When playtesting Clash of Empires, I noticed that many games end up with one player having an overwhelming advantage in terms of territory or position when the game isn’t close to over.

To fix this, I plan to introduce a morale system to allow players with an early advantage to quickly end the game. There will be a single morale tracker, that will move when a player removes enemy influence. Also a player will gain morale each turn for occupying strategic locations. They win the game if the morale tracker moves enough spaces in their direction. If the game end is triggered before one player wins a morale victory, a player gains points equal to the number of territories controlled plus their position on the morale track.

In addition, the morale system has many other strategic implications. First of all, it is a lot more dangerous for a player to neglect the board early game in favor of improving their deck because the other player will get a morale victory. Second, players will now be more willing to take risks, especially if they are losing in order to quickly win a morale victory. This will make the board more dynamic, and the game will be less likely to devolve into a stalemate near the end.

During my playtests of Clash of Empires, I have noticed that the combat system has some major problems and needs a rework. Players have complained that combat is too predictable, and that high value combat cards are overpowered. I have also noticed that attacking is often not worthwhile since combat often ends up in a draw.

With the new combat system, players play 3 cards from their hand instead of one.  Each card has a suit and a number, and the winner will be the person who played the most suits. To prevent draws, tiebreakers will be used in the following priority.

• Most numbers in a row.
• Highest total value.

Going for the highest value card early is now a bad strategy, and players should spend more time buying low to mid value cards. Early game, it is best to buy some low value cards to add more suits to your deck since they are easy to get, and some mid level cards because they are good for tiebreakers. High level cards are only good late game to help with having the most numbers in a row and possibly the highest total value.

For the starting deck, a player starts off with 8 combat cards, 2 recruits, 2 attacks, and 8 influence. Each of the combat card has a value of 2, and has be of the same suit.  The influence, recruit, and attack cards also have the same suit, but have a value of 0. To start the game off, all the influence goes on the top of the deck and everything else is shuffled. This allows players to build up some influence on the board before actually fighting.

I was thinking about ways to make Clash of Empires work for more than 2 players. This week, I came up with a variant where players trade “shares” in countries that are fighting each other on the board. The winner is the person who makes the most money at the end of the game.

There are two things I want to accomplish with this variant. First of all, control of a country is based on being the majority shareholder, and you can make money by buying shares in countries you do not own. This adds a new layer of strategy as players need to predict how the board position will change and make investments in the right country. Second, the value of a country’s shares increases based on how fast that country is expanding. Players will be encouraged to make a country rapidly expand, then sell its shares to make a big profit. This encourages dynamic board positions as players abandon a large country for a smaller one that can rapidly expand and take the place of the overextended large country.

The game will be played over a number of turns , each split up into several phases.

Investment Phase: For  each player in the game, create an individual pile of x stocks, and place them to the side of the board. Afterwards, players can bid on stocks. On a player’s turn, they pick a pile of stocks, and then place a bid on that pile. Their bid must be higher than any previously existing bids. Players keep going until everyone has the highest bid on 1 pile.

Control Phase:  If a player has the most stocks, they get control of a country. In case of a tie, control does not change. If nobody previously had control of a country, then the player who bought a stock of that country from the leftmost pile gains control.

Action Phase:  Starting with the first player(first player rotates counter-clockwise), and moving clockwise, each player picks a country they have majority control in, and performs an action round with them.  Then, starting clockwise from the first player, anyone who doesn’t have majority shareholder in a country, may take actions with a country that hasn’t done anything that turn.

Here is how an action round for a country works.

-Majority shareholder places troops in a county equal to its reinforcement value. To figure out the reinforcement value, count the number of regions a country owns, and divide that by 2 rounded down. Troops can only be placed in a country’s home regions.

-Move troops. Majority shareholder can move each troop to an adjacent region. If there are enemy troops in the same region, combat happens. Keep removing one troop for the active country, and one troop for the defending country until one country is out of troops.  If the defender runs out of troops, and the active country still has at least one troop, the active country takes control of the territory.

-Sell shares.  Starting with the active player and moving clockwise, a player can sell shares in a country to get money. The value of a country’s share is based on the number of regions that country controls. During the last round, players automatically sell their shares.

After playing a fixed number of rounds, the game will end. The player with the most money wins.

Found a bunch of a riddles and trick questions I learned as a kid.

Q: How much dirt is in a 4ft x 4ft hole.
A: None, there is no dirt in a hole.

Q: Say shop.
Q: Spell shop.
Q: What do you do at a green light?

Q: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
A: The egg.

Q: A man has 1 match, 1 lantern, 1 stove, and 1 heater. What does he light first?

A: The match.

Q: Say silk 5 times.
Q: Spell silk.
Q: What do cows drink.

Q: A plane crashes on the border of the US and Canada. Where do you bury the survivors?
A: You don’t bury survivors.

Q: Say fort.
Q: Spell fort.
Q: What do you have soup with?

Q: You are driving a bus. At the first stop, 10 people get on. At the second stop, 5 people get off. At the third stop, 3 people get on, and 13 people get off. Who is the bus driver.
A: You.

Q: Jack’s mom has 5 sons, the first son is named firstCup, the second son is named secondCup, the third son is named thirdCup, and the fourth son is named fourthCup. What is the name of the
fifth son?
A: Jack.

Q: What is the center of gravity?
A: The letter V.

Q: Spell my name.
A: M-Y-N-A-M-E.

Q: A man an a woman go on a honeymoon to Paris. In Paris, the woman falls of the balcony and the man says it was a suicide. However, an airline official says: “This was not a suicide, it was a murder”. How did he know?
A: The man only buys a one way ticket for his wife.

After the latest Clash of Empires playtest in July, I decided to experiment with some major changes. It did not scale well because adding more players would end up making the game take too long, and there were balance issues with odd numbers of players.
In January 2015, I came up with a variant that made two major changes.

The first change was that players would secretly invest in certain factions on the board, and would earn points at the end of the game based on the success of those factions.  Many multiplayer area control games suffer from excessive leader bashing or targeting a specific player based on factors outside the game. With secret investments, it is harder to figure out the leader or target a specific player. Additionally, things would be faster because players will not be able to slow the game down by trying to calculate points.

The second change  was that each player made simultaneously took their turn. Players would secretly play cards from their hand representing a territory, and a specific faction that would get a unit there. This meant that I could easily add more players without making the game take significantly longer.  I playtested this variant, and it seemed to go well. However, I decided not to implement the variant because it was too much of a change.

Due  to the issues I had during the July playtest, I decided that some radical changes were needed. As a result, I revisited the variant I had made 18 months earlier and decided to try testing them again.

In addition to the rule changes, I decided to make a map of the US. Territory names were important, and I wanted to have ones that people would recognize.

Additionally, I decided to make the theme revolve around fast food corporations.  Many players did not like the old historic theme, and I felt fast food was a theme more people would like.

The playtesters liked the secret scoring mechanics, and the short playtime was also appealing to them.  For the next playtest, I’m going to continue working on this variant, and focus on the following gameplay changes.

• Add special action cards: Players said they wanted more ways of influencing the game state aside from placing units on the board. To address this, I plan to add special action cards that give various bonuses such as reducing a company’s endgame score.

• Fewer territories: Players have cards in the hand that refer to specific territories. This was an issue because the map had over 50 territories, and finding some of them took time. Companies would score multiple times throughout the game, and having a large number of regions made scoring tedious. To fix this, the number of territories on the updated map will be significantly reduced.

• Rework combat: Combat occurred every turn because a players turn usually involved playing a company’s unit in a rival territory. Resolving combat took time and significantly slowed down the game.. Additionally, combat was based on a die roll, which left players frustrated when a bad roll made their turn meaningless. In the future, multiple companies can have units in the same  territory, and combat will be triggered by special cards that will only show up every few turns. Players will also have more control over combat results.

On Sunday, I ran two more playtests for Clash of Empires with the following rules. The reaction was mixed, with players enjoying the area control aspect of the game but not the card mechanics.

Here is some of the feedback I received.

• It was frustrating to have a hand of weak cards that were difficult to get rid of.
• The area control element of the game was fun, but the card play felt boring and not well integrated.
• Some of the cards were confusing.
• The theme needs improvement.

For the new playtest, I will focus on improving the theme and making sure the card play is integrated well with the area control part of the game.

This week, I worked on an updated map. The goals were to make the differences between regions more clear and add naval territories to the map.

During the next week, I will focus on making the map easier to read and add some theming to the map.

This Sunday, I ran a playtest of Clash of Empires with a generic hexagonal map instead of the Europe map. In addition, I tested out the following changes.

• Special terrain types.
• When you take an opponent’s territory, you may move nearby influence into it.
• Players are no longer required to have specific cards to do certain actions, but will have cards that give bonuses for actions.
• Players will have a fixed deck of combat and action bonus cards.

Overall, the changes made the game simpler, but there were some issues.

Hex Map was boring

Players found the hex map to be dull due to a lack of theme or asymmetry. As a result, I plan to give up the idea of developing a hex map, and go back to the Europe map.

Attacking was too powerful

The ability to use influence to boost attack combined with the ability to move it into conquered territory made attacking too powerful. Placing extra influence in a territory was initially a way to make the “influence” action card useful in the late game, but extra influence have been the source of many balance issues over the past few months. As a result, I plan to remove the ability to advance influence into a conquered territory and make it harder to place influence into a conquered region

Combat was imbalanced

Players felt that the combat was not very interesting because of a lack of variety with the cards made the combat too predictable and dependent on rapidly cycling through the deck to get the powerful combat cards.

I will continue having fixed player decks, but they will get a massive overhaul in order to make combat more interesting. Additionally, some cards will get special abilities to address concerns about a lack of variety with the card types.

I am considering switching to the use of individual hexagonal tiles with different terrain types. This will be a good way to offer replay value by allowing the easy creation of different maps, and will be easier to balance than a map of Europe.

Here are the different terrain types and their effects.

• Mountains:  Players cannot place units on mountains, and supply cannot be traced through them.
• Hills: Owner gets +1 defense, and +1 attack when attacking adjacent regions.
• City: Worth 2 VP instead of 1 if controlled at the end of the game.
• Water: +2 defense when being attacked from a land territory. Additionally, when doing a move or attack action any two land territories connected by a continuous path of friendly land territories is considered adjacent. However, water tiles do not give victory points at the end of a game.

  Players will have the option of playing on a symmetrical map, or playing on a randomly generated map.

There will be several balance changes.

• Players will have the option of taking a move action.
• When attacking another territory, any additional cubes that participated in the attack must move to that territory if the attack is successful. Also, players must declare how many cubes they are using in the attack before combat is resolved.

  On the negative side, these terrain rules do add complexity to the game and increase the learning curve. As a result, they will be only added in an expansion, or if I find a way to simplify the base game.