I’ve been spending some time this week pondering how to put the war into the Spider Siege war game. As I mentioned on Monday, it’s complex because combat and economy are (not unlike the real world) totally connected. Okay, yes, better units should cost more, but in order to do that, I need to know what “better” looks like, and how much cost is “more.”
Order of Battle
First things first! If we’re going to give units stats, we need to know how combat works, so we know what stats to use and how they affect things. Here’s the first draft of combat rules for Spider Siege:
At the end of a player’s turn, if that player has units in the same space as an opponent, the opposing units must battle.
Both players roll one die for each of their units in the fight. The players then take turns assigning their dice to their respective units.
When you assign a die to a unit, you activate that unit. An activated unit can’t be activated again.
When you activate a unit, it attacks an opposing unit of your choice. To attack…
- Add the value of the die to your unit’s Attack score.
- If this total meets or beats the opposing unit’s Defense score, the defender takes a wound.
- If a unit takes a number of wounds equal to its Life score, it is destroyed. (If it has a die on it, that die is set aside.)
When all units that haven’t been destroyed are activated, the battle is over. Remove all wounds from any remaining units. To determine the winner of the battle, add up the remaining dice on both sides of the battle. The player with the highest total of dice is the winner. (Ties go to the attacker because aggressive play is more fun than realism.)
The losing side must retreat into an adjacent space that is empty or occupied only by friendly units. If there is nowhere to retreat to, all those units are destroyed.
Stats for the Stat God!
As you can see above, units have three stats: Attack, Defense, and Life. Your average “Dude with a stick” has zero Attack, 3 Defense, and 1 Life. Most units have only 1 Life, since tracking wounds on lots of guys is a hassle.
Some units also have special abilities that are triggered when they’re assigned certain die values. For example, if you assign a Priestess of Trax a die with the value of 6, she not only attacks with that 6, but also heals a wound off of a friendly unit.
(Game Design Note: Special abilities are triggered by high rolls, giving us that “Hoody-hoo!” moment of rolling a crit – you not only succeed, but you do something awesome too. But I’m considering switching it to low rolls, which gives us more interesting tactical decisions. If a unit’s special is triggered on a roll of a 1, you might assign it that terrible roll even though that means its attack misses, in order to use its ability. I’ll play it as written for now, but will keep this idea in mind.)
Next?
Now that we know how the combat system works and what the units’ stats are, we can figure out how much each of those units costs. That will take some math, some guesswork, and more time than I have right now. I’ll meet you back here next week and we’ll see how it turns out.
