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[PompiPompi]

My game "Sumerian Blood" is a mix between strategy\action. You have a strategy board, similar to a chess board, in which each side of the two armies have their own units\pieces.
Units are moved one by one, turn based. Whenever two opposing units step on the same cell, it goes to an arena and the units battle out to the death.
This game is inspired by Archon, in Archon every cell has a color. Either black or white or something in between. While the darker the cell, the better it is for one side, and the lighter, the better for the other side.
This affects the arena battle in which the dark side unit gets an HP bonus for a dark cell and vice versa.

My board looks like this:


It is very similar to Archon, and to avoid copyright issues I want to change it. The Archon board has the same coloring, but it is a sqaure board. Where my board is a square board with two capped corners.

I need ideas for how to make the board have some strategic value, instead of having only one strategy to win. The worst would be that staying at your own side is the best strategy(defensive).
And no the other hand, I am not sure I want the exact same strategy as on Archon, mostly because of copyright issues.

Those brown things on the board are power points, and you have them in Archon as well. I want to remove them as well, and maybe instead put 3 forts. One in the middle and one for each army.

Winning conditions could be: Get all 3 forts, siege(where you have a few pieces making a line between the two edges of the board), killing all enemies, something else?

Instead of colors I was advice to make 3 types of cells:
Grass - everyone can pass.
Water - only air units can pass.
"Grey" - No one can pass.

Sorry about the confused post, I hope I am clear enough.

[JasonPickering]

you could make it more like chess and give yourself a hero unit to protect. you could probably check out chess variants and I would suggest looking up Shogi. I would also suggest looking up Shogi Variants. This one specifically. you could do a lot with a smaller board if you made the guys really different.

Also look into the the Drop in Shogi. its the term used to put pieces onto the board. this could be a good way to add peices to the board. maybe limiting what a player can have on the board. perhaps those "Forts" could be spawn points to spawn more characters. basically I would say setup a base game of archon and right down all the choices you have on a move. next set up something similar in your game(this could all be jsut done on paper, no need to actually play the game) and look at the choices you have to make. If you can make these two lists different people wont care how similar it is to Archon, because it wont feel similar to them.

[Uykered]

I haven't really played many strategy games, but in Advance Wars there are various types of terrains that affect defensive (maybe offensive too, can't remember) power and movement range, they're represented by grass/trees/rivers/mountains etc. which look a lot cooler than a dull black and white board.

[PompiPompi]

@Jason, I read the links you gave. Hmm, I think it is too much strategy. I don't want to limit units movement that much. The strategy in Shogi is a game on it's own, and in my game the strategy only suppose to work with the battles. Giving an advantage or disadvantage in the battle, but basically you want to have a lot of battles.
I like the drop idea though, might be interesting to use.
@alasrair, I agree with you that visually it's more interesting. But now I am trying to figure out the strategy regardless of visuals. I should playtest a game with terrains as you suggest, which would give both a defensive bonus and would limit certain units movement.

[Mikademus]

You can't copyright game mechanics so you're legally free to use the Archon board design and every numeric aspect of the original. Then again, it might be more fun to have some new or your own ideas and takes on the original, but that's another thing.