Call to power: The Cardgame

[kemtox]

Hi everyone!

I'm taking 2 minutes of your time to get some feedback about a project I'm working on. I always liked CtP and Civilization in general and I also enjoy boardgames and cardgames. One of my friend and I have been working on a card version of Call to Power since 2010. It is roughly based on "through the ages" but changes many of it's mechanics and add new ones (pollution, slaves, etc.) so I consider it as a completly new game.

We playtested the game several times, and everything has potential but need a lot of balancing. However, we are currently in a "anyway who will give a s**t about that game?" phase and we are curious to know if there are some people in the world interested in that project.

Also, it is a french game (that could be easily translated I guess) and don't pay attention the images as they are litteraly stolen from Civ5 (for playtesting purpose).

Here are some cards:

Thanks and have a nice day!

 

[Honkoid]

Hard to give an opinion only seeing a few cards, but perhaps this is interesting for you:
http://www.internationalespieltage.de/
It's an annual board game fair in Essen, Germany and maybe there you can get people interested in your game. The cards look pretty well designed and every game developer started small

 

[kemtox]

Thanks for your answer. I might as well give a little bit more informations.

Span
For the purpose of making that game playable within a certain timespan, there are 5 epochs (or ages) within the game:

1. Ancient age (2000BC to 600 AD)
2. Medieval age (601AD to 1600 AD)
3. Enlightment age (1601AD to 1900 AD)
4. Modern age (1901 AD to 2020 AD)
5. Synthetic age (2021 AD to 2400 AD)

Basic mechanic
The goal of the game is to have the most "Civilization point" at the end of the game. To do so, players can:

• Complete objectives
• Research what are called "Seminal discoveries"
• Build wonders
• Aim for one of the 6 end game "superprojects"

The game works using a timeline. Card are revealed stating with age I and placed on the board forming a column of 10 card. Players can draft cards in this column by using polical actions. After each round, the "Sand of times dice" is thrown and some other cards may be removed from the column. Then, the column is reformed and new cards are drawn until 10 cards are present in the column. When the age I deck is gone, players take the age II deck, and so on...

Players play those card by paying their cost. This cost may be science (for technologies), culture (for special characters) and sometimes production (for wonders).

Some technologies allow the construction of buildings, while other allow the training of military units but the majority of them give various bonuses to its owner.

The different pools
The number of avaible "ressources" is limited for each player. There are 3 pools of those ressources.

• Population pool (workers for building and military units)
• Prosperity pool (Production and food)
• Intellect pool (Science and culture)

The more "ressources" you take from one pool, the more you'll need to backup your whole empire. By example, an empty prosperity pool leads to criminality, an empty population pool leads to higher hapinness and food needs.

Ok, your english is bad and you should feel bad! I didn't get a s**t!
First, I'm sorry, I don't get to use english very often. But here's a resume of what is CURRENTLY in the game and that WORKS but need balancing:

• Population
• Happiness/Not happiness managing
• Production management
• Food management (production and starvation control)
• Culture management
• Science management
• Faith management
• Pollution/Ecology management
• 14 governments (Yeah, Virtual Democracy and Technocracy are in!) all with their special powers
• 18 wonders
• About 500 cards
• Action cards, objective cards, event cards (all with a never seen way to be played)
• 30 different empires with bonuses
• Territories and natural wonders
• Military units (infantry, cavalry, artillery, planes and ship)
• Special characters (Slaver, Televangelist, Lawyer, etc.)
• Nukes/Global warming/Eco terrorism/Spying/Slaves
• 6 superprojects to compete for a scientific, cultural, military, religious, economic or environnemental victory

Well, that's about it!

 

[SouthernKing]

Your English isn't as bad as you think it is, don't worry
Sounds good, although my only concern concern would be that extending the Enlightenment Age into Industrial is a little odd (although I've never played CtP so I'm not sure if it's different there)

 

[kemtox]

Your English isn't as bad as you think it is, don't worry
Sounds good, although my only concern concern would be that extending the Enlightenment Age into Industrial is a little odd (although I've never played CtP so I'm not sure if it's different there)

Thanks, I'm doing my best!

During the "ALPHA" phase, there were about 10 different ages (stone, bronze, medieval, renaissance, gunpowder, atomic, modern, numeric, genetic and diamond). However, the game's mechanic works in a way that by example, an age IV food building would produce 4 units of food per worker present on it. At age 9 or 10, managing those ressources was a real nightmare! lol

So we took the decision to keep the 10 ages, but have some "transition age". by example, you'd have "gathering" at stone age and the next upgrade would be "crop rotation" at medieval age. This was working...in some ways...however, it didn't make any sense not to have "agriculture" (at bronze age). So, we met those kind of problems all along the process. And at that point, there was like a gazillion cards and it was unmanageable!

We than decided to "compress" some of the epochs. Stone age was easy to cut and became "the player's first turn" instead of a complete era. Then, we created the "ancient age" (a mix of end of stone age, bronze and iron age). Medieval age was left as is, but we felt the scope could go up to the pre-gunpowder age (1600-1700 AD).

Of course, the hardest part was that "Renaissance->Industrial" period, where horses become trucks and crafters become factories. We finally took the decision to merge them into the "enlightment age", a kind of hybrid and honestly, the result is a lot more interesting than what we initialy thought. As you might have realized, this isn't exactly a snake and ladder game, and after 2 complete ages of swords, horses and catapult, rifleman and canon are more than welcome! (and add a lot to the game strategy). It is also at age 3 that pollution makes it appearance. Not a threat until age 4 but just enough so players can start to build up an environmental strategy. Because there are effects like "Destroy all pollution producing buildings that every player owns" in the game. (Eden Project FTW!)

Then the modern age, that covers both atomic and numeric age. That's also where a regular civilization game ends.

And there is the synthetic age. We wanted it to be very exciting. That's why we "exagerated the future" in some ways. I'm pretty sure mankind won't be able to shape time and space in 2400AD...but in our game it is. We really wanted to give age 5 that "far far far utopic future" feel...

And for your information, the original CtP is doing way worse than our enlightment age! It goes straight from ancient to renaissance and then directly to modern age!

 

[GoodGame]

Sounds interesting. It'd help to have a graphical illustration of how the cards are laid out in the table and in players' hands.

I'm guessing the play is a bit like this---player draws cards, decides which are best to add to their "column" on the table, and in order to pay for the cost to play their desired cards they have to sacrifice other cards. And then each game mechanic is also sort of a card suite (like instead of hearts, spades, etc.... the suites are population, political action, science, religion, art, etc...). And I guess there are also "antagonist" cards that can be played against opponents----like attacks, natural disasters, etc...

Sounds like an interesting idea that is a good mix of fast-playing, thematic, and strategic.

Is each era represented by 10 cards?

Is it possible to rush to certain cards despite "historical realism"?

 

[kemtox]

Sounds interesting. It'd help to have a graphical illustration of how the cards are laid out in the table and in players' hands.

I'm guessing the play is a bit like this---player draws cards, decides which are best to add to their "column" on the table, and in order to pay for the cost to play their desired cards they have to sacrifice other cards. And then each game mechanic is also sort of a card suite (like instead of hearts, spades, etc.... the suites are population, political action, science, religion, art, etc...). And I guess there are also "antagonist" cards that can be played against opponents----like attacks, natural disasters, etc...

Sounds like an interesting idea that is a good mix of fast-playing, thematic, and strategic.

Is each era represented by 10 cards?

Is it possible to rush to certain cards despite "historical realism"?

Not quite...here's a simple diagram I made really fast.

Here are additional informations:

• Players don't have columns. Column is the main section where the games progress.
• Instead, players have a player area (that might look like a Magic the Gathering playing zone)
• Additionnaly, each player have a cardboard tracking sheet where colored cubes are placed to represent (food, production, workers, culture, science, etc.)
• Players start with initial technologies and workers already placed on some mines, farm, academy and warrior.
• Not shown on the diagram are 2 other deck of cards. One is the INFLUENCEdeck that contains (just like you said), attacks, aggressions and wars but also cards that give players various bonuses. The other deck is the EVENT DECK. This is the one containing earthquakes, tornados, rat infestation. But it goes further than simple natural disasters.
• Cards are DRAFTED from the timeline and placed into the corresponding player's hand. Wonders and Government are THE ONLY cards that are placed directly into play. Otherwise, cards have cost that must be paid using science, culture or faith depending of the card.
• Everything uses political actions. Drafting a card, recruiting a unit, building a farm (or any other building), plating a technology, drawing or playing an influence card. This mechanic is really interesting as it makes players have to take hard and strategic decisions (draft that cool technology for 2 political actions or...build up to 2 military units?)

Concerning the player's hands. The maximum hand size is always the number of political actions produced by the player's current government (by default this is 4). This hand can be composed of various cards (those drafted on the timeline or influence cards).

I'll try to make another diagram showing the playing mat and the player's zone.

Also, I opened a thread on www.boardgamegeek.com if you guys are interested.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/831603/echoes-of-ages-card-game-hybrid-between-through-th

 

[Rub'Rum]

This is more than "roughly based" on the Through the Ages board game. I guess making it into a card game only could remove some of the fliddliness of Through the Ages.

 

[kemtox]

This is more than "roughly based" on the Through the Ages board game. I guess making it into a card game only could remove some of the fliddliness of Through the Ages.

Through the Ages is a great game. However, many aspects of that game are either overcomplicated or just plain uninteresting. By example, having aggression and war cards doing almost the same thing and having so many different rules may be hard to understand for new players. Combats in the game are really abstract and trade or diplomacy is almost unexistent. In some way, TTA may be one of those game where other players are almost secondary.

That game DOES take some mechanics from TTA as my friend and I find them to be very suitable for a easily manageable card game. However, that game DOES have original mechanics and new ways to make the game a lot more "player's interraction oriented".

Ultimately, I guess this game could be a Through the Ages: Advanced or Throught the Ages 3.0. But keep in mind that right from the beginning, this game was meant to be a free print and play game and a personnal project I started with one of my friend. I think it is normal for us to get inspiration from games we enjoy

 

[GoodGame]

I'd suggest that the game would be more portable if you did it by my suggestion---all abstract concept are suites on a card, such that a card is both: an item (to be bought by trade) and a set of suites (card-buying currency in the form of categories: population, politics, culture, religion, money, etc...).

That way the value of the card hand is used to build a better card hand with the winner having the best hand at the end of the era/game. And competitive play would have try to destroy the opponent's hand, block trading, or steal cards, etc...

"Time" would also be "more flexible" this way since the cost of cards wouldn't be by "era/epoch" but by their purchase cost which could be weighted so more advanced cards (e.g. armored vehicles, Eiffel tower) would cost much more in suites (e.g population, politics, etc..) than earlier cards (e.g. copper swords).

*
For a table-top counter (cubes) I'd suggest having a single grid of colored squares so no cheating. Assuming nice production values, each player's "cubes" are a single color, but come in different shapes to represent population, politics etc... That'd minimized sleight of hand cheating.

**
I do like the central concept though---bidding on a common, random timeline, where there is more to bid over time.