Micro Worker Placement game progress, and the "Strategy Triangle"

I recently posted about a micro worker placement game that had come together pretty quickly from idea to 1st prototype. I mentioned a lot of brainstorms in that post to improve the game. Since then, I have played 8 more times, iterating and making tweaks after each game.

Since joining the Keith Burgun Games Community Discord, I have not only played a lot of Dragon Bridge, but also participated in a lot of great game design-y chats, some of which centered around a concept known as the Strategy Triangle. That link is to a long post from Keith's describing the Strategy Triangle as he sees it. Here's a video of him talking about it which might be a little more succinct (the video is really long, but it should be queued up to his description).

I like the idea of this triangle, but it seems clear that no 2 people really agree on some of the details. A course grained reading of it, or my interpretation at least, is this:

•  An extreme "red" strategy spends all of its resources on direct progress
• An extreme "blue" strategy spends some of its resources more efficiently countering or slowing the opponent's direct progress, leaving some resources to invest, allowing for more progress later
• An extreme "green" strategy invests ALL of its resources, allowing for even more future progress

Given that, generally speaking... 

• Blue has an advantage over red, as they hold off the red strategy with efficient defense long enough for their investment to come online 
• Green has an advantage over blue, as any "efficient defense" is wasted, and green has invested more resources than blue, giving green a resource advantage for buying progress later
• Red has an advantage over green, as unhindered, they could bring the game to an end before green sees a return on its investment

In discussing this, I drew a crude graph to show advantage over time:

In any given matchup, you could look at this graph and see which strategy has an advantage at any given time (which line is higher). But more importantly, the area under the curve would be cumulative advantage, so depending on when the game ends, you could look at the area under the curve for each strategy and see which had more cumulative advantage, that would be the winner. 

Said another way, if you're playing an aggressive "red" strategy, you'd better end the game quickly, before your opponent's cumulative advantage overtakes yours! By the nature of the colors as descried above, in red vs blue that is probably going to be rare, while in red vs green that is probably going to be common.

I decided to try and use this micro worker placement game to sort of express that triangle fairly directly. I called one resource Red gems, one Blue gems, and one Gold gems (instead of green). As I alluded to in the previous post, I added an effect on each resource tracker that you would resolve whenever you collect more of that resource (when you collect some red gems, first resolve your current red ability, then collect the gems). 

• I tried to make the red effects kind of "rushy:" collect extra red, buy a star, take an additional turn after this one, get an additional star for free, and when you overshoot the top of the track, get 1 star and then reset to 2 red
• I tried to make the blue effects directly hinder red: opponent discards red gems, steal a red gem from the opponent, and when you overshoot the top of the track, get 2 stars and then reset to 0 blue
• Gold, being the "econ" strategy, does not give discrete effects when you collect gold. Instead, having gold means you have some number of Green gems - effectively Gold/2, only instead of doing math, you could just look at your tracker card and see how many green gems it currently shows. Several of the buildings give additional red or blue gems for each green gem you possess. When you overshoot the top of the gold track, you don't get any stars, but you get 3 each of red and blue gems, triggering your current red and blue effects

Also as alluded to in the previous post, I did add a countdown tracker (a "dragon"), which gives you an additional star if you score a star using the resource (red or blue) matching the color currently face up on the countdown tracker. The countdown ticks down any time:

1. You place a worker of matching color
2. You place in a building of matching color
3. It pays out a bonus star
4. The deck gets shuffled (every 7 turns)

The game started with a deck of 18 cards, but in one update I added two, going to 20. Either way, there were 7 turns before a reshuffle, with each player adding 1 card from the supply to the board, and then using another card from the display as a worker to place into one of the available buildings. In my latest update, I cut some cards and combined some others to bring the deck down to 16 cards, which will mean 5 turns before a reshuffle. I haven't tested that yet, but I suspect it'll be OK.

So far it seems like this game is shaping up for something that's just 16 cards (plus 9 more for trackers)!

Here are the current cards as of 7/7/22:

(fronts - ignore the crossed out ones)

(backs)

These files are set up for Tabletop Simulator more than for print and play, but you're welcome to print them out and give it a try (I'm sorry it's not easier to do so!)

At this point, I think the game works pretty much as intended. If you start gaining one color of gem, you have incentive to get that color some more (your action of that color will be improved, and you'd be closer to scoring a star by overshooting, or by the building that rewards you for having 4 or 7 like gems). If I see you gaining gems of a certain color, I can play against that by getting gems of the color that has an advantage against that - if you take red gems early, I can take blue gems. If I take blue gems, you can start taking gold gem, etc.

I think I've tuned the effects such that, for the most part, if someone were to bull-headedly go for red gems all game, and their opponent were to go for blue, the blue player would likely win, and similarly, bull-headed, extreme green would beat extreme blue, and extreme red would beat extreme gold. The game could probably use some more tweaking in that respect, but I thin it's on the right track.

One thing about this game though is that you can't necessarily go bull-headedly into any color, because while you do have 7 (out of 16 existing) options available to you on your turn, you don't have every option. Some cards aren't out yet, others are occupied, and others still have been turned face down as workers. So you have to have some flexibility as well, and you might have reasons (in the early game, or in general) to go for one strategy over another when you don't have gems yet.

I'm pretty happy with this game in general. It's not the deepest game ever, and attempting to keep it under about 18 cards is probably holding it back from being significantly better than it is. That may make it difficult to get published, but I think it does a fair amount with very little components, and as microgames go, I don't think it's half bad!