Idea for a PBW game

[Arkcon]

I've got an idea for a PBW game. This will be the first one I set up, so I'd like opinions before I start.

In the grand tradition of using PBW games to try to understand the game better (you all know about Puke's Furball series, and Rautha's ankle biters), I've got a peculiar set of rules to make it interesting. I'm open to opinions on some of these.

The title will be "Holy War".

1). All players must take the Religious Trait, the talisman will not be disabled and everyone will have it eventually.
2). All tech's and alliances, trades, intel projects, etc. will be available.
3). There will be neutral AI's in this game. The rule is, if you share a border with them (or surround them), they are placed under your protection. You can't exterminate them in that case. Anything else, is fair game. Dominate them. Colonize their system or drop troops. Abuse the AI with trades. It's all your business. But leave them an independent planet. If you want to exterminate the neutral far afield, that's fine, the player next to them has the responsibility to come to their aid.
4). I'm going for role-playing encouraged, but not required here. Just follow the rules robotically or role-play your decisions.
5). I figure 3 planet, good, start. Medium galaxy, 4 players min, 8 max, no catastrophic events so neutrals don't die from natural causes, and anything else someone cares to suggest.

[Puke]

I suggest you rename the game "White Man's Burden," in honor of Kipling and imperialist opression.

seriously tho, maybe you should setup the map with fixed starting locations, so each player has a neutral to guard. then rules could be that if you lose your neutral protectorate, you are out of the game. or maybe, you have to conquer someone else and take their neutral. maybe set a 100 turn limit in a small quadrant, and whoever is protecting the strongest neutral(s) at that time, wins. of course, you will have to disable gifting so that everyone does not give their neutrals all their planets on the Last turn.

[Arkcon]

"One True Faith's Burden" maybe. I like that name.

Setting up starting positions seems like it might be easy. But insuring an adjacent neutral, hmm, I don't know how to do that. Can you add neutrals? Didn't think so. I will putter around with the map maker tonight.

But I didn't want to lock the game into a pure neutral defence game. I want the player empires to attack one another. But then again, the two goals don't have to become mutually exclusive just because they're both out in the open like this.

Maybe the game ends with peace in XX years. The neutral AI's will insure wars break out. But you can work around this -- just beat your own neutral to submission and make him make peace with everyone else.

[ October 10, 2003, 20:41: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Puke]

you should be able to add neutrals. say you are going to have 5 players. just add starting positions for players 6-10 right next to one of the human starting positions. disable random computer, enable random neutral. tweak your settings .txt to force a certain number of computer empires, and you should be good to go.

and in case any one missed the reference:

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poet...pling_ind.html

edit: this should have been the link: http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poet...ns_burden.html

[ October 10, 2003, 21:08: Message edited by: Puke ]