Howdy, ya'll. A few of you here know a little bit about what I'm talking about, but I haven't made any mention of it here, yet. I'm working on a game right now, and I could really use some help. It's just in the early production phase right now, but any kind of assistance that can be offered would be greatly appreciated.

So, some details: The game, right now, holds the title Barons' Wars. For those who were thinking this is a video game of some sort, it's not. It's a Grand Strategy board game/Tactical miniature battle game. In Barons' Wars, players are in conflict with each other (or in alliance with each other) to expand their domains from a single barony to, eventually, the entire kingdom. The game is based on a hexagonal map, on which you can move your armies to take control of lands and fight opponents.

The Grand Strategy side of the game is all about improving your domains, discovering new technology, engaging in diplomacy (via Pacts, Treaties, and Alliances), arming and training troops, and deploying your armies for war.

On the Battle Side, each opponent in the battle hex can take control of up to 64 troops (usually broken down into 8 companies of 8) and fight battles either as small skirmishes, or as a part of a larger, many hex-spanning conflict.

Some unique things about the game:

- Creating your own, customized soldiers

- Culture affecting both strategy and battle

- Conquering and maintaining prosperous domains

- Unique events that can occur randomly via cards

- and much more as the production process goes on

I know a lot of people usually aren't willing to help out all that much with something that is just getting off the ground, but I would really love to make this game a reality. So, if you can help in some way, either through actively aiding in the creation of rules, or throwing ideas around that could be implemented, I would love to hear from you.

Thank you for your time.

What resources will be needed to fund development along the tech tree? Are you planning on having it use a generic currency or specific resource seperate from other (or at least most) transactions? By doing the latter, you could assign certain hexes as granting certain amounts of the resource per turn, resulting in the creation of military targets whose securing is vital for late game victory. The problem with this is that if holding specific hexes grant additional and useful resources, it might encourage zerg rushing in the early game. You could hinder this by having low movement speeds for early units.


Which situation inititiates combat in your game:
1. Armies in adjacent hexes engage in hostilities
2. Two armies attempting to occupying the same hex engage in hostilities


Wargear.


Cities could radiate culture into surrounding hexes per turn. Occupying a hex with an opposing culture could increase upkeep costs or increase the chances of a negative event, such as a modifier on a dice roll when the GM wants to determine if a rebellion occurs. For battle, different cultures get different bonuses in combat? Or maybe different cultures get bonuses when fighting other cultures?


Total war

Go to jail.

The initial plan calls for two resources. Capital and Prestige. Capital is a very vague resource which is essentially made up of any valuable asset your domains might produce. If one of your domains is predominately forests, for example, you can build saw mills which enhance your capital intake.

Prestige is a little different. Prestige is gained over time by holding titles or having a certain trait on your leader, or as lump sums for some random event or heroic action.



The second. Two opposing armies cannot occupy the same hex at the same time. When either tries to, battle is initiated. The first turn going to the army that initiated the attack.



Yes. It exists.



Culture is more of a fief-wide thing. The majority of people in Normandy, for example, would be Normans. Culture change (to your dynasty's leader's) would happen at a massive expenditure of Prestige. Occupying a fief with a different culture would incur upkeep problems (you wouldn't be able to gain "upkeep points"), and occupying a fief with an enemy culture (Castillian/Moorish, Frankish/Breton) would incur that penalty, as well as cause a drain. Rebellions are something I haven't quite thought of how to implement.



Um...sorta.


Hehehe, that is a possibility. Events are card-based, and are drawn every three turns. They are separated into three groups; Celebrations, Information, and Disasters. Celebrations would be something like "Your servants discovered a wrecked cargo ship. Gain ___ Capital". Disasters would be "Lo! While on a hunting trip, you have suffered a fall from your horse. Cannot move leader for 2 turns". I'm not quite sure what Informational events would be yet.

So, tech tree wise, you would use capital then?

so attacker gains initiative then, cool. When a battle occurs, Does everything stop while the battle is played out, or can other stuff go on at the same time?

You could have low upkeep point disasters be done with cards that are drawn when you recieve a certain event card. For example: You could have a card that's called "Consequences of your rule" that causes different things based on the upkeep in your fief. Low upkeep, and you draw from a deck of bad things, high upkeep, and you draw from a deck of good things.


So, do you want informaitonal events to just be for color (ooh, we invented glasses!) or simply not be as clear cut good/bad as celebrations and disasters?

edit: Here's something, you could make informational events prerequisites for certain technologies. A card saying "ooh, we made a non-newtonian fluid" lets the reciever research and build a special type of moat or liquid-based trap.

Yes. There might be other pre-reqs as well.


Haven't quite worked that out yet. If there is only two people playing, then it makes sense for everything to basically stop until the fight is complete. but with more people, they'd just be sitting around waiting until the fight is done to continue playing. I'm much, much, much more inclined for things to continue going even while the fight is going.

A way this could be implemented: Fights essentially comprise three stages; Advancement, Shooting, and Engagement. So, each player in the combat wouldn't do anything (except respond in engagement, maybe) in combat until it is their turn to act on the Strategy map. This would also help with implementing reinforcements.


I kinda like this idea. Be a bad ruler and more often than not, bad things will happen in your domain. A little more intuitive than the purely random events I had planned before...



Kinda a mixture of both.


That was definately something I wanted to implement. Vice-versa, too. Certain tech is required for certain events. To use your example, you can't invent glasses until you've learned how to work glass.

Make it a matter for house rules. That's the kinda thing people would go house rules on anyway.


I'm reminded of duel monsters for some odd reason. Anyway, once you work out the math for combat it should be easy.



Well, for events caused by having certain tech, you could have certain cards which say "if you have X, this happens. If you don't have X, put card back in deck and reshuffle deck."

I would still have to have something written for it. But if people wanted to ignore it and institute their own system for it, that's fine.



?! It's more like Warhammer or Warmachine. Which reminds me, I should post the troops profile and give a general idea of how combat works.

A units profile is all pertinent information regarding how much it costs to train them, how many you get, their characteristics (Attack, Defense, Movement, Threshold, and Command), their wargear, and any sort of specials they might have.

Here's an example of an English Fyrdman

Unit Name: English Fyrdman

Cost/Turn: 2/1

Trained/Turn: 4/1

ATK: 13+
DEF: 1
MOV: 5
THR: 1
COM: N/A

Equipment: Shields (+1 DEF), Spears (+2 ATK vs. Cavalry)

Special: Spearmen (Schiltrom), English (+1 All stats when being besieged)

ATK works on a roll of a d20. DEF affects this roll by adding the defense value to the required roll of the d20. So say a Fyrdman (13+ ATK) comes up against a Housecarl (3 DEF), the Fyrdman would need to roll a 16 or better to hit the Housecarl. Say the Housecarl has a THR of 1, and the Fyrdman rolls a 17, the Housecarl dies because suffered one hit to his THR.

Command is a value only commanders have. Haven't quite worked out how it will function yet, though.



Yeah, that's what I'm incline to agree with.

You could have it so that a commander being stacked with a unit gives the unit some discretionary power in battle, whereas without a commander a unit has to follow some protocol that determines who they attack. This would help ensure that commanders are always strategically useful, even early on when they might reasonably have poorer stats. Command as a stat could let the commander either get a bonus to his stats when fighting a targeted unit, or perhaps providing a bonus to his force in general in the dice rolls. Command could also be levels of a special ability (mechanically) so that there could be say, 5 levels of command, each level granting the commander a different power or effect upon his units or the enemy.

That's what I was brain-storming, too. Commanders would actually allow you to command your troops, rather than just direct them forward. Instead of just getting in range to stab, commanders would allow for retreating, reforming in battle (normally done outside of combat), bonuses to a units attack if led by a high level commander, ect ect.