Game Concept: Factions

rdonj · #1 June 7th, 2009, 12:02 PM

An idea I had that I thought might make for an interesting game. This would be fairly similar to a team game, but with some twists. Main points...

1. I'm thinking there should be at least 4 teams. I'm not quite sure exactly how to divide the teams up yet. Ideology, physiology, political beliefs, power level... probably whichever proved most popular. With 3 of the teams, they act relatively normally for the most part. They can trade and communicate freely between team members and need never consider themselves at war with other members of their faction. Maybe somewhat abnormally for a team game, faction members can make NAPs with members of the other factions on an individual basis. However you cannot trade with them.

2. The fourth faction is an exception. This is where all the high-powered nations are. This faction is always at war with everyone, and cannot communicate or trade with anyone else, including other members of their own faction.

3. Precise victory conditions would vary depending on how many people were playing. But each faction would earn points based on meeting certain conditions, though some might earn more for doing the same thing to help balance the game out.

Conditions: One point for each capitol belonging to your faction. One point for each category of the score graphs in which your team holds the top position (2 for dominion, for thematic reasons). One point for each surviving member of your faction. You get extra points for taking underwater captiols as a land nation, and vice versa. I'm also thinking that 4th faction capitols and captures might be worth extra as well.

4. Another twist. Either a team can win, or a player can win. Scores are counted again for each player individually, and if a player reaches a certain point goal or possibly advantage level over all other players before a faction victory is achieved, that player wins. If a team wins, whoever the player on that team is with the most points is declared the winner, not the team itself. So while you want your faction to do well, you don't want it to do too well. I see this as a bit of a machiavellian style game where players may see it to their advantage to let their faction suffer as long as they come out ahead. As such, naps in this scenario can be followed or disregarded as one sees fit.

5. I am considering allowing nations that are losing a war to turn coat ONCE per game and become a member of the faction that they lost to. If they switch sides, they must give all of their gold and gems to the nation that defeated them as reparations before beginning to rebuild their armies. However, the player they are warring with does not have to accept the defeated nation into the fold and can decide to destroy them instead (taking their gold and gems in this situation is not allowed).

6. I was thinking this should be a no gem-producer game type, but with all the big spells (nexus, forge, corruption) still intact. Other game settings depend largely on number of people and player input. Particularly I think this would be an interesting way to do the next mega game it could get pretty interesting with that number of players.

There are a few things to work out and I would need a bit of help from some of the more experienced players especially, but if enough people would be interested in playing a game like this, I would be willing to organize/admin it for them. Any comments or suggestions are of course welcome.

rdonj · #2 June 7th, 2009, 07:21 PM

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

Illuminated One · #3 June 7th, 2009, 08:03 PM

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 · #4 June 8th, 2009, 01:07 AM

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 · #5 June 8th, 2009, 01:22 AM

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 · #6 June 8th, 2009, 11:47 PM

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 · #7 June 12th, 2009, 12:48 AM

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 · #8 June 13th, 2009, 06:49 PM

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 · #9 June 14th, 2009, 10:10 AM

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.

PsiSoldier · #10 June 14th, 2009, 02:21 PM

Ive been thinking of two other possibilities remotely similar to this. One where teams are divided by Magic specialization. Ie An Earth team, A Death Team, A Nature team and so on.

And the other thought was one in which each player could choose only One Main Magic path where they could reach lvl 9 in and maybe 2 other paths they could reach lvl 4 or so in and thats it.. Or perhaps just a flat Research point limit that you cannot exceed while still selecting only one path to reach lvl 9 in. A long time ago I read a post where people were discussing which Magic Path they thought was the most powerful which was what originaly gave me the idea for such a game. But you could not limit them to ONLY one path since the top spells in some of them require some magic from another path to compliment it to some degree. That one probably actually wouldnt be a team game but your talk of Ideology made me think of that.