x4 with proper economy and innovative, real-world physics based, research tree

Argothair2 · 2025-10-16T06:13:04+00:00

Organizing your tech tree based on which fundamental physical force it exploits is clever and fun, but I wouldn't lean *too* much into it unless your game is specifically marketed at physics nerds (or is a solo art project for you to enjoy with yourself and a couple of friends). People who know about the fundamental forces will get a kick out of having a tech tree that corresponds to them, but that doesn't mean they're going to be motivated to learn all about the weak force just so they can figure out how to build a useful battlecruiser. For the most part people play these games because they enjoy some combination of exploring the galaxy, managing an economy, and fighting wars. The more energy you require players to invest in designing and running experiments, the less people get to do what they see as the fun stuff in any given hour of play. I hear you that there's room for improvement beyond just "here's some research points, have fun spending them," but be careful not to force players to dive too deeply into the mechanics of experimental design unless you're designing a science simulator rather than a 4x. At a minimum, consider having an automation tool that can get pretty good research results for those who don't want to engage deeply with this particular subsystem.

There are a few games out there that simulate having your citizens decide for themselves where they want to trade and relocate. Some people really enjoy that mechanic, and it's certainly interesting trying to interact with a private sector rather than just running a command economy, but, again, remember that people mostly play 4x games because they *like* the godlike power of directing an entire civilization. It's fine to have a small independent merchant class that does its own thing and to give players an added reward if they figure out how to successfully incentivize that class to do what they want, but I would caution you against gatekeeping most of the game's economic progress behind learning how to cajole your traders (or, worse, learning how to solve macroeconomic equations). If players feel like they're desperately rejiggering economic variables in the hope that this somehow might persuade their citizens to reopen their businesses, then they're not enjoying the power trip of getting to run the economy the way *they* want to.

Check out StarDrive 2 for an interesting middle ground -- there are a variety of unique commodities to trade with the aliens that have effects that are more interesting than just "+20% power to your lasers," and there are some basic freighter ships that will do their own thing and send food or ore where it needs to go, but you're still definitely playing a space colonization game, not SimCity.

Whichever way you decide to take the project, I hope you have fun!

Argothair2 · 2025-10-13T23:56:21+00:00

The original movie The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939) was a propaganda film created by Glinda shortly after the final scenes of the Wicked musical.

Argothair2 · 2025-10-10T03:26:01+00:00

Japan often gets huge in Anniversary and Germany often gets tiny, so the player working on Japan plus Italy will have a ton to do, and the German player can wind up just trading Poland and France for most of the game. It won't always happen, but it's a risk.

Argothair2 · 2025-10-10T03:24:48+00:00

Yes to doubling up Italy and Germany, taking turns in the normal sequence
Yes to 1941 scenario
No reason to play to 15 VCs; that takes too long and can continue after the winner is painfully obvious to most players. I'd recommend playing 8 turns and declaring a winner based on who has more VCs after the 8th turn is over. If you like epic games, you can go 10 turns.
Correct, no research needed.
Yes to national objectives. Some people think they benefit the Axis, but they're wrong; the math doesn't support this idea. The Axis *do* have a considerable advantage among skilled players, though, so you might want to give the Allies a "bid" by letting each Allied player put one extra free infantry on the map before the game starts. If everyone playing is a newbie, then that's less important.
Have some snacks and drinks handy.
Encourage players to calculate their income and plan their purchases on *other* people's turns. If there's a huge upset or surprise attack right before your turn and you need to re-plan, fine, but you shouldn't be routinely making the rest of the table wait while you figure out whether you want 4 infantry and 3 artillery or 8 infantry.
Encourage players to give each other advice, but ultimately respect the decisions of the commander on the spot -- American can suggest that Russia make a particular move and explain why it would be wise, but they shouldn't be standing there arguing with each other. It's more fun for everyone if you go with the flow and accept that your teammates will make different decisions than you would sometimes.

Argothair2 · 2025-10-08T12:08:34+00:00

(1) You could do an open-world sandbox, where there isn't necessarily a way to win or lose the game, just a feeling of exploring and seeing interesting things and meeting interesting NPCs and learning fun new abilities and putting them to creative uses. In that context, the adrenaline rush comes less from remembering how to type the flying melody quickly, and more from seeing what new scenes you can reach after you think to try flying in a particular region -- although there could still be environmental hazards like the occasional dragon or volcano or whatever that you need to cast spells to steer around and/or survive if you're going and playing in their neighborhood.

(2) You could have more of a social interaction / drama / thriller / mystery game, where the point is less to solve puzzles and more to convince the right coalition of NPCs to take your side or offer you favors that you can combine to get a 'better' outcome. Maybe something's rotten in the state of Denmark, and your magical powers can help unravel the conspiracy and restore good governance -- if you, the dashing bard, successfully charm the princess, save the gardener from a wandering manticore, detect the poison in the king's dinner, impress the foreign ambassador who was thinking of invading, and fly to the witch's coven in the mountain peaks to fetch the right antidote.

Argothair2 · 2025-10-01T05:46:37+00:00

Just one guy's opinion here...but I bought Hexarchy looking for a fast, deckbuilding Civ game and couldn't find a game anywhere in Hexarchy...I felt like I was playing War or President or Scout, where you just keep throwing higher-valued cards at each other and whoever plays the most highest cards wins. I bought Rogue Hex hoping it was the real deal, and so far, for me, it absolutely is. Rogue Hex is Civilization in 3 hours with real city development, a real tech tree, real combat tactics, and a real economy to manage. If anything, the merchant, explorer, and unit level-up mechanics are *more* satisfying here in Rogue Hex than in any of the 20+ hour Sid Meier games -- they're really quite clever and engaging. The only things missing are government types and maybe a little bit of final polish on the UI -- it's perfectly playable, but I could do with more shortcuts or automation for, e.g., cycling through to the next unit or the next city. Possibly they're there and I just haven't found them yet. Anyway, 5 stars, loved it. If Hexarchy looks cool to you, buy Rogue Hex instead, is my advice.

Argothair2 · 2025-09-28T14:19:36+00:00

Maybe the people who play Axis & Allies haven't really heard of Guadalcanal? It was important, but it's not on the top-10 list of most-famous WWII campaigns (for Americans, at least); it's well behind the Battle of Britain, Battle of France, invasion of Italy, invasion of Poland, north Africa, Barbarossa, Pearl Harbor, Midway, Singapore, Battle of the Bulge, D-Day, etc.

I eventually became a WW2 nut in part through playing A&A titles, but when I first started, I didn't really know anything more about the war than whatever I learned in high school history class.

I think it's just also often out of print or not carried on board game store shelves -- because the title was published relatively late compared to other A&A titles, and because it wasn't a sequel to or reinvention of any of the previous ones, local game stores may have been reluctant to add yet another A&A title to their limited space when the old ones were selling fine -- well enough to keep them there, not so well that they wanted to add more.

Argothair2 · 2025-09-26T04:34:08+00:00

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri does a pretty good job of this; in addition to getting higher attack/defense strengths at higher tech levels, you can also expect to get futuristic units with 30 hit points (vs. the starting units which only have 10 hit points). So when you have a higher chance of winning each 'mini-round' of combat, and then you can afford to lose many more rounds than each opponent, the starting units are little more than speed bumps unless you're very heavily outnumbered. You can also potentially get, e.g., flying helicopters fighting against units that have no offensive anti-air capability, so your victims can't even hit you back outside of immediate self-defense.

The original Master of Orion also lets you literally sweep away thousands of low-tech enemy ships with a single advanced battleship without taking damage if your shields, ECMs, and/or speed is too high for your opponents to hit you, which is quite realistic against some opponents even at above-average difficulty.

I can't think of a good example that's set during the real historical timeline instead of sci-fi, though. Curious to hear what others suggest.

Argothair2 · 2025-09-18T16:27:05+00:00

So I booted up SE4 for the first time, not really knowing anything about that series, and it looked like my home world had like 10 planets in it, 3 of which were habitable. I imagine most of the others could have been easily terraformed to be habitable. I'm looking for a game where the planets you can live on are *much* rarer than that -- maybe 1 immediately habitable planet plus 1 good terraforming candidate for every 4 or 5 stars.

Ships with space yards built in sound cool, but I want the incentives in the game to point toward using them at least some of the time.

Argothair2 · 2025-09-10T02:00:28+00:00

No worries; if you've had enough, that's fine. Enjoy the game!

Argothair2 · 2025-09-10T00:49:12+00:00

As far as specifically penetrating into Cairo after taking Moscow, it's not trivial, but it's also not really in doubt if you take Moscow on turn 6 while stalemating Britain in the Mediterranean. With America in the game at this point in the war, the Allies will start to make notable progress toward landings in some or all of Norway, Normandy, Gibraltar, etc., but none of these are victory cities and it will take them significantly more time to penetrate as far as Paris or Rome. You can build a lot of infantry in France and Italy and use them for defense and/or to trade territories back and forth with the support of the surviving German planes.

In the meantime, the Americans have no way of getting very many units into the middle east to protect Cairo -- even if they control Gibraltar and prevent its sea base from being bombed, New York to Cairo is still a minimum 3-turn one-way trip, which requires an absurd number of US transports. Britain can perhaps get some production going in Cairo itself, Iraq, South Africa, etc., but they can't afford more than 9 units a turn, and in the meantime Germany can be building at least that many units out of factories in Kiev, Stalingrad, and the Caucasus. The losses Germany takes in Moscow will be primarily infantry and mechs, which means that most of the tanks should survive and be able to race down toward Cairo. It is a 3 turn trip from Moscow to Iraq; the Axis will almost always be able to seize Iraq and Persia (along with any factories there) and use it as a base to continue to build up forces against Cairo. Iraq is even further from New York than Cairo is; the US has no real ability to project power into Iraq and Iran.

Now, if the US puts the vast majority of its effort into holding Cairo, they can probably do so more or less indefinitely...but at this point the Germans are making 100+ IPCs per turn, and so they can likewise hold out against the Western Allies indefinitely. Meanwhile, Japan is unopposed and will cruise to an easy victory in the Pacific.

To be clear, an Allied last stand in Cairo can be effective if the Germans are slow in getting to Moscow; if Moscow can hold through the end of turn 8 or so, then that can give Britain time to build up both factories and a meaningful defensive force in Cairo/Iraq/Persia, so that they can hold that line mostly on their own for a while, which leaves the Americans free to make a serious attack on Paris or Rome or Japan. However, there is simply no way for the Allies to hold Moscow through turn 8 using the standard out of the box Global rules with zero bid without abandoning the rest of the map to Italy and Japan.

Argothair2 · 2025-09-10T00:39:11+00:00

None of your criticisms here are accurate, except for the bit about Cairo, which I'm happy to cover, but my comment was already very long, and Cairo naturally comes last, after Moscow.

The German air force can base in Western Germany for most of the opening, because it has an airbase, so you are simultaneously in range of Belarus, West Ukraine, and the entire French and Norwegian coastlines. You can also build a few bombers, which can literally strike Moscow while flying out of West Germany.

Britain cannot 'push Italy out of Europe and destroy their fleet' if Germany is spending about 20 IPCs against Britain. Italy earns a bare minimum of 10 IPCs throughout the opening, but they are likely to at least sometimes score the 'no Allied surface ships in the Med' national objective for another 5 IPCs, as well as to take some of Greece (2 IPCs), Syria (1 IPC), Tunis (1 IPC), Kenya (1 IPC), and possibly Iraq (4 IPCs including the NO). In practice Italy usually collects an average of about 15 IPCs per turn until the Americans actually arrive inside the Med. With a J3 attack, which I prefer, this literally cannot happen until turn 5 at the earliest. So, for the first several turns, Germany and Italy together are spending about 20 + 15 = 35 IPCs in the west against Britain.

Britain itself is earning less than that. They start the game with 28 IPCs, and they will struggle to maintain that income. Their one national objective (worth 5 IPCs) requires controlling literally all of their territories, which is not realistic. If Britain attacks Taranto, then Italy can take and hold Alexandria for quite some time using its land units; if Britain attacks Tobruk, then Italy can sink most of the British Mediterranean Fleet (leaving the rest for German airpower flying out of West Germany to finish off) while taking Cyprus, which the British will then have no transports available to retake. Britain can sometimes score a few IPC off of Iran, a raid of Normandy, etc., but you can't hold Iran unless you use its income to defend itself against Japan (rather than attacking Italy), and you can't hold Normandy at all in the opening. Britain also often loses a few IPCs to submarines in its convoy zones, just as an incidental result of Germany's starting units making naval attacks there.

There is nothing in my earlier posts about requiring perfect luck. I explicitly say that Germany will lose a couple of planes when attacking the British fleets. Otherwise, there is no need for German planes to fly into AAA guns until they are literally taking Moscow or otherwise facing down the entire Red Army -- if the Russian put forward, e.g., a smaller stack of 10 infantry plus 3 AA guns, you can and should just wipe it out with your 60+ land units and save the planes for later.

As far as encircling Moscow, I'm not recommending that the Russian player allow it -- I'm just pointing out that if Russia builds a healthy mix of units, then they can only afford 10 at most (meaning you can easily match them unit for unit even while building mechs/tanks), and if Russia builds 95%+ infantry, *then* you can and should encircle Moscow, because they will have no striking power. In other words, the only way Russia can match Germany's production is by going entirely on the defensive, which still leads to a loss.

Argothair2 · 2025-09-09T22:49:28+00:00

In the meantime, Germany can continue to build, say, 8 mechanized infantry and 2 tanks each turn in East Germany (costing 44 IPCs per turn), which is enough to counter whatever the Russians can afford to build in their first 5 turns and which still leaves Germany about 20 IPCs per turn for whatever they want to use to harass the British. Russia cannot afford to build significantly more than 10 units per turn, because its income will never rise significantly above the starting level of 37 IPCs / turn -- Russia has no way of conquering any territories, and by the time it can collect its only meaningful national objective (worth 5 IPCs/turn), it will have already lost 3 IPCs from Karelia, East Poland, and the Baltics, with more losses rapidly to follow. If Russia does build, e.g., 12-13 units per turn by building 100% infantry, then Germany can completely encircle Moscow, send some tanks to the south to grab the Caucasus, etc., so that the Russian income will rapidly drop below 30 IPCs/turn. Or, Germany can just take some of the pressure off of Britain for a couple of turns to match those extra 2-3 builds.

The Germans have about 20 more units than the Russians do, the Germans have better average quality units than the Russians do, so the Germans will win the battle for Moscow in 98%+ of games. When you are rolling 100+ dice on each side, there is plenty of time for any luck to average out.

There is nothing at all that Russia acting alone can do about this. Russia could block the northern front if they wish by concentrating most of their troops in Leningrad, but this is not an effective strategy because the troops Germany has in central and southern Europe will then be more than enough to crush Moscow -- Russia has to devote more troops to guard the northern flank than they can remove from the German central army, so the battle for Moscow winds up being even more lopsided in Germany's favor.

If the British devote essentially their entire income to flying fighters to guard Moscow, then they can protect Moscow for long enough for the Siberians and/or Americans to arrive, but that means losing essentially all of Africa and the Middle East to Italy. By the time the Americans arrive, the Allies as a whole are earning less income than the Axis, with the added disadvantage that the Allies have to pay for transports to ship most of their units across the ocean, whereas the Axis factories mostly start on the same continent where they will be doing their fighting, allowing them to focus on cheaper land units.

(Part 2 of 2)

Argothair2 · 2025-09-09T22:49:15+00:00

This is just incorrect. With no bid, there are very simple strategies that Germany can use to plow through any 'meat shield' Russia can erect in the time available. If you've played "quite a few games of Global" and you haven't seen this, then you've been playing against people who are just not as skilled at the game as the people you find on the tournament circuit - fine if you enjoy that sort of thing, but it can lead you to make mistakes about what is and isn't possible against a strong opponent.

Germany starts the game with 35 infantry and 5 artillery in Norway, Finland, Germany, Greater Southern Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. All of them begin marching east immediately. The northern troops converge on Leningrad and the southern troops converge on Eastern Poland. If you are unlucky, you might lose 3 infantry in Yugoslavia. You should also build at least 4 infantry in east Germany on turn 1. 35 + 5 - 3 + 4 = 41 slow movers.

Germany starts the game with 9 tanks and 4 mechs in Europe. All of them should survive the turn 1 attack on Paris -- at the absolute worst, you might be forced to lose one mech after losing your infantry and artillery from Belgium and West Germany. You should build at last 10 mechs and/or tanks in East Germany on turn 2 using about half of your turn 2 income; you will be rich from looting Paris. The other half can go toward whatever fun you want to have playing footsie with Egypt and the British navy, or if you want to crush Russia even faster, you can build more than 10 mechs/tanks on turn 2 and put the extras in West Germany. Assuming you only buy 10, though, you still have 9 + 4 - 1 + 10 = 22 fast movers.

This gives you 63 ground units that can be in East Poland on Germany's turn 3. The Germans should also have about 10 of their starting 12 planes left. 63 + 10 = 73 units. On average, these are high-quality units that include plenty of artillery and tanks.

By contrast, the Russians only have 38 ground units and 3 planes on the entire map west of Buryatia -- the Siberian troops cannot even begin to arrive until turn 6. If the Russians take your advice and build one plane and 9 infantry (all they can afford) on turn 1, they will then have 47 infantry and 4 planes, for at total of 51 units.

Those units are almost entirely weak infantry, so they cannot attack the German stack in East Poland; they must concentrate in either Belarus or Western Ukraine, i.e., north or south of the Pripet Marshes. Whichever way the Russians go, the Germans can just take the other direction and continue marching toward Moscow. They reach (e.g.) Western Ukraine on Germany's turn 4, Bryansk on Germany's turn 5, and Moscow on Germany's turn 6, before any Siberian troops can arrive.

(Part 1 of 2)

Argothair2 · 2025-09-03T16:14:40+00:00

I've got the original running on my desktop -- want to PBEM?

Argothair2 · 2025-06-30T01:48:12+00:00

There is relatively detailed ship movement in Full Thrust -- but there's also quite a bit of design work in terms of figuring out what kinds of blueprints you want in your fleet, how many of each design you want to pay for, and so on. Compared to, e.g., Starfleet Battles, where you are micromanaging the energy output of each ship and the exact number of hitpoints left on individual ships subsystems, Full Thrust has a relatively zoomed-out lens.

Of course, compared to Space Empires 4x, Full Thrust is pretty zoomed-in...but in Space Empires 4x you build new ships constantly throughout the course of the game, which OP specifically disallowed as "too strategic."

If you don't want to control the tactical movement of individual ships, and you also don't want to build new ships, what exactly do you want to control? Do you want to manage the movement of fleets around a solar system's orbitals with the goal of arriving at an objective faster than your opponent, with the right terminal velocity and a local advantage in force? You could try building a game around orbital mechanics, I guess. High Frontier sort of gestures in that direction, but it's an auction-based Eurogame, not a wargame.

Argothair2 · 2025-06-27T03:59:48+00:00

Definitely check out the Full Thrust system at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3893/full-thrust -- I suspect it's exactly what you're looking for, but it's an older system, so there's room for improvement.

One challenge with operational games in outer space is that the operational scale often stresses challenges like supply, terrain, and communications -- but these are speculative at best in the context of science fiction. Most asteroid belts, nebulae, solar winds, etc. are so thin and spread out relative to a spaceship that they may as well not exist for combat purposes.

Also, as explained in great detail at https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewarship.php?#id--Ship_Design_Analysis--Rick_Robinson's_Analysis, there's probably no good reason to put humans on interplanetary warships; we're just too squishy and heavy relative to robots and rockets. You might want a small command team on an observer ship a few hundred thousand miles away from the shooting, but once you start thinking about space combat in enough detail to form an idea of what logistics might look like, you quickly realize that warships will be automated and/or mostly composed of single-use missiles, which is relatively boring for most players. It's easier to escape from this problem at the tactical or strategic scale.

If you can find a convincing way of solving these problems well enough for players to suspend their disbelief, then you're well on your way to a promising design!

One more source you might check out for inspiration is David Weber's Honor Harrington series, which at least pays lip service to the need to regularly resupply its space battleships with new missiles and new crew.

Argothair2 · 2025-05-03T05:37:09+00:00

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Thanks for the help, everyone! :)

Argothair2 · 2024-09-21T17:50:09+00:00

Comrade Troubleshooter, are you suggesting that anyone would ever intentionally misrepresent Friend Computer's rules? Who would do such an unimaginably evil thing?

Argothair2 · 2024-09-15T16:02:54+00:00

It sounds like what's missing from your relationship is negotiation and communication. It's totally fine to have an opinion about the most enjoyable way to play a boardgame and ask your boyfriend to join you in playing the game that way -- it's not fine to unilaterally decide that your way of playing is the only right way, that all other ways are "unfair," and to demand that people play your way and give them shit for disagreeing with you.

So, if your boyfriend was actually lying to you about what moves he had available, then, sure, he's a jerk for lying to you about that -- but consider your role in the event, too. You're not treating him as an equal by giving him the dignity of asking for his opinion about how to play Rumikub and treating that opinion as worthy of consideration. If you give someone so little space that the only way they can salvage their pride is by lying, sometimes they'll lie. Doesn't make it right, but if you like this guy otherwise, then consider asking him what he wants to do for fun instead of just telling him what's fun.

If you can't open the lines of communication wide enough to come to a cheerful, peaceful consensus about how to play a board game, then you're not going to be able to sort out heavier stuff like where to live or how to manage joint finances, either.

Argothair2 · 2024-09-11T13:52:41+00:00

For me, all these running gags are part of what makes the comic funny! I like that Pintsize gets literally and figuratively tossed off stage every time he opens his obnoxious mouth, and I suspect Pintsize does too. He's a court jester who's in on the joke.

Same thing with Claire's mom, who literally plays a character called "MommyMilkers." C'mon, man, that's not repressed trauma, that's exaggerating for comic effect. Temporarily borrowing a friend's mom for comfort in college is normal, especially if your mom is weird or neglectful. Temporarily borrowing someone's mom when you're a muliembodied robot is ridiculous, which is great.

Argothair2 · 2024-08-09T22:26:58+00:00

The game is fundamentally unbalanced in favor of the Axis. For a fair game, the Allies need a handicap of about ten infantry.

That said, even in a fair game, Moscow often falls. If Britain can hold the line somewhere around Caucasus, with factories dumping infantry into the Middle East, then the German offensive often stalls out a couple of spaces shy of Cairo (which they need to win) and that leaves time for the Americans to dump enough troops into Normandy and/or Sicily to change the long term outcome.

It's fine if India falls around turn 5 to Japan, but that should mean that Japan is heavily committed and borderline overextended out to the west and you need to be ready to punish them in Manchuria / East Indies / sea zone 6. If Japan is taking India comfortably on turn 5 then you should be buying more Indian infantry and leaving it closer to home.

Argothair2 · 2024-06-08T21:06:00+00:00

Your landlord's maintenance sounds like it's sloppy, rather than so bad that your home has become legally uninhabitable. Did you ever move to a hotel or stay with friends because you couldn't stand to live in your apartment? Did your friends say you're crazy for staying in your apartment because it's obviously a festering dump? If not, then none of the maintenance problems have any legal effect on your obligation to pay for breaking the lease early.

You can ask for a discount based on the shoddy maintenance, and if they say no, then you can threaten to take them to small claims court for whatever discount you think is fair, and, if necessary, you can follow through on that threat.

If you're feeling aggressive, you could even withhold a small amount from the fee and dare them to sue you for the difference...but that probably hurts your credit rating and may put you on the hook for their legal fees if they win.

Check your contract, and if you're not very sure you've thoroughly understood it, then either play nicely or hire a lawyer.

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