Great Powers

[Cuathon]

How many people here are interested in playing some sort of Balance of Power type game, with slightly better rules and less ability to exploit?

 

Essentially a map will be drawn up with various territories with various values, and each player make some claims for lands and powers and such and I will write it up, fill the map out with some NPCs and you will get to dominating.

 

You can pursue a variety of strategies to control the world and each of them should be fairly well balanced. You will be given an allotment of points with which to specialize your lands, including how many lands you take. This free form allocation is to allow you to customize your in game nation with your role play desires.

 

Although you can expand through conquest its not always the ideal strategy. Lots of stuff can do wrong and it will take a while to solidify your conquests.

 

You had better roleplay because you get bonuses to all actions when you do it. Quality is considered but its mostly the fact that you are adding flavor to the game that matters.

 

You'll be able to specify several values:

Number of lands

Accessible and undiscovered resources

Production Infrastructure

Transport Infrastructure

Education

Social Services

Military

Magical powers of leaders and troops

Spying defenses

Spying offenses

Diplomatic skills

 

I know it sounds really complicated but a lot of this stuff will only be necessary to do when creating your nation/history/culture.

 

As far as how this stuff works, which you don't really have to know:

 

Diplomacy/Influence is used to connect with NPCs. Basically you invest influence points or money into an NPC nation and in return you get ecomomic benefits and can utilize a variety of actions. Influence with a nation can also be given for treaties like defense pacts and trade agreements.

 

Spying defense and offense involves espionage. Defense protects you from enemy missions and lets you run missions to achieve goals such as removing enemy spies. Offensive spy missions can reveal non-local spies, increase your influence or decrease the influence of an enemy. They can also be used for coups.

 

As far as resources and number of lands, you can try to decide the future of your nation. Resources are mathed together with infrastructure and population to produce your economic output. You can use your points to pick a large number of lands. All lands have a resource score for both known and hidden resources. More lands will give you a larger early score and room for more population with less crowding. However they are harder to defend and harder to spread transit and infrastructure to. Less lands allows you to focus your infrastructure and resource bonuses and may get your economy off the ground faster. Undiscovered resources require you to search them out before they are enabled for your economy.

 

Infrastructure allows you to process your resources. Higher infra means better economy but if your infra score rises over 10x your resources you start to degrade those resources. Infra and resources are by province. Roads create trade bonuses both within your nation and with every other nation. This is not as direct as infra and somewhat relies on the road level of neighbors. Also the diversity of resources counts.

 

Social services deals with the happiness of the populace. It helps prevent espionage that pisses off the populace. It helps to alleviate high tax rates, and it helps to grow population.

 

Education is a general bonus to all scores and helps on special activities. It is required to discover new resources based on their quality.

 

Magic allows for the use of various special abilities and options for play. It will not be the be all and end all of game domination, don't be scared.

 

You can annex territory both populated and not, but there is a cost. Wild lands have no infrastructure and few exposed resources but there is no combat or a local populace to subdue. Populated lands have built up economies to some degree but you have to fight for it and this can cause damage based on the intensity of the war. You may also suffer from populist revolts which can be enflamed by your enemies. It usually takes a few turns to consolidate your hold.

 

The game ends when one player holds dominion over 60% of the world. Should you get busy or decide to quit you can send me a message and I will dissolve your nation into some smaller groups which other players can then try to control in some way, either diplomatic or military.

 

If you feel overwhelmed by the number of options I can handle any or all of the actions for you. Perhaps you merely wish to decide to annex lands or use magic or something and don't wanna mess with mathy econ.

 

Here is an example nation claim with placeholder RP:

 

Points: 150

 

My nation controls medium amounts of land with vast undiscovered resources. We have a focus on infrastructure and magic.

 

Lands:

Education: 10- 10 points

Services: 10- 10 points

Defense Spy: 10- 10 points

Land Army: 10- 10 points

Leader Magic: 10- 10 points

5 provinces: 25 points

1 p-infra 5, t-infra-2, resources 2/4, capital- 10+4+4+4+5 = 27 points

2 p-infra 3, t-infra-1, resources 1/2- 6+2+2+2 = 12 points

3 p-infra 3, t-infra-1, resources 1/2- 6+2+2+2 = 12 points

4 p-infra 3, t-infra-1, resources 1/2- 6+2+2+2 = 12 points

5 p-infra 3, t-infra-1, resources 1/2- 6+2+2+2 = 12 points

 

So you have one powerful capital province that is highly industrialized with a good number of discoverable resources and 4 other provinces of lesser quality but still some resources you can find. Found resources cost more points since they are in your economy on the first turn.

 

You have medium number of lands as well as medium values in all other scores. You are prepared for annexing local lands or defending from player assaults as long as the fight is small.

 

You'll probably have more points than this in a real game.

 

Again it seems a lot more complex than it is. Turns will probably last about 48-72 hours so you'll have plenty of time to plan. Its a little faster than similar games but I may slow turns down if people have problems.

[John E. Kelley]

I'm intrigued....

[Cuathon]

I'm intrigued....

I figured the problem with my mafia game was that mafia isn't supposed to have too many people due to its large amount of single thread communication. This game has way less posting involved so its a bit easier to keep track of.

[WWWwombat]

I'm interested. I always wanted to play Diplomacy or something like that.

 

What is the tech level going to be like?

[Cuathon]

I'm interested. I always wanted to play Diplomacy or something like that.

 

What is the tech level going to be like?

You mean the starting level of science? Does it matter? People can vote or something. Medieval with magic, magitech, anything that would involve only a single planet I guess.

[Niniel]

I love games but this sounds a little bit complicated for me. If you are going to run it I would love to read along to learn how to do it. How long does it take? Is it an neverending story?

[Cuathon]

Its actually modelled on BoP with a different theme. I was not aware of NES's until recently. The game is a little complicated at game start, because I've given you a lot of freedom to define both the lore and history of your nation and how you want to procede. Actual turn orders should be a little simpler unless you are powergaming. For instance I would expect most players to make decisions more commonly in their local area around their map location, which means they don't need to check the info on every NPC society, but some people probably wanna do a little more.

 

How long does what take? The whole game? Depends on the players I guess.

[Cuathon]

Hmm, this game will require at least 10 players. Hopefully more people will be interested in the next few days.

[WWWwombat]

I tend to powergame. I was mainly wondering if gunpowder, tanks, and/or airplanes would be involved.

[Cuathon]

You can powergame all you like, you won't be able to out mathcraft me most likely.

 

There probably won't be like 1940s warfare if that's what you mean, depending on the time period players select and your technology level you could probably get guns, and maybe armored rolling things with big guns on them, airplanes might be more like creatures or ornithopters.

[WWWwombat]

So fantasy/steampunk kinda?

[Cuathon]

So fantasy/steampunk kinda?

Well, only the magic part is really fantasy themepunk. And that can be removed, its not tied in the same way as the other mechanics. Like I said, the theme is malleable. I do personally prefer fantasy over industrial revolution to 21st century conquest.

[WWWwombat]

Me too. Automatic weapons and mechanized forces are boring.

[Cuathon]

Well, it looks like this is not gonna get off the ground. Ah well.

[Cuathon]

I ended up running this at bay12, the DF forums, and I've gotten about 6 signups so far, its been up a day. Perhaps if it goes well there more people here would be willing to give it a try.