Conquer Club

• new type of spoils

• All spoils are colorless. You are always able to trade them when you get 3 of them. However, your patience will be rewarded according to this table:
  trade 3 spoils when you have 3 - 4 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 4 - 6 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 5 - 8 armies
  We can cap this here or go further, allowing for more powerful "midcashes", such as:
  trade 3 spoils when you have 6 - 10 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 7 - 12 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 8 - 15 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 9 - 20 armies
  
  You still get +2 when you hold a cashed spoil.

• I conceived this system to minimize the effect of luck on the game.
  
  1 - Nuclear is considered a game that involves a lot of luck, as you can nuke anything (particularly when you have 2 pairs and thus need to use the 5th card you are awarded, regardless of what it is).
  2 - Flat rate is also considered highly dependant on luck. You can get anything between 4 and 10 armies depending on the colors of the spoils you have.
  3 - Escalating is probably the setting that takes most skill. Games get really complicated when cashes get high (definition of "high" varying per game type). However, there is still a lot of luck in getting a 3-card set at the right time or hoping that your opponent's 4 cards are 2 pairs.
  4 - No spoils is probably the setting that is less dependant of luck. Well, at least when you consider "spoils" luck. This is the kind of game that is harder for comebacks to occur. Early leads are a great indicative of the winner. Several 2-sided no spoils games are decided when a player/team holds 1 well protected bonus. Since holding that bonus usually depends on a lucky drop or lucky dice, you could say that the luck factor in no spoils is simply shifted from the non-existent spoils to start/dice/drop.
  
  The idea of the "colorless" spoils is to remove luck elements that are present in escalating/flat rate, while giving some reasonable strategical margin for a team that started poorly and is deploying less armies per turn (by round 1 or 2) to comeback on the game.
  In other words, unlike flat rate, the ammount of armies you get does not depend on the color of the spoils you randomly drew; unlike escalating, you won't be denied a clutch cash with 4 cards just because you drew 2 pairs; unlike no spoils, that poor round 1 dice/drop is not a death sentence.
  
  Strategic elements would be the dilemma between cashing earlier to break/take/protect a bonus or make a kill and cashing later to get a bigger ammount of armies. "Luck" would be limited to getting cards of territories you already have (the +2 auto-deploys) and, of course, killing territories to grant you the card when your turn ends.
  
  In summary, the idea is good because it diminishes the role of luck and makes room for more strategic considerations.

Colourless Spoils

Concise description:

• new type of spoils

Specifics/Details:

• Those spoils don't have colors. You are always able to trade them when you get 3 of them. However, your patience will be rewarded according to this table:
  trade 3 spoils when you have 3 - 4 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 4 - 6 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 5 - 8 armies
  We can cap this here or go further, allowing for more powerful "midcashes", such as:
  trade 3 spoils when you have 6 - 10 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 7 - 12 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 8 - 15 armies
  trade 3 spoils when you have 9 - 20 armies
  
  You still get +2 when you hold a cashed spoil.

How this will benefit the site and/or other comments:

• I conceived this system to minimize the effect of luck on the game.
  
  1 - Nuclear is considered a game that involves a lot of luck, as you can nuke anything (particularly when you have 2 pairs and thus need to use the 5th card you are awarded, regardless of what it is).
  2 - Flat rate is also considered highly dependant on luck. You can get anything between 4 and 10 armies depending on the colours of the spoils you have.
  3 - Escalating is probably the setting that takes most skill. Games get really complicated when cashes get high (definition of "high" varying per game type). However, there is still a lot of luck in getting a 3-card set at the right time or hoping that your opponent's 4 cards are 2 pairs.
  4 - No spoils is probably the setting that is less dependant of luck. Well, at least when you consider "spoils" luck. This is the kind of game that is harder for comebacks to occur. Early leads are a great indicative of the winner. Several 2-sided no spoils games are decided when a player/team holds 1 well protected bonus. Since holding that bonus usually depends on a lucky drop or lucky dice, you could say that the luck factor in no spoils is simply shifted from the non-existent spoils to start/dice/drop.
  
  The idea of the "colourless" spoils is to remove luck elements that are present in escalating/flat rate, while giving some reasonable strategical margin for a team that started poorly and is deploying less armies per turn (by round 1 or 2) to comeback on the game.
  In other words, unlike flat rate, the ammount of armies you get does not depend on the colour of the spoils you randomly drew; unlike escalating, you won't be denied a clutch cash with 4 cards just because you drew 2 pairs; unlike no spoils, that poor round 1 dice/drop is not a death sentence.
  
  Strategic elements would be the dilemma between cashing earlier to break/take/protect a bonus or make a kill and cashing later to get a bigger ammount of armies. "Luck" would be limited to getting cards of territories you already have (the +2 auto-deploys) and, of course, killing territories to grant you the card when your turn ends.
  
  In summary, the idea is good because it diminishes the role of luck and makes room for more strategic considerations.

Super Nova wrote:Would the colorless spoils be given out randomly mixed with the regular spoils? If so (assuming I understand your suggestion correctly), this would mess up a lot of strategies, and would also kind of screw up the whole mid-turn cash board sweep thing. If this were to work, it would have to be completely independent of the spoils system. (Maybe you get one per turn if you took a territ?)

Either way, I'm afraid I'm not in favor of this suggestion.

Rodion wrote:Greenoaks a fan of the british spelling?

blakebowling wrote:I remember reading something like this before. A banana to the first one to link it for me.

tkr4lf wrote:I'm not really a fan of this. I like the spoils the way they are now.

SirSebstar wrote:mmm.
just making the spoils all jokers then.. no not interested in that part.
cashing in 5 cards(instead of 3) and then getting a bigger bonus, now that would be funny! but in your proposal nobody will cash in unless they must. thats just no fun.
and the player who desperatly needs his 3 cash to work is screwed by the player who can just wait.. or you get noobs who cash as asson as they get 3.. no that part i dont see as attractive.. sorry

Rodion wrote:

SirSebstar wrote:mmm.
just making the spoils all jokers then.. no not interested in that part.
cashing in 5 cards(instead of 3) and then getting a bigger bonus, now that would be funny! but in your proposal nobody will cash in unless they must. thats just no fun.
and the player who desperatly needs his 3 cash to work is screwed by the player who can just wait.. or you get noobs who cash as asson as they get 3.. no that part i dont see as attractive.. sorry

What happens if a player is in desperate need of extra armies and happens to be playing a no spoils game?

I think they'd rather solve their problems in round 3 by cashing 4 and risking new problems arising when their enemy cashes 8 in round 5 than not cashing and simply losing the game because they were not able to break Asia.

And noobs making mistakes it not a ground for not liking something. Think of all the complicated maps that are forged every month!

Rodion wrote:1 - This system is like any other spoils system. You can "naturally" collect up to 5 spoils. You are forced to cash everytime you have 5 or more spoils. The only possibility of holding more than 5 cards at once is, like in any other game type, killing someone else and having a midcash. When I said in the OP that we could cap that at 5 cards or go further, allowing for more powerful midcashes, I thought I had established pretty clearly that the only way to hold more than 5 cards is through an elimination.

Rodion wrote:2 - Another misconception is that you'll get armies based on the number of spoils you trade. No. You always trade 3 spoils (like every other game type). You will, however, get armies based on the number of spoils you hold when you decide to cash (and only 3 will be cashed). I thought the "trade 3 spoils when you have 4/5/6/7/8/9" had made that clear, but apparently not.

Rodion wrote:

SirSebstar wrote:mmm.
just making the spoils all jokers then.. no not interested in that part.
cashing in 5 cards(instead of 3) and then getting a bigger bonus, now that would be funny! but in your proposal nobody will cash in unless they must. thats just no fun.
and the player who desperatly needs his 3 cash to work is screwed by the player who can just wait.. or you get noobs who cash as asson as they get 3.. no that part i dont see as attractive.. sorry

What happens if a player is in desperate need of extra armies and happens to be playing a no spoils game?

Rodion wrote:I think they'd rather solve their problems in round 3 by cashing 4 and risking new problems arising when their enemy cashes 8 in round 5 than not cashing and simply losing the game because they were not able to break Asia.

Rodion wrote:And noobs making mistakes it not a ground for not liking something. Think of all the complicated maps that are forged every month!

SirSebstar wrote:mmm.
just making the spoils all jokers then.. no not interested in that part.
cashing in 5 cards(instead of 3) and then getting a bigger bonus, now that would be funny! but in your proposal nobody will cash in unless they must. thats just no fun.
and the player who desperatly needs his 3 cash to work is screwed by the player who can just wait.. or you get noobs who cash as asson as they get 3.. no that part i dont see as attractive.. sorry

tkr4lf wrote:I understood what you meant by it. I just like the way the spoils are now. They are more true to the game of risk. Yeah, I know this isn't a risk site, but still, it's a risk site, if you get my meaning.

I suppose if it was an option to play this way then I could support it. But I don't want to see it become the only way to play.