Concise description:
CHOOSE or ALTER Initial Placement
Specifics:
Just like in "risk" you can change the initial placement by not having 3 units on every territory you own. You start the game either using random placement by dealing out the cards or by picking territories one at a time by placing one guy on that territory. On Conquer Club, I propose that the computer randomly generates your initial placement much like it does now, but instead of automatically placing 3 units on each of your starting territories for you, it only places 1 unit on each of those territories. Upon the "start of the game" all players would get a pre-game deployment phase in which they each take turns placing their "reserves" which would normally already be on the board in stacks of 3. For the sake of the website and the game engine, I would say placing 2 units at a time would be best since 1 at a time is slow, and 3 at a time makes normal 3-unit-per-territory Conquer Club un-even for people who miss their pre-game deployment phase(explained below). It would be up to the players of this site as to whether or not all 2 would have to be placed onto a single territory, or if you could spread them out.
This will improve the following aspects of the site:
I feel this idea would just be a neutral addition to the site. Would add more customization to the game, but also add more delay. I strongly feel this would be a great addition to SPEED GAMES!!!
HOWEVER. I STRONGLY feel this will improve the initial two turns of game play due to the dreaded "First Turn." (you all know what I'm talking about, the sad victim who has to go first and blow his whole deployment onto a space to smash up against a 3-stack and loose all his guys, then just start spamming "auto-attack" furiously trying to get spoils for the turn... Yes...) This will fix that since everyone will have a general focus and available attacks that have(or at least should have!) high success rates.
EDIT - OH! I forgot to mention - This will greatly improve TEAM play as well as completely add to the excitement of strategy based maps that involving war-fronts/castles/entrances, aka: Attacker/Defender, etc etc, it would actually make sense to have attacking and defending forces already in place for the assault! Also, noting that it would help solve the lucky "starting with a country" problem.
Thoughts?
PS: It may add 4-5 turns of play to the game before the game even STARTS, but I feel those 4-5 turns "wasted" will add to a much better and solid game. Not to mention in a Speed game it won't be an issue.
