wall gains or loses units.

An obvious limitation as Amidon mentioned is that if player 1 is eliminated/booted the wall stops working.  Workarounds - make it a 2 player game or set up Up/Down territories for each player, dividing the N up between them so for example it goes up +1 at the beginning of each players turn for 3 turns, and then down 1 at the beginning of each players turn for the next 3 turns.  You could also do something where each player has their own wall and it is in front of their capital, so once a player is out, you don't care if their wall is going up & down anymore.

Another limitation - you have to use capitals, because the Up & Down territories will be unreachable by regular means and so it would be impossible to eliminate a player if you don't use capitals.

You can also set it such that every player-owned territory on the board is a +1 universal factory on the wall, and have a separate territory or territories that start neutral but once captured break the wall down with negative universal factory placement.