So how's that board game your making coming along /tg/?

>>55103251
I'm stuck on a design point, and it's kind of annoying. It's SUPPOSED to be a game about wheeling and dealing between a powerful Empire player and the 6 or so barbarians at the fringes; the Barbarians, if united can easily crush the empire, but none of them will get enough money for their own victory conditions if plunder divides more or less equally.

The idea is to encourage the Empire to constantly switch alliances by paying off the various barbs (they generate a lot more cash), but in practice, I can't come up with a way of stopping the Empire from just permanently allying with 2 barbarian players and virtually ensuring that the three of them win.

>>55103307
Ok if I'm understanding this correctly, why don't you just make rule so that the Empire can only have one alliance at a time?

>>55103307
Maybe you only let one of them win in the end. Hunger Games style, people form temporary alliances but ultimately need to kill each other.

>>55103652
Because it's completely unenforceable. Even if you only have one formal alliance such that they can move and fight together, you still can't stop a less formal one.

>So I'll send you 10 gold, and you'll be my ally for the next turn. We'll break alliance next turn, but you keep not attacking me, and that's a lot more money than 1 turn of alliance is worth, don't you agree? If you don't take it, I can offer it to any of the others.

Or stuff like that; and ultimately, the main mechanic of the game is supposed to be the political maneuvering, not the fighting. I don't want to restrict players abilities to do that sort of stuff too much, or at all, really.

>>55103307
Make allying more risky in some way. Maybe it allows sneak attacks or some kind of underhanded subversion, of course with a reward that rivals the benefits of keeping the alliance.

>>55103786
The problem with that is that unless I redesign things from the ground up, you ultimately have 2 very different paths to victory. The Barbarians just need to amass 100 gold by the end of the game. The Empire needs to maintain enough of its territorial integrity by the same. It's entirely possible, (and hoped for, in a sense) that if you have a war of all vs all, everyone loses, and that a sole victor should be an unlikely outcome.

If you do make it there can only be one at the end, that in practice probably means that the Empire player will have to start wiping out barbarians, even though there's no direct incentive to do so at current.

>>55103812
Hmm, that's actually a very good idea, and I'm not sure why I didn't think of it. I'd kept tinkering with methods of making alliances (or more precisely, sending the gold which underlies most of those alliances) risky, but that has a lot of potential.

>>55103851
Maybe treat the barbarians more as hired mercenaries than something you can all. Something like
>I'll give you 10 gold to attack Barbarian Camp X
And the Barbarian player has the choice to either go through with that and gain the trust of the empire or backstab the empire by leading them into a false sense of security

>>55103937
*Ally

>>55103307

Maybe some sorta mechanic where someone who keep their barbarian roots longer, have special bonuses? And that the longer someone is allied with the empire they become powerful enough to challenge the empire with the help of a few barbarian players?

Also maybe make it easier to obtain more gold relative to effort for barbarians

>>55104007
I feel like that'd kind of make the game a bit formulaic.
>play barbarian
>ally with empire
>build up gold and strength
>break alliance and attack the Empire with the other barbarians
>win

>>55103251
>your

>>55104419
I'm sorry anon please don't bully me I'm retarded