* Changes on several individual cards. Although I'm very pleasantly surprised nothing was truly degenerate.
* Suggested solution to winning condition is a scoring track, where you score periodically (when you play an appropriate card?) for the number of hexes of each type you control. That's unfortunate in that it adds another element to the game, but sounds like it would work very well to making "expanding your empire" immediately connect to victory, and give players an incentive to go on the offensive immediately.
* Alternatively, have goal hexes initially neutral you have to capture N of. Then there's immediate conflict, but doesn't have the downsides of giving players a capital to defend.
* I think I want to chop off the first half of the game time by giving players immediately (or over the first few turns) a giant wodge of territory and 2-3 armies. And reduce the map size so they are more immediately in conflict. I like the feel that the game can encompass the whole sweep of history from the first halting attempts to settle river valleys all the way up to high-tech warfare, but the _interesting_ bit is when there's conflict, so the game should cover that stage.
* The existing propaganda mechanism for switching allegience of adjoining friendly and enemy hexes created a few good "back and forth" border skirmish moments, and I like that feel. I aspire for it to feel like Go, when placing a piece places a claim to a territory, and an opponent CAN skirmish you for it, and always CAN take it away, but only at the expensive of giving up something valuable elsewhere. I may look for a way of achieving that "stake a claim" feel while radically simplifying the rules for controlling hexes.
* I may well nix the whole "depletion" mechanic entirely. I like the idea that there's a way to trade a long-term benefit for a short term boost, or to attack and raze opponent's land, but I'm not sure it actually adds anything to the game.
* There were several interesting moments where armies skirmished, because someone had two armies and could afford for one to make a frontal attack, or because it depended exactly what attack card someone had. But the base attack cards are not distinctive enough, so this only happened rarely. The ideal is that EVERY turn represents an interesting decision (but not so agonising that you can't feel like you're making steady progress) and all the turns that don't are simplified out of the game...
* The ideal is that different geography on the board naturally lends itself to different tactics, expressed by buying different cards. But at the moment it's not really sufficiently differentiated, people expressed an interest in being able to customise the starting decks more, which makes sense, but I think the root cause is making people's strategies naturally divergent.
* Thanks massively to Liv for listing to the ideas and giving a whole bunch of good ideas, and to Alex and Douglas for enjoying a first real-life playtest! :)
* Suggested solution to winning condition is a scoring track, where you score periodically (when you play an appropriate card?) for the number of hexes of each type you control. That's unfortunate in that it adds another element to the game, but sounds like it would work very well to making "expanding your empire" immediately connect to victory, and give players an incentive to go on the offensive immediately.
* Alternatively, have goal hexes initially neutral you have to capture N of. Then there's immediate conflict, but doesn't have the downsides of giving players a capital to defend.
* I think I want to chop off the first half of the game time by giving players immediately (or over the first few turns) a giant wodge of territory and 2-3 armies. And reduce the map size so they are more immediately in conflict. I like the feel that the game can encompass the whole sweep of history from the first halting attempts to settle river valleys all the way up to high-tech warfare, but the _interesting_ bit is when there's conflict, so the game should cover that stage.
* The existing propaganda mechanism for switching allegience of adjoining friendly and enemy hexes created a few good "back and forth" border skirmish moments, and I like that feel. I aspire for it to feel like Go, when placing a piece places a claim to a territory, and an opponent CAN skirmish you for it, and always CAN take it away, but only at the expensive of giving up something valuable elsewhere. I may look for a way of achieving that "stake a claim" feel while radically simplifying the rules for controlling hexes.
* I may well nix the whole "depletion" mechanic entirely. I like the idea that there's a way to trade a long-term benefit for a short term boost, or to attack and raze opponent's land, but I'm not sure it actually adds anything to the game.
* There were several interesting moments where armies skirmished, because someone had two armies and could afford for one to make a frontal attack, or because it depended exactly what attack card someone had. But the base attack cards are not distinctive enough, so this only happened rarely. The ideal is that EVERY turn represents an interesting decision (but not so agonising that you can't feel like you're making steady progress) and all the turns that don't are simplified out of the game...
* The ideal is that different geography on the board naturally lends itself to different tactics, expressed by buying different cards. But at the moment it's not really sufficiently differentiated, people expressed an interest in being able to customise the starting decks more, which makes sense, but I think the root cause is making people's strategies naturally divergent.
* Thanks massively to Liv for listing to the ideas and giving a whole bunch of good ideas, and to Alex and Douglas for enjoying a first real-life playtest! :)