Invasion of Trishula Session Report/thoughts on future changes

Got another session of Trishula in on Saturday - 2 "experienced" players, 2 more or less "new" players (although Seth had previously played it, it has changed quite a bit since).

Response was positive, with some good suggestions.

The main problem I have with this game is it's seemingly impossible to test it on my own - it is too frustrating to deal with everything by myself, and I'm gearing it only to my personal responses. The secondary (perhaps larger) problem is that it's a 4-player only game! This makes things quite difficult sometimes.

The change to a shorter game is much better, and still gives the game enough of a "length" to feel that things are happening. It took us about 3.5 hours w/rules (poorly explained by me).

The new Temple rule (where each player gets X points / unit of any species in the Temple, X=3 in this game) "worked" as well as I hoped, although it was broken (worth too many points, too many units inside caused a problem) . A point system related to the cum. aggression track will be instated in the future, should work well.

There was a complaint of too many units - probably true, but one main issue was that there were many more units outside of the cities than normally occurs. I'll reduce the numbers, but not by too much (50/species instead of 65). There was a good suggestion of a starting distribution of units, which will be a good idea for a "basic" set-up, an "advanced" set-up (my normal one) would be easily re-implimented. So, we'll go for 50 units, 30 in the cities at the beginning.

The 4X,3X,2X system of resource gathering based on cum. aggression worked much better than it being based on individual aggression. If I reduce the number of units, I'll be reducing that to 3X,2X,1X, which will bring on an additional dynamic of its own (you must save resources for the later turns or risk losing your units).

The Cum. Aggression track was also not right, took too long to get to the 2nd level, tottered on the brink of the 3rd without going in. Will need reduction (was 15,40,70; going to 10,25,45?).

The Invaders have a major problem - sacrificing is bad. This gives them a single-goal - build up a small amount of tiles to "increase their economy" and eventually make a run for the Temple. This needs to be changed. The Sacrificing action will now be tied to one thing with two aspects: the Portal growth amount has previously been a separate amount of resource paid to increase, now it will be a part of the sacrificing; and the cost of units will also be tied to this amount, previously it had been a simple 1-1 amount. By sacrificing, you will be moving up your Portal Growth (acceleration) amount AND/OR your unit ratio (how many units you get / resource).

value (-> amount to increase) value ( -> amount to increase) .....
PG: -3 (->1) -2 (->2) -1 (->3) 0 (->5) 1 (->8) 2 (->13) 3 (->21) 4
Units: 1U/4R (->1) 1U/3R (->2) 1U/2R (->3) 1U/1R (->5) 2U/1R (->8) 3U/1R (->13) 4U/1R) (->21) 5U/1R

The Trishulans will similarly be able to knock down these values by sacrificing more (every Y cum. resources gives -1 to BOTH tracks). I'd like to turn this into a differential, but I don't want to overcomplicate the system.

This should let me be able to just give the Invader 2 resources / flipped hex without having all of those go straight into more units. This should also give the Invader some more choices about how to sacrifice, how many units to get, and how much flipping they're going for. In the same note, the Invader will now only need to sacrifice (1/3)X, (1/2)X,1X the amount of the Trishulans (tie to Invader) to delay the Temple activation.

As it (seems) more likely to have delays, I will reduce the base number of turns to 5.

This sounds like a massive overhaul, and perhaps it is. We'll see how it works, what does work and what does not work. Hopefully this will get some further testing soon, as it will take shape better while these things are fresh in my mind.