Disciples 3: Renaissance - the CCG

[Malagar]

the next templates are ready, as buildings have much fewer stats i redid the design a bit (if you ask me, they look mouth watering cool!).

okay, now here we have three sample buildings from the empire war priest branch wich is part of the fighter branch. in the game, units and buildings are categorized into tiers (fighter, mage, archer and support) while some tiers are further sub-categorized (like the imperial fighters who can either be armsmen or war priests).

so this is how it currently works, hopefully it provides a functional base for a card game and is a aestethic (albeit loose) translation of the computer game concept:

buildings concept further explained

1. you can bring any building at any time into play, and are not forced to stick to the tier structure
2. the advanced buildings can be played ontop of the normal buildings, upgrading them (all abilities stay in effect).
3. when doing so, you may ignore the additional cost (shown by the crystals) - pay just the base cost
4. but you can also play each building seperate into different city districts (this makes it more difficult for your opponent to destroy many buildings in one go, as he can target only one city district per attack).
5. each building increases its unit type by adding a permanent effect. i kept the effects simple so they are easy to remember
6. of course - each building reduces the additional cost of cards from the same faction by 1, as do the upgrades
7. as stated earlier, a building can also be constructed: bring it into play face-down and inactive, add gold tokens to it every turn as you wish to spend, turn them over when their cost is paid and the building becomes active.

Example:

1. you start the game with your capitol "Fergal City" in play, it grants you 3 gold each turn.
2. say you want to attach a "Dungeon" to the capitol. The dungeon costs 6 (3+3) but the capitol (being from the same faction) reduces this by 1 to 5 (3+2).
3. still there is not enough money to build the dungeon in one go, so you decide to bring it face down into play and add just 1 gold token to it (4 more to go). this reduces your gold to 2.
4. in your next turn, you gain 3 gold and add 1 gold token to the dungeon (3 more to go).
5. now you bring a "Squire" into play, it costs 3 (1+2), the capitol reduces this by -1. So it costs 2 (1+1), you pay your remaining gold and play the card (please note that the dungeon does not reduce the squires cost, as its face down and not yet considered to be in play).
6. in the turn after that, you gain another 3 gold. by placing 3 gold tokens on the dungeon, it is finally built, turned over and the gold tokens are removed.

7*. say you wanted to bring a "Torture Chamber" into play at another city district, it costs 9 (5+4). as you now have 2 buildings of your faction ("Fergal City" and the "Dungeon"), it reduces the cost to 7 (5+2).

8*. alternatively you could also bring the "Torture Chamber" on top of the Dungeon card into play, upgrading it. In this case you could completely ignore the additional cost, dropping its cost from 9 (5+4) to 5 (5+0). as you can see, upgrading is the way to go BUT

- you have to focus on one faction
- you have to have the previous buildings already in play
- you have to focus on one city district
- you have to focus on one (or a selected few) tiers of units





Final Thoughts:

* Buildings are quite costly at the moment
* Building effects are quite weak at the moment, but the effects stack, once you have all buildings of one tier in play - your corresponding units turn quite powerful. Example:

Say you have all war priest tier buildings in play, the "Dungeon", "Torture Chamber" and "Magistrate". now when you bring a "Witch Hunter" into play, it would read:

- double strike (attack again with ATK 1 and INI 0).
- iron will (immune to mind attacks).
- tested with fire (-1 damage from fire attacks).
- Anathema - ignore the first point of enemy armor.

this turns your witch-hunter into an armor ignoring, double striking universal soldier with complete mind immunity (making him strong against those pesky undead and black magic) and fire resistance (making him relatively strong against demons and fire magic as well). not bad hu?

Phew - long post, time to take a break!

[Cyrus]

Hadn't really read through this thread til now, and wow, this is looking really cool!
Please finish it, I'd love to play! Can't offer much in terms of playtesting time due to real life stuff (stupid excuse!!) but hopefully I'll find some time to play once you've got some decks ready!

[Malagar]

@Cyrus thanks for the heads up!

Okay, i didn't have much time to work on the project, but here are three templates to wet your tastebuds! PS: Once finished, this will be EPIC (...if i ever finish this).

[Typherion]

There is so much going on with this game that, if it can all be brought together, will be awesome to behold. Right now it's looking to me like there are a heck of a lot of card types that I want to play but I can't imagine how I could play all of them in a consistent deck yet.

Also, I just had a crazy idea that you could play this game by choosing your cards each turn instead of drawing randomly. This could really make it feel like you were building an empire in my opinion, because in these kinds of pc games you usually decide to construct building X or train unit Y. Just a random thought.

[Malagar]

well, the rules are not ready yet - but will be similar to Legend of the five rings (with a lot of unique stuff like the buildings rules posted earlier). we will have to wait and see how the whole thing performs, i just cannot tell now because the game is rather complex.

basically, there are lots of deck building options wich can all be toned down to a flow chart style decision making like this:

1. Wich faction do you want to play? (Empire, Dwarf, Demon, Elf or Undead?)
2. Do you want to play a pure faction deck or a mixed deck (like empire with dwarves blended in).
3. Choose your capitol (in the beginning there will only be 1 per faction).
4. choose your starting hero and additional heroes.
5. wich troop type do you want to rely most on? (fighters, archers, wizards, clerics, monsters etc.)
6. how many branches/tiers of troop types do you want to use in your deck?
7. how much do you want to upgrade your troop types? choose buildings accordingly
8. add supporting buildings, sprinkle some artifacts, battlefields and spells into the deck

thats it. the main points are choosing the right troop types, heroes and buildings to support them - this allows at least 5 deck types per faction (with a possible of 6 or 7). thats 35 pure faction deck types, including the blended decks (like a demon/undead deck), theme decks or artifact heavy / spell heavy decks, i think we get a whole lot of possibilities.

I will post more about the rules later, and a few more templates (altough we are almost through with all the card types).

[Dragoon]

How are heroes going to be handled? (Leveling, items, etc) also, how are you going to handle unique monsters, such as the Fiend for the demons?

[Malagar]

@cyrus sorry for the delay. everything below is well thought out BUT untested, i guess it will change a lot during the playtest phase:

Heroes

Basically you can bring units into play without heroes at all. those units are considered to be inside your city and can defend on their own. But, in order to attack your opponent (and a few other things), you need a hero to lead your battle group.

* Defending - Always allowed
* Attacking - needs a hero to lead
* Questing - needs a hero to lead (explained later)

Heroes have one more stat, called leadership (shown by a flag) - the amount of leadership indicates the amount of units you can attach to that hero (a hero with leadership 2 can attach up to 2 units). heroes can also carry equipment and gain abilities by levelling up.

All hero cards cost the same amount of gold, just their attributes are distributed differently. Every player begins with exactly one hero of his choice in play.

Levelling is done by adding a "Skill" card to your hero, the number of attached skill cards shows the level of the hero. You may only attach a skill card in following situations:

* Your hero lead and survived a defense
* Your hero lead and survived a attack
* Your hero lead and survived a quest

Skill cards include typical skills but also attribute upgrades (like +1 hitpoint and the like). so you can decide the "build" of your heroes by the cards you include in your deck. there is also a skill card that increases a heroes leadership by +1. of course you can include multiply copies of skill cards in your deck and attach them multiply times.

Items are attached the same way as skills, except that you can attach them any time without meeting a prerequisite. But, items cost gold and are seperated into tiers that require your hero to have a skill to be able to carry a certain item (like in disciples 2). for example to equip magical scrolls your hero requires the "scribery" skill.

therefore you should select your hero skills and items wisely or you end up with combinations you cannot use during the game. this means you should only include scroll items if you have at least one hero in your deck who can use them!

[Cyrus]

Ooooo neat-o. I like the heroes idea, I dunno if I'm sold on the requirement to attack with them though. Heroes should, in my opinion of course, just add bonuses for the units they can lead? There could be a lot of other unit/building/hero/card effects that could make attacking with a scattered group of a units a worse idea and thus encourage hero play, but you could also build decks that just try to "outrun" the need for heroes (swarm/rush decks).

[Malagar]

Hey all!

sorry for necroing this thread but i received a message from r0cknes a while ago, and I am sure this game was meant (r0cknes, i sent you an answer but im not sure if the PM system here is working, my outbox always says i did not send any messages).

Okay, so the short answer is: I plan to continue working on this project once again.

The long answer is: I don't mind if some of you want to help me. in fact im about to prepare everything i have and see "where we can take the project from there".

EDIT: After writing this, my harddrive crashed (no joke). it contained all images, templates, cards and rules. as it looks now, i dont really know if i continue with this project or try something new (being forced to start from blank anyway).

Cheers
-Malagar