EmDo: Coalition progress

A while ago I posted about some early ideas I had for a cooperative mode for Eminent Domain. Well, after iterating through half a dozen playtests, I'm happy to report that Eminent Domain: Coalition has come together pretty well!

Since I haven't said much about it yet, here are some details of the early version of the game:

Players have formed a coalition (United Empires?) and are working on some common project - building a Dyson Sphere - that requires players to commit some planets, resources, and technologies in order to complete it. So each time you flip a planet, you choose to either keep it for yourself (to use is abilities), or commit it to the project (to further the victory condition)

Similarly, if you buy a tech card, you can either keep it, or commit it to the project. And if you trade resources, you put them into resource slots in the project board (I imagine a board with slots for all of these things)

Meanwhile, some semblance of "bad guys" (hostile aliens?) antagonize the players - they can put 'curses' into the players' decks, which makes them less efficient, and whenever a curse comes up, maybe that advances a "bad stuff" track, and every so often on that track a bad thing happens, like maybe some progress on the shared project is reversed

Maybe players could use ships/warfare to get rid of these curses, or spend their actions researching them away. If you don't keep the bad guys in check, then they'll keep coming up, and the bad stuff will get worse and worse!

Perhaps the Bad Guys get a turn after each round of player turns, in which they randomly (or algorithmically) remove a card from the stacks to hurry the game timer along, and also resolve some sort of effect

Players win if the project is completed before 1-2(?) of the stacks are depleted, and lose otherwise

Maybe players gain some kind of benefit for completing quadrants or certain portions of the project

How do the Bad Guys work? Maybe there could be a "Bad Guys" deck, and you'd flip a card from it after each round of player turns (or after each player turn perhaps, so it scales?), it could indicate which card to remove from the stacks, as well as what effect or action the bad guys take. Stuff like...

• If it's a warfare card, they power up their fleet (no attack, but increase their strength)
• If it's a colonize card, then they attack the planets in the project -- VP value is their "hit points," and players can defend by discarding VP tokens that they have collected
• If it's a research card, maybe the same thing but they attack a tech card in the project
• If it's a produce/trade card, then they knock out resources that have been placed in the project
• If it's a survey card, then some other bad thing happens

In any case, you'd reference their strength track to see how hard they attack, and maybe if they don't have anything in the project to target, then players take curses to make up the difference

When curses come up in your hand, maybe the bad guys strength track increases

Also, when bad guy cards come up maybe it's like "each player takes a curse for each [Advanced planet] in their empire, so some variable attack-type cards\

As I said, those were early thoughts. When I finally made a prototype. I stayed pretty true to the original ideas, but of course some things changed and evolved since then.

Of course it was far from perfect, but I was pretty surprised at just how well the initial prototype actually worked. The biggest problem I had was that it took far too long, and even more importantly, it took too long for players to interact with the Sphere. In retrospect, this made some sense -- EmDo is more-or-less an engine building game, and in any engine building game you first build your engine, then switch over to earning VPs. And in this case, filling up the sphere was the VPs of the game, so it makes sense that the first 1/2 or more of the game players would just build up their own empires, then start to deal with the Sphere. This was lame, and worse it rendered many of the "bad guy" (hostile alien) cards mostly ineffectual for half the game. Sure, they removed cards from the stacks, but many had no effect otherwise until you started actually working on the Sphere

Dysen Sphere

The solution here was simple, but took a few iterations to figure out: make the sphere also an engine building type of thing. I had initially thought it might be good to give a reward for finishing a section of the sphere, but that takes too long. I needed a strong, globally good effect, usable by all players, that would encourage them to engage with the sphere from the get-go (or at least very early in the game). I tried a few things, and in the end (well, currently) I settled on this: in each section, I connected 2 planets into a pair. If you complete that pair, then you get a benefit: all players gain access to a role icon. There are 3 sections of the sphere, and 6 role icons, so I dealt 2 role icons to each planet pair during setup, and now when you complete that pair, you decide however you want (as a group, individually, etc) which one comes into play, and the other is removed from the game

Then I connected the level 2 tech card slot in each section with the 3 starting resource slots, and said that when you complete those, you gain an ability. My first draft was "hand size +1" on each of them, but the current version has just one hand size +1, and the other two are the Streamlining ability (each turn you may remove 1 card in had from the game), and "+1 action per turn." I worry that +1 action might be the most obvious best thing, which would be lame, so it might need a nerf or something, but for now that's what I'm going with

In order to win, you need to contribute 2/3/4 planets per section (6/9/12 total) based on player count, one level 2 tech card per section (3 total), and one total level 3 tech card, as well as 9 resources, plus whatever resource slots are on planets committed. And you lose if the aliens attack an empty stack

Coalition Tiles

Like the Fleet, Mining, and Political Influence tiles from the expansions, I added a Coalition tile to the game -- a reference tile that allows you to do a couple of specific things as actions instead of playing a card. And just like the reference tiles from the expansions, you can upgrade to Improved Coalition via research to improve those actions. The actions on this tile give you a way to remove the 'curse' type alien cards from your deck (in an inefficient way), repair damage to the sphere or bolster it against attacks, and send ships to defend the stacks - if the aliens attack a defended stack, instead of taking a card, they remove the ship defending it. 

Hostile Aliens

The antagonistic force that challenges the players is a deck of Hostile Alien cards. Every so often (originally once after each round of player turns, but more recently I've tried effectively every 3 player turns, using the old Guards mechanism from All For One for 4 players), you draw a card from the Hostile Aliens deck and resolve it:

1. Note the stack that gets attacked. Remove a card in that stack from the game (unless that stack is defended, in which case remove the defending fighter instead). If that stack was empty (defended or not), game over -- the players lose.
2. Resolve effect printed on the card -- increase the Alien Strength track, attack a certain type of planet (in the sphere and in all Empires), attack all cards in a particular section of the sphere, attack the players (giving them all some 'curse' cards), attack permanent techs/techs in the sphere, or reshuffle the discards (and then maybe draw/resolve another card or two).

Whenever the aliens attack you, you take Alien Spy cards into your discard pile. When these come up in your hand, of course they don't help you -- they have no actions or role icons. Also, whenever they are discarded from your hand, you must increase the alien strength track. So they are pretty bad, especially if you ignore them and build up a handful in your deck. Your Coalition tile allows you to remove 1 of the Spies from the game as an action, and of course a Research action can remove up to 2 of them from the game

A newer rule I added in an attempt to disincentive to leaving the sphere empty too long was that they get stronger (advance the strength track) whenever they try to attack some type of card in the sphere, and there is none. I thought maybe that way if players don't build int he sphere, the aliens will get really strong really fast

Damage to the Sphere

My original thought was that when the aliens attacked the sphere, they would do so with strength based on the strength track, they would deal more damage the stronger they were. Then the VP value of the card being attacked would be the card's "hit points" - the damage it could take before being destroyed. But that led to some problems, and things like Bolster and Repair being equivalent

I figured out a better way, so the new rule is that the VP value of a card in the sphere is its defense, and the aliens damage the card only if their strength (per the track) is greater than or equal to the card's defense. Therefore it pays to Bolster -- you might be preventing multiple damage by keeping the card's defense out of reach of the alien strength for longer. And it still pays to repair, assuming that there's some down side to having a damaged card in the sphere

On that note, originally damage meant the card could be destroyed, reversing your progress. This felt pretty harsh, so I looked for something different. Since then, damage has just been something that you need to remove in order to win. So if a card got damaged, then you couldn't win unless you repaired it by the end of the game. But I wanted players to feel pressure to repair damage sooner rather than later, or risk some bad thing happening, so the new rule I am going to try in the next playtest is this: If a damaged card gets damaged again, then something bad happens. For starters I'll try "destroy it"

I'm pretty excited about this new damage format, with reasons to bolster cards before they get damaged, and reasons to repair them if they do (note that you could leave a card damaged for a while, and it's not bad unless that card gets successfully attacked again)

TTS Prototype

That's a long, rambling summary of where this cooperative mode currently stands. I think it's very promising, but it'll take a lot of testing and data to get all the details nailed down, and I have several big comments/ideas from my playtesters that I'm still considering. I'll post again in the future when I have more news about this. In the meantime, here's a screenshot of the TTS mod for the game :)

Playtesters welcome

I'd be happy to have fans of Eminent Domain give this cooperative mode a try! Let me know if you're interested, I could share the TTS mod, and maybe I could put together print-and-play files if anyone were so inclined