Conquer Club

Map Name: TBD
Mapmaker(s): thenobodies80
Number of Territories: TBD
Special Features: Starting Positions, Conditional Borders, Transformations, Stages
What Makes This Map Worthy of Being Made: This map will add the possibility for players to play on map that will change during the game, where your power will become stronger if you progress and upgrade your civilization more than just holding big pieces of territories to grab a bonus.

Map Image: NOT READY , tha map project has more than a single image, so I would like to discuss the concept before to start to draw the map. In any case a rough draft will come very soon.


Description:
The story starts with some groups of people that find a dream land to build up a happy city. But as soon as the game starts they will discover that they are not alone. Infact during the first phase of the game they will discover soon that there're others that had the same idea and they are not keen to move away.

Phase 1
The players (up to 12) will touch the land and they can explore the terriotories and/or collect some resources.
Resources have a key role since they allow you to progress and allow your civ to advance and leave your settlement/camp to create a real city.
The whole land is splitted in various zones, each zone can be occupied by 3 players ( so there are 3 camps for each zone) but there can be only 2 cities in the same zone. So as soon as 2 players create a city the third player in that zone is out of the game. (obviously the players can decide to kill the others before to advance and create a city).
So in theory, as soon as the phase 1 ends, there will be only (up to) 8 players left .
Important thing: in this phase the players are not allowed to leave the zone in which they start the game (the idea is that they are not advanced enough to explore the whole land).

Phase 2
We have cities. Now the game is similar to a classic risk game but we will add some resources that will be essential to advance and progress.
As soon as the game will progress the players will face the necessity to control the whole zone, infact some resources will be unique and so the only way to control them is to eratidicate any form of competition and rule the whole zone to grow a small empire. As soon as a player will control the whole zone he is free to explore and conquer all the land available on the map.
This means that progress your civ is a key aspect because it allows you to do something that the others may not able to do.
Attack other zones means that the game will move on th phase 3.

Phase 3
The last phase.
this is the most "classic risk" part.
I will add some resources that will allow players to do nice things to make the game more interesting, (e.g. long range bombardments)
the game will finish as soon only a player will survive to the battle or as soon as a player will reach a level of progress (map objective)

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As said we will have more than a single image. the idea is to change image when a player will create a city and when a player will create an empire.
Since there are some combinations there will be lot of images to create, that is a pain, but certainly will add some variety to games and also will add to conquer club something that is not yet available.
For this reason i would like to discuss a bit the idea and maybe refine it before to draw.

Hope you like the idea, please add your comments and contribute to make it better!!! =)

Nobodies

that's a very ambitious idea!

the special feature that u want to use, but haven't named, is stages.

since no-one has tested stages with a proper map, it'll be a good idea initially to try a 3-player map with one simple zone (maybe 9 or 10 regions) and two stages (pastoral and civilised?), just to see whether we can make it work. if it does, then u can build from there.

ian.

I'm worried about the gameplay for smaller games though. Would the starting zones be restricted, or could some people be alone and have a much easier time progressing and winning the game (or is it only meant for 12 players)? And what exactly would resources be? Bonuses and conditional borders (hold resource X and you can bomb Y, hold resource Z and you can attack AA, ...)?

iancanton wrote:that's a very ambitious idea!

the special feature that u want to use, but haven't named, is stages.

since no-one has tested stages with a proper map, it'll be a good idea initially to try a 3-player map with one simple zone (maybe 9 or 10 regions) and two stages (pastoral and civilised?), just to see whether we can make it work. if it does, then u can build from there.

ian.

OK!
I'll start to work on a very rough draft today, no reasons to develope advanced graphics for a test.
What I would like to understand, and that it's really important for the way I tought to use stages, Is it possibile to change the image accordingly to what each player control? I mean, the game start with an image and a camp for each player (camp A, camp B, camp C). As soon as player 1 control a key region his region is converted to a city. So we will have City A, but camp B and C are still there. So I will produce a image with that alyout. Next turn, Player B can convert his camp to city as well. So I need to produce a image with City A and City B, but not City C. So I wonder if the game is able to understand what image is needed since the right one is based not only on a single user controlled key territories, but is given by the state of the whole game situation.

If we go with your idea and assuming that there's a single key region (or better one for "each location") that will change the camp to a city, I need to develope:
Kx= key region X, C controlled, N Neutral)
Image 1 K1 N, K2 N, K3 N
Image 2 K1 C, K2 N, K3 N
Image 3 K1 C, K2 C, K3 N
Image 4 K1 C, K2 C, K3 C
Image 5 K1 N, K2 C, K3 N
Image 6 K1 N, K2 C, K3 C
Image 7 K1 N, K2 N, K3 C
Image 8 K1 C, K2 N, K3 C

Is the game able to understand this? Assuming that there's no way to ge back into the transformation, so id if a player advance there's no system to regress to a previous state. (moreover when the tranformation happens territories and their values - for that player - will change).

If this is not possible I can make it to work doing something like "the first one that advance will change the map for everyone, but I would like to make it possible to have each player, so each single civilization to progress at its own pace.

Anyway...I'm going to start to draw a first rough draft this afternoon following your advices.
Then, we will move from it.

Nobodies

ZaBeast wrote:I'm worried about the gameplay for smaller games though. Would the starting zones be restricted, or could some people be alone and have a much easier time progressing and winning the game (or is it only meant for 12 players)? And what exactly would resources be? Bonuses and conditional borders (hold resource X and you can bomb Y, hold resource Z and you can attack AA, ...)?

First of all, thank you.
Discussion has a key role in developing a good map, so I need to know what you think and what your concerns are.

No, the map is not meant only for large games, the idea is to use starting positions to spread the players around the map . No one should stay alone, and if it happens, well it is not for so long since at some point players are forced to fight each other to advance. No conquer, no progress, no win.
And I will make all I can do to not have games where player will stack tons of armies and wait (I really dislike that type of playing). For now the idea is that when you advance you're "reset" to predefined values and than you move from there. Obvioulsy advance will give you an advantage but this doesn't mean that if you progress a bit slower than your opponents, then you're 100% out. I would like to make possible to minimize the dice influence. At least, this is the idea

Starting zones are restricted, but the map will force you to grab land and create a city. If you don't do this you will be out at some point.
This could be done maybe reverting to neutral a whole piece of land as soon as a city is created. So run to create a city will be primary to stay in the game.
And here the resources become important. Since i don't want that someone will sit waiting and stacking, waiting that another player will do the dirty job to eradicate him as soon as he conquer all is need to create the city.
I will make that resources are a required thing to create the city or, later in the game, to progress.
Surely, at the start we will see lot of "natural selection" since there's no space for everyone to advance...the stronger will survive. But at some point of the game I would like to have more focusing on progress that on fight....maybe making more attracting to use progress than use the brute force to annhilate your opponents.

But most of these are just random ideas, that's why I have no posted a working draft yet.

Finally resources...
Well resources are just regions in the game, but those regions will give you something that will make you able to do something else.
Some random example I can think are: farming, mining, wood cutting could be requirements for a prorper city. Mastering iron and gunpowder could be a key role to develope better weapons and maybe make you able to have longer range attacks, or leter in the game bombardments with cannons, or again create and airport and so bombard very distant places...etc etc etc

I would like to have also some resources/progress key features that will give you something that is not just make you able to attack stronger your opponents, but i need to think about them better for now. The idea is to add a final objective that will make u able to win without bring your opponents' armies count to zero. This because I would like to have a map with more than a single wayto win a game.

Nobodies

thenobodies80 wrote:What I would like to understand, and that it's really important for the way I tought to use stages, Is it possibile to change the image accordingly to what each player control? I mean, the game start with an image and a camp for each player (camp A, camp B, camp C). As soon as player 1 control a key region his region is converted to a city. So we will have City A, but camp B and C are still there. So I will produce a image with that alyout. Next turn, Player B can convert his camp to city as well. So I need to produce a image with City A and City B, but not City C. So I wonder if the game is able to understand what image is needed since the right one is based not only on a single user controlled key territories, but is given by the state of the whole game situation.

If we go with your idea and assuming that there's a single key region (or better one for "each location") that will change the camp to a city, I need to develope:
Kx= key region X, C controlled, N Neutral)
Image 1 K1 N, K2 N, K3 N
Image 2 K1 C, K2 N, K3 N
Image 3 K1 C, K2 C, K3 N
Image 4 K1 C, K2 C, K3 C
Image 5 K1 N, K2 C, K3 N
Image 6 K1 N, K2 C, K3 C
Image 7 K1 N, K2 N, K3 C
Image 8 K1 C, K2 N, K3 C

Is the game able to understand this? Assuming that there's no way to ge back into the transformation, so id if a player advance there's no system to regress to a previous state. (moreover when the tranformation happens territories and their values - for that player - will change).

If this is not possible I can make it to work doing something like "the first one that advance will change the map for everyone, but I would like to make it possible to have each player, so each single civilization to progress at its own pace.

Anyway...I'm going to start to draw a first rough draft this afternoon following your advices.
Then, we will move from it.

Nobodies

i believe stages will work as u outlined above. u said previously that there can be up to 2 cities in one zone, so image 4 will never be used. unless i'm mistaken, if the map has 4 zones, then stage 1 needs 7x7x7x7=2,401 images. this is because a zone's image cannot be changed independently of other zones.

ian.

Ok, my idea is to use gameplay and stages to kick out players, so I will have less player when the map will change.
But I can consider to make it more simple, specially if have not to fit the map for 12 players. I don't know what is the current rule about it...
My original idea was to have a map for max 6 players, but I don't know if it's allowed.

If it's allowed we can have only 3 cities. as soon as a player will create a city the other one that start in the same zone is killed with the stage switch (territories in that zone outside the city will revert to neutral at the image switch).
So when we will have 3 cities it becomes a 3 players game.

What do you think? Better?

Nobodies

What about this?
We have 8 starting points (SPx) , so we can have up to 8 players.
2 starting points for each main area.
Maybe these starting points can have a small autodeploy. You can do nothing with starting points, so the idea is that players will move to camps.
Camps are the place where your civilization can start to progress. As soon as you have your camp you can start to collect resources (Rx).
The number of resources in the image is not definitive, even if I was thinking about very basic resources, like wheat, wood and stone.
Resources will give you some small advantage and will give you access to the "progress bar" (that is not currently on the posted image).
As you reach the 1st level of this progress bar you can build you city. there's only the space to build a single city in each area.
The city will appear and the player that share with you the same area is killed since the stage will change all the territories outside the cities to neutral.
I want to change them to neutral, not only to eliminate a player, but also to create a different gameplay for the player that is still there.

By the way, is possible to change what the territories do in each stage, I mean a territory X does nothing before the city but as soon as the city appear it allow to attack, or bombard , or give a bonus, etc...???

Anyway...at some point we will have 4 cities and they will fight to kill the others or progress and win through objective.

In this way we will have just to change the image for the cities. Not my starting plan but it could be a good start considering that this may be the first map with stages.

Another way could be to have images also for camps, but we may decide to have less cities (maybe just two) to keep the number of images to produce acceptable.

Nobodies

this is a good beginning. code 4 of the starting points as starting neutrals, to reduce the number of players to 4, which greatly reduces the number of images used for initial testing. u can eliminate the starting neutrals after we're sure that the transformations code operates properly, which was not true when it was previously tried on a different map. the conditional borders code, which we know does work properly, can change the potential attacks for a region when a city appears, while a variable bonus needs transformations.

ian.