This is the feedback thread for Manowar, a forum based boardgame I've been running in a thread on the general forum.
link:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8391.0I'm pretty sure this is okay.
WHAT I WAS TRYING TO DO
I wanted to make a forum game that lets people drop in and drop out as they like. This works okay for that. I also wanted to see if I could do strategy-by-commitee by having everybody vote on everything; but it took ages and needed a bunch of people, it did not really work.
STUFF THAT WORKS PRETTY GOOD
You get choices and sacrifices: whether to attack or defend each turn, whether to spawn guys early or wait, you can't attack without losing mans.
All the units work the same way, all the strategy is in where you put them.
The economy is kind of interesting, mans are worth one point or one point per turn or one turn in combat or as many turns as it took you to get them where they are.
STUFF THAT IS MESSY
point inflation: points are expensive to begin with but lose value in the midgame, everyone always gets more points than they can spend.
travel time: it takes 3-4 moves to move a man from any corner of the map to any other corner. So, for instance, spawning a man to defend against an attacker who is already moving is unfeasible, where it probably shouldn't be.
Besides this, it takes ages to do anything, one move is a couple hours to a day in real time, so 3-4 steps is a pretty long time.
symmetry issues: the red team was a man up all game, because the different starting moves are not really balanced against each other. If you take a point early and the other team doesn't, you can carry that advantage for the whole game, this is pretty messy.
but as well as this, the game is pretty symmetrical on the whole, possibly too much so.
RULE VARIANTS
-I kind of want to see how it plays out with three or four teams.
-Cokho wanted to spend points to extend a man's move distance, this maybe would fix the point inflation thing and the travel time thing, though probably the movement/defence rules would have to change. I'd have mans move like stunted queens (1-2 steps in one direction per turn, spend points to get 2 more steps in the same direction) and not allow them to move through enemy mans.
-Cokho also wanted to spawn mans and move mans on the same turn, this probably wouldn't hurt, would make troops easier to mobilise.
-SUPER-MANS, either as stacks or multicell behemoths. This could be another thing to spend points on, also, movement and combat could be different for these units.
-if we do different shaped super-mans (2by1,1by2,2by2,1by3,3by1) we can have them treat different distances as a step, based on the unit's width in that direction.
-different boards. there's a lot can be done with just moving the different elements around, having yellow squares be more sparse, etc.
-I wanted to try a hexgrid variant but I'm not sure if there's an easy way to address hexgrid cells (like A1, A2 etc)
Anyway, please post stuff that you think should go into future games. If somebody else wants to run the next game, that is okay with me.
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