Here's another one
My idea is to create a Turn Based Strategy Game of my dreams in phases of increasing complexity.
1. Claim. This will be TBS reduced to the most basic level. The board is a grid of identical green squares, and each player starts with an army which is represented by a black bordered square of his national color filling its terrain tile with the strength of the army displayed by a numeral. Each player also has a global Wealth variable. Armies can be moved one square per turn through a tile face (not diagonally). The last player to have an army in a square owns that square, and the square turns from green to the players national color until someone else captures it. Each turn, each players Wealth increases by one for each square he owns. Each turn, each players Wealth decreases by one for each strength point of Army that he owns. This is deducted when the army is moved, or tapped off as not moving, and if the player doesnt have the money to pay the army being moved it vanishes (or declines in strength by the amount underpaid, if stronger than level one). During his turn a player may also build new armies anywhere in his territory, which always start at strength 1 and cost ten points of Wealth. When an army enters a square occupied by a friendly army, the two merge to add up strengths and become one new stronger army. When an army enters a square occupied by an enemy army, the strengths of the armies are compared and both adjusted based on relative strengths. The weaker (or defender if equal) is downgraded by the difference between the strengths. The stronger (or attacker if equal) is downgraded by the square root of the remaining strength of the weaker (or defender) rounding down. After a battle, if the attacker is stronger than the defender, the owner of the defending army must move it to some other square (any other than the one the attacker came from) so the attacker can move in. Which square the defender moves to is up to the owner of the defending army, but the consequences can lead to the formation of new army conglomeration if the square fled into contained friendly troops or to the fleeing former defender becoming an attacker as it moves into an enemy occupied square.
I'm finished with this one, its attached to this post. < 3000 lines of C++ (entirely ifs whiles and arrays) using PTK for graphics.
2. Phalanx. This will actually be a tactical game. Two players start with a number of phalanxes on a grid of squares. A phalanx is represented by an arrow pointing to a face of the square. Each turn, a phalanx can move forward one square or rotate 90 degrees. A phalanx may attempt to move into a square occupied by an enemy that is facing the back at it, but both will be destroyed. If a phalanx moves into a square occupied by enemy units facing some other direction, all enemy units are destroyed and the square is captured.
3. Phalanx Claim. This combines Phalanx with Claim into one game, in which battles between armies on the Claim board are resolved by going to the Phalanx board to fight it out. The number of phalanxes each side gets will be determined by the strength of the army that entered the battle, and retreat is handled by moving phalanxes off the edge of the board. In this version, armies, once assembled, can always be broken up.
4. Phalanx Claim 4X. This adds just enough to the basic Phalanx Claim game to make it qualify as a 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) game without creating new mechanisms that will not be in the later versions. Now Wealth is not a global variable, but instead Wealth units are created by and in each square every turn and can only be spent by moving them to the point where they will be used. Thus you have to move supplies to armies in the field, or to where you want to build a new army. These wealth units can be captured, so when you capture a square containing them, you capture the wealth units. Additionally, you can spend wealth units to develop a square, which increases its production. By spending a wealth unit in a square you can also survey it for its maximum development potential. Each time you do so, you check for one additional possible level of maximum development. Once you know this potential exist, you can develop it further. The concealed map of maximum development levels is generated randomly at game start. Other than that the game is the same as Phalanx Claim.
5. Battle Claim. Battle Claim is Phalanx Claim 4X on steroids.
a. There are more types of combat units than just Phalanxes. There are now Archers, Chariots, and Swords. The original method of battle resolution from Claim is revived. Phalanxes have a strength of 4 to the front and 0 to other sides. Swords have a strength of 2 to all sides and dont have to turn. Chariots are directional, with a strength of 3 to the front and 1 from other directions, but they get 3 moves per turn, so they can move 3 squares straight ahead or turn, move forward, and turn again, or do a 180 and advance one. Archers move like swords but have no defensive combat value. They can only attack an adjacent square or one two squares away, with a strength of 2. A unit attacked by archers can raise shields, which reduces its combat strength in all directions by 1 and prevents movement, but makes it immune to the archer attack. Also, archers attack a square, including all units in it, not just one unit.
b. There are more types of resources than just Wealth. There is now construction, food, cattle, metal, and goods. Everything consumes and produces these. Improving terrain costs construction. Armies and improvements consume food. Resource units consume goods. Town improvements produce goods while consuming metal, cattle, food, and construction. Armies are built with various amounts of metal, cattle or goods depending on unit type.
c. Terrain is less abstract. The initial productive value of terrain varies, and the color of the terrain indicates what kind of terrain is in the square. There are now water, ice, highland, wetland, wasteland, and plains. Wetland has a high probability of having a forest bonus, which can produce construction, and highland and ice have a smaller chance. Forest must be removed to build a farm. Mines can be built on any land square to produce stone, and building a mine also has a chance of revealing any hidden metal. Some metal is not hidden. Metal has a higher chance of being unhidden in highland. Farms can be built on wetland to produce food directly and constantly and cattle occasionally. Some squares also start with cattle productivity. Herds can be built on wetland or plains, and they produce cattle which can be used as food or for production. All kinds of resource units can be converted to waterborne resource units on any water or wetland square, at a cost of goods, and can move on both wetland (which is assumed to have rivers) and water. Water can also be improved to fishery, which produces food. Combat units can also be converted to sea carried variants at a cost of goods, but on converting back into land variants (which can engage in battle) they must spend goods to convert back to sea variants again. Additionally, there the galley, a unit that can engage in combat on water (and attack others of its kind on wetland and defend there against land units). Galleys function like chariots in battle, with forward combat strength equal to the number of squares moved in a straight line that turn plus one.
d. The terrain generator for Battle Claim generates a land mass that goes from arctic to tropics vertically and from eastern sea to western sea horizontally, without wrap. Highland will tend to be along the center line, ice at the top and dry areas in the tropics, but variety and multiple continents are possible.
6. Advanced Battle Claim. Advanced Battle Claim is Battle Claim with tech progress. No longer stuck in an eternal bronze age, the world can evolve. Now towns can have multiple types of improvements. All improvements and units have a chance each turn of becoming some new more advanced type of improvement or unit, with all this entails. In addition, the game map has diagonal wrap, with 9 regions similar in size to the one in Battle Claim. Battles are played not on a flat featureless field, but on terrain of the province where the battle is being fought.
a. Each province has an actual terrain generated for the province as a whole and this is fought over and recorded for consistency in case there are future battles there.
b. When not in war, military units have an infinite rate of movement, but cannot enter enemy territory. To enter enemy territory, a player must take the game to War Speed. At War Speed ordinary resource units are not shown. Wherever resource units are produced and consumed, war buck equivalents are produced and consumed instead. For construction and combat unit production it takes 50 war bucks to equal one regular resource. Wherever regular resources were stored, the represent 50 war bucks each, but if consumed they will not be there after the war ends to support regular needs. Regular resource units represent activity over a long period. After 1000 turns at War Speed, another Generation turn must be executed.
c. Strategic Aircraft get a second move on the battle map at War Speed after battle resolution phase. This reflects sorties, and movement rate in battle is prorated to represent that time over the battlefield is only part of flight time. The more distant (relative to range) that the target is, the worse that ratio. Normally the worst possible rate is still sufficient to move all the way across the board in one battle turn, thus speed in air on air battles is not affected by the ratio, just the number of iterations of dogfights. German planes can fly to Britain and fight British planes once, but have to go home and refuel then by retreating off screen.
d. On battle screen, all movement is like this: each turn, a unit gets a number of movement points equal to its speed. Players take turns moving units until all units that have movement points left have moved one square. Thus faster units just keep going longer.
e. If an army enters enemy territory, battle is joined. After all players finish moving, all battles are resolved at battle speed, one province at a time. After 50 turns on a battle screen (or one side is left with the field) the next battle or next turn at War Speed ensues. Unresolved battles are left unresolved for the next resolution phase.
6. Space Claim. Space Claim is Advanced Battle Claim with a larger map and future techs. It has multiple diagonal wrap planets moving on a disk shaped solar system map. This is treated exactly like a different part of the world that units can teleport to (only from specific spaceports on planets) and into (only at the planets location at the time) out of (only to the location of a planet). Space is its own kind of terrain, with its improvements and resource units and Generation Turns and War Turns. However, there are no battle maps in space. Combat is resolved there immediately the War Turn level. (Alternatively perhaps space battles will be resolved in an RTS form) Also, movement on the solar system map is by acceleration. A destination is set and trajectories are calculated and fuel expended. Acceleration ensues and location calculated from it is translated each turn into tiles and turns. Actually there are separate maps for inner and outer solar system and for orbital areas around planets.