Curious about 4X-ish game turn/round structure and end game condition.
I’ve been building a 4X (really 3X because there’s not much ‘explore’ going on) game for a while now, and I’m struggling with how to structure the turns/round part of the game.
I want to be concise because I don’t think every ounce of my current rules is necessary to get y’all’s opinion on this, but I’m also going to try to be exhaustive so you can actually give feedback.
In essence, it’s kind of a hodge-podge of Blood Rage, TI4, AoEII, Inis, Kemet, and Scythe (of varying degrees). And yes, before you lose your cool and think that there’s probably way too many subsystems, I genuinely have put a crazy amount of time into making it as lean as possible.
The way I see it, I really have two different possibilities:
Structured - This one is going to sound incredibly lame/uninspired, but bear with me. The general idea is that a game has a set number of rounds, and each round has a set number of turns (ie. 7 rounds of 4 turns each). The idea is that it would allow players to pace themselves, have a sense of their ‘budget’ in terms of the turn economy, and would keep the ‘creativity’ on the board. Then, it would be just the total number of VP’s earned at the end. I’m also considering adding a caveat (mercy rule), where if the leader leads by X amount over second place at the end of a round, they win (but this amount would be high enough to never really happen in competitive play.
Tug-o-war - This would be more akin Inis, except instead of just 1 win condition held, it would likely be a ‘win by 2’ scenario. Where it’s slightly easier to gain them than in Inis (only slightly), but there’s also a signal that someone’s pulling ahead. I like this one, but I am kind of worried that a competitive game could last a really long time.
The way that I justify to myself liking the first one, is that a) it kinda feels like a sport to me. We’re very used to there being a set number of periods (quarters, half’s, innings, etc) in a game. It helps to keep track of it and adds built-in tension. And b) it’s the most recommended by chat (over and over again in separate brainstorming sessions). I don’t really rely on it too heavily, but if it keeps coming back to something I try to keep an open mind.
The second one seems like a cool idea, but I’m worried that it would sometimes drag on, or be over way too quickly. I understand that’s sort of the trade-off with a game like Inis, but I’m looking for something slightly more predictable I think. Thought I also recognize that when I did a poll for this a while ago, the overwhelming response was that this more organic/emergent end-game/win trigger was preferred.
And before you say, “it really depends on the rest of your game,” I promise, it doesn’t. I genuinely could tweak just a couple of things and it would completely work for either structure. I get that not everyone in here is going to prefer going for the mainstream and that purists would typically lean toward more of what was conceived of by the designer. But I feel pretty confident in the rest of the game (at least for where it is right now, I know much will change as it continues in development). Right now I’m genuinely looking for a) crowd-appeal, and b) y’all’s personal opinions on how to approach this.
Thanks for following along, I hope you enjoy this thought exercise with me.