At the request of a few friends, I’m putting together a simple strategy game that we can use to amuse ourselves during reading hours and the like. Since I don’t have any experience creating this kind of game, I thought I’d ask for suggestions, criticisms, or (especially!) neat ideas that I haven’t thought of. A little background:
The game itself is a military conquest deal, played on a map covered by a hex grid: start with a little bit of land, spread out, build lots of units, spread out more, repeat. I’d be interested in making the economy complex enough to allow an economic or diplomatic strategy to flourish, but I’m beginning with open conflict as the mainstay.
I’m not adverse to making the ruleset increasingly complex as we playtest it and get a better feel for what works and what doesn’t, but I’d like to start with a fairly minimalist format.
I’d like the game to be entirely transparent, such that it can be run without a DM. We’re happy with running stealth units, spies, and the like on the honor system, so long as the player covertly records his movements so he can prove that he was following the rules if someone challenges him.
Finally, let me summarize what I have so far:
Gameplay is fairly straightforward: each player begins with a certain number of units and the ability to construct more units. Once I have a solid economy worked out I’d like to add a simple tech tree.
The game is played in rounds; a round is defined as the time required for each player to take a Turn, in which he makes any legal moves he wishes. A turn may take as long as a player needs, but once the player announces the end of his turn, he may not move any unit until his next turn. However, regardless of the state of his turn, any player may elect to attack an opposing unit if said unit attempts to travel through a hex adjacent to said player’s unit. Play proceeds clockwise in the same order every round.
Each unit has a small number of statistics. To keep things simple, I’m beginning with an Erfworld-style system: every unit, without question, has the following statistics:
Health: Hit points; if a unit runs out of these, it dies and is instantly removed from play.
Movement: These govern a unit’s speed; advancing one hex costs one movement point, and when Movement reaches zero a unit may not move anywhere else. Movement regenerates completely at the beginning of each turn. Attacking does not cost any movement, so a unit may advance, attack, and retreat in the same turn. (I’m thinking of creating a special ability that prevents an attacking unit from retreating; lining up several units with this ability would create an effective front-line.)
Attack: The unit’s offensive capability. One attack may be made every round, and damage is calculated by subtracting Attack from Defense; once the enemy’s Defense has been reduced to 0, all remaining attack points are subtracted from the defending unit’s Health. Attack regenerates completely at the beginning of each turn.
Defense: The unit’s defensive ability. As noted above, one point of damage recieved from the offensive unit is soaked for every one point of defense. Defense regenerates completely at the beginning of each turn.
Special: Some, but not all units have special abilities. Any such abilities are recorded and detailed in this slot.
I’m quite certain that I’m leaving a few things out, but those are the basics of my system. I have a few things I’m still unhappy about, but I’m hoping that as I flesh things out an obvious solution will present itself. My chief concern is that I don’t want gameplay to be tedious. As such, I anticipate most units will have high movement and low hit points. To compensate for this, I can introduce different types of Healers. Ideally, I’d like to avoid outright sluggfests unless one or both players really want to throw down. Weak units should force players to play thoughtfully. It might be interesting to begin each game by giving each player several powerful units that may not be replaced during the course of the game.
So, anyway… any thoughts?
