Game Concept: Factions

[rdonj]

I'm guessing I should have had this idea when there were less games active....

[Illuminated One]

Yay, cool idea.

I had a slightly similar one, concerning ideology.
Make one team democratic one feudal and one dictatorial (or whatever).
Each team would have a different organisation and players in each team would have different conditions for individual victory (like kill and replace the dictator or become elected as team leader three times in a row).

I'd be interested in it if it starts some time.

[rdonj]

Feudalism, theocracy, anarchy, despotism? Something along those lines wouldn't be too bad.

I had similar thinking about differing victory conditions, in particular a secret enemy type deal where defeating them contributes significantly to your personal victory. Like I said I'm open to ideas to make it more interesting.

[Septimius Severus]

Well, you know I'm partial to any sort of team game. This concept seems to capture the spirit of cooperation and yet allow a great deal of individual freedom (Machiavellian as you say).

The liberties of the free wheeling first 3 teams would be pitted against a sort of xenophobic 4th team. Sounds like 4th faction members, aside from having a power nation, would be at a serious disadvantage since they could not communicate nor trade nor ally themselves with any other faction or member of their own team.

[rdonj]

Yeah. The intention was to create politically complex games that try to make nations seem more realistic, seperating them into seperate power blocks like in our own past based on their different beliefs. The 4th team's members would represent universally reviled peoples who are just too dangerous to leave alone.

The 4th faction would be at a significant disadvantage as a team, but I think that on an individual basis some of them would be likely to do well. Especially if they were given extra points for their achievements as compared to the other factions. Also trying to defeat them could be very dangerous for some of the less powerful nations as they would be likely to take significant losses, and risk being defeated by someone on an opposing team. It might not work out that way, but that was the best way I could figure out to try and balance the really powerful nations so that it wouldn't be unfair to have them in the game.

[chrispedersen]

Make the game set turn limit.
Make 15 or 20 victory conditions:
Forge of the lords - 5 pts for ulm,

Mictlan's capital 20 points for ermor
ermors captial 10 points for anyone...

etc.

[GrudgeBringer]

Hmmm, Interesting to say the least.

You might want to have the 'Team' Players have to pick out of low to medium Nation strength (say EA and perhaps Arco, Maybe Kalisia ect) and the single player faction get thier chice of the powerful nations and perhaps a very slight to slight advantage on starting gems, money ect.

Anyway, the possibilities are endless but I think you would need to keep it in one age and propbably EA as there seems to be definite 'classes' of Nations.

Just an opionion

[rdonj]

Definitely I think the basic game set up is very versatile and could handle many different ideas without breaking down so long as points needed are assessed carefully.

The way I was thinking, the number of players determines number of slots for each team. Say every 3 people who are playing a normal nation allows one super power nation. A 12 player game would therefore have 9 players (3 per team) playing moderate nations and 3 players in overpowered nations. It wouldn't necessarily have to be done that way, but it's probably a decent approximation. I don't know that the strong nations would really need bonuses. People can often take on 2 or 3 lesser nations at once in a normal game, so just being outnumbered wouldn't necessarily doom them from the start.

I think the game type is flexible enough to handle all ages, but you wouldn't really need to play all ages unless you had a lot of players and ran out of super nations in the era.