VIKTORY II Expansion Background
After developing VIKTORY II, I had ideas for various other games that I might develop, but as I tried playtesting them, I kept coming back to the things that I like the best about VIKTORY II: exploration, a geomorphic hex map, varying terrain, developing an empire, building a military, fast-paced combat, shifting alliances, ability to fight it out to the end, etc.
I decided that I was more interested in taking VIKTORY II and trying to make additions/modifications to create a different gaming experience, using principally the same game pieces. Since I didn’t plan on changing it up so much that it would warrant VIKTORY III, I decided to develop a VIKTORY II expansion.
When I’m finished, it may look like the same game, but it should have a significantly different gameplay.
For those interested, I would like to reveal the development process and would welcome feedback on my new VIKTORY II blog, which will focus on the VIKTORY II expansion’s development.
Please feel free to offer any critiques, suggestions, and advice. This will be a dynamic, changing process of development. I admit it’s a little unorthodox, but by encouraging player feedback and playtesting before the expansion rules are developed and finalized, I hope to improve the resulting expansion game.
Posted: December 13th, 2006 under Expansion Rules.
Comments: 4
Comments
Comment from Edwin Raith
Time: December 15, 2006, 1:30 pm
Just as a wild shot in the dark, what if various hexagon “worlds” could connected by one of the setup “world’ hex sides. You don’t even have to start with the 2nd world in place. Players could explore for it and then if found it’s placed. It’s a great reason to buy an expansion set of tiles and diffrent colored pieces or a 4 player game. You also could have discovery tiles, say 1 inch square cardboard turned upside down on the newly discoverd world. You only turn it over if you explore it. Then the effect, what ever it is applied. The surprises that you could add this way are never ending.
I hope that you find these ideas helpful. I’m looking at ways of adding these ideas to my own ViktoryII games.
Take are and good luck. May the dice be with you.
Ed Raith
Comment from Peter
Time: December 16, 2006, 8:10 am
That’s part of what drew me back to working with VIKTORY II and developing an expansion - VIKTORY II is so easy to modify and add additional rule sets or ideas.
You could certainly have additional map exploration off of the main map if you had enough hexes, and by using discovery tiles could add tons of new effects.
Comment from Tim Fiscus
Time: December 17, 2006, 4:49 pm
I think that there is a fine line to tread here. Your goal all along was to make a simple and elegant system with deep choices, all of which could be easily explained to “jump right in”. You have succeeded marvelously in that regard! I’d hate to see that elegance compromised by the addition of extra “fiddliness”. If the Pillage change is along the lines of your plans, I’m all for it- it does not increase the complexity very much, just the depth.
Tim aka HuckmanT on BGG
Comment from peter
Time: December 17, 2006, 10:13 pm
I definitely agree. That’s an easy path to go down with an expansion - adding additional rules that weigh down what was initially a straightforward light-weight game.
In fact, from my days of developing house rules for Axis & Allies, I’ve been full circle, as explained here:
http://www.viktorygame.com/viktoryiihistory
Early on I just added more and more complexity, and then finally realized I had crushed all the fun out of the game, and began simplifying.
I’m certainly not trying to increase the complexity too much, but am hoping to have a different sort of gameplay “feel” when it’s all finished. I think some gamers will like the original better, some will like the original + expansion better, and some will probably like both equally depending on what style of game they want to play at the time.
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