VIKTORY II Expansion Rule - Reordered Turn Sequence
Instead of the original Building Phase; Movement & Combat Phase; Reserve Placement Phase, the new reordered turn sequence would be:
Movement & Combat Phase; Building Phase; Reserve Placement Phase
This simplifies the road/port situation for new towns, gives players a chance to see the lay of the land before making a building/upgrading decision, allows players to clear off building hex if enemy occupied via fighting for it, allows players to upgrade newly captured towns to cities.
Posted: December 19th, 2006 under Expansion Rules.
Comments: 10
Comments
Comment from Peter
Time: December 19, 2006, 10:44 pm
This was originally addressed a few months ago on my VIKTORY II forum at:
http://morrisongames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=63
At the time, I didn’t think it was worth the change, although the turn sequence in VII works both ways as far as gameplay is concerned.
With more distant town/city placement though it becomes much more critical that a player be able to see what the surrounding territory looks like before having to make a building decision. Particularly on the second turn, when only the originally revealed hexes are still revealed.
Comment from Alan Emrich
Time: December 19, 2006, 11:35 pm
This is simple, elegant, and effective. This change should be tested and, I believe, become cannon to the basic game.
Alan Emrich
Comment from Mike Betzel
Time: December 20, 2006, 12:53 am
I think it’s a good change. I’ve played with it several times now and it’s subtle but it penalizes a player less for having poor starting terrain. I agree that if you go with any rule changes that require more distant building options (like the original population density rule) that you really need to have this in place to let players make good decisions.
If you wanted to keep it somewhat restricted you could say that you can only build a town on a hex where you currently have a unit. That way players would need to decide between scouting out further and revealing more terrain or staying where they are to build, or maybe they’ll reveal a nice spot ahead but don’t have enough movement left to move a unit in place that round.
Comment from Peter
Time: December 20, 2006, 7:56 am
I’ve considered the option of only allowing building where players have a unit, but I think there would be two negatives:
1. it would slow the game down a bit
2. players couldn’t build their way off of an island, if there wasn’t a forest hex that could provide a frigate
Comment from Carl Orthlieb
Time: December 20, 2006, 10:43 am
Interesting note about the island with no wood hex. We had this situation just yesterday (island with only one hex which was not wood). Ultimately, we agreed that the town in question would issue a frigate on upgrade despite the terrain given that there was no way to explore the map or get off the island. Perhaps it was a rather leaky frigate made out of driftwood .
Comment from Peter
Time: December 20, 2006, 11:00 am
When the town in that game was upgraded to a city, did it reveal any nearby shoreline? That would have been a huge sea around it otherwise!
Cities reveal all hexes within a range of 2, and so usually that allows players to see a distant shore, and then build their way off the island, because players can build on any hex 2 or 3 hexes away from any of their towns/cities, regardless of if they have a unit there or a land path.
Comment from Darker
Time: December 20, 2006, 2:05 pm
I like this one. In addition to the benefits mentioned, it eliminates the turn-2 forced city upgrade in many starting positions, and removes the “may use just-built building to ease slow passage this turn”, which I wasn’t entirely fond of (though mostly because of its inconsistency with the port/road exception-cases.) Very good simplification.
It does remove a bit of the uncertainty of placement…the “will I manage to take out this enemy force which would prevent reinforcement of the newly-built town?” or “After this turn’s battles, will I need Cavalry or a Frigate more badly?”-type questions. It also changes the “holding a place for building” dynamic. Overally, I think the benefits are well worth this shift, though I’ll want to test.
It also has “placing a building” happen just before “placing units”, which I think learning players may find slightly easier to remember. (We’ve had players who’ve forgotten to expand, because they were so focused on the anticipation of what they were going to move/fight with on their turn.)
Comment from Peter
Time: December 20, 2006, 4:22 pm
I know I’ve definitely forgotten to build in the anticipation of what I was going to move/fight on my turn.
This does seem to place events more in a natural order of play, where players are most interested in moving/fighting units, then in building and bringing back reserves.
Comment from Tom
Time: December 21, 2006, 7:57 am
We played a game at Peter’s house last night with the full expansion rules (which he hasn’t revealed 100% yet). I must say that it is a richer experience and a more enjoyable game for me that the original VIKTORY or VIKTORY II. It’s more multi-step oriented.
The game dynamics are also more pleasing- there is more of a slow, steady crescendo in the early part of the game, and the game seems to wrap up more quickly once one player becomes dominant. A lot of this has to do with the new notional roads rules that make vassalage and/or informal alliances a lot more powerful, the new attack rules for determining how many dice to roll (and its effect on infantry and frigates) as well as the new lower-variability dice system.
But I’ll let Peter decide when to let those respective cats out of the bag.
Comment from Napoleon Blownaparte
Time: December 31, 2006, 9:18 am
We tried this re-ordered turn sequence in our Viktory II games after seeing this thread. It worked very well — can’t see switching back.
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