The Official VIKTORY Blog

Comment from Jim McCourt in DC
Time: December 17, 2006, 10:01 am

Rule suggestion: perhaps Fortifications might be built in plain or pasture hexes, giving them the mountain or forest defense bonus.

Instead of building on a turn, one could build a fort or forts.

Rule suggestion #2: cathedral, colluseum, palace, or other remarkable building does something.

I am not sure what it does. I am just interested in getting the juices flowing here.

Comment from Peter
Time: December 18, 2006, 5:05 pm

Good suggestions. If you get a chance, please playtest all of the above and see what you think works and let me know!

I am trying to come up with some sort of fortifications/fortress addition, but I’m still not sure how I want to do it.

Comment from Eric A
Time: December 20, 2006, 3:00 pm

I’ve been thinking that something that changed the turn order ever round would be interesting. Simplest would be a random die roll, but there has to be something better. This would make it harder to always beat up on the person to your left.

Also, could you turn the RSS on for the blog if it has that feature?

Comment from Peter
Time: December 20, 2006, 8:12 pm

The RSS feed should be working now.

Comment from Chris
Time: December 21, 2006, 8:45 am

Hi Peter,
one of the things i love about Viktory is all the wonderful and plentiful pieces. The cannon, infantry, cavalry all look fantastic, and lining them all up on the table is a pleasure
So, I’ll admit the monopoly-like houses don’t fit in so well I’d like to see the expansion include new town designs. Maybe something like this: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/91659
In the fore-ground is a fortress, which would be a nice design for you previous suggestion, and in the middle is a city, something like this to replace the monopoly-houses would be great,
cheers,
Chris.

Comment from Peter
Time: December 21, 2006, 10:12 am

Those are some nice looking fortresses.

What it ultimately came down to was cost. I was trying to put all of my development cost into creating good units: infantry, cavalry, artillery, and frigate.

The towns and cities I was able to just buy as off the shelf components and while they don’t fit in quite as well as the military units, are still very serviceable.

However, if anyone wants to make a donation to the get-custom-designed-towns-and-cities fund, I’d certainly welcome them.

Comment from Napoleon Blownaparte
Time: December 30, 2006, 10:44 am

I like the idea of being able to fortify hexes (a suggested by Jim McCourt). I can recall several times when I’ve wanted to somehow fortify a strategic chokepoint or defensive terrain near one of my towns/cities.

Maybe:

1. Allow an Infantry in a non-town/city hex to be exchanged for a Fortress in that same hex (Fortress does not produce units, provides city-equivalent (i.e., 2-die) defense). The Fortress can be demolished during any subsequent Build phase (resulting in the building/garrisoning Infantry reappearing in the player’s Reserve).

– OR —

2. Allow a player to use their regular Build action to build a Stockade (does not produce units, provides town-equivalent (i.e., 1-die) defense). Stockades must be built within 2 hexes of one of the building player’s existing Towns/Cities, and cannot be built in hexes that are (a) adjacent to enemy structures and/or (b) occupied by enemy units or structures. Owning player may use a subsequent Build action to upgrade a Stockade to a Fortress (does not produce units, provides city-equivalent (i.e., 2-die) defense). Players may NOT build a Stockade if this would cause their total number of fortifications to exceed their current number of Cities. Players may use a subsequent Build action to demolish an existing fortification. When captured, an enemy fortification is automatically reduced one level (Stockades are destroyed, and Fortresses are reduced to Stockades). Fortifications ARE connected to Towns/Cities and other Fortifications by Roads. However, Fortifications do NOT allow Port Movement through hexes they occupy.

Those are two approaches that I would consider. These are just off the top of my head, however — I have not though these rules through at any length or playtested them.

One potential I can see with Fortification rules is that they could change or limit the offense/attack orientation of the current Viktory II rules set. However, this might actually contribute to providing your stated goal of a “different gaming experience.”

Comment from Peter
Time: December 30, 2006, 12:32 pm

In trying to develop a good fortification rule, one thing I’ve tried to stay away from is using the regular Build action, because I always want the decision to fortify to come at a certain cost. At the end of a game in which all available town/city real estate has been used up, I don’t want players to automatically begin fortifying every city on the map.

I’m hoping to develop a rule that allows fortifications to develop more naturally and consistently through the course of the game, only in places where players really want to have a fortification. I never want someone to fortify a location just because it’s a cost-free decision that they might as well make, such as the end-game scenario I just described.

The key to me has to involve units. A unit or multiple units are on a hex that a player wants to upgrade and in exchange for not moving those units or for removing them from the game or to the reserve, the player gets the right to fortify the hex. This creates a true “cost” for building the fortification, whether that’s the loss of a unit, or IMO more promisingly, the lost opportunity of using that unit offensively for a turn by not moving it.

Comment from Napoleon Blownaparte
Time: December 30, 2006, 1:56 pm

Definitely see your point about Build actions causing runaway Fortifying.

I think you’re right — probably the best course would just be to allow units that stay put for a full turn in Plains/Grassland hexes to get a “Fortify” bonus of 1 die (Forest/Town equivalent) and leave it at that. The bonus is modest, the “price” is that those units must remain static, and (perhaps most important) the rule adds almost no complexity and no additional physical components.

Comment from Peter
Time: December 30, 2006, 8:58 pm

Well, one potential problem if you don’t put out a marker or anything to denote a fortified unit is that you might have trouble remembering what was fortified and what wasn’t.

It’s good to have a visual reminder.

Comment from Napoleon Blownaparte
Time: December 31, 2006, 9:11 am

How about lying fortified units on their sides? Not real pretty, I suppose, but it would work and wouldn’t require marker pieces. (Could get confusing if a table bump knocks other pieces over, I guess, but that usually confuses things regardless.)

Comment from Eric Pietrocupo
Time: February 21, 2007, 5:29 pm

Some of my friend found it stupid that you could make a suicide attack on your turn and that your lost troops get back at the end of your turn. To solve this problem I have a cheap solution.

In your play area, you would have a card which represent your reserve. This card is split in 2 sections, on the left side you have the troop “Ready” and on the right side the “Lost” troops. Now, when you lose units, the are put in the “Lost” area, at the beginning of your turn, you move all the units in the “Lost” area to the “Ready” area. At the end of your turn, you reinforce with the troops which are ready.

In other words, you will only be able to place units you lost on your last turn or in your opponents turn. But units you lose on your turn will only return at the end of your next turn.

Comment from Norman Hills
Time: February 27, 2007, 4:22 am

Coastal forts - after a few games we began to feel that the ability of frigates to whizz around the edge of the map and pounce on rear areas was a bit powerful, so, we are trying this;

Any town/city on the coast contaning an artillery piece can take an opportunity fire (1 dice) at passing ships in adjacent hexes.

This makes sending frigates off on deep penetration raids a bit riskier & it feels a more Napoleonic.

Comment from Arcadious
Time: April 9, 2007, 7:50 pm

I have an idea for a “Home City” variant. After the map is created, every player randomly draw one of the remaining land hexes. This hex will represent your home city back in the old world. The terrain of that hex determines your starting units.

Plains = 3 Infintry + 1 Frigate
Grasslands = 1 Infintry + 1 Cavalry + 1 Frigate
Forest = 1 Infintry + 2 Frigates
Mountains = 1 Infintry + 1 Altilery + 1 Frigate

(If you aren’t playing with the perimeter water hexes then replace one Frigate with one Infintry. Example: Forest = 2 Infintry + 1 Frigate)

For everyone’s first turn (rather then placing their capital), the players place their capital marker on one of the perimeter water hexes ajacent to their starting hexes (or one of their starting edge hexes if there isn’t the water perimeter). The players then place there starting units on that hex. That hex acts as their capital (for reenforcement only) until the player builds their starting town. Their starting town can be placed anywhere that their units have explored. Once built, that town becomes the capital, and other towns must be built 2 or 3 hexes away from it. The units suported by the player’s home city remain in the game after their capital is built.

I have not yet had a chance to test this variant, so I don’t know how much it would add to the game.

Comment from Robert Coleman
Time: June 12, 2007, 9:12 pm

The idea of creating a fortress or castle seems to be a popular idea. Here is my take on it. Allow another building level. You can upgrade a city to a fortress during your build phase. I pulled out my kids lego blocks and found these great little one level squares in black, yellow, red and blue. They can be substituted for fortresses.

Fortress characteristics:

Unit production: Fortresses produce double the units for the specific terrain. For example, if you have a fortress on a mountain hex, you may place an additional infantry and artillery unit in your Reserve for that turn. You may place two artillery and two infantry in a fortress hex during your reserve placement phase as compared to the one artillery and infantry if it were a city hex.

Defense bonus: Defending units receive a two dice bonus to add to their defensive die roll (similar to cities and mountains). However, the attacker must subtract one die roll during his attack phase. Example: You attack a fortress with 2 infantry, and 1 cavalry. You add up your attack die = 3 and subtract 1 die = 2 die to roll.

This creates and interesting tactical decision. Infantry cannot attack a fortress alone because they only get one die roll which is negated with the fortress’s defense bonus, hence they get no die for their attack. You must use a combined arms attack on a fortress and have a large enough attacking force so that you are not reduced down to only infantry or artillery which can only attack with one die.

I wanted to keep the fortress simple, yet give the player a reason to upgrade from a city. One thought might be to give the fortress a 3 dice defense bonus instead of 2…but then this might make it much harder to attack. I will have to playtest this option.

Any thoughts??
Thanks,
Bob