Empires of Steel and Steam

[Keldoclock]

Luddites
Shitty tech, powerful military units, high populations.

[mgb519]

All civilizations need both strengths and weaknesses, of course-I'm only seeing strengths. You should fix that. Make it force the player to sacrifice one thing for another-faster armies are weaker, that sort of thing. Still needs something else, though.

[jmatthew]

All civilizations need both strengths and weaknesses, of course-I'm only seeing strengths. You should fix that. Make it force the player to sacrifice one thing for another-faster armies are weaker, that sort of thing. Still needs something else, though.

I agree with this. If you could see all the notes I have in my anal orifice, you'd see a lot of the various weaknesses I've thought of, but yeah, each civ definitely needs to be balanced out and not over-powered. Most of the resource-income is determined by the government type though. Each type of government will show how many units of each resource their various buildings will generate. I'm thinking they'll all be averaged around 3ish. Examples would be theocracies generate more wealth (pay the church, you fuckers), but will have fewer immigrants since their type of society only attracts a select few. A technocracy's power plants generate more energy than other governments, but they have average wealth and population generation. There's a lot more to it than that, but a lot of it is still in the idea phase still, so I don't want to type it all up right now.
Basically, government type determines resource generation, plus a couple minor abilities (missionaries for theocracies, conscripts for totalitarians, tech recycling for technocracies, etc.), whereas the race determines unique units and unique technologies, as well as a couple more major abilities/ detriments.

[IVhorseman]

I actually really like the niche you're working at. If you ask me, the best part of this game are your resources. They seem like they'll flow together REALLY smoothly.

I guess a kick-ass illuminati blackhatter shadow government would also work well too.

[newcowboy]

If I may,
Quarks
People living underground, and in mountains. Low Pop., but good wealth. Average milatary.

[knolli]

All civilizations need both strengths and weaknesses, of course-I'm only seeing strengths. You should fix that. Make it force the player to sacrifice one thing for another-faster armies are weaker, that sort of thing. Still needs something else, though.

Another approach is to give each player a noname-race and he can choose two bonuses from the list. For the means of balance each bonus is coupled to the base income or population growth or any other major factor in the game. So i.e. a bonus that reduces upkeep costs lets you start with less recources/income to begin with. That will make it more worthwhile to focus on big swarms of cheap units. You could couple the boni to the chosen form of government or you could just leave it to the players to interpret them as such.

A game that already uses this method is Vinci.

To turn a card sideways to indicate that it is inactive is called tapping and it as well as the Tapping symbol are property of Wizard of the Cost, I think. Not that I care.

On a gereral note: As far as I can see the game will be very complex and each turn will take ages to play. The most difficult challenge to you will be to simplify and shorten it until you can finish one match in a reasonable span of time. So far it looks like a mix of Risik, Civilisation and Master of Orion. Consider that for everything a computer calculates in seconds (like income, total upkeep,....) the players will probably need minutes.

[jmatthew]

I guess a kick-ass illuminati blackhatter shadow government would also work well too.

Ooooo I likey.

If I may,
Quarks
People living underground, and in mountains. Low Pop., but good wealth. Average milatary.

I contemplated some kind of underground race, but I feel like too many new mechanics would have to be implemented to make them work, and they'd be hard to deal with.... I dunno.... Still thinking about it.

I'm planning on the Coven having rudimentary phase-gate tech, and I decided that one of their early attempts to summon a demon lord opened a portal to another dimension and brought a group from an ancient, highly advanced, but completely alien race into their world. This new race now has to try to adapt and develop their society in their new home. They have some of the most specialized techs and units, as well as the ability to phase-shift. They'll be able to take Hivemind (or Unified Mind), Democracy or Theocracy.

Another approach is to give each player a noname-race and he can choose two bonuses from the list. For the means of balance each bonus is coupled to the base income or population growth or any other major factor in the game. So i.e. a bonus that reduces upkeep costs lets you start with less recources/income to begin with. That will make it more worthwhile to focus on big swarms of cheap units. You could couple the boni to the chosen form of government or you could just leave it to the players to interpret them as such.

A game that already uses this method is Vinci.

I'm trying to kind of go for that same sort of thing with the pairing of different political systems with the different races, as well as further balancing it out in each race's unique units and technology cards. I love the game Small World (which is actually a re-worked and re-themed version of Vinci by the same author), but I wanted a bit more complexity than the simple mechanics of that game, without making it so intense that only people who enjoy reading 50+ page rule books (like myself) would be able to get into it.

To turn a card sideways to indicate that it is inactive is called tapping and it as well as the Tapping symbol are property of Wizard of the Cost, I think. Not that I care.

When buildings are inactive, you turn the physical building piece (which will be a wood or plastic piece on the board) on its side, not any of the cards. Either way, turning cards side-ways isn't property of anyone, but the tapping symbol and calling it tapping are, or so I think.....

On a gereral note: As far as I can see the game will be very complex and each turn will take ages to play. The most difficult challenge to you will be to simplify and shorten it until you can finish one match in a reasonable span of time. So far it looks like a mix of Risk, Civilisation and Master of Orion. Consider that for everything a computer calculates in seconds (like income, total upkeep,....) the players will probably need minutes.

The combination of games you listed is kind of exactly what I'm going for (except, replace Master of Orion with Sins of a Solar Empire, since I have never played the former, but I hear Sins based much of its gameplay on it). And yeah, that will be one of the hardest parts. I'm trying to keep the number of things to keep track of limited to a small set, and all the calculations to be extremely straight-forward and easy to remember, as well as having it all laid out in front of the players' on their cards, but without making it so simple that it detracts from the immersion of the game. Early versions of my notes had wayyyyy more things to keep track of (8 types of buildings and around 6 different resources, as well as having way more ways to allocate populations).
It's a work in progress and I really appreciate all the feedback you guys have provided (positive and critical). Thanks a lot!

[EDIT]
I forgot to mention, I decided how a some of the governments are going to work, sort of. Two of the hardest ones to figure out were Anarchy and Unified Mind.
I decided that for Anarchy's resource production, each turn they'll roll a d6 each for Trans. Depots, Govt. Buildings, and Power Plants to determine how many bonus units they produce (one d6 for each building type, not each individual building). Since the average for any given building in other political systems will be 3-4 bonus units, this means anarchists have the potential to either generate much higher or much lower on resources any given turn.
Unified Mind players will have a pool of 9 points (which can be boosted up to 12 by spending population) that they may choose to allocate however they wish each turn to their resource-producing buildings. If they have plenty of wealth, but are hurting for energy on a turn they might have their govt. buildings produce 0 wealth, their transit depots produce 2 pop, and their power plants all produce 7 energy that turn, as the collective consciousness dictates for the greater good.
Other systems will be more straightforward and have set values for their buildings, with a couple bonus rules (any territory with population in it adjacent to a theocracy's govt. building (church, temple, etc.) produces +1 wealth, their transportation depots only give them 1 population per turn though, until they start spreading their gospel to other nations, etc.).

[mgb519]

You could say they partially live underground instead. They could have defense bonus, especially in mountains, but not have good attack. Possibility?

[stubby]

I'm pretty sure it's actually illegal to copyright the actual rules to a game, which is why you can download pdf versions from any game publisher's website.

Mostly false. What you can copyright is the text of the rules, and specific names for rules mechanics. The M:tG guys are famous for defending their copyright on "tapping" cards, for instance, but you can make a game with a card-tapping mechanic as long as you don't call it "tapping" and you don't copy any of their rules text when describing it.

[Porphyrogenitus]

The Primevals - Higher costs than normal (2 population required for them when 1 would do for others or something like that; 2 population for infantry, half the research for the same level of population, etc), but individual unit performance is consequently better. Government types could be Aristocracy, Autocracy, and Theocracy. Their super unit could be a Steam City-Breaker - based on this (Helepolis), only steam-punk-ified:





The idea would be that they are an ancient civilization that has old and powerful technology but has a hard time keeping up with their enemies' numbers and relies on their superior kit to stay alive.

[morganm]

I've found that risk is a great game to argue over, because it takes so long that all of the arguments eventually turn into hysterical fits of laughter as people decimate each other for control of the world.

My wife literally kicked someone out of our house over a Risk game once. It was fucking hilarious to watch unfold and we all still laugh about it to this day. She wasn't really laughing at the time ... but we all were... which I think made her more mad... and thus we laughed even more.

She takes winning VERY seriously....

[mgb519]

Winning or whining? Because I could see someone getting kicked out over either of those.

[morganm]

Winning

[jmatthew]

Once, I was playing a game of Risk 2210 with my little sister and our mom. Our mom was actually doing really well, so my sister and I had to unite to take down her global defenses. My mom literally ran to her room. We were like, "wait, are you CRYING!?" She was. Because we teamed up against her.
I made my mother cry over a game of Risk.

[stubby]

I made my mother cry over a game of Risk.