Back to reformulate the rules
I have to confess, I'm a programmer trying to design a game. I'm struggling to make rules that are fun and challenging, and I'm afraid I'm failing. I changed my game rules for the third time and the result was not appealing to me.
I realice that my problem is try to came a “real” rules to a game. I am thinking in terms of people, rulers, etc. And this made me created rules that all pivoted around citizens behaviors, and that was a huge mistake.
“Meaningful decision with an uncertain outcome and measurable feedback.” That is the more useful definition of a game I read.
Meaningful decision and the orthogonal resources
I made the coins the base resource for all the game, so you need to get coins to recruit soldiers with a limit in the current population of the regions, then you need to “move” the soldier from regions to the player “reserves” and the assign the reserves to the armies, etc. A very stupid design.
I had to change the base concept, moving the soldiers around the game elements, only to found that the soldiers management was a boring mess.
Then, I remembered a game design video about orthogonal design, and changed my view. An orthogonal pair of resources are those that do not depend on each other. In my game those resource will be coins and soldiers.
Now the land give you either coins and soldiers, and you decide how many of one or other. More soldiers means less coins, so you need a trade off.
The other resource you have is “popular support” at the regional and global level.
Regional support depends on the region’s level and other actions. If regional support reaches zero, the region rebels and gives you no coins or soldiers.
Global support is the sum of the support of your entire region, this is key, because if global support reaches zero, you lose the game.
Support increases when you conquer new regions and expand your empire. You can buy regional support with coins.
Support is therefore not an orthogonal resource, as it relies on soldiers to expand or coins to buy.
Randomness and the uncertainty outcomes
Perfect knowledge is a boring outcome. I made the outcome of all events perfectly predictable and all regions the same, which took all the excitement out of the game.
I realized, too late, that in Risk not all lands are the same, there is a key region that connects the continents and this makes controlling those regions a key point in Risk strategy.
At first, I tried to make all regions the same, and armies can travel through water, so all regions are connected, this took all sorts of strategy out of the game. So no meaningful decisions.
The first thing was to made some region values different each other. The size determine the max level that a region can get. And when a region can reach the level 10, It becomes a rival empire. The level determine the number of free soldiers that can give you and the soldiers used in the battles.
The battles now are not binary.
When you attack with more soldiers than the region, you now have three outcomes: Conquest the region, loot the region or retreat to the origin region losing soldiers. The percentage of each outcome is determined by the different of soldiers.
When you attack with less soldiers you have three outcomes too: The army is destroyed and you are captured, so need to pay keep playing. You lose but can retreat to your origin region, or you win. Again the percentage of each outcome is determined by the different of soldiers.
Popular Support and measurable feedback
Popular support is the key resource of the game. Every action will change the support of the regions, adding support when expand you empire or losing support when you don’t manage the region.
Conclusions
Try to reinvent the wheel will kick your ass.
When I tried to remove the randomness of the game It collapse in misery. I try to be smarter than thousand of game designers through thousand of years of games and this made me lose a lot of time and effort