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The Last Kings of Mars: Sword and Planet pt. IX; Recruitment and Mapping

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There Will Be Games

So I've been experimenting with map designs and ideas, and I thought I would post them and get some more feedback. Fortunately, nothing at this point is unchangeable - in fact, cards are the only thing even printed - so I'm going to keep tweaking things to receive feedback. All the graphics at this point are to give an impression of what the game could potentially look like, but for playtesting, I'm going to create some really minimalist maps and counters for ease of printing. I like to visualize a more final product to get feedback from designs. I also just like playing with graphic design.

So one of the big obstacles has been deciding how the work movement on the map. Hexes? Small or large? Point-to-point? Area? What? I still have no idea for certain, but have been experimenting with smaller hexes than what was demonstrated last post. I'm expermenting with moving the relevant city information off map to give more room for hexes and terrain. Here is the first result.

From recruitment demo

I've tried to make the cities blend in to the "satellite" view of the map, and I think with some decent amount of success. The cities are supposed to seem like ruins, and I think I got that across with some success. The trouble with the map, however, is that information must now be stored elsewhere, which some may find irritating. 

 Now, on to the storage of information. Cities really only have a few essential functions as of this point. Tracking resource availability, control and also recruitment. I've never covered recruitment before, but it will be dependent upon control of certain areas and its costs will change based off-of relationships of armies to the race and caste of the hero or villain attempting to recruit. Below is my rather minimalist mock-up of what an off-board (or side-board, I'll demonstrate this later) city box would look like.

From recruitment demo

This is the box for Sedat Herij, a city that is located in the map above. The double lines cutting behind the numbered boxes indicate that it is a double-fortified city, although I need to find a better way of showing this. "SE" is the cities abreviated name for all cards and effects. The boxes track the relative value of the city, which can grow or shrink at any time, grey is radium, the common currency of Mars, and blue is science, a bit more intangible, but a valuable resource for building powerful weaponry and technology. 

The boxes beneath are the recruitment boxes for the city, which will demonstrate the units currently available from Sedate Herij. Counters would be stacked in these boxes according to the set-up indicated on the counter (This has me worried, I'll get into it later) and will only be available to recruit from the city by the controlling player or a friendly player. You can only recruit from the top of the stack and any of the boxes at or below where the control marker is currently at. The more pristine the city is, the stronger units that can be recruited, and the weaker the city is, the weaker the units. Units at the top of the stack at the beginning of the game would be of decent value, units in the middle would be the strongest and units at the bottom would be the weakest. Wars escalate, but finally wear down the resources of the cities. There would also be similar recruiting boxes for tribes, regions and mercenary pools.  Below is a quick mock-up of how this concept would work, but keep in mind, the units are just for demonstration purposes, the final will look nothing like them.

From recruitment demo

 So here, you see the control marker is on the second box from the right. If this player wanted to recruit, he could recruit any of the units on the top of the first three boxes, but would be unable to recruit the cavalry on the far right. If the player wanted to recruit that unit, he would have to expend resource cards to bring the cities value up. If he was to tap the cities resources this turn instead, he would degrade the cities resource box down one, and the next impulse, would only be able to recruit the two units on the left. If it was to drop again, his selection would be very limited. Players can target each other's cities with raids to degrade levels of the cities, preventing valuable recruitments for opponents, and possibly saving them for a later conquest of the city! If a city is ever destroyed, units in the lowest box would join the common mercenary pool, but all others would be lost forever. 

Now, here is the issue. To fit these boxes on the map, it has to be shrunk to accomodate them. This has me thinking of two approaches: either placing a border around the map on which these boxes and other tracks will be or removing them altogether, and using cards to demonstrate this.

Next  blog I will demonstrate the card idea to give an idea of what I'm thinking of. In short, it would reduce the map to a plain hex-map with cities but no information. The only counters on the board would be heroes, and counter indicating control and location points. Cards would represent all cities keeping the necessary tracks and all units would be on cards instead of counters. They would be stacked with their appropriate hero like they were any other type of equipment. 

 For now, though, here is a rough idea of the hex map with the border and how it will play out. The graphics are crude, but I think you can get an idea as to how it would work.

From recruitment demo

 Around the frame of the map, all relevant information would be kept, but damn, it would be mighty cluttered! There will be a total of 26 cities on the map! 

 Next time: Cards instead of counters and more!

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