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For this week's update on Of Duchies and Polities, I want to dive more specifically into how the game has been designed around player interaction. Since Of Duchies and Polities is a game about politicking, scheming, and making deals, having good player interaction is one of the most important parts of the design of the game.

So without further ado, here is how The Art of War is conducted in Of Duchies and Polities.

The Importance of Map Design

I've mentioned this in an earlier post, but one of the most important parts of this game is to make sure the map is designed to augment player interaction.

The current board/map.

One thing I learned from its previous iteration using a map of the entire world (ala Risk) is that being far away from your opponents is not necessarily good for a game. What I thought would be a refuge for empire-building became a boring slog of building up and passing turns for hours, before even being able to march envoys to other players' territories.

As you can see from above, Of Duchies and Polities is instead set in the British Isles. They, along with northern France, provided an interesting pseudo-world with which to strategize and plan out domination. Each 'isle' is close enough to each other to keep players interacting with their game pieces, but far enough apart that it doesn't feel claustrophobic. Reducing the maximum number of players also helps on this front.

The number of territories is also reduced to 26 (from 42 in Risk). But the territories are not as obviously “continental” as the real world. For example, Wales is smack dab in the middle of Ireland and England, with no discernible reason for its borders. Except on the grounds of player interaction.

One thing I really didn't like about Risk was that the player who was able to secure Australia (or sometimes South America) the longest would almost always win the game. This made many games pretty one-sided, unless the player with Australia got multiple bad rolls in a row. Having no variation in strategy stagnated the game for multiple play-throughs, and eventually, my friends and I stopped playing it, even though it scratched that itch we all had.

In Of Duchies and Polities, both Ireland and France could be viewed this way. But with both regions, the map has been designed so that each of them have at least one county with multiple points of entry, thus making regional claims harder to make. Furthermore, because there are more 'Australias', each player can set up camp (if they choose) where they want, rather than always aiming for the same spot.

The Importance of Variable Strategies

One of the most fascinating videos I watched last year was this one on Youtube. In it, the guy interviews top level generals about modern warfare, talking about how war is now 5-dimensional. In addition to land, sea, and air, we have the space and cyber domains.

I've always been interested in this multi-dimensional aspect. It has existed throughout all of history. For example, in World War 2, propaganda was one of the most heavily used tools to de-moralize enemies (as seen recently in Dunkirk, a movie by one of my favorite directors in film). Even when I was young, when playing games like Warcraft 2 and Age of Empires, one of the most interesting parts of those games for me was how there were 3 dimensions (land, sea, and air).

I wanted to take this idea of multidimensional warfare into Of Duchies and Polities. I especially love the idea that “mighty is the hand to know when to pick up the pen and when to pick up the sword”. This is why the game's victory condition isn't military control, but rather population support. Yet, there are military aspects to the game. And so, by design, the game is meant to encourage multi-domain warfare.

On one domain, players are doing what most typical “world domination” games are doing. They are using their forces to crush the opposing side, be it neutral or an opponent player. These forces can also be used to occupy and collect tribute from territories which don't support said player. This allows the militaristic domain to have a presence, even if the objective of the game isn't strictly based in it.

But like the actual Art of War by Sun Tzu, which encourages any commander to only use the military at the utmost end of need, diplomacy and politics make a real impact in the game. Players thus war through the word and the pen, using their Diplomats and other similar agents to convert popular opinion to their side.

These two theaters are having a huge influence on the real-life politicking in the game. The social contract is alive and well (from my test, so far), especially with 3-4 players. I've noticed that players tend to eye and watch out for who is ahead. Since the pace of the game is slightly slower than that of Risk (intentionally so), there is more time to understand what threats could be neutralized through alliances and deals. And with more time, there's more negotiation, and more scheming shenanigans.

Theoretically Infinite Possibilities

So I mentioned last time that there was something that I had been wanting to test in place of the now defunct trade routes. The original idea for trade routes was basically like a county or territory add-on. Its primary function was to enhance one's own income and incentivize expansion, since the more territories you had, the more trade routes you could build. However, while the idea seemed great in concept, the reality was that, since trade routes provided very little else, they were not fun, and often forgotten and unused.

Anyone who has read through my posts before I started this series on making this board game knows that I really like talking about money and the economy. In fact, my first series on Coil was about becoming your own bank. And I've always wanted to see how the idea of a full functioning economy works in games.

And thus, the mechanic of Contracts was born. In place of trade routes, and wanting to continue to encourage more interaction amongst players, Contracts are meant to be a way for players to formally make deals with each other. In this way, almost all assets, from Diplomats to Armies and even other contracts, can be traded for a certain period of time. This allows for the idea of trade to be more tangible than just building a trade route.

One of the game concepts that I love is the idea of theoretically infinite possibilities. A great example of this is in the card game Magic: The Gathering. Not only is it considered the most complex game ever made, but an actual match can result in the creation of a Turing Machine (if someone really wants to)! It's the ultimate way to give players multiple ways to personalize their game, and enjoy a game even if they may not be the best player in any given match.

Key to this idea is the ability to layer cause-and-effect events within a game's mechanics. It's similar to an “if-then” programming statement. If certain conditions are met, then some effects will happen. For example, in Magic, one card might say “When this card enters the battlefield, X happens”. Another card might say “If X happens, then Y happens”. Multiple cards with these if-then conditions would cause a chain reaction to happen, sometimes resulting in an infinite loop that allows a player to win a game.

With Contracts, Of Duchies and Polities touches on this 'infinite possibilities' design concept. Players can make 'legitimate' deals that wouldn't be possible otherwise. By allowing nearly any asset to be used for Contracts, it has the chance for allowing players to do almost anything they want, chain multiple contracts and effects together, and really make their own playstyle viable in a match.

Of course, this is a new idea, and needs to be tested pretty thoroughly to make sure there is still balance and fun playing the game. But the idea of Contracts, currently, has really infused a bit of new life into Of Duchies and Polities, and intertwines the Art of War (or, really, the art of player interactions) with the realm of near infinite possibilities.

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