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Some time ago, a game called Pax Romana was released and failed to deliver(I haven't got it myself, but that's what everybody says, included its maker.) The maker blames the company he worked at for it, not enough money and so on. Anyway, now the company is bankrupt, and he has begun making a new game, called Great Invasions.
He seems to be interested in his community, judging from the feed back he has given when I have checked his posts.
I will not fully trust that the new game will be good enough before I see people saying otherwise, but the info provided so far(here) seems very interesting!
Currently, the features in Great Invasions (GI) are:
* A timespan of 700 years (AD 350 to AD 1066)
* Up to 80 playables nations and 160 nations in all
* Real time à la Pax or EU
* Innovative concept designs derived from famous boardgames such as Rise & Fall or Britannia / Hispania
* The game exists as a boardgame I created and playtested some years ago
* Main gameplay feature: a player has to manage more than one nation at a time
* Second gameplay feature: nations rise, live and die, from humble (but powerful) barbarian tribes to mighty (and later crumbling) empires...
* maximum 4 players in MP sessions (for play balance interest, as well as the fact everyone knows you rarely can make more than 4 meet consistently)
* Simple battle system, the military aspect is mostly grab, loot and conquer
* Stratagems à la pax (more of them)
* Historical Events (most to be designed yet)
* Religion plays a large role: expansion of Christianity (and
heresies, like Arianism), the rise of Islam (play Jihads), royal
conversions
* Viking drakkars may move inland via major rivers
* easy learning curve: as a barbarian, just conquer...as a kingdom, you need to do a little building and ruling...as an Empire, you need much more attention to administrative matters..lest you decay and fall...
* Help wanted from the commuity: nations and leaders research, events, gameplay tricks, user's manual...
In GI, the player starts a scenario with one or 2 nations to manage. During the game, he will receive more nations (e.g. new barbarian tribes popping up, open for control), either on a set way (historically balanced scenarios) or by competitvely bidding with the other 3 players for them (free-for-all
scenarios)
A player may have up to 10 nations in play at one same time, or may end up the Grand Campaign having played more than 20 of them (there are 80 nations in the game for 700 years)
This seemingly hard to manage situation is possible because a nation will have a life-cycle, from Barbarian tribe to Kingdom and then Empire, each of these status having different and progressively more complex gameplay.
E.g. as a barbarian tribe, you receive free warrior levies every year, so you just bother yourself with conquering new land (and surviving other more greedy, stronger barbarians)...
Then you settle in some nice area and transform to Kingdom: you now have to do a bit of ruling and building to ensure prosperity, growth or survival..and after some years, if your expansion did well, and you took quite a few lands, you can transform into Empire...more wealth, more units, more buildings, more administrative actions...and more problems (civil wars, usurpers, revolts, tax, religious strife)...until, maybe, you crumble and split into successor minor states (then just concentrate on your other nations and keep playing....)
The system is simpler than Pax in that it works à la EU, but the Pax feature to assign leaders freely will be kept...
Economy in those ages is barely simple: tax the population (or the monks), loot, exact tribute from vassals...that more or less it. Plus a few 3 or 4 buildings you may construct that provides a few extra gold pieces....
Other key elements:
1 - A player is never off the game...if one of the nations he controls is conquered and disappears, so be it...the player has other nations to continue playing with...and in the rare case the last nation of the player is destroyed, he will get de facto a new one to continue playing...
2 - I'll keep the suggestion to improve the message system...the one from Pax was never finished as it should have been (because the disappearance of ressources to do so in Galilea, it was "dumped" by the people there as "not
important"...!!!
3 - The game working is way different as you feel: although a player may control many nations in different status or age, all these nations are independent from each other, and they may well be at war with each other if their controlling player feels it is necessary. Of course, some testing and rules have to be set to limit possible "cheating"...but this is how it
works. Nations do not merge, except via Historical events...so if you conquer a nation (including one of yours by one of your "other" yours!, it disappears...
4 - The whole diplomatic engine is WAY different from what you may have know in Pax, EU or other games...you will find familiar stuff (alliances, princely weddings, CB, foedus, war and peace, etc...) but it works with embassies sent to other nations (even, and sometimes above all, to those you
control as a player) and those embassies undertake some specific mission and no other...but you do not choose the pool or the frequency of ambassadors and their assigned missions (as for instance rare and precisous missions
will not be very frequent). The amount of embassies you get depends on your age, status, and the DIP value of the nation's monarch...with a special bonus to Byzantine diplomacy... Unusual but fun and adapted to the gameplay,
a way to keenly avoid the above-mentioned "cheating" (for example, as Western Rome, if you have only 1 foedus embassy, do you send it to your Franks - 100% chance to accept - or to your opponent's Wisigoths - with chance player / AI refuse ? Got the trick?)
Globally, nation at kingdom / empire status (no barbarian ruling
required...it is obey or die! will need, once every 3-7 years, to manage their administration [the Admin year of sort]: the monarch's admin capacity, taxation policy (critical), funds allocated to government and a few other decisions will cost the nation gold and the amount and quality of spending
will impact on "administrative checks"....
These checks will be done throughout the nation at random intervals between the Admin years...and will give more or less positive results depending on how much / well you spent on administration, the nation age (the older the tougher...a very key factor) and taxation policy (more tax...more problems)...and even previous results (like if you "obtain" a decline result, more problems later...you fall into decay)
Results will be in terms of extra aging (when bad comes to worse), revolts, corruption, palace coups, unrests, tax loss, usurpers, decline, etc...and a few (little) nice stuff too for good admin results...
Also, choosing whether to rule well the core of the realm and leave the periphery, or spread evenly resources will be important...
The player management will be minimal: at some point, spend gold and take good decisions via 2-3 buttons / sliders in 1 single window, and that's it.
Have a good monarch, appoint good local regional governors (via map interface, easy), have the right religious attitude...
If the player does not manage the realm properly, the decay will be faster.
Note however that because normal and regular aging, nations will face more and more problems over time. Hopefully, random and historical monarchs will help (e.g. the Justinian monarch for Byzantium will provide some respite...the empire even getting "younger")...
Scenarios:
Everything is open yet, but I plan to have the following:
* a grand campaign AD 350 - AD 1066
* a mini-campaign #1 scenario AD 350 - AD 630
* a mini-campaign #2 scenario AD 630 - AD 800
* a mini-campaign #3 scenario AD 790 - AD 1066
* a First Wave scenario AD 406 - AD 632
* a Jihad scenario AD 630 - AD 790
* a Carolingian scenario AD 650 - AD 850
* a Viking scenario AD 790 - AD 1066
He seems to be interested in his community, judging from the feed back he has given when I have checked his posts.I will not fully trust that the new game will be good enough before I see people saying otherwise, but the info provided so far(here) seems very interesting!
Currently, the features in Great Invasions (GI) are:
* A timespan of 700 years (AD 350 to AD 1066)
* Up to 80 playables nations and 160 nations in all
* Real time à la Pax or EU
* Innovative concept designs derived from famous boardgames such as Rise & Fall or Britannia / Hispania
* The game exists as a boardgame I created and playtested some years ago
* Main gameplay feature: a player has to manage more than one nation at a time
* Second gameplay feature: nations rise, live and die, from humble (but powerful) barbarian tribes to mighty (and later crumbling) empires...
* maximum 4 players in MP sessions (for play balance interest, as well as the fact everyone knows you rarely can make more than 4 meet consistently)
* Simple battle system, the military aspect is mostly grab, loot and conquer
* Stratagems à la pax (more of them)
* Historical Events (most to be designed yet)
* Religion plays a large role: expansion of Christianity (and
heresies, like Arianism), the rise of Islam (play Jihads), royal
conversions
* Viking drakkars may move inland via major rivers
* easy learning curve: as a barbarian, just conquer...as a kingdom, you need to do a little building and ruling...as an Empire, you need much more attention to administrative matters..lest you decay and fall...
* Help wanted from the commuity: nations and leaders research, events, gameplay tricks, user's manual...
In GI, the player starts a scenario with one or 2 nations to manage. During the game, he will receive more nations (e.g. new barbarian tribes popping up, open for control), either on a set way (historically balanced scenarios) or by competitvely bidding with the other 3 players for them (free-for-all
scenarios)
A player may have up to 10 nations in play at one same time, or may end up the Grand Campaign having played more than 20 of them (there are 80 nations in the game for 700 years)
This seemingly hard to manage situation is possible because a nation will have a life-cycle, from Barbarian tribe to Kingdom and then Empire, each of these status having different and progressively more complex gameplay.
E.g. as a barbarian tribe, you receive free warrior levies every year, so you just bother yourself with conquering new land (and surviving other more greedy, stronger barbarians)...
Then you settle in some nice area and transform to Kingdom: you now have to do a bit of ruling and building to ensure prosperity, growth or survival..and after some years, if your expansion did well, and you took quite a few lands, you can transform into Empire...more wealth, more units, more buildings, more administrative actions...and more problems (civil wars, usurpers, revolts, tax, religious strife)...until, maybe, you crumble and split into successor minor states (then just concentrate on your other nations and keep playing....)
The system is simpler than Pax in that it works à la EU, but the Pax feature to assign leaders freely will be kept...
Economy in those ages is barely simple: tax the population (or the monks), loot, exact tribute from vassals...that more or less it. Plus a few 3 or 4 buildings you may construct that provides a few extra gold pieces....
Other key elements:
1 - A player is never off the game...if one of the nations he controls is conquered and disappears, so be it...the player has other nations to continue playing with...and in the rare case the last nation of the player is destroyed, he will get de facto a new one to continue playing...
2 - I'll keep the suggestion to improve the message system...the one from Pax was never finished as it should have been (because the disappearance of ressources to do so in Galilea, it was "dumped" by the people there as "not
important"...!!!
3 - The game working is way different as you feel: although a player may control many nations in different status or age, all these nations are independent from each other, and they may well be at war with each other if their controlling player feels it is necessary. Of course, some testing and rules have to be set to limit possible "cheating"...but this is how it
works. Nations do not merge, except via Historical events...so if you conquer a nation (including one of yours by one of your "other" yours!, it disappears...
4 - The whole diplomatic engine is WAY different from what you may have know in Pax, EU or other games...you will find familiar stuff (alliances, princely weddings, CB, foedus, war and peace, etc...) but it works with embassies sent to other nations (even, and sometimes above all, to those you
control as a player) and those embassies undertake some specific mission and no other...but you do not choose the pool or the frequency of ambassadors and their assigned missions (as for instance rare and precisous missions
will not be very frequent). The amount of embassies you get depends on your age, status, and the DIP value of the nation's monarch...with a special bonus to Byzantine diplomacy... Unusual but fun and adapted to the gameplay,
a way to keenly avoid the above-mentioned "cheating" (for example, as Western Rome, if you have only 1 foedus embassy, do you send it to your Franks - 100% chance to accept - or to your opponent's Wisigoths - with chance player / AI refuse ? Got the trick?)
Globally, nation at kingdom / empire status (no barbarian ruling
required...it is obey or die! will need, once every 3-7 years, to manage their administration [the Admin year of sort]: the monarch's admin capacity, taxation policy (critical), funds allocated to government and a few other decisions will cost the nation gold and the amount and quality of spending
will impact on "administrative checks"....
These checks will be done throughout the nation at random intervals between the Admin years...and will give more or less positive results depending on how much / well you spent on administration, the nation age (the older the tougher...a very key factor) and taxation policy (more tax...more problems)...and even previous results (like if you "obtain" a decline result, more problems later...you fall into decay)
Results will be in terms of extra aging (when bad comes to worse), revolts, corruption, palace coups, unrests, tax loss, usurpers, decline, etc...and a few (little) nice stuff too for good admin results...
Also, choosing whether to rule well the core of the realm and leave the periphery, or spread evenly resources will be important...
The player management will be minimal: at some point, spend gold and take good decisions via 2-3 buttons / sliders in 1 single window, and that's it.
Have a good monarch, appoint good local regional governors (via map interface, easy), have the right religious attitude...
If the player does not manage the realm properly, the decay will be faster.
Note however that because normal and regular aging, nations will face more and more problems over time. Hopefully, random and historical monarchs will help (e.g. the Justinian monarch for Byzantium will provide some respite...the empire even getting "younger")...
Scenarios:
Everything is open yet, but I plan to have the following:
* a grand campaign AD 350 - AD 1066
* a mini-campaign #1 scenario AD 350 - AD 630
* a mini-campaign #2 scenario AD 630 - AD 800
* a mini-campaign #3 scenario AD 790 - AD 1066
* a First Wave scenario AD 406 - AD 632
* a Jihad scenario AD 630 - AD 790
* a Carolingian scenario AD 650 - AD 850
* a Viking scenario AD 790 - AD 1066
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