MArcomage

Keywords side-effects made the game more random then I expected, so I designed a new system that could replace the random-based side-effects.

This new token system works like this: instead of random chance you collect tokens. When you have enough tokens for a specific keyword and you play a card with that keyword, the side-effect will happen. Then the token counter is reset to zero and you may start accumulating tokens again. Each keyword have their own token counter (only non-zero counters will be displayed).

Here are the advantages of this system:
- side-effects are no longer random, it's up to you to accumulate tokens
- it's up to you when to use the side-effect (you may save it for some specific card)

How are the tokens accumulated? I designed an easy-to-translate mechanism (from current system to token system).

Let's take some specific keyword - Soldier, for example. "there is a 8% chance for each Soldier card in hand (not counting the played one) that half of the recruits cost will be returned."

Let's say that we have 3 soldier cards in hand (not counting the played one). When I play this card I have 24% chance to trigger the side-effect. In the token system you get 24 Soldier tokens by this action.

When you accumulate 100 tokens and you play a Soldier card, the side-effect will be trigerred and token counter reseted. When you have 100 tokens you don't have to play the first soldier card you have in hand. You may want to get some more interesting Soldier card, like "Dragon knights" or "Ceremionial guard" to use the side-effect with maximum effectiveness (getting back half of the recruits cost of high recruits cost card).

This is only an idea, I expect to make some modifications and solve some more questions like these:

- should the tokens that you gather above 100 be preserved or not?
- how to display token counters?
- how to display when side-effect is triggered?
- add some card normal effects that manipulates with the tokens? (+ 20 Soldier tokens, -50 Enemy Beast tokens...)
- should the player choose when to activate the side-effect, when he met the respective conditions (this would let player preserve the side-effect even when he played a card with matching keyword and having 100 tokens). Should we let the players to accumulate more then 100 tokens in this case? (should we set the upper limit or let it be unbounded? How should we modify the user interface for this?)

Please share your thoughts.

Can/should player collect multiple types of tokens at once?
Pros: Make the game more interesting? Possible to pull keyword combo?
Cons: Given the amount of keywords we have now, it might be messy to keep track of multiple types

Not necessarily. One deck usually contains only few keywords with random-chance side-effects. If we make token counters similiar to card cost icons and display only token counters that have only non-zero tokens, we should be able to display needed information with little space.

Would Undead be changed back to a positive effect?

Probably not... but this is a balance issue, not a system one. However it would be weird if the player could choose when the negative effect happens.

Exclude my tower building or resource accumulation deck, other decks of mine have 7-10 keywords with effect(not counting Quick, Nature, Destruction etc)

7 token counter isn't exactly few...but I would be glad to have them all available

Only keywords that have a trigger chance would have tokens. This includes only Alliance, Barbarian, Brigand, Beast, Burning, Holy, Mage, Soldier, Titan, Undead and Unliving.

I'm not sure if Legend and Dragon should be also included - they are different from those mentioned above.

Note that if you are playing a mixed deck, you shouldn't have too many token counters, because the played card doesn't count.

Anyway, we consider the possiblity that many token counters will be active. What then? Either we find a way to display this information somehow or we can limit the maximum number of token counters (then we also need to think of rules how token counters will be chosen - which one to shut down and which one to add).

EDIT: Fithz Hood has a good idea - to able to pick which token counters you want for specific deck in the deck section. So, we set the number of token counters to a fixed value, 4 for example. Player then assigns keywords to token counters. For example Soldier, Alliance, Unliving and Titan. These keywords will use the token counter, the others will not.

Since we know that at most 4 token counters can be used, we have no problem displaying it.

Deafult values for the token counters should probably be the 4 most used keywords present in current deck.

- should the tokens that you gather above 100 be preserved or not?
Yes
- how to display token counters?

A list somewhere with keywords and the numbers next to it, I guess.

- how to display when side-effect is triggered?

If it's displayed like a number somewhere, you can give the number a color, like it does now with wall & tower when you change it. (Green when increased, orange when lowered.)

- add some card normal effects that manipulates with the tokens? (+ 20 Soldier tokens, -50 Enemy Beast tokens...)

I wouldn't waste card slots on it...

- should the player choose when to activate the side-effect, when he met the respective conditions (this would let player preserve the side-effect even when he played a card with matching keyword and having 100 tokens). Should we let the players to accumulate more then 100 tokens in this case? (should we set the upper limit or let it be unbounded? How should we modify the user interface for this?)

No, I don't think we should do this. The trick of planning ahead should matter more. If you want the keywordeffect to trigger with a specific card, you'll need to plan your turns so you have 100+ tokens at the moment you play the card.

Here's my opinions on the concept, and I certainly like it, I think excess tokens should be carried over, (otherwise you once again weaken the drawback of undead), also, in the same vein you shouldn't "truly" be able to choose when to use tokens, but here's a decent trade off in my mind. Whenever a player plays a card with a keyword that has an associated token, the game checks to see if they have 100 tokens or more with that keyword, if they do, it activates, so, a player could "wait out" for a stronger card to use the side-effect with, or in the case of undead, wait for a cheaper undead card to cleanse their tokens and take less drawback, but, the drawback of waiting to take advantage of such would be not being able to play cards with that keyword until you're intending on using your tokens, seems quite balanced to me, a person would have to discard, or play cards without the keyword you're using to "choose" when to use/clear his tokens. (As to display, Maybe a box on the side where you could change between the token types, so you only need to watch the token values you care about with your deck. (As to seeing opponent tokens, your call.)

Heres my opinion

there shouldnt be token types, all token are the same (playing a soldier or unliving gives same token types, but, obviously if u have many unliving its going to give more tokens)

Tokens could simply be a ressource, just like bricks or gems or recruits. so u can have some cards like

Magical Barier
cost 200 tokens
Wall X2

That kinda blows teh idea of the tokens, for my feeling.

Yeah, I'd have to agree that making tokens another resource with keywords as a proxy facility would be missing the mark entirely. It's being proposed as a way to bring strategy to the keyword effects.

I'm personally against the idea of having cards directly affect token values -unless- they affect the rate of accumulation (no +20 soldier token effects, but a card that gives 1.2x token gain or somesuch could be interesting). Also, it might be fun to see new keywords or keyword effects that alter your or your enemy's tokens when played (nature?), but I wouldn't feel it right to implement cards that individually, for example, deal 5 damage and reduce enemy tokens by 10. In short, keep it to keyword effects.

I'm against any form of excessive complexity.
Otherwise it'll end up like -> http://www.adultimum.net/rw/294.htm

Good point, I promise, that I will design the new system, so it would be simple and using only basic of arithmetics like addidtion, substection, multiplication and division.

Your complaint is making the game more random. I will point out that it adds very little into the 'randomness' of every card draw. If anything, it makes it less random. It adds more focus on playing properly and deck design, because so many cards increase your chance of drawing another card (increased chance that soldiers draw soldiers, holy draws holy).

Militia adds more to the random aspect of the game (in that you could have the chance to play any card, and your opponent doesn't even get a chance to react to it) than the potential for a card to, say, decrease stock by a little bit.

Hi, I'm a newbie, but I've been reading through the posts and I will refresh some of them with my 2 cents worth.

I like the idea of these tokens. Although the random system works fine too, I agree that this adds something to the strategy aspect of it all. I agree with Progressor's post above on all points.

I'd make a short list of only three (or four) items, visible only to oneself, not to the opponent. The question now is which keywords of the 11 main ones available to list here. I could think of 3 ways:

1. Make the shortlist part of the gamescreen to select the most important 3 or 4 keywords, before the start of the game, and change it yourself even during the game. Pros: None. Cons: One will have to do it each and every time one plays. Not that easy to code, I think.

2. Better IMHO: Choose the three most important keywords at the time of deck creation and store this information with the deck, so the right keywords will be automatically listed during gameplay. Pros: player will have to set it only once and doesn't have to bother with it again during all the games with that deck. Cons: Only three or four keywords are listed, so if an infrequently occurring keyword does collect enough points to reach 100, you either don't find out about it OR (if thus programnmed) doesn't come into play at all, meaning the player will have to decide already at the time of deck creation which 3 or 4 keywords matter to him or her.

3. Even better: The player doesn't have to choose or select anything beforehand. On the gamescreen are always shown the 3 or 4 keywords with the highest accumulated number of tokens, as these are the only ones that are immediately relevant to the gameplay at hand. This means that once a release so to speak is triggered the token count goes down and may even disappear from the list for a while, at least until they'll start accumulating again. Pros: Easy to implement, no additional hassle for the player. Cons: hardly any (who cares if you're playing an Unliving-deck and the single Barbarian in your deck just got 9 tokens)

Comments?

I don't think you should dis encourage Rainbow Dragon - deck builders by limiting the keyword trigger to a max. You'd punish creativity. We better find away to display all tokens acquired in a way that's good to look at. You shouldn't have to reveal what keywords are in your deck before the game starts, so a keyword appears in the list from the point you accumulate tokens for the first time.

Where to list it?
Under the chat screen?
'Behind' a button?
Or does someone else have a better storm in his / her brain?

I already have a working prototpye of the token system. It works like this:

- in the deck section you may choose at most 3 keywords that will have token counters. If you don't want to do this manually you may let the system assign this for you.

- as other deck data, once the game is started they cannot be changed (for the specific game)

- token counters are displyed below tower and wall, they are highlighted in color when they change values or tigger side-effect

Hi Mojko,

Let me first compliment you on your great website. I am so glad I found it. You must have put already so much time anf effort and love into it. Thank you very much for that.

The implementation you have started out with is in line with my option 2, which is a viable option, but has the downside mentioned by progressor. Still, it's definitely a way.

Progressor, you mention opponents getting knowledge of keywords. I would not make a list that's visible to both parties. I would make a list only visible to oneself, just to keep track of the keywords and their imminent "release". The opponent shouldn't get advance notice of that happening, and shouldn't know what your selected keywords are.

Still, if it's not too much work, I'd still like to throw into the ring (of discussion) my proposed option 3. Wouldn't thatbe easier to program? I do have some PHP experience and does seem a bit easier to implement than option 2.

To Mojko, a question and a remarks in line with my previous statements:
-If you limit keywords, you potentially limit creativity (Rainbow Dragon), so if you want to limit I want to know this: Why?
It can't be that much harder to code to add a keyword to the list when it's played (I think).
-If you do as you say, it will be (somewhat) visible from start what type of deck you're playing against (and vice versa). Not very wishful. (It would be silly to hide the tokens you acquired from your opponent. It would make it pseudo random again.)

So, Id say: Start with an empty list and add a keyword to the list when you aquire tokens from it.