Designer Diary: World Conquerors

World Conquerors began in 2003 or so as a response to my complicated love-hate relationship with historical games. I love history, but I don't always remember it right and certainly not as the game designer wants me to. Consequently, you have situations where if you know the game, you know the Saxons are showing up on turn 12 in Mercia or something but it takes a few playings to internalize this stylistic version of history. I also think that people are inherently more interesting than peoples. Having French or German units just doesn't do it for me like having Hitler or Napoleon show up.

I thought it would be cool to pull the historical figures out of context so there wouldn't be a history to remember. Hitler starts the blitzkreig whenever he shows up. You don't have to remember that he shows situated in a particular chronology. I had a theme. I would base the game on the historical figures that had the most impact – would-be world conquerors.

The first thing I did was create the cards without a thought to balance. I was going to use a bidding system to balance it. If Napoleon's ability was better than Caesar's, then people would bid more for it. I didn't have to tweak it. It was perfect as the balance was built in.

I should point out that this was right before the publication of Battlestations in 2004 and designing World Conquerors was a bit of playing hooky from balancing an ongoing game which by that point was into its fourth year of devlopment. A one-off game is just easier because you don't live with imbalances for years. When I screw up the balance of something in Battlestations, a player who selects an underpowered character might play it for several missions before realizing he was shortchanged. If they then want to change, they are behind the curve. Drafting in the form of bidding made World Conquerors inherently balanced: Everybody could bid on the cards as much as they wanted.

For a combat resolution system, I looked to Diplomacy and Risk. I like the way Diplomacy handles support, but I wanted dice to provide variability. Comparing the highest single die just made sense, with the next highest die breaking ties. I've done the math on it a few times and it works out nicely. (Full disclosure: Me "doing the math" is a joke. I'm pretty good at multiplying things by six and crunching out the 216 possible outcomes of three dice – one die versus two in the Middle East wins almost exactly 1/4 of the time – but when you take into account rerolls I slide into intuitionville on the way to outrightguessville where I go when you try to factor in card abilities like counting a 1 as a 6 or the surprise revelation that "This roll with doubles in it loses.")

Of course, using a bidding process for four players to acquire one new card every turn was tedious (thanks, Todd) so I scrapped it. I was left without my perfect balancing tool and now had to balance fifty unruly rulers.

The early cards were ugly, but they worked, with powers and bonuses such as:

Some early cards, including Gygax!

• +1 combat
• +1 defense
• Ignore sea costs
• Doubles always wins
• Losses always 2 each
• Use the ability of any face-up leader when played
• Capture enemies on doubles
• Empty spaces cost 1/2
• Bonus attacking empty spaces
• Death costs vs you are doubled
• +2 on rolls but any loss ends turn
• May replenish defensive losses from your pool
• May reroll one die in each attack you make
• When done, half your losses come back
• Any doubles gets you one pool
• Any loser against you means you gain one pool
• Adjacency bonuses are doubled
• Gain adjacency defensively
• No adjacency when attacking you
• WMD wipe out armies at a cost of 1/each
• Double your value on all bids
• Each time somebody gains a leader they pay you 3
• Each player must pay you 2 at start of turn
• Any player who attacks you must pay you 3 per attack
• If you have no territory gain +10
• You may attack over water cheaply
• Cancel any leaders special stuff
• Read 1s in your rolls as sixes
• May pay 1 to reroll a die
• Take two turns
• Sea lane costs reduced by -1
• Gain +10 power
• Can pay 1 for adjacencies without permission
• Nobody gets benefit when attacking you anywhere
• All other players lose 2 power

Now I had to balance everything after creating that huge list of powers and bonuses under the delusion that the free market of bidding would do all of that work for me. The ruler's goals provided the answer as not only could they provide a direction to the game to mitigate spoiling; they could also be scaled based on the arbitrary value of a conqueror's ability. A conqueror who lets you roll two extra dice should have a goal that is harder to accomplish than somebody who lets you reroll only one.

Tiny old map

The early game board was divided into pretty much the final configuration except there were differentiated sea lanes and more territories. In the bid toward streamlining, I made the ocean a single area and reduced the territories to the minimum. I eventually went back and forth folding Japan into Asia and separating it into its own island (still part of Asia) at least four times and as late as 2010.

The early boards had my turn marker and supply cost boxes scribbled in in pen after I printed them out.

(I also couldn't figure out how to make text that wasn't pixelated but my technological ineptitude might be apparent from this post.)

By 2006 I had what I thought was half-baked. I knew it needed more testing but I have this feeling that when you test ugly stuff, you get the wrong kind of feedback. People don't play it for fun, they play it to help you fix it. I waited for my artist friend to get on it before I moved on to the next phase. And I waited, and I waited. He has a day job and just couldn't get around to it. At one point, he offered to let me off the hook saying that he'd understand if I couldn't wait. After a few more years we agreed that it just wasn't moving, so I found another art director: jim pinto, who is not the dithering type. My other buddy had done this work as a hobby in his free time, while jim has worked in the industry and is used to getting stuff done so he got the cards together and I got testing.

The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. I had a few tweaks to make. The early game had "State Funerals" in which you could replace your ruler. The situation came up rarely enough that pulling it from the game streamlined it, although I may add it in as an option to the expansion. There were also two general pawns and they were removed at the end of each player's turn. These last few changes all happened in the last six months.

So, to recap, I wanted to have a fast global domination game with historical figures. I ended up having to balance the design after all, but it worked out. The art delays gave me more time to tweak the game but it didn't crystallize until the last few months.

World Conquerors is on Kickstarter with ten hours to go as of this writing...

Jeff Siadek