Qx Idea Dump: Inertial Behavior

[snowdrop]

Inertial behavior

Idea is with bigger cards-on-table power, player has more problems with playing new cards.
It's a bit tricky, cause we want the game to be cheap to play, so small deck is a good thing. But at the same time card is the only real value in the game - that is a core resource, that may be turned into "fuel" or "power", into a resource card or into whatever card it happens to be.
Problem is twofold: we want factions that are consisting of many weak units and factions that are made with power in mind. This excludes counting cards, as well as casualties directly to balance the resource system.

Solutions

For each played card with the cost of X or more, discard a card from your resource pile
For each played creature card with the cost of Y or more, discard another creature card from your table

Thought about mailing you, but I try to make a habit of keeping discussions here, so they are nicely archived and others will have use of them.

You can solve what you want - "Idea is with bigger cards-on-table power, player has more problems with playing new cards." - by setting a cap on how much is allowed on table. Say that each card has an "Army Point" and that players aren't allowed to have an army that is larger than 20 Points at any given time. That way you really do have to think what you stuff on the table... Personally I think it's a problematic solution though since it requires constant (re)counting.

I'd suggest a mod to your idea instead: Let the card from the RP bounce back to top of deck.

[Q_x]

Card recycling, from piles to hand or to deck is a really good idea. What you said earlier, and what I agreed with, is the fact that it will make some extra, not so cool, card management.

Make the card-to-deck count a threshold value and add condition of moving only faction-matching cards this way and we have two pieces roasted at once.

[snowdrop]

Card recycling, from piles to hand or to deck is a really good idea. What you said earlier, and what I agreed with, is the fact that it will make some extra, not so cool, card management.

Yeah, I'd still avoid it if possible... as with any and all management that can be avoided. At least I'd avoid it if it was very frequent. Once every 2:nd or 3:d turn wouldn't matter that much maybe(?), if it really isn't solvable in a more elegant way. I guess it depends on how often you picture it being used, for what cards you'd push it. If it's only high-tier and really faction-related cards it maybe won't be used super-frequently.

Make the card-to-deck count a threshold value and add condition of moving only faction-matching cards this way and we have two pieces roasted at once.

Hrm.. So to play a Gaian card with Threshold 2 you'd need to bounce 2 Gaian cards form resource piles on to of deck?

[Q_x]

So to play a Gaian card with Threshold 2 you'd need to bounce 2 Gaian cards form resource piles on to of deck?

Exactly. Still lot of shifting cards around.

Problem is the cards that cost zero threshold are basically non-faction when played (not so when sitting in a resource pile with this idea). Similar situation as we have now.

I think we should be extra careful with zero threshold cards and their abilities/effects. As it is now, I think, they can be played regardless of faction, so we will have to be sure there are no flawed/exploitable interactions.

[snowdrop]

I think we should be extra careful with zero threshold cards and their abilities/effects. As it is now, I think, they can be played regardless of faction, so we will have to be sure there are no flawed/exploitable interactions.

They will hardly be around in my next suggestion... I agree they are a problem, but they are so because they build on the assumption that there can arise situations where you have no cards in play of that faction.

[Ravenchild]

I don't understand what the actual problem is. Do you want to prevent that a player has too many units in play? What kind of problems do you see?

As for units with a threshold of 0: I think that units with a threshold of 0 are absolutely okay. Keep in mind that if you play a Gaian card in your House of Nobles deck, your other HoN cards with a threshold will /not/ benefit cost-wise from the Gaian unit.

I think having a greater variantion of low-threshold units in a deck is a nice thing. We shouldn't make it too costly to build such a deck. And you still need mightier cards with a higher threshold in the later phases of a game. So it will probably be common to have up to 3 "foreign" cards in a deck.

[Q_x]

Problem occurs often in some card games.
Take two equal players, two decks of the same power. The reality is, whoever hits first, taking a creature down, will win whole game. He will simply make a small gap between his power and his opponent, and will just have to hit, hit, hit to widen the gap and there is no fun in such a kind of play. It should be plenty, cause you have two equal players, equal decks...

My idea is enabling or helping the player to fix this small gap quite quickly, while it's still small, in 2-3 rounds.

How to do it is completely different question, and I've developed some ideas that helps in regaining balanced game state, using the concept of negative feedback. Powerful table should make extending it harder, preparing attack should weaken the defense and so on. Most of those things is in my "idea dump" in the wiki.

It's even better to play a game much like a good sword fight - whoever attacks first without a solid plan most likely will lose - not a whole game, but will be hit hardly by a counterattack.

Problem is those concepts are maybe good, but there are no elegant solutions yet, at least not in my head. And compatibility with GDD is partially doubtful (some parts, like reusing piles from cards are good, some, like shifting more cards per turn from place to place, are not)

[Ravenchild]

Problem occurs often in some card games.
Take two equal players, two decks of the same power. The reality is, whoever hits first, taking a creature down, will win whole game. He will simply make a small gap between his power and his opponent, and will just have to hit, hit, hit to widen the gap and there is no fun in such a kind of play. It should be plenty, cause you have two equal players, equal decks...

That's a very theoretical consideration and an extremely unlikely event. I think we shouldn't worry about this.

I have never noticed a correlation between players that start the game and players that win the game.