Background on Pax Mongolica

The applied theme has varied widely from the operations of the mongol horde in the fertile crescent in the time shortly after Tammerlane, the human immune system under assault by player-diseases, the progress of the western steppe vikings to overland to Constantinople and along with the sailors who sailed the long way around and the resulting formation of the Varangian Guard, the spread of polynesian tribes and societies across the pacific islands via proas and their wave/wind pattern based navigation systems, etc. I have no doubt that the theme will change again, and again, and again. A new theme and backstory are easy enough to contrive for whatever the current set of mechanisms are. Getting the game right is more interesting.

The basic assumptions of the game:

0) Semi-random board setup (half random, half fixed)

1) Only one resource which is used for everything, or if you want the currency is fully fungible. A unit of currency equals a man equals a unit of influence equals a combat casualty equals a unit of every other cost in the game.

2) A (mostly) closed economy. Players start with a fixed pool of resources which they will spend during the game. They get them all at the start of the game, they won’t get more and when they’re out, they’re out.

3) Fully deterministic and yet interesting combat (well, interesting in the multiplayer case). It is a fun little bit of applied number theory. In short one player declares combat in an area. Each player with at least one token in the area in turn either kills another player’s token, or retreats their token or passes. Repeat until there’s either only one player left or all participating players players pass. (Yes, there are many paradoxes and dilemmas in there as well as rewards for “Let’s you and him fight!”)

4) Each turn there is a New England-style auction for turn order (the auction style may change, but the variable turn order won’t).

5) Action points. In each turn a set of different numbers of action points are available and after turn order determination players uniquely select how many action points they wish to use that turn. Each number of action points not only defines the count of action points, but also where on the board all those actions must start from.

6) Action points are resources and have fixed exchange rates with resource tokens, either 1:1 or 2:1. (There is only one currency…)

7) Players will build routes among the areas of the board and thus gain access to them. Building routes is expensive. Joining an already built route is cheaper. Destroying a route is expensive. Removing another player’s access to a route is cheap. Manipulating the network and the network accessibility occupies much of the game.

8) Scoring occurs any time a player selects the score action. That player gets the least number of action points that turn and scoring happens immediately after their turn. Scoring also occurs when the game ends. (Lots of HiLo? games)

9) Players score for pluralities and monopolies in areas and markers. Areas are contiguous sets of board tiles of the same colour. A monopolies is a plurality by the same player across all areas of a given colour. Markers are present on tiles and are gained by plurality on that tile. Scoring is (currently) triangular.

10) I’m toying with special powers and roles (See http://www.bgdf.com/tiki/tiki-view_blog.php?blogId=149)

The game currently plays in about 150 minutes. I’d like to shrink that to 120 minutes.