River Rapids

[Mad-elph]

My idea is to have a whitewater rafting sim like thing were you start in the boat of your colour (launching point) and can bombard any of the starting positions. The entire map has neutrals of 1 (except portages).
I want to have 4 obstacles where there is an alternative to portage around it on land - if you take the portage you go around the obstacle but have to defeat a (reverting) neutral of 3. If you go through the obstacle you will lose 2 (or random if possible - to simulate getting through clean or hitting a rock).

Its a race to the bottom, and once you get to the bottom you can take the shuttle back to the top to defeat any of the launching points. This will allow people to go through at different paces, you can only attack forwards down the river and you have the objective of defeating all others to rule the river. The interesting idea is all about when you take the shuttle to hit someone as you then have to allow that the others around can take their spots. Is it too complicated?

Here is a rough drawing I did. I will probably end up taking out a portion of the spaces before the first bend to streamline it. But I like the bulky spaces at the front, and fewer spaces throughout. The idea I want is for people to rush forward. I guess I have to give them incentive to do so. I was thinking of having 'check points' which once passed it would give a bonus of x (5?). Then again cards do that don't they.

Click image to enlarge.

Thanks in advance

[Mad-elph]

Its hard balancing the idea so people don't cash before the first bottle neck, then again why would you pu them all on a bottleneck as everone else would work together to hit you. The goal is to move down the river faster than anyone else, how do you suggestion I encourage this? I like the idea that people aren't out until their launching point is gone, that way anyone, even when seemingly far behind can get into the game. The beauty is that even if everyone hits you on the river, you can start again at the top your next turn and run again.

[Aalmeida17]

i like the idea , maybe some boats are good idea too , to made more bonus zones

[MarshalNey]

Love it.

This idea has a good, unique idea for the flow of gameplay. I looked at it and at first thought of Circus Maximus, where you are looping around and around trying to catch players. But although they both have a "race" feel with 1-way attacks, this is different because of the starting points- everyone knows where they have to go, even in a foggy game, in order to wipe a starting position. So it really is a race, and whoever gets to the end could have a decided advantage.

The Obstacle vs. Portage choice is good, but the negatives of each choice aren't clear to me yet. When you say "lose 2", do you mean troop decay? That would be practically the same as a killer neutral, since a player wouldn't bother trying to keep any stack of troops on the spot in any case.

I thought maybe you meant that holding an Obstacle would constitute a negative bonus (probably just -1), which could work. It would be a definite alternative to simply trying to build up enough troops to whizz through a Portage killer neutral (and possibly failing). However, in order to be an acceptable choice, there would have to be decent bonuses to hold along the way as well- nobody would risk taking their deployment down too low.

You can't do random negatives, as far as I know.

Bonus 'checkpoints' (one available for everyone?) would be a good incentive to advance down the river. You could even scatter 'items' too, like a Speedboat, Ranger Bob, etc. that are single-tert bonuses which could be fought over, depending on which bank of the river you head towards, maybe?