Let's admit that my battle rules suck and have failed playtesting. I'm sorry that I was unable to see those consequences of them, I genuinely thought they were well-balanced. I propose to terminate this game and, if someone still wants that, generate rules that would be enjoyed by everyone, not fought over. That wasn't my intention. Or better, we could move on to a different game already proposed by Marti. After all, its not his fault I burdened him with all this. Let's put an end to it and maybe reconfigure it later. Okay?
Don't beat yourself up!
My first game, Alien Salvation, seemed like a major success! I playtested it alone, and I completely and utterly loved it!
It's a game of aliens attacking North America! And each area of the map has units to defend.
But here is the thing... alone, it's fun. Really fun, because you can only activate one region at the time.
But when you are more people, each control a region, and since most Aliens don't survive long enough to spill over multiple regions (and the rare that do are thin enough to be easily killed), so that we played at 6 players and most of the turns, 5 of the players had NOTHING to do.
Deploying Aliens became a long tedious and boring task, and not a scaring stress filled task that my solo playtest delivered, because I was alone making the fighting!
Now, we were SIX to handle waves of a single alien... granted, that was EASY to fix: 1 alien per player per turn,but that meant that each turn was way too long, and in the end, it was too hard to adjust...
My second game, Barbarian prince, was much better, but there was once again a balance problem: you had to built your own city (Carcasonne style), but each player with his own city.
Barbarians at first attacked at random, but here is the problem: the first person attacked might lose a two tiles (or more), and from then on, they are SCREWED for the other players are then in advance compared to him...
No problem, since from then on, that player is immune, being the weakest, so for the 2nd attack, another player is attacked, and again, might lose two tiles (or more).
Fine...
But by the 3rd of 4th wave, players have usually enough barracks and walls to successfully defend against the barbarians even if they scale with the players, because barbarians have to attack using rules you can use to build up a defense.
As such, the last player to be attacked usually doesn't lose any tiles (only units which regenerate) and as a result, even if that player (being the strongest), received waves and waves of barbarian, he is still able to keep his advance.
Eventually, he has enough resources just by this advance that he is pretty much guaranteed to win...
My 3rd game, Zombie Hex, inspired by Barbarian Prince, seemed to be MUCH better for 3 reasons:
1 ) Zombies, unlike barbarians, attack everyone, not just one player. They also get stronger and stronger, so that you never get that sense of security.
2 ) Zombies don't steal hexes, they occupy them. If you fail to kill the wave, you can later clean the hex after you regroup. That way, you are slowed down, but not at much.
3 ) The goal isn't to accumulate tiles. Tiles give you more varied options, but having 4 police stations isn't much better than 3
4 ) You make points by sheltering Kids, which are useless in the game and found randomly (like any other survivors which help you, but don't give points). As such, the more kids you have, the harder it is to feed them and protect them, as you are winning, it is harder to keep your leed.
But just when I was about to playtest it, my friends grew tired of the Zombie theme, and I started to become sick...
