Comment Thread - The Courts of Candle'Bre

[Velociryx]

'k....I decided, for ease of finding the rules, to move them over to the "Other Games" category.

For those of you who may be looking in on this thread for the first time, this discussion came about via several people saying both in the forums and via PM/e-mail that it'd be really cool if I was on the design team for Civ4.

That got me thinking....yeah. I'd like that! But...since it's unlikely in the extreme that a big-name company would just come up and ask me to do something like that, the idea got in my head and under my skin that It'd be *almost as good* to design....something....anything and see what the folk of 'poly thought about it.

So....given that I have some experience at designing board games, I decided to develop one on the fly. Over the course of two days, I sketched out a design and wrote the rules in the "other" Candle' Bre thread (which does not exist as I write this, but will soon enough). The rules in that thread outline how the game would be played out if it were a board game, and are in a state of completion that those curious could co-opt pieces from various games around the house and actually play it out to see what it's like.

I put out an APB for people with art and programming skills, and the whole thing started to gel from there....with luck, we'll have a mock-up of the vision presented in the rules thread soon!

This then, is an attempt by me to foster discussion about the design, and do it in such a way that it leaves the rules thread intact, so the folks doing the coding and art have one centralized place to go looking for the rules as they stand now (and any tweaks and ideas I get in this discussion, I will simply go in and edit what's already there).

Read 'em over and give me your thoughts!

*Note: I realize that there's not yet much true variance between the various unit types...most of the in-game variation comes in the form of unit special abilities....that will likely change (the combat values will prolly be tweaked) but for now, it serves as a basis to begin from!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

You'll note in the reading of the core rules that the "Book of Fate" has been left (intentionally) unfinished.

This was not due to lack of ideas on my part, but merely to solicit other ideas from here!

Generally, I view the cards as being categorized loosely (hearts = hearts and minds of the people, diamonds = wealth and power, clubs = mercenaries and freebie units, spades = the "bad effects" that happen to players when they muck about with the Fates!)

Anyway, ideas for these cards are welcomed, and I'll wait a few days before fleshing that section out to see what ideas are generated here!

-=Vel=-

[Libertarian]

Just checking in, Vel. And letting you know that, so far, in just a couple of hours, we've had apps from three accomplished programmers who are eager to help out. When you've completed all the game rules, including all the missing pieces, we can begin spec'ing the project in earnest.

[Velociryx]

That sounds perfect! I'm gonna hold off on filling in the rest of the "Fate Cards" till this evening, as I've been getting some good ideas from folks on the board, and by tonight, I'll have all the blanks filled in there.

That's the last of it tho, barring anyone's test of the boardgame version that reveals any serious flaws in how stuff is put together. We'll have a 100% complete alpha version of the board game sometime tonight!


-=Vel=-
(::shuffling like a zombie and muttering "Nyquil....Nyquillllll...." :: )

[Velociryx]

Update! The game system is fully armed and operational! After compiling all my favorites of the suggesstions mailed and PM'd to me, the Book of Fate is fleshed out and ready to go!

I also tweaked the A/D values of all the units to balance them out, and gave Light Infantry (who was kinna a wayward son in the mix) a little more of a unique role to play.

Lastly, I fleshed out the startup routine (Turn 0) of the game, to allow for greater flexibility and to avoid early game tedium (you have no army so you can't conquer, you lack the funds to build Provincial Improvements if you want to research, soooo....the startup segment has been bulked up to address that and get the game going good!



-=Vel=-
(back to bed with me!)

[Chowlett]

Good work on the rules! As I say in the Civ3 Thread, I've created a Map of Candle'Bre, which has raised a slight query. I seem to recall some slight inconsistencies in the rules as well - nothing major, just a niggle or two. I'll take a print-out and get back to you.

[Velociryx]

Yep! Just saw your post there on the perplexing pointy problem....my prognosis is on the "plate" thread...lol...just had to do that...must be the nyquil...

And yes! Lemme know if I've shot myself in the foot anyplace re: the rules! Three days is an awfully compressed amount of time, but I just couldn't stop! LOL...still, there may be some slight adjustments needed, so lemme know if you discover any hidden snafu's!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

'k....played my first full game out...DUDE! It rocks! The prices and unit strengths were a wee bit outta whack still, so I had to make the Archers and Light Infantry a little more expensive....The way it was before, Cav was great but too expensive relative to Archers to EVER be useful....they'd simply never survive to make their charge....and in any case, the moment Light Infantry got the charge ability, cav were beyond obsolete (light infantry were every bit as good on the attack, for half the money)....so, it's closer now....that's late game anyway, when that happens, but Cav has a new lease on life!

-=Vel=-

[Chowlett]

The most obvious niggle at the moment (read: I haven't had time to scrutinise properly) is the Council of Five's Divination ability. You state that they could use it to discover the exact standing of any opponent in terms of, eg, Gold, Honor, Influence. However, these can be discovered without Divination - they are "recorded" by means of cash, counters, whatever, in public view. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

[Velociryx]

Yes and no. Part of the problem with putting this doc in particular together is that I was attempting to do it with both the boardgame in mind, and with an eye toward converting it to a computer version.

It's true that honor, influence, and income are publically charted and tracked, however, since all three can be stored and carried over from turn to turn, it quickly becomes nearly impossible to track (esp. in a 5-way game), exactly who's got what (harder still in the computer version, cos the "income charts" will all be handled by the code and invisible to the player).

When I gave them the ability, here's exactly what I had in mind: The Five, when playing their Divination variant, should have more "control" when dealing with those fate cards, and many of them revolve around your opponent having the option to undo any potential damage done by the cards if they pay honor/influence/money....but with the Five able to keep close tabs on exactly what you've got, they can hold their cards back until the moment that your treasuries are running light, and then hit you for maximum impact (I see The Five as being verrrry into Espionage and Card drawing....they don't have combat abilities like Fury or Mourngrym (with their cheap Mercs), they don't have any special influence with the church (in fact, a tweak I was considering would be to boost the power of their spells and give them a negative influence rating).

But, you are right....for the board game version, Divination is a relatively weaker ability. Not useless, cos you can still peek at held cards to see what kind of hurt an opponent could lay down on you if you attacked them, but weaker than the other two....will have to revisit that one....perhaps allow them to also look at the top card of the book of fate to see if they want it? Eek! That may go toooo far the other way tho...lol How do you think the ability might be strengthened it the board game version?

I'm at work today, and just might be able to get a five way game up here...LOL...now THAT would rock!

Here's kinna how I see the five factions breaking out:

Fury: Prolly the easiest to play. Two leaders at the start give them LOTS of control over early battles and their cav bonuses make them REALLY powerful. Unfortunately, in a MP/hotseat game, that can sorta work against them too. Makes them targets, cos nobody wants to see them expanding too quickly. I see LOTS of archer heavy armies used to counter the power of the Furies, and lots of assassination attempts made ASAP to kill off their edge in leaders.

Castillar: Defense via Influence. These guys would be an easy choice for a peaceful builder. The potential for offence is there, cos they DO start with a leader, but their abilities lend themselves well to the acquisition of honor (stalling attacks on allies via their honor...which they could really have quite a lot of at game start if they opted for a temple on the open....one quick conquest of a neutral territory gives them six territories (2 Influence per turn), their leader nets them 2 Influence per turn naturally, and the starting temple gives them another. Every four turns, they have enough Influence to block an attack, and that's with only a single neutral province conquest!

The Seven: Sort of a swing faction. Most of their abilities are defensive. The rebellion thing, and loss of honor if you attack them means that they can mostly count on being able to control when a fight occurs, generally by starting it (since they suffer no penalties for being war mongers). And, their "convert captured troops" ability is heinously powerful (especially if they get their hands on "The Mercy of the Seven" card! A player faced with that has few options if The Seven launch a series of attacks along a broad front. Mass Retreats from battle will result in a hefty loss of honor, and in the meantime, every hit that they inflict before the retreat weakens the player they attacked and makes The Seven that much stronger. I see these guys as playing quietly for much of the game, and then just exploding out toward a selected enemy.

Mourngrym: My pick for the early game terror. Forget Barracks and just buy LOTS of Mercs (Hell, I'd even buy Mercs as my starting force with them). Yeah, you'll take attrition losses when fighting other players, but vs. the neutral territories, you have the ability to expand like nobody's business (since you're fighting all Infantry in neutral territories, and you can "bounty-up" the capabilities of your Mercs.). I see them as being played fast and furious....prolly not even worrying overmuch about combat techs at all, relying on speed and cheap mercs to put them in control of the biggest territory, and then using their economic muscle to plow through the Espionage techs to keep their opponents down. Their biggest threat, IMO, would be The Five, if that player chose Pestilence....since they'd likely have a larger than average standing army, they'd suffer much worse damage from the spell than anyone else.

The Five: Drawn to the dark side, like Mourngrym. With Divination, they can time their strikes against enemies to hit them when they're down and for maximum effect. With probability and "bountying up" the mercs., they can boost their effectiveness up to be even better than infantry, mitigatigating their losses by maximizing hits per turn, and with Pestilence, they can create "blocks" to prevent attacks against them (or at least make those attacks more costly, since any unit moving THRU a diseased territory has to roll a survival check. Of all the factions, I'd bill these guys as the hardest to play correctly, requiring more finnesse than Mourngrym's beatdown style, more active aggression than Castillar's burgeoning Influence, and more speed than The Seven (who would likely be the perfect choice for slow-paced builders and provincial optomizers). The only ones who could give them an early game problem would be the Furies, able to end-run around pestilence territories and still make strikes with their awesome cav.

For the moment, I'm gonna make the following changes to the Divination special of The Five, and that may change further, depending on your thoughts:

Divination may also be used to look at the top card of the Book of Fate (at a flat rate cost of 15 spell points). If the card is looked at but NOT taken, the player suffers the loss of 10 Influence (church does not like dabbling in the dark arts), and 5 honor (dodging what the fates have in store). The upshot is, The Five never need worry about getting a bad draw!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

WhoooHooo! We're neck deep in an improv. five way game and it's REALLY cool! One thing tho, as we're playing, a couple of things have come up, and I'm making rules tweaks as we play so I don't forget! The rules section has been updated thusly:

Killing a captured leader: -20 Honor BUT, you get +1 on all your attack/defense rolls till the end of your NEXT turn (ie - if you kill a leader at the start of a given turn, you get two turns of bonus).

Killing captured troops: -2 honor BUT you get a bounty in gold equal to half that unit's price (armor and weapons recycled)

The Cost for drawing from the book of fate got bumped up to help balance the support costs, which are missing from the boardgame.

And on that note, I'm back to it!

EDIT: Go Castillar, GO!!! I'm currently being a ROYAL Pain in Mourngrym's a$$....shouting out the phrase "Knave and Pox of the Realm I smite thee and you shall not attack!" Every time I use my Influence to interrupt one of his big pushes toward the floundering Seven player....HEH!

[Velociryx]

'k....me and the guys are getting ready to go grab some dinner....gonna talk shop about the game over some Mexican food....see how Candle'Bre plays under the influence of Margaritas! LOL

Couple more quick things we've learned in this run-thru/clarifications and such. I"ll post these changes to the rules section when I get back, but wanted to put 'em somewhere so I'd not forget:

You can deconstruct provincial builds, but it takes time, and when you deconstruct, you get one fourth (drop all fractions) of your money back. If you deconstruct an improved building, it reverts back to its previous (non-upgraded) status and you get one quarter of the money back that you spent on the upgrade (ie- if you choose to deconstruct a University, it becomes an Academy, and you get 25% of the money back that you put into the upgrade). Each "deconstruction" takes a full game turn, and must be announced at the start of your turn. Thus, it IS possible to make mid-game adjustments to your building and improvement array, but if you try to undo heavily upgraded provinces, it'll take some time to pull off.

You may only build provincial improvements in territories that began your turn under your control! (ie- you cannot conquer a province and immediately drop a barracks there).

Movement: Fast units MAY NOT "blitz" through neutral territory, or through any provinces that you do not control! Their advantage though, is they may move into an adjacent territory during combat movement, help take the territory, and then move out to avoid a possible counterattack.

Chowlett and anybody else who might be makin' maps and playin' the game....how's it going for you? We're having a blast....and it sure has made babysitting the servers more fun! We've got improvised everything...pieces from three different games, monopoly money, monopoly houses and hotels with nailpolished rooftops to stand in for the various buildings, poker chips (red = honor, white = influence) and a poster up on the wall outlining what everything is....

"oh wait...what the hell was barracks again? Ohhhh yea...monopoly house with the BLACK rooftop...gotcha!" But it's working!



-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Latest and greatest revisions have been incorporated into the rules framework!

Also added - Details on the Diplomatic Model!

Specifically, I should note here that I agonized over exactly how to make it work, and if anybody does not agree with the final decision, please DO try and convince me! I was very much on the fence about it, but here's how it shook out:

1) You cannot, under any circumstances move through any territory you do not control directly without it being considered a combat move! This means that moving troops into an ally's territory WILL break the alliance.

2) You can, however, gift units gold, and cards (fate cards) to your ally.

The part that I was agonizing over specifically was whether or not to allow troop movement thru an ally's territory. On the one hand, it would be sooooo convenient to be able to sweep in from an unexpected flank. OTOH, by NOT allowing that specifically, it FORCES you to make more of a commitment to your ally. Since you can't move your own guys through to help, your only alternative is to simply give units away. I like the dynamic it sets up, but it was a tough decision!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

D'oh! Almost forgot! One other minor tweak!

I was not 100% happy with how "The Five" played, so I gave them 10% cheaper research rates, and offset that with a -2 Influence penalty at game start (easy to undo, but it's something that if you don't nip early, it can really stifle you!)

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

The results are in!

Victory number one goes to the wily Lords of Cavalry, The Furies!

During the course of the game, I got *close* a few times....was trying for an Honor victory (my closest approach was 160 points of Honor accumulated), but in-game circumstances kept forcing me to spend down, and so I never quite got there.

The bold Furies win the first five-way test game by conquest, and what a game it was!

LOTS of twists and turns and reversals of fortune.

"The Seven" player got off to a rough start and got hammered HARD by a vicious Mourngrym player who had a seemingly ENDLESS stream of Mercenaries and really good luck with his espionage efforts! The highlight of their battle royale was when I gifted "The Seven" their big kicker card ("Mercy of the Seven" and he played it, capturing a TON of Mourngrym Mercs in a single wave of stinging attacks. The very next turn, he counter-attacked, only to be faced with "Mourngrym's Gambit" and he lost all the Mercs so recently converted! Only the steady supply of blocked attacks from my vast supply of Influence with the Church kept him in the game, but it was interesting to watch them battle it out.

Meanwhile, to my north, The Furies and "The Five" took turns wailing on each other, with both making little attacks of opportunity down my way.

The big push there came when the Fury player dropped a forced march he'd been holding onto (had positioned a large chunk of his slow troops two provinces away from "The Five's" border, making it look like he was massing to attack me, played it, and then blew most of "The Five's" army away.

After that, it was basically a mop up....he made short work of the faction, acquired most of their former territories (smelling blood, I started making some attacks into their territory, but it wasn't enough), and once "The Five" were gone, the full weight of the Furies dropped onto me.

I had enough influence to block the attacks for two turns, but with Influence rapidly draining (and honor! ), the third turn's worth of monsterous attacks broke through, and that fierce Fury Cav made mincemeat of my armies.

Excellent game tho, and I think it revealed most of the stuff that was missing or unclear from the rules. Our NEXT test game (set for tomorrow...I think they're hooked!) should go much more smoothly, without all the stopping to clarify rules and such!



-=Vel=-