I'm in a few games as of late where we have massive build-ups of units and not much is happening on the board.   Usually these games end in one of three ways 1) Someone gets tired of it and suicides themselves, causing the other players to react, 2) Players form alliances and team up to take out one or more players or 3) The players agree to terminate.

I had an idea that would force the action somewhat, and obviously it would need to be tested/tinkered, but what if at some point, the remaining players could agree on a new condition "Accelerate Ending"?  It could be voted on like Termination of a game.

Once everyone accepts, you have to either defeat or lose (or some combination) X% of your units (like 5% or 10%) on the board each turn before your turn will end.  The kicker is, if you don't meet the condition you don't get a card, even if you take over a territory.

In these stalemate games, often the card scale is several times higher than the bonuses each player receives, so getting a card is everything.

Completely agree this is a problem.  I've suggested having some sort of 'bomb' that is triggered by on-board conditions, and parametrized by the map designer.

First you need to define a "bomb triggering stalemate".  Maybe N turns where the # of units grows monotonically.  Or maybe if the lead doesn't change in N turns.  Or if less than N territories are conquered over the last M turns.  Lots of ways to potentially do this.  Or it could require a vote.  Although some players might think it is not in their best interest to vote & would rather hold out for a termination.

Then as you said some kind of forcing players to attack.  I was thinking if the stalemate conditions don't change, then whoever is in the lead wins.  So it would force players to want to get into the lead.  Or maybe a decay sets in, and each territory loses 10% of its units each turn.  Your idea is a good one also, although I have also gotten into stalemates on boards with rotating card scales, where needing a card is not critical.

There are multiple solutions to the problem - if you consider it a problem at all. Crab games have always been a part of the game.  When I was a young lad and it got too late and we got tired of holding our eyelids open, we would all agree on a draw and go to bed.

I'm inclined to not be a fan of any mutual agreement system, because that could bring in politics involving the person who votes against it getting taken out by frustrated opponents..  I'm much more  inclined to let the designer have control over the system and the mechanism that triggers it.

I like the option where everyone loses the same percentage of armies at the end of each round.  That way the relative strength are the same but the ratio of turn-in units to units on the board make elimination more feasible and attractive.

SquintGnome wrote:

I like the option where everyone loses the same percentage of armies at the end of each round.  That way the relative strength are the same but the ratio of turn-in units to units on the board make elimination more feasible and attractive.

When would this kick in?