How would you make changes to allow for multiplayer? After a Conflict is declared could a third party join in with the attacker or defender? What about running out of Rings during the Conflict phase?
Multiplayer
Im not sure. Perhaps starting with the first player, select a conflict and go around the table till all the rings are taken.
I would change the card bidding to fixed amounts. 1 card = gain 2 honor, 2 cards = gain 1 honor, 3 cards = no honor, 4 cards = lose 1 honor, 5 cards = lose 2 honor.
Depending how that effects Honor wins/losses, you could allow a person to trade fate to a team mate or another player for honor - provided the person gaining the honor has less honor than the person doing the trade. Looking at it like making a sacrifice (of fate) for an ally. Most honorable! Players may pay one fate to remove an honor from a player, this can not bring their honor lower or equal to yours.
You may declare a conflict on anyone. Then anyone can join in as an attacker. The defender declares their blockers. Then anyone can join in the defense. A player gains 1 honor for assisting. (Maybe per unit you send?) Action window would be Main Defender => Defender Ally => Main Attacker => Attacker Ally
I like the set bidding gain.
We played in Ivory edition where honor was the victory points, they could be traded, gifted, and most importantly stolen. They were stored in provinces so if a province was broken than the attacker would get all of the honor there.
This made Crane and Phoenix very wealthy and Crab and Spider very mercenary.
The game would go a certain number of rounds. Last round removed all gifts and trades and then it's a fight to gain the most, or lose the least through combat.
24 minutes ago, Devin-the-Poet said:We played in Ivory edition
This made Phoenix very wealthy.
Doesn't sound like you played during Ivory at all.
I think they should basically remake the War of Honor game.
Create a flexible game board that is built by the players each game. This dictates who they can attack on which turns, and who can ally on which turns. This helps coordinate aggression so a 4 player game can't turn into 1v3 without some gross miscalculations from the onset to let that happen.
Honor is not gained or lost, but the amount you gain or lose is tracked each turn. They do not count against each other, so it is possible for a player to gain and lose any amount independently. The game used to use 4 paths for victory, but with the new ring system and no enlightenment victory the new system could use just 3. If you destroy a province you gain 1 step on the MIL path. If you gain 6 honor in 1 turn then you gain 1 step on the Honor victory path. If you cause a player to lose 6 honor in 1 turn then you gain 1 step on the Dishonor victory path.
Instead of bidding - there will be 5 options you can select when you bid. These are not compared directly to each other, but do dictate how many cards you draw. If I bid 1 I draw 1 card, if I bid 5 I draw 5 cards. There is no set honor loss or gain, or immediately declared loss or gain in honor because honor is tracked differently. We do not use a running total, but rather count only the amount of gain / loss per turn!
So here is the deal - Any honor I gain during a turn is counted, but also I can add to that count the difference between my dial and any other player's dial. So if I bid 1, and any other player bids 5 then I can count that as 4 honor gain toward my total for the turn, but I can only claim this against any 1 player. If I gain a total of 6 for the turn then I move up on the Honor Victory path. I must gain at least 1 honor to claim this, it cannot come only from bids. Dishonor through any means does not count against this number. Honor and dishonor are 2 separate counts.
For dishonor - Causing 6 points of honor loss to a player during a turn will move you up on the dishonor victory path. Any dishonor a player receives from a different player than you does not count. It does count any honor loss a person suffers from their own actions* such as playing assassination or a dishonored character leaving play. This dishonor total includes the difference in bids, so if 1 player bids just 1, and another player bids 5 that can count as 4 honor loss against that player that turn.** The player must still cause at least 1 honor loss themselves directly to claim this.
Victory through military is just as straight forward - except you don't need to knock out any 1 player completely. When you break an opponent's province you gain 1 on the Military Victory path. Each player only has 3 provinces on the map though - so no player can be eliminated, and if they lose all 3 provinces they are still in the game, but you'll have to find someone else to pick on lol. The map also dictates who can ally. A player can only attack a player they have an adjacent province to on the map, and you can only ally if you are adjacent to the province being attacked.
The first player to reach the 5th rank on any Victory Path wins. Everyone starts at rank 0, and gains in rank as detailed above. There is a new phase at the end of the round with no action windows which simultaneously applies any advancement from all players on the Victory Track. If two players tie for victory, then they compare the total Victory Track placements combined. If there is still a tie, the game ends in a tie.
Rings will be done slightly differently - When you attack you will still choose a ring to declare, but the way the unclaimed rings work is a little different. A ring is considered claimed to you IF you have either claimed it yourself, or your opponent in a conflict claimed it against you. If neither of these are true then you can declare a conflict with that ring. You cannot declare a conflict against a player using a ring type they have claimed. So if we are in a 3 player game and Player A declares a MIL conflict with Ring of Fire against Player B, and Player B claims the ring - then Player A and Player B both consider the Ring of Fire claimed, but Player C may declare it, since it is not claimed to them - but only against Player A, since Player B has it in their Claimed Pool. Any rings not claimed by any player will receive fate at the end of the turn as normal.
*If a dishonored character leaves play through a player's actions the honor loss is attributed to that player. It does not matter who dishonored the character, only who caused the action.
** You may only claim the difference in a bid of another player once as either an honor gain or loss. You can claim a bid against different players for different victory paths. You do not need to specify which until the Victory Track phase.
*** Taking or giving honor counts as both an honor gain for your and an honor loss against that opponent. Bids no longer take or give honor, but give you the ability to claim 1 bid compared to yours as an honor gain for yourself, and 1 bid compared to yours as an honor loss for that opponent.
Edited by shosukoFor multiplayer rules I think it should cap at 5 players allowing each ring to be declared once. The person with the first player token has first crack and then, moving clockwise each other player gets a chance to attack.
So in a three player game, players 1 and 2 have the potential to declare up to 2 attacks while player 3 only gets one attack, unless someone passes their opportunity to attack.
This was my suggestion from an earlier thread on the same topic:
Bidding: All players bid secretly and simultaneously. Then the players are paired. Players are always paired with the player either to their left or right. If there is an odd number, a 'leftover' player is chosen, whose bid is compared with a default bid of 3. The other pairings are determined automatically once the leftover player is known. If the same player is selected to be leftover in consecutive rounds, the selection is redone. If there is an even number of players, a coin flip can determine whether the first player pairs left or right, and this determines the rest of the pairings.
Victory: the game ends when any player reaches 25 honor or 0 honor, or when any stronghold is destroyed. If the game ends through a player being eliminated, the player to their right is the winner.
Rings: 2 sets of rings are used (10 total). No player may declare both attacks using the same ring if that ring was claimed during their first attack, even if another ring of the same type would otherwise be available. The exception is if a card effect makes the same physical ring they attacked with available again.
The rules below are to impose a bit of order on things: for a more anything goes experience the above rules are sufficient.
Attacks: Players may attack the player to their left without restriction. An attack against a player not to the left is a 'special' attack. Only one special attack may be declared against each player per turn. This means that once a player has had a special attack declared against them, no one else may declare a special attack against them for the rest of the turn.
Aid: Each player may recieve aid on defence from one other player once per turn. Both players must agree. For that conflict, the aiding player's characters may be assigned on defence. Aid is agreed to after the attack is declared. An aiding player may also play cards that specify that they must be used by a defending player or when defending your provinces as if one of their provinces was being attacked.
1 hour ago, Ishi Tonu said:For multiplayer rules I think it should cap at 5 players allowing each ring to be declared once. The person with the first player token has first crack and then, moving clockwise each other player gets a chance to attack.
So in a three player game, players 1 and 2 have the potential to declare up to 2 attacks while player 3 only gets one attack, unless someone passes their opportunity to attack.
I thought about that issue to. One idea might be to double the number of rings and separate the conflict type. So...
Fire Ring, political
Fire Ring, military
Water Ring, political
And so forth. This way you could support up to 10 players and everyone could have more access to a particular ring.
I like the idea of pairing off against the players to the right and left of you. Allow each person both of their conflicts, but only against players they are paired with. Maybe also make you crack all 4 provinces before going after strongholds.
I think honor bids during the draw phase should be compared amongst all players, so if one player underbids 3 others they receive the difference from all 3 of them.
I think rings can be handled by adding one set for every player beyond the first two. I'd temper that with the check for Imperial Favor only counting unique rings, so if 2 or more players control the same ring they are not calculated.
There should be some bonus for eliminating a player, but I don't know what that might be.
I like the War of Honour approach to the Multiplayer.
A few thoughts:
1. Honour bidding, every player bids as normal. Reveal Dials and Draw Cards as normal. Then starting with Players 1~2 compare dials and adjust honour, then players 2~3 do the same, then 3~4 etc... Not sure how that will actually work in game play, just an idea.
2. Enlightenment Victory (War of Honour Path): at end of turn calculate who has captured the most amount of rings that turn, and they move up the track. In case of a tie I think everyone moved up who tied.
57 minutes ago, Shu2jack said:I thought about that issue to. One idea might be to double the number of rings and separate the conflict type. So...
Fire Ring, political
Fire Ring, military
Water Ring, political
And so forth. This way you could support up to 10 players and everyone could have more access to a particular ring.
10 players would been unbelievably sluggish and boring game. 10 players worth of action or pass windows makes it an all day affair.
I'd cap it at 5 players not just because of the number of rings but any more players than that and the downtime between your times of actual activity gets too long and starts to detract from the enjoyment of the game.
Edited by Ishi Tonu14 minutes ago, Ishi Tonu said:10 players would been unbelievably sluggish and boring game. 10 players worth of action or pass windows makes it an all day affair.
I'd cap it at 5 players not just because of the number of rings but any more players than that and the downtime between your times of actual activity gets too long and starts to detract from the enjoyment of the game.
Sorry, my mistake. I said 10, I should've said 5. Each player could then declare two conflicts. You could probably squeeze in 7 (one for each clan!) since not every player will declare two conflicts. Especially if you have to defend against multiple players.
Edited by Shu2jack3 hours ago, Ishi Tonu said:For multiplayer rules I think it should cap at 5 players allowing each ring to be declared once. The person with the first player token has first crack and then, moving clockwise each other player gets a chance to attack.
So in a three player game, players 1 and 2 have the potential to declare up to 2 attacks while player 3 only gets one attack, unless someone passes their opportunity to attack.
While this might work once there's a larger card pool available, I don't see many Phoenix players going for this format. It effectively neuters our champion's ability. Even once Kaede is released, I doubt she'll be a sufficient replacement to make this worthwhile.
Maybe if there was an option to declare Honor conflicts, basically instead of claiming a ring, you could claim honor in the same/similar format to the Air Ring (gain 2 from pool or steal 1 from opponent). Or perhaps even just limit it to the gain 2 from pool option. While that may not be much enticement for all clans, I would think it might encourage some to choose this option rather than a ring.