War! What is it goofier?
I’m re-examining the premises for war. I like the idea but am uncertain whether the complexity and detail is justified. This almost certainly means it isn’t justified. Ergo I may end up killing war from the design before I’ve adequately explained to you poor readers what it was before I mercilessly defenestrated it. So be it.
The core concepts of war are simple: City States may construct buildings whose outputs are transport-like devices that can destroy other buildings or transports, or which can take over (conquer) other City State’s city centres.
Destruction of buildings can be useful for land-constrained City States or City States attempting to achieve or maintain a competitive edges over neighbours. Such military units could also be used to sever key Transport connections for competitors or possibly of the host City State so that other/different/more attractive connections could be built instead. Of course once a warship (for example) has been built and the appropriate transports adjusted, the question arises of what to do with it in other later turns and who might use it to do what and where? There are laws about unintended consequences as well as idle militaries.
Conquest however was intended to be the more interesting affair. The core concept was that military units could attempt to penetrate another City State and to conquer its city centre. Should they succeed, then a large portion of the treasury of the losing City state would be divided given to the larger investors in the winning City State. In this way potentially large lumps of cash could be extracted from the game and handed to players. (Investors in the losing City State would have their investment totals transferred over to the winner according to some ratio) On subsequent turns all buildings within range of both/all city centres would activate when that City State had its turn. Thus the result of conquest are several-fold:
- The total number of City States in the game would be reduced, thus the maximum length of a cross-City-State production pipeline would be one shorter.
- More buildings over a larger area of the map would activate on a given City State’s turn. Ultimately the entire map could potentially consist of a single City State. This is not necessarily a Bad Thing.
- The effective turn order relationships of buildings within City State boundaries would change. Greatly distant buildings would now be able to operate within the same functional City State turn. This change could have significant effects in making and breaking efficiency optimisations.
- A City State could acquire technologies and other aspects of a city centre without investing in them directly.
I can also imagine tieing city centre count limits to technology level limits of City States. In essence this would be a logically implied branch of the tech tree.
Getting back to the starting position however, what I’m having the most problem with is the war buildings and the war transport-like objects. They just don’t seem justifiable in terms of return for complexity. It will also be difficult to write rules without problems for them. I do like the investment and cash flow effects of war. Those are compellingly interesting.
A thought: Have branches of the tech tree which do nothing but absorb/conquer other City States whose city centres are within range of the tech tree climbing City State city centre.
Hurm. The more I think about this the more I like it. It also ties in well with another post I haven’t finished writing yet on managing building ownership and city centre ranges. I’ll try and get those details posted later today.