Friday, April 25, 2008

Area Control mechanics

I was thinking about Reiner Kinizia's upcoming release Municipium (which I don't know much about) and an old favorite of mine In the Shadow of the Emperor. Both are Area Control games where you move your influence around the board. In ItSotE your influence also "ages" and falls off the board, which I find a very interesting twist.

I was wondering how I would go about an Area Control game, and with the thoughts of those other two in mind, the following popped into my head:

Players are lobbyists for special interest groups, with congressmen in their pockets. 'Assign' your congressmen to various committees in an attempt to control them, and earn the benefit of the committee while you control it. Over time Congressmen's terms come up and they go away, or maybe they have some chance of being reelected so they only MAYBE go away.

Regarding committees... maybe each congressman gets a vote, and you might want the same thing out of the committee as one of your opponents, so you don't need majority control of a committee all by yourself yourself to get what you want. I imagine the committees would be in charge of making some kind of decision which would affect the game state, so players would have a stake in what their 'decision' will be.

These were just some thoughts I had, so I thought I'd jot them down in case I ever want to pursue the idea further. for the time being I'm working on Reading Railroad for the KublaContest, and on getting Homesteaders (and Terra Prime?) published.

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