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A variant idea- comments welcome.
Some of you may recall me making a massive RPG-styled Dip variant for the 1600 variant, working as kind of a cross between Magic: The Gathering and Age of Wonders II (not that I knew at the time how AOW2 would turn out, of course!). It would have been really interesting, with each ruler as a wizard being able to cast spells to affect various things, map locations having explorable properties, and a backstory element for those who wished to find the ultimate powers and spells. However, it also would have required 9 hard-core Dippers, something that would be difficult to find at any time.
So here's something a little less ambitious I was making on the side, and recently returned to look at. Basically, every player chooses a special ability from a list, and then the game plays normally- with of course the special abilities playing around off each other.
I'm curious if people have any comments on this, mostly balance-related.
Note that this is not a recruitment thread- we should probably work on Orange_1's suggestions first. That said, if you're interested in possibly playing this or have other comments, please feel free to post so- it would be nice to know the interest level!
The 1600 map would probably work the best, of course, but that requires 9 people. Among 7 people maps, there is of course the Standard map, but also Heptarchy, which is good fun and appropos.
Anyway, the abilities (what's a better name for these? It could help name the variant, too):
Knight: In Winter of 1901 (or whatever the first builds turn is), you promote one of your armies to have the strength of 3 units, but on the attack only. It still defends as 1 unit. Note that you can promote a just-built army or one already in existence. You can never change which army this is or swap things around. If this army is ever dislodged, then it is reduced to merely having the strength of 2 units; if it is dislodged again, it is just a regular army the rest of the game. Needless to say, if it is destroyed, it is gone forever.
Nationalist: Every single one of your home provinces acts as if an invisible army is supporting all friendly actions on your turf. So a holding unit will have an extra "support" from nowhere, and if you are attacking something inside your territory, it is as if you have an extra support for that attack. So a Turkish army can still walk into Ukraine unopposed, but if a Russian army moved there or was holding there, not even a supported attack would dislodge it (you'd need 2 supports to beat that).
This applies both to home SC's as well as provinces that are "colored" for you when you start out.
Sorceror: Once per year- either in Spring or Fall, but not both, and you can't save it for later years- you may issue an attack/support from nowhere (as in, blast a lightning bolt down to help out or something). Note that if instead of a support for an attack you're making or for the defense of an army (the standard option), if you make a regular "attack" this is useful only for cutting support, since there isn't actually any army attacking.
You can symbolize this with A Mag S A Spa->Mar, or A Mag S A War, or however.
Necromancer: Should one of your moves dislodge an opposing army, you may choose where the opposing army retreats (although you cannot chose Off the Board). In the fortuitous chance that your enemy chooses OTB (he can still do this) or is forced to via lack of options, you immediately gain a skeleton army/ghost ship in the nearest possible province (generally the place that was just attacked from). Your opponent gets one build less than normal next season (in other words, it can't immediately rebuild the army, although its builds are calculated normally the next next season). If they are still all full (maybe you moved a unit into the province that just launched the attack), then it arises in one of your home SCs (your choice). If those are all full, then one of the non-SC territories around them, your choice.
You gain 1 of these skeleton armies/ghost ships for free in Winter 1901 (built according to the above rules- first home SCs, etc.). You may only maintain a maximum of 3 of these armies/fleets at once. These skeleton armies do not require support from your SCs (but if you lose all your SCs, you are still out of the game).
Geomancer: As per Seismic Dip. Before every movement phase, submit a seismic order, ordering two neighboring provinces to disconnect while another two connect. See the rules on the variant for more.
Spy: Every (movement) turn you gain an espionage point. You can spend them in the following ways:
2- View an opponent's movelist, and you can then change your own.
3- Change a specific enemy order. You don't need to have looked at their movement list for this. Just submit an order for an enemy unit, and it will supersede whatever they told it to do. It will also appear in the turn's moves as if the real leader ordered it (although he is free, of course, to claim he didn't make that order and cry foul on you. In fact, people are free to do this even when you didn't change their orders). You can imagine this as impersonating the messenger bringing the movement orders.
This trick will not work on a Knight-promoted army.
6- Assassination. This requires one season of notice (although you don't need to have all 6 points ready; you can do it with 5), in which the turn's moves will note the wild rumors of assassination conspiracies. Note you don't have to choose who you're assassinating the season you give notice. The next season you do have to choose though (possibly after people dip with you and beg for mercy?), and no matter what orders they submit their moves will be an NMR that round, as their ruler recovers in bed from the injuries sustained in the attempt.
You can keep 10 points stored up at maximum.
Doomsday Cultist: At the beginning of the game, declare what your capital is. This is known to all players. In any case, for every (movement) turn in which you hold your capital, you gain 1 mana point. Should your capital ever be lost, your mana is cut in half (and you obviously won't get more mana until you recover it). In any case, you can do the following with mana points:
0 Dark Sacrifice. If an army holds or supports in an SC you control, you can order it to massacre the residents of the city in a bloody attempt at power. The province will never again be an SC, and you gain 1 mana point. You can only do this once per (movement) turn- or rather, you can do it more than once, but you will only gain 1 mana point per turn. Also note that since you have to control the SC, this is only somewhat effective for run & gun scorched earth in the enemy's homeland.
1 Fanatic's Stand. An invisible support aids a holding or supporting army, supporting it in place. So an army all alone would functionally act like 2 armies on the defense for that turn. However, if the army/fleet is dislodged, then it must retreat OTB- the ritual insures that they fight to the death, part of the reason they're twice as strong.
4 Bloodlust. An army attacks as if it had an extra support from nowhere. You can sacrifice armies to make this cost less mana- sacrificing one army would cause it to cost 3, 2 to cost 2 mana, 3 to cost 1 mana, and sacrificing 4 armies would make the usage free.
16 Meteor. The ultimate attack in the game, this can severely ruin some people's day. The province and all surrounding provinces the meteor lands on are annihilated; every province 2 or 3 provinces away from the landing spot are turned into ocean. Thus a meteor landing in Paris would make life suck for people in Britain and Germany too. The range of the meteor may change based on map size (that radius was actually intended for the 1600 map). In any case, one turn's warning is required (in which astronomers will notice something odd), although the target need not be declared. There is a 40% chance of the meteor landing exactly on the province you declare; a 30% chance of landing on a randomly chosen neighboring province; a 20% chance of landing 2 provinces away from the target; and a 10% chance of hitting a totally random board location. Including possibly your empire. Such are the risks of meddling with fate.
Note that for Dark Sacrifice and Meteor, the victory condition is recalculated for the new number of SCs on the board (ie floor(total SCs/2 + 1)). Also, if a nation is at the point where it has 0 or 1 home SCs on the board (NOT controlled, so if you only have 0 or 1 SCs in your possession but the others still exist, you're out of luck), every winter turn it can declare a new SC to be a home SC until it is up to 2 home SCs.
Some strategy commentary:
Knight is the ultimate early game pick. In Spring 1902 you can just blast past your opponent's defensive line, most likely, and run around causing all sorts of havoc. An especially good pick for a country that doesn't expect to grab tons of SCs (Italy in regular, Spain in Modern) and wants something explosive to use. The problem is that this bonus never gets better, and because it defends as 1 unit, it has to stay on the move constantly. Also, the surest way to weaken it up is with an Assassination attempt... your Knightly army will be going nowhere, and likely be dislodged in that case, weakening its usefulness.
Nationalist might seem a bit weak, but consider the massive deterrence to early attacks it gives. Who in their right minds will choose you as an enemy? You may find yourself being courted by your 2 possible opponents to be their ally, say with a nationalist France. This can give a powerful early game lead. On the other hand, a nationalist Austria might just inspire all the other nations to kill it jointly while they still can... so it's not an assured thing.
Speaking of which, an interesting combo would be the Nationalist and the Geomancer. The Geomancer could extend a bit of the Nationalist's home territory way out into opposition lands, and could be used as a protected highway of sorts to funnel reinforcements into the enemy's area. The Geomancer could also do interesting things with the Necromancer- the Necromancer forces the enemy units to retreat into trap provinces, which become more inescapable by the actions of the Geomancer. Meanwhile the Necromancer racks up more skeleton armies.
Necromancer is definitely one of the odder abilities. Used properly, it can be cheap, and almost too good, although early in the game it leaves something to be desired. That's why they get 1 skeleton army free in Winter 1901 (to give them some early game survivability) and why they're limited to 3 skeleton armies max, and why the person losing the army loses a build for a year functionally (to make the farm an ally's armies strategy a bit less effective).
The Sorceror is interesting. If he had that ability every turn, then it would be by far the cheapest ability around; an army anywhere, unpredictable, every turn. As it stands, having it every other season is still pretty good, especially for the fear effect that other players will have against you- putting in more supports than neccesary, etc. Though you only can use your ability every so often, your opponent needs to anticipate it everywhere. It may still be a wee bit underpowered- I'd consider giving it an extra one-shot powerful spell, say an earthquake that can just outright destroy a target army on your turn. But of course you can only use that once per game, and maybe only allow its use in 1903 and later.
The Geomancer might be a bit unbalanced as it stands, especially if there aren't any other Geomancers nearby to counter him- given enough time, he can work an opponent's position into something completely untenable, as well as create the stalemate line of doom.
I think the strategy in using the Spy is somewhat similar to that of the Sorceror- you can change your enemy's moves less often than the Sorceror can aid his armies, but this is a more versalite and potent tool than the Sorceror's mere supports. After all, the Sorceror might stop an attacking army, but only the Spy can make it turn around and walk the other way, allowing your counterattack to walk right into the SC. Not to mention the discord you can cause between allies with proper use of this- ideally you can make an army attacking you go attack your enemy's ally.
The Spy's other features are nice but probably secondary to the main usage, the changing of orders.
The Doomsday Cultists were kind of added in for fun as a challenge- they are basically mere mortals for the most part, but if you let them survive, they have by far the most powerful attack in the game. Most of your mana will probably be hoarded up for a Meteor, but some inferior Sorceror style abilities are added in if you're desperate.
Probably the biggest danger for a Doomsday Cultist would be a runaway Knight making a play for the capital- think launching a spaceship in Civ, if you know your local cultists are close to summoning a meteor, then you better take out their capital.
Other ideas for players I've thought of, but not sure are neccessary: Teleporter (think Alien Dip, aka the It Came from Outer Space variant. Problem is, it's ridiculously unbalanced without the colonization rules preventing beam-down in Alien- and those would be annoying to put in place.). Engineer (your capital start out worth 2 SCs, and you can use points to build more SCs up to be worth 2, and you can also build canals. Hard to balance though, and don't want another style involving points to keep track of).
The two easiest to cut from this roster would be Spy and Geomancer, because they're the slowest by far. If the game doesn't have speedy repsonses from the Geomancers, then the addition of an extra phase can slow the game down to half speed, and the Spy requires speedy dipping from everybody, because when he peeks at orders you have to have them in to give to the Spy first, then he has to send orders back. There could also be nasty problems with respect to the Spy- presumably, after he sees the orders he can't Dip anymore (otherwise you get into nasty problems if the orders aren't final), but that would also be a dead-give away if the Spy isn't talking that he peeked at somebody's orders that round, which could incite people to change their moves to be more conservative. Probably won't matter much, but it could happen.
In any case, I would say that if I actually ran a game here, I'd probably ban Geomancer to keep the map simple, the game running fast, and avoiding the worse balance issues. It works in Seismic Dip because <i>everybody</i> can do it and counter it- I'm not sure how to balance it without that.
So here's something a little less ambitious I was making on the side, and recently returned to look at. Basically, every player chooses a special ability from a list, and then the game plays normally- with of course the special abilities playing around off each other.
I'm curious if people have any comments on this, mostly balance-related.
Note that this is not a recruitment thread- we should probably work on Orange_1's suggestions first. That said, if you're interested in possibly playing this or have other comments, please feel free to post so- it would be nice to know the interest level!
The 1600 map would probably work the best, of course, but that requires 9 people. Among 7 people maps, there is of course the Standard map, but also Heptarchy, which is good fun and appropos.
Anyway, the abilities (what's a better name for these? It could help name the variant, too):
Knight: In Winter of 1901 (or whatever the first builds turn is), you promote one of your armies to have the strength of 3 units, but on the attack only. It still defends as 1 unit. Note that you can promote a just-built army or one already in existence. You can never change which army this is or swap things around. If this army is ever dislodged, then it is reduced to merely having the strength of 2 units; if it is dislodged again, it is just a regular army the rest of the game. Needless to say, if it is destroyed, it is gone forever.
Nationalist: Every single one of your home provinces acts as if an invisible army is supporting all friendly actions on your turf. So a holding unit will have an extra "support" from nowhere, and if you are attacking something inside your territory, it is as if you have an extra support for that attack. So a Turkish army can still walk into Ukraine unopposed, but if a Russian army moved there or was holding there, not even a supported attack would dislodge it (you'd need 2 supports to beat that).
This applies both to home SC's as well as provinces that are "colored" for you when you start out.
Sorceror: Once per year- either in Spring or Fall, but not both, and you can't save it for later years- you may issue an attack/support from nowhere (as in, blast a lightning bolt down to help out or something). Note that if instead of a support for an attack you're making or for the defense of an army (the standard option), if you make a regular "attack" this is useful only for cutting support, since there isn't actually any army attacking.
You can symbolize this with A Mag S A Spa->Mar, or A Mag S A War, or however.
Necromancer: Should one of your moves dislodge an opposing army, you may choose where the opposing army retreats (although you cannot chose Off the Board). In the fortuitous chance that your enemy chooses OTB (he can still do this) or is forced to via lack of options, you immediately gain a skeleton army/ghost ship in the nearest possible province (generally the place that was just attacked from). Your opponent gets one build less than normal next season (in other words, it can't immediately rebuild the army, although its builds are calculated normally the next next season). If they are still all full (maybe you moved a unit into the province that just launched the attack), then it arises in one of your home SCs (your choice). If those are all full, then one of the non-SC territories around them, your choice.
You gain 1 of these skeleton armies/ghost ships for free in Winter 1901 (built according to the above rules- first home SCs, etc.). You may only maintain a maximum of 3 of these armies/fleets at once. These skeleton armies do not require support from your SCs (but if you lose all your SCs, you are still out of the game).
Geomancer: As per Seismic Dip. Before every movement phase, submit a seismic order, ordering two neighboring provinces to disconnect while another two connect. See the rules on the variant for more.
Spy: Every (movement) turn you gain an espionage point. You can spend them in the following ways:
2- View an opponent's movelist, and you can then change your own.
3- Change a specific enemy order. You don't need to have looked at their movement list for this. Just submit an order for an enemy unit, and it will supersede whatever they told it to do. It will also appear in the turn's moves as if the real leader ordered it (although he is free, of course, to claim he didn't make that order and cry foul on you. In fact, people are free to do this even when you didn't change their orders). You can imagine this as impersonating the messenger bringing the movement orders.
This trick will not work on a Knight-promoted army.
6- Assassination. This requires one season of notice (although you don't need to have all 6 points ready; you can do it with 5), in which the turn's moves will note the wild rumors of assassination conspiracies. Note you don't have to choose who you're assassinating the season you give notice. The next season you do have to choose though (possibly after people dip with you and beg for mercy?), and no matter what orders they submit their moves will be an NMR that round, as their ruler recovers in bed from the injuries sustained in the attempt.
You can keep 10 points stored up at maximum.
Doomsday Cultist: At the beginning of the game, declare what your capital is. This is known to all players. In any case, for every (movement) turn in which you hold your capital, you gain 1 mana point. Should your capital ever be lost, your mana is cut in half (and you obviously won't get more mana until you recover it). In any case, you can do the following with mana points:
0 Dark Sacrifice. If an army holds or supports in an SC you control, you can order it to massacre the residents of the city in a bloody attempt at power. The province will never again be an SC, and you gain 1 mana point. You can only do this once per (movement) turn- or rather, you can do it more than once, but you will only gain 1 mana point per turn. Also note that since you have to control the SC, this is only somewhat effective for run & gun scorched earth in the enemy's homeland.
1 Fanatic's Stand. An invisible support aids a holding or supporting army, supporting it in place. So an army all alone would functionally act like 2 armies on the defense for that turn. However, if the army/fleet is dislodged, then it must retreat OTB- the ritual insures that they fight to the death, part of the reason they're twice as strong.
4 Bloodlust. An army attacks as if it had an extra support from nowhere. You can sacrifice armies to make this cost less mana- sacrificing one army would cause it to cost 3, 2 to cost 2 mana, 3 to cost 1 mana, and sacrificing 4 armies would make the usage free.
16 Meteor. The ultimate attack in the game, this can severely ruin some people's day. The province and all surrounding provinces the meteor lands on are annihilated; every province 2 or 3 provinces away from the landing spot are turned into ocean. Thus a meteor landing in Paris would make life suck for people in Britain and Germany too. The range of the meteor may change based on map size (that radius was actually intended for the 1600 map). In any case, one turn's warning is required (in which astronomers will notice something odd), although the target need not be declared. There is a 40% chance of the meteor landing exactly on the province you declare; a 30% chance of landing on a randomly chosen neighboring province; a 20% chance of landing 2 provinces away from the target; and a 10% chance of hitting a totally random board location. Including possibly your empire. Such are the risks of meddling with fate.
Note that for Dark Sacrifice and Meteor, the victory condition is recalculated for the new number of SCs on the board (ie floor(total SCs/2 + 1)). Also, if a nation is at the point where it has 0 or 1 home SCs on the board (NOT controlled, so if you only have 0 or 1 SCs in your possession but the others still exist, you're out of luck), every winter turn it can declare a new SC to be a home SC until it is up to 2 home SCs.
Some strategy commentary:
Knight is the ultimate early game pick. In Spring 1902 you can just blast past your opponent's defensive line, most likely, and run around causing all sorts of havoc. An especially good pick for a country that doesn't expect to grab tons of SCs (Italy in regular, Spain in Modern) and wants something explosive to use. The problem is that this bonus never gets better, and because it defends as 1 unit, it has to stay on the move constantly. Also, the surest way to weaken it up is with an Assassination attempt... your Knightly army will be going nowhere, and likely be dislodged in that case, weakening its usefulness.
Nationalist might seem a bit weak, but consider the massive deterrence to early attacks it gives. Who in their right minds will choose you as an enemy? You may find yourself being courted by your 2 possible opponents to be their ally, say with a nationalist France. This can give a powerful early game lead. On the other hand, a nationalist Austria might just inspire all the other nations to kill it jointly while they still can... so it's not an assured thing.
Speaking of which, an interesting combo would be the Nationalist and the Geomancer. The Geomancer could extend a bit of the Nationalist's home territory way out into opposition lands, and could be used as a protected highway of sorts to funnel reinforcements into the enemy's area. The Geomancer could also do interesting things with the Necromancer- the Necromancer forces the enemy units to retreat into trap provinces, which become more inescapable by the actions of the Geomancer. Meanwhile the Necromancer racks up more skeleton armies.
Necromancer is definitely one of the odder abilities. Used properly, it can be cheap, and almost too good, although early in the game it leaves something to be desired. That's why they get 1 skeleton army free in Winter 1901 (to give them some early game survivability) and why they're limited to 3 skeleton armies max, and why the person losing the army loses a build for a year functionally (to make the farm an ally's armies strategy a bit less effective).
The Sorceror is interesting. If he had that ability every turn, then it would be by far the cheapest ability around; an army anywhere, unpredictable, every turn. As it stands, having it every other season is still pretty good, especially for the fear effect that other players will have against you- putting in more supports than neccesary, etc. Though you only can use your ability every so often, your opponent needs to anticipate it everywhere. It may still be a wee bit underpowered- I'd consider giving it an extra one-shot powerful spell, say an earthquake that can just outright destroy a target army on your turn. But of course you can only use that once per game, and maybe only allow its use in 1903 and later.
The Geomancer might be a bit unbalanced as it stands, especially if there aren't any other Geomancers nearby to counter him- given enough time, he can work an opponent's position into something completely untenable, as well as create the stalemate line of doom.
I think the strategy in using the Spy is somewhat similar to that of the Sorceror- you can change your enemy's moves less often than the Sorceror can aid his armies, but this is a more versalite and potent tool than the Sorceror's mere supports. After all, the Sorceror might stop an attacking army, but only the Spy can make it turn around and walk the other way, allowing your counterattack to walk right into the SC. Not to mention the discord you can cause between allies with proper use of this- ideally you can make an army attacking you go attack your enemy's ally.
The Spy's other features are nice but probably secondary to the main usage, the changing of orders.
The Doomsday Cultists were kind of added in for fun as a challenge- they are basically mere mortals for the most part, but if you let them survive, they have by far the most powerful attack in the game. Most of your mana will probably be hoarded up for a Meteor, but some inferior Sorceror style abilities are added in if you're desperate.
Probably the biggest danger for a Doomsday Cultist would be a runaway Knight making a play for the capital- think launching a spaceship in Civ, if you know your local cultists are close to summoning a meteor, then you better take out their capital.
Other ideas for players I've thought of, but not sure are neccessary: Teleporter (think Alien Dip, aka the It Came from Outer Space variant. Problem is, it's ridiculously unbalanced without the colonization rules preventing beam-down in Alien- and those would be annoying to put in place.). Engineer (your capital start out worth 2 SCs, and you can use points to build more SCs up to be worth 2, and you can also build canals. Hard to balance though, and don't want another style involving points to keep track of).
The two easiest to cut from this roster would be Spy and Geomancer, because they're the slowest by far. If the game doesn't have speedy repsonses from the Geomancers, then the addition of an extra phase can slow the game down to half speed, and the Spy requires speedy dipping from everybody, because when he peeks at orders you have to have them in to give to the Spy first, then he has to send orders back. There could also be nasty problems with respect to the Spy- presumably, after he sees the orders he can't Dip anymore (otherwise you get into nasty problems if the orders aren't final), but that would also be a dead-give away if the Spy isn't talking that he peeked at somebody's orders that round, which could incite people to change their moves to be more conservative. Probably won't matter much, but it could happen.
In any case, I would say that if I actually ran a game here, I'd probably ban Geomancer to keep the map simple, the game running fast, and avoiding the worse balance issues. It works in Seismic Dip because <i>everybody</i> can do it and counter it- I'm not sure how to balance it without that.
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