DoW Talk[/b]
Turn OrderAn important decision, but more of a decision to be made by the Game Master each game with input from the players. ...which since the entire reason we’re talking about this is due to us needed a new DoW thread soon, will be needed to be discussed soon.
AvatarsAvatars are power. We’ve learned that since the first game. So yeah, we should probably divorce the cost to create avatars from the turn order and instead make it a scaling cost based on the about of avatars you already have. The real question is what scale?
Additive: 8, 12, 16, 20, 24
Geometric: 8, 16, 24, 32, 40
Exponential: 8, 12, 20, 32, 48
I’m a little partial to Exponential myself. It stops a reasonable player at two but let’s someone save up for three if they REALLY want it, and progressively makes the cost not worth the power beyond that.
Alliances, Race Ownership, and OrdersThe real problem with alliances is that race’s aren’t owned by one person. Avatars are definitively owned by one person, and orders are owned by a person but the rules allow other people to command them. I know most people choose/create a pet race, but its people doing that and isn’t fully supported by the rules.
With that in mind I say get rid of the controlling other people’s orders rule that NO ONE ever uses. People own their avatars, and people own their orders. Creating an order in a race puts a stake in that race. Creating subraces gives a race a chance to divide its orders; how depends on the owners of the orders and the person that initiated the subrace action.
What this means for alliances is that having an order in a race, and in turn having that race in a civilization, means you have a vote. Not in the actions done by other people’s orders but in the democratic actions needed to decide civilization membership, alliances, and how to spend those civilizations points that is being earned through trade... and potentially less diplomatic actions we’ll discuss later. I’m not certain if having more orders in a race should give you more votes, there is potentially for and against having more than one vote given this is a game and not a real democracy, but ultimately this line of thought is a good starting point.
Civilizations, Advancements, and Advance CityFirst thing, here’s a quick diagram for what I’m talking about civilizations.
Here.There you can see Race A stands along with with a subrace of itself, and it’s own little civilization. Race B has two subraces, the first (presumably founder race) of which is part of its founding civilization. The second subrace has joined Race C as part of its Civilization.
Each of these different categories is a potential node for advancements, which all builds up to have a final impact on the civilization as a whole. I personally don’t see a reason to make a cost for adding an advancement to different nodes, though if someone wants to make the argument they are free to do so. To me, where an advancement goes should be measured by what makes the most sense and not tactical decisions... though what advancements you implement is an entire different story.
Concerning advancements... I think we need to have a long talk to build examples to figure out most of the plausible benefits. For instance, in the current game Trask’s Utopians have the advancement
Toy-a-forming to represent the ability for Toymancy to slowly convert the organic world into toys. Obviously it would be too powerful (and possibly too weak with poor dice rolls) to just potentially gain a defeated army, but if instead we consider it allowing the Utopians to gain points to its pool of civ points with each victory, which Trask could then potentially spend on new armies of converted soldiers or possibly split off a new subrace of toys from the mother race and fold it into the Utopian civilization.
Advance City I agree should also be made more useful... and potentially cheaper. With the amount of players we work with we do have FAR more cities than anything else but armies, and if advancements are to be something other than a universal plus one to combat we should consider costs across the board. Of course, to spend more time with advancements we need to consider what they do.
One idea that crossed my mind are military ports, both naval and air, making up for armies built there not being made by the first civilization to pop the ship building advancement. Or trade ports to allow the establishments of trade routes unconcerned by geopolitical boarders. I’ve always considered it a strong possibility for advance city to be allowed to upgrade cities to count as an army on the defensive, but if you have mobile flying ships like the Tiatlaca do there is no reason you can’t use advance city to turn the city into an offensive army. Or going back on the trade concerns, advances to make a city profitable for trade or even tourism should be considered, but we should also consider advancements that provide the equivalent of one army protection on at least one of its trade routes per turn.
And yes, protect the trade routes. If we’re going to allow the civilizations who build up and develop it’s cities to live peacefully, we must provide some counterbalance for the aggressors to make being an aggressor a style choice rather than an underdog choice.
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