The Official VIKTORY Blog

Comment from Phillip Heaton
Time: December 18, 2006, 1:57 am

Has having too many units in play been a problem? If so, I haven’t noticed it. I think that the available number of towns/cities in the normal game is fine, and the resulting number of units is quite workable.

Phil

Comment from Jim McCourt in DC
Time: December 18, 2006, 6:09 am

I like this one…it makes for an interesting twist and offers the player a fine-tuning of his economy. It will add additional consideration of where to build, with a mind to future upgrades to cities.

Corollary One: Use the above rule, but allow cities separated by only one water hex to coexist, as a tribute to commerce.

That said, Phil makes a good point. Like him, I haven’t noticed a problem with “too many units.”

I would offer that playtesting any of these proposed rules will be important. Lengthening the game is not really a desirable side effect, in my mind.

Comment from Peter
Time: December 18, 2006, 8:48 am

I meant to include this with my original post:

“The initial map should be one size larger than originally specified based on the number of players playing. So a 2 player game would get played on what was originally a 3 player map.”

What this means is that although the population density gets lessened, the map size increases (which keeps the population or # of units about the same).

In the playtesting I’ve conducted so far, it ends up being about 50/50 towns/cities.  A map might have 10 towns and 10 cities when all areas of the map are filled in.

Comment from Darker
Time: December 18, 2006, 1:12 pm

Hmm - this would change the ratio of unit types, increasing the proportion of Infantry and decreasing that of advanced units. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not; probably a matter of taste. Fewer advanced units means combined arms is rarer, and discretionary hits (on a ‘1′) are more powerful.

The larger board would mean more exploration / movement in order to reach the other players, and a bit more time to ’set up’ before engaging the enemy, which some might enjoy, and others will probably find just lengthens the game.

It provides a bit of a buffer against bad tile draws; with city upgrades no longer inevitable for all towns, plains settlements aren’t so bad. That, I like.

It makes mobility more important due to the larger board, which could be interesting. Cavalry and Frigates become a bit more desirable as a result.

The only major problem I see relates to a minor issue with the second turn: depending on initial tile draw, players sometimes can’t legally place a new town on turn #2, giving a choice between “upgrade to a city” and “don’t expand”. (In fact, in the four-player arrangement, two players are guaranteed to have this happen.) In the base rules, the ‘upgrade’ option is fine, since it doesn’t actually disadvantage you in any way, but with this optional rule you’re forced to either lose a tempo by not upgrading or make a bunch of your starting territory ineligible for cities. Very irritating, especially if the 1-2 non-water tiles you drew don’t offer much choice in advanced units.

Comment from Raindog
Time: December 18, 2006, 1:20 pm

I like a lot of units, so to be honest I would prefer some rulemodifications that would result in more units, rather than fewer. But I haven`t had time to playtest the new rules, so I don`t really know what I am talking about.

Comment from Thrylos
Time: December 19, 2006, 9:05 am

I do not see any major advantage of this new rule. I agree with the other commentators that more units is better for the game. I also like to keep things simple, so I am not in favour of a rule that adds some complexity without providing more fun in the game.
I tried the new rule in one game (3 players) and we did not like it. It makes the game slower (players try for 3 hex away so they can upgrade later to a city – this takes more time), and also there is the possibility that one player maybe less lucky and end up in a starting position where “3 hexes apart” is not very favourable for him.

Comment from Tom
Time: December 19, 2006, 2:19 pm

The advantage to this rule is that it makes the game more “campaign-oriented” and less of an all-out slugfest. Armies have to expose themselves for a turn to position for an attack, which enables all sorts of interesting strategies of posting sentries, etc, instead of holing up in cities.

Again, the expansion rules are meant to stand alone as an entirely different game. Everyone will prefer one or the other.

I like the expansion rules in the playtesting I’ve done with Peter- of course, Peter has not posted all of them yet. He will over the next couple of weeks.

I would say that VIKTORY II is a great minimalist game that maximizes strategy with a minimum of rules. All of the easy, elegant rules have been taken with the original.

The marginal rule complexity to strategic value ratio will be lower with the expansion, but I think the goal is to move the game one iteration out in complexity with a still significant boost in strategic value. And I think the expansion could still stand alone against a lot of other games that are overly complex for no good strategic reason.

I must admit the lower population density is the rule I like least, because it’s so arbitrary. However, I can’t think of a better way to get its effects.

Also, remember the lower population density rule is to be played on a one-size-larger map- on the original prescribed sizes, you will feel overly cramped.

Comment from Tom
Time: December 19, 2006, 2:20 pm

Oops- I meant higher….

“marginal rule complexity to strategic value ratio will be lower with the expansion”

Comment from Mike Betzel
Time: December 19, 2006, 6:01 pm

I’ve played with some of the expansion rules a bit and I’m still not certain on this population density change. It does result in a more interesting-looking map as you get a mix of towns and cities, but usually you avoid building two away unless it’s a really strategic position (land bridge, blocks enemy city building, nowhere else to build). You do also get the effect of having more infantry and less specialized units, which I agree isn’t necessary good or bad, just a matter of taste.

What if each player had a set number of city upgrades available based on the map size and number of players? Assume each player gets an equal portion of the board, determine how many towns can be build (assuming the 2 or 3 away rule) and then allow only a certain number of towns be upgraded to cities. Or maybe simplify it and state that no more than half of your towns may ever be upgraded to cities at any point in time. Along with that, if you capture an enemy town and it would put you over your city limit then it would be automatically downgraded to a town. That way you still get the effect of having more infantry but it keeps the building options open and lets players hold areas with towns and then later decide which to upgrade to a city.

Just something off the top of my head.

Comment from Mike Betzel
Time: December 19, 2006, 6:04 pm

Put another way, every city would need to be supported by a town on the map.

Comment from Peter
Time: December 19, 2006, 9:32 pm

I think it’s helpful to provide a background to each rule addition. In this case, there were several motivations that I had for developing this rule:

1. Open the map up to allow troop movement into non-developed hexes. VII has such population density that nearly every move you make is basically going from city A to city B. Rarely are units, particularly in any strength, sitting outside of a town/city on an undeveloped hex. I wanted to see if by spreading it out, there would be more armies moving around the open areas of the map, instead of movement straight from city A into an attack on city B. This particularly will help cavalry to get in an opponent’s backfield and conduct a raid, ie Pillage Attack.

2. Create more natural variety in the map. If a VII game goes on long enough, EVERY town gets upgraded to a city. I hoped to create a rule structure where some quaint little towns would stay quaint little towns. This would create more fighting options (do I try to attack this one key city, or gobble up these two towns?).

3. Toughen the town building/city upgrading decision making. As it stands, you only have to decide - do I want an eventual city in this forest hex eventually (giving me a frigate) or do I want an eventual city in this adjacent mountain hex (giving me an artillery)?

Now the decision would be - do I want a city here, which PREVENTS me from building a city anywhere within three hexes, or do I want to build a city there, which allows me to build two little towns inbetween? The town/city placement becomes a much more strategic decision and less of a no-brainer. In some ways placing your town/cities would become its own little game within a game, albeit a game with important military implications down the road, whereas in some ways the town/city placement currently feels like an optimization algorithm that can be solved.

Comment from Peter
Time: December 19, 2006, 10:17 pm

Thrylos - were you playing on the one size larger map?

Comment from Peter
Time: December 19, 2006, 10:22 pm

It’s important to remember that with a map size one size larger, there will be more land, and thus more towns/cities to support units. Also, every addition or subtraction in the game usually has a time consequence. More units means a longer game.

Admittedly, a larger map means a longer game too, but in general I think the tradeoff there is worth it. Part of my reasoning here is because I’ve been surprised at how few gamers seem to play with the Standard Conquest rules. From the feedback I’ve gotten, the shorter game rules typically get used, such as the first capital being taken, etc. So, if the shorter game rules are used, playing on a larger map doesn’t have nearly the impact as it would with the Standard Conquest rules.

Comment from Peter
Time: December 19, 2006, 10:31 pm

Mike - You make a good suggestion, which is limiting players to having as many cities as they have town. When I consider that against my initial three motivations behind the rule, I think that covers #2 and #3. However, my first motivation of opening up the map and creating more open spaces is still not achieved with that restriction.

I’d certainly be interested to hear of other ways to achieve a more open-spaces-friendly map, other than the 3 hexes away restriction.

I had debated rules such as:

a. you can only build adjacent to a plains/grassland hex - but that could mean a continent of solid mountains and forests would go completely undeveloped, so I disregarded it

b. you could only build on hexes that had an adjacent hex of like terrain - now that I recall this one, I can’t remember why I disregarded it, but I think I just liked my original idea better of the cities having to be 3 hexes apart

c. each player only received a set number of cities they could build - this seemed arbitrary though and if a player was doing exceptionally well, I didn’t want to restrict them; plus after capturing cities, you could easily forget which cities you built vs captured

Comment from Mike Betzel
Time: December 20, 2006, 12:45 am

What if you just increase the map size by one, require towns to be three hexes away and go with the 1/2 city limit. It would open up the map while creating more diversity although it sticks by the 3 hex rule. Does take away some of the strategy when building towns.

Going with the “build adjacent to a plains/grassland” idea, what if you invert it a bit and say you cannot build in a mountain space, make plains support artillery and nothing support a second infantry. Then you’ll have some forced dead space due to mountains. They’ll become tough to move through but they may become more important as they’ll be the only place outside of cities that give you +2 defense. You could even take it so far as to say notional roads can’t go through mountains to make them really challenging and force people to go through them the hard way.

Combine that with the 1/2 city rule and you’ll get varied maps, potentially some dead space and terrain hexes that become attractive defensive positions. Not sure if that would be enough to achieve the effect you want though.

Comment from Peter
Time: December 20, 2006, 8:03 am

If you’re requiring towns to be three hexes away, and enforce the 1/2 town/city limit, that would REALLY open up the map, but I think it brings even more potential frustration for players. It’s amazing in playing just how far apart 3 hexes apart actually are. You would have lots of vast open spaces - probably more than I was aiming for!

The nice thing about allowing the towns to still be 2 apart is that you can always build a pair of towns 2 hexes apart and then decide later which one to upgrade to a city. Also, it allows players to backfill a little bit later in the game into some of the open areas created from the 3 hex spacing they originally targeted for their future city sites.

Another way of looking at the dead space creation possibility, is to have plains hexes become “deserts”. Deserts don’t support anything, so you can’t build on them. I’ve never playtested this sort of thing though, but it is intriguing.

All of these sorts of things should be playtested though, as you don’t know the merit of a proposed idea until it actually hits the table!

Comment from Darker
Time: December 20, 2006, 1:43 pm

“… I’ve been surprised at how few gamers seem to play with the Standard Conquest rules.”

Thus far, we have always played with Standard Conquest - and seen some pretty impressive come-from-behind resurgences which would never have occured with a truncated game - but have been slowly coming to the conclusion that with four or more players, we ought to use one of the other victory conditions simply to keep game length down.

[We end up in many situations where (everyone - 1)’s best odds of victory *requires* beating on the leader (to prevent the game from ending). Victory comes eventually, either when a leader manages to craft a situation where the others can’t effectively cooperate against them, or when there are multiple front-runners who strike a bargain to leave each other alone for the nonce while they feed on lesser empires, but it does take a while. This may be exacerbated by the fact that we always play with Vassalage rules.]

Comment from Peter
Time: December 21, 2006, 10:28 am

It all depends on the type of game that you want to have, and to a large extent, that’s what I envision the expansion rules to offer - a different sort of gaming experience.

Comment from Napoleon Blownaparte
Time: January 1, 2007, 7:40 am

I like the idea of boards having a mix of towns and cities — I do think that would create some interesting additional strategic considerations.

I also like the idea of making a larger number of units available to each player. It sometimes seemed to me like I never had enough units to effectively carry out an offensive and garrison rear-line areas simultaneously. (We eventually started having Plains cities produce 3 Infantry, instead of just 2, to help alleviate this.)

Comment from Peter
Time: February 10, 2007, 11:06 am

I continue to playtest all of these rules, and it can be hard to settle on which rule method of reaching a particular goal is best.

One of my ongoing biggest concerns is that the length of game will get stretched out. I hate not being able to finish a game because I run out of time and it just has to be called.

There are two potential problems that arise from forcing the three hexes apart cities.

1. It can take an agonizing long time to decide where to build a town if you know that your cities must be three hexes apart. There is such a huge difference in the number of cities that you can fit onto a map and it lends itself to the sort of thing that can almost be optimized, which then requires a player to want to spend the time to optimize it, and it isn’t always self-evident. I don’t want players to spend long sections of the game deciding where to build. The game is about action and fighting, not building optimization.

2. A bigger map is virtually required to play with the 3 hexes apart city rule. Bigger map = longer game time. Earlier I commented that this was the case, but I thought the tradeoff was worth it. Now I’m not so sure.

At any rate, I still like the prospect of having a map that will basically be 50/50 towns/cities, but I’m finding it harder and harder to justify accomplishing that goal by forcing cities to be 3 hexes apart with each playtesting session.

My latest thoughts are that if my desire is for there to be 50/50 towns/cities, why not cut to the chase. Elegance is nice, if you can build that in, but sometimes being arbitrary with a rule is the cleanest approach. Note I’m certainly open to other suggestions.

I think Mike was the first to suggest the approach of forcing players to have a town for every town they upgrade to a city, so that the city was “supported” by the town.

This is in essence what my latest thoughts are, although I would express them as:

“Towns must be two or three hexes apart (including across water) from another Town or City (except for your Capital, which is the first Town you place).

For every Town that is upgraded into a City, a Player must control another Town.”

Now, this does have one possible weakness. If two players both were “maxed out” on the number of towns they could upgrade to cities, they could theoretically cooperate to allow each other to take a town from the other, which would give them some building space, allow them to upgrade a town to a city, then let the original town’s owner take it back, plus another town. That would give the second player some building space, to upgrade a town to a city. Then the second player could let the first player retake his original town, and the net effect after those few turns is that each would be “Overstrengthed” if you will on city building. If they were both originally 4 towns/4 cities in strength, now they would be 3 towns/5 cities in strength.

However, a simple solution to close that loophole, might be to force players to have one of their cities reduced back down to a town if they lose a town that is “supporting” one of those cities.  This might have some nice strategic implications, as you could really hurt an opponent more than just a town loss by taking one of his towns if it meant that a supported city had to get reduced back down to a town.

Additionally, as Mike also suggested:

“if you capture an enemy town and it would put you over your city limit then it would be automatically downgraded to a town.”

I’m curious to get feedback on this latest proposal.