ratsy wrote:

berickf wrote:

You know what that fog would be really good for, I mean of course it works for War with intelligence gathering and recon, etc... But what it would be really good for would be for a board which deals with the concept of exploring and opening up the new world.

Problem is, you play the board once, the world is explored. Although who's doing what with it can be a suprise still....  I am trying to make one of these are the moment.

I was thinking more in the lines of the Continents of North and South America would be held entirely by neutral and then there would be colonial landing points where each player would start out from.  Each player would then seek out bonus from neutral, and with this proposed fog, but also be conscientious that others are also expanding into the void.  Under expand and your bonus might be too small when the time comes for fighting your opponents, over expand and you might be too weak to fend off the more conservative player who has built up more troops.  So, it's not like you'd have explored it once and be done with it, because how each player expands and how they end up encountering each other would be a different experience every time around.  Could even implement European "capitals" which would only be accessible through their colonial landing points and supply lines for transporting troops from the capital, through the landing point(s) to facilitate exploration and, eventually, conflict as all attempt to compete to explore and conquer the new world... Something like that?

M57 wrote:

berickf wrote:

There is no hurry.  I still have to add my borders, define my continents and bonuses, set my neutral starting values for my cities... I still have a ways to go before I'm ready to bury a bunch of factory territories under the polar ice caps!

Nevertheless, it's probably not a bad idea to set up a dummy territory or two under the ice-caps with factories and view borders just to see if works the way you think it's going to work. (Besides, I'm curious).  If there's a hitch, we can start scheming up plan C, or if something is truly broken, you can give Tom some early warning, etc..

For the purposes of creating different play scenarios I was thinking that it would be good to complete the map with the normal borders only and then add the factory borders so that I would have two template designs to work from for the same map.  But, when this gets just a bit more completed I could still experiment with a couple, as you say, and then delete them and re-add them later.

berickf wrote:

M57 wrote:

berickf wrote:

There is no hurry.  I still have to add my borders, define my continents and bonuses, set my neutral starting values for my cities... I still have a ways to go before I'm ready to bury a bunch of factory territories under the polar ice caps!

Nevertheless, it's probably not a bad idea to set up a dummy territory or two under the ice-caps with factories and view borders just to see if works the way you think it's going to work. (Besides, I'm curious).  If there's a hitch, we can start scheming up plan C, or if something is truly broken, you can give Tom some early warning, etc..

For the purposes of creating different play scenarios I was thinking that it would be good to complete the map with the normal borders only and then add the factory borders so that I would have two template designs to work from for the same map.  But, when this gets just a bit more completed I could still experiment with a couple, as you say, and then delete them and re-add them later.

..or just create a different game scenario and name it "Delete Me."

berickf wrote:

I was thinking more in the lines of the Continents of North and South America would be held entirely by neutral and then there would be colonial landing points where each player would start out from.  Each player would then seek out bonus from neutral, and with this proposed fog, but also be conscientious that others are also expanding into the void.  Under expand and your bonus might be too small when the time comes for fighting your opponents, over expand and you might be too weak to fend off the more conservative player who has built up more troops.  So, it's not like you'd have explored it once and be done with it, because how each player expands and how they end up encountering each other would be a different experience every time around.  Could even implement European "capitals" which would only be accessible through their colonial landing points and supply lines for transporting troops from the capital, through the landing point(s) to facilitate exploration and, eventually, conflict as all attempt to compete to explore and conquer the new world... Something like that?

I have a number of differently-themed maps that use a similar mechanism. In Fall of Rome, barbarian players set out to conquer the largely neutral Roman Empire.  In War of the Roses (still in Dev), players race to gain control of the neutral "houses," which in turn will choose the New King.  And in New Earth, players vie for the fertile ocean fishing grounds ..which are guarded by those ferocious shark-like (but tasty) neutral fish, in order to feed the always hungry troops.

The common denominator with these boards is found in the 'neutral bashing' nature of their game-play, and the challenge for the designer is to make a game that straddles the balance between the need to grab the bonuses that are guarded by neutrals, and the desire to directly attack opponents.  Generally speaking - in order for the game to progress, the former tactic should be somewhat more advantageous.

As you know, (berickf and I have had this conversation before) This is not as hard as it may seem with 3+ player games. This is because when A attacks B, C gains the advantage, so players have more reason to consider going for the bonuses.  But these types of boards can be particularly tricky to balance with 2 player scenarios, where when A attacks neutrals he ends up doing all the heavy lifting, and B just marches through fields littered with corpses and attacks the weakened A.

berickf wrote:

I was thinking more in the lines of the Continents of North and South America would be held entirely by neutral and then there would be colonial landing points where each player would start out from.  Each player would then seek out bonus from neutral, and with this proposed fog, but also be conscientious that others are also expanding into the void.  Under expand and your bonus might be too small when the time comes for fighting your opponents, over expand and you might be too weak to fend off the more conservative player who has built up more troops.  So, it's not like you'd have explored it once and be done with it, because how each player expands and how they end up encountering each other would be a different experience every time around.  Could even implement European "capitals" which would only be accessible through their colonial landing points and supply lines for transporting troops from the capital, through the landing point(s) to facilitate exploration and, eventually, conflict as all attempt to compete to explore and conquer the new world... Something like that?

This is a good idea, and I can envision it's potential in my head. =:0)  I especially like the idea of capitals only attackable from the new world. 

-- In order to not make the natives not too strong or frustrating, it might be good to make the new world territories just tokens (1 neutral army each or 0) and find a way to limit player movement. -- However, this has all it's own set of problems too...

Erick's general play has a similar feel to that hex board you were working on Ratsy - which had a cool feel to it.

Yeah, I think the key differences might be: continent style bonus structure and way less territories. which may make things much better :)

Which hex board is this?

Sent you an invite.