Last weekend, I ran several more playtests of Clash of Empires.

Below are some notes from the playtest.

• Players often got frustrated because they were stuck with a hand of useless cards that were difficult to get rid of.
• Players did not enjoy the deckbuilding part of the game and felt it wasn’t very useful.
• Players liked how the game was quick with relatively simple rules.
• In summary, people mostly enjoyed the area control portion of the game, but did not like the deckbuilding portion of the game.

Over the next month, I will focus on finding ways to improve the deckbuilding part of the game. Here are several ideas I am considering.

Instead of requiring a specific card to take an action, have cards give bonuses to an action.

For example, players would be able to attack without having an “Attack” action card, but having the card would give a bonus to attack. This would help reduce frustration with not having a desired card while rewarding players for building strong decks.

Remove the deckbuilding portion of the game, and give players a fixed deck.

With the current game rules, building an useful deck that doesn’t prevent you from taking an action is possible, but it is not easy.  Having a fixed deck means it is easier to ensure that players can consistently do things on their turn, and not accidentally back themselves into a corner by buying the wrong combination of cards.

Additionally, a fixed deck would simplify the rules of the game and make it much easier to teach, and will not detract too much from the game.  The core idea of Clash of Empires is being able to strategically influence a board while having a quick combat system that strikes a balance between luck and skill.

Also, development of the game would be much simpler due to the need to have fewer cards. This would leave me more time to gather feedback and design expansions.

Have hexagonal tiles instead of a Europe map.

This would make designing the map easier as all I need to do is print out hexagons and put them together. Also, hexes will be useful in the long term.  In order to add more strategy and address concerns about replay value, I am planning to add rules for different terrain types and randomly generated maps, which will go well with hexagonal tiles. However, many players think a map of Europe looks better and offers more interesting gameplay due to its asymmetric nature.

I am considering the idea of creating an agent-based real-time strategy game.

The idea behind the game would be that each player will have a bunch of uncontrollable agents that will do thing such as fight and gather resources. However, players would be able to make high level decisions to guide the agents in a manner similar to how a president leads a country. There are several things I like about creating a game like this

• Players will only focus on high level decisions, which will make learning how to play easy. At the same time,  these decisions will not always be straightforward, which will make the game appealing to experienced players.
• Watching the agents interact will be interesting, even for people who are not playing the game.
• There are lots of possibilities for developers who want to extend the game and do things such as create custom agents, or implementing better AI for the agents.

I made several visual changes to the map in order to address comments that it was difficult to read.

• Thicker borders.
• Larger territory labels.
• Arrows to represent connections over water
• Thick green borders to visualize sections of the map, which are blocked off based on the number of players.

Today, I ran another playtest at a Break My Game event.  The goal was to experiment with modified rules , and different player configurations besides the normal 1v1 format.

Here are several of the things I tried.

Modified supply rules:

I decided to try something different from using Go  rules to determine if unit should be removed from the game. Instead,  I changed the rules so that any unit that could not trace a path through friendly or neutral territory to a player’s capital was removed from the game. Players found these supply rules to be more intuitive,  and it led to more decisive attacks as it was easier to remove large chunks of territory from an opponent. However, I am not sure if I want to use the modified supply rules since it makes it too easy for players to surround and maintain control of large swaths of territory.

Team Rules(2 v 2):

For this playtest, I played with 3 other people, and we organized into teams of 2 with more available regions. The playtest went well because it maintained the things that made players enjoy the 1 v 1 game while the larger map and coordination with your teammate made the game interesting.

Free-for-all(3 players):

This did not go well because players were forced to play passively. An important part of this game is being aggressive to attack your opponent to reduce their influence. However,  attacking one person was discouraged because it left the player open to being attacked by the third person. Another important part of the game is not wasting turns, and that player would gain a major advantage if the rules allowed them to take one or two free turns. Players may also form alliances, which means a free-for-all version of this game would devolve into a series of 2 v 1 situations where the player being attacked by two people has essentially lost.
As a result, I’m going to ignore free-for-all-games for now to focus on 1 v 1 and team games.

Other comments

• Balance
  • Recruit cards were not useful at the game end.
  • Some players felt that there were issues with lame duck players and runaway leaders.
  • Map has too many choke points and needs to be opened.
• Ease of learning
  • Rules for extra troops on a territory was confusing.
  • Some players were confused about the rules, which made it hard to enjoy the game.
  • The map is confusing and needs a visual redesign.
  • Some of the territory borders were hard to read.

Things to change

• Rules clarity:
  • Create player aids.
  • Rewrite the rules so they are easier to understand.
• Game board design:
  • Make the map bigger.  There were many complaints about the map because it was too small.
  • Make sure the territory borders are clear.
  • Often, parts of the map will not be used, so have a clear way of covering them up.
  • Some parts of the map do not have enough contrast, which makes them hard to read.
• Theme
  • Find alternative game components for the board besides cubes. Currently, all the pieces on the board are cubes, which is confusing and does not make thematic sense.
  • Rename Constantinople territory to Istanbul.
  • Add pictures to the cards.
• Balance
  • Figure out rules for adding multiple units in a territory.  Placing multiple units in a territory needs to have a useful benefit such as a combat bonus that is easy to understand.

Today, I ran another playtest at a Break My Game Event. I was primarily focused on seeing if players liked the mechanics, and making sure there were no broken strategies.

One of my goals is to make sure that strategies that ignore certain action cards are not successful. To do this, I ran 3 playtests with the following strategies.

• Game 1: Focus on influence and playing with the low-level combat cards in my hand:
  • I did well early in the game,  but I started losing in the late game because my opponent had stronger combat cards.
• Game 2: Gain some influence on the board, then trash most influence cards, and then focus on attacking:
  • This did not work well because my opponent started placing influence in critical territories to boost his attack and defense power. I was unable to counter this because of my limited ability to gain influence.
• Game 3: Trash my attack cards to focus on influence early game, and transition into a strategy of using a 4 card deck.
  • The early game did not go well for me. My opponent was allowed to be more aggressive with his influence plays because he did not have the threat of me attacking him.
  • I lost further ground in the mid-game because I focused on trashing cards from my deck.
  • The late game went better for me because my opponent did not take free actions to trash cards from his deck after losing a territory.

Feedback

• One player felt that the game ended before he could have fun fighting, which was also a complaint last time.
• Being forced to gain a militia into your discard pile was annoying. to some people.
• The theme of the game was weak.
• Territory rules do not make sense, but they make the game interesting once a player understands them.
• The updated 100+ territory map is too big for 2 players.
• Players liked that the game was quick.
• People liked how the game was easy to learn.
• The mind games from playing hidden combat cards was interesting.

Things to work on

• Create rules for updated map that allow for quick 2-6 player games.
• Improve theme of game.

The existing map for Clash of Empires is too small for more than 2 players, and not designed to work well with the game. I am currently working on fixing those problems with an updated map.

A draft of the map is below.

Today, I ran several more playtests at a Break My Game event.The game received good feedback from playtesters, which means I can now start focusing on balance and making the game easy to learn.

Playtest comments

Gameplay

• Avoid punishing a successful attack with a militia card.
• It is difficult to play with a strategy of getting better combat cards because it takes too much time.
• Be careful about ruining game with too many changes.
• The game is unique due to the way it combines Go with a deckbuilder.
• Avoid making the game too complex, the game strikes a good balance of having deep strategy without being too complex.

Rules clarity

• Improve explanation of supply and territory control mechanics.
• Add a player aid.
• Make it clear that Switzerland cannot be controlled.Theme
• Rename combat cards.

Based on the results of the playtest, I plan to focus on the following things over the next couple of months.

• Add a better explanation of the territory control mechanics.
• Update the map. My goal with this is to make the gameplay more clear and give players the option of playing with a larger map.

Special thanks to Break My Game and The Board and Brew for hosting.

Today, I ran several playtests with modified rules to simplify the game and add strategy for picking territories to expand to.

Here are the major changes.

• All your territories must be able to trace a supply line to an empty territory or your capital. You lose control of any territories that cannot trace a supply line.
• Claiming territory does not cost troops, and you can claim any empty territories on the board.
• In order to take an action on the board, players must play an action card.
• Combat is resolved by playing a combat card from your hand and picking the highest value.
• Each territory can only have one troop.Overall, things went well, and players enjoyed the new mechanics. For the next playtest, I plan on fixing balance issues.

Here are some of the comments

Gameplay

• “Great game feel”.
• “Combat feels off”.
• “It felt like playing Go with a combat subgame”(The area control mechanic is very similar to the one used in the board game Go).
• Combat felt like a stalemate.
• Combat had too many draws
• “Ties are weird”(The combat mechanics had a lot of ties)
• Add a better end condition.
• Improve theme.
• The game ended too quickly(Players did not have enough time to build up their deck).
• As the game ended one player said: “I feel we are getting to the interesting part”

Ease of learning

• “Make territories more clear”.
• “Change colors”

Suggestions

• Add an action to upgrade cards in deck.
• Add bonuses for controlling territories.
• Increase incentive to attack.
• Give bonuses to territories.

Changes for next version

• Figure out the optimal starting deck.
• Change map so that is it bigger,and the territories are more clear.
• Improve theme.
• Have a better end condition.
• Figure out a way to deal with a useless hand. In one game, I ended up having a hand without any actions for several turns, and I had to come up with an immediate fix for that.

Today, I ran a playtest with the new region cards and a small set of action cards. The new region cards worked out well, but I am planning to make a major change to combat based on feedback.

The playtest consisted of a 1 v 1 game with a seasoned board gamer that did not have much experience with deckbuilding.

Gameplay comments

• Combining deckbuilding with area control was a cool mechanic.
• The number of choices for purchasable cards was confusing.
• Game is like 2 player Risk and does not work.
• There is a problem due to a lack of troops

Other observations

• It was too easy to get money.
• The region cards give too much of a boost to players who took territory because of the extra money they gave

I am now planning to implement a new combat system. Players will not gain extra troops from regions, and troops will get displaced instead of destroyed during combat.  Here are the advantages I see from this new system

• The balance of the region cards is no longer as important. The region cards were originally designed in order to prevent people with too many regions from running away with the game.  When I made the region cards too weak, board play was discouraged. When I made the region cards too strong, they didn’t do a great job of preventing runaway leaders.
• There was often an incentive to avoid attacking because a player would lose troops.
• Players will not need to spend time constantly adding and removing troops.
• As players expand, they will have the same number of troops, but the troops will be spread out, which makes it harder for them to be a runaway leader.
• More opportunities to make meaningful decisions.

Here are some of the main mechanics of this system

• Players will start off with a fixed # of units on the board.
• When combat occurs, players will add the number of units in the contested region, and they will be able to play cards to boost strength. The loser has to retreat troops to a region of the winner’s choice.
• Players can purchase cards that boost combat strength.
• All regions  must trace a supply line to a capital region. Players lose control of any regions without a supply line to the capital, and any units in those regions are sent back to the capital.

In order to encourage players to take territory, I am creating region cards.  When a player takes a neutral territory in a region, they will gain a card that is specific to the region with the following benefits.

• Victory points at the end of the game.
• Will give +$2 during a turn for buying cards.
• Bonuses when combat occurs in the same region. Below are some possible region cards.

Also, I am switching back to a Early Modern Europe theme since it is a better fit for the region card mechanics.