The Evolution of “Expansion or Extinction” (EOE) is an article series periodically appearing in InsideGMT. It features articles from the designer regarding the game’s design, development and upcoming release.

Today’s Topic:  Design Decision-How to avoid an asymmetric design?

One of the very first major design decisions I had to wrestle with was the layout of the map, i.e. how would I place the various star systems? In a game based on a historical battle or war, the problem is the size or scope of what the map looks like…everyone already knows what shape Europe is, or where Germany is located (or at least they should! 🙂 ) One of the great things about Triumph & Tragedy is the asymmetric nature of the game play, the Western Powers play very differently than the Axis, and successful Russian play is wildly different than what it takes to win playing either of the first two.

I have played a number of games where each player has the exact same starting position and abilities, and those types of games quickly lost their appeal. But with a space design, I was creating my own universe from scratch…I had no starting map to lay a hexagon grid over. On the flip side, I didn’t want to create a map where each person’s optimal moves become scripted…as in: to be successful as the Klingons you must first move here, then conquer this system…etc.

It soon became clear to me that that I had a number of goals for my map design:

• Asymmetric player start positions
• Replayability
• A different experience each game

Ultimately I created a map which is symmetrical (the large 3 or 4 person map more so than the smaller 2 person map). I had decided that anything else could skew the gameplay too much. But I was now confronting one of my worst fears…if the game looks symmetrical, how do I make sure that the gameplay isn’t symmetrical?

Starting Positions of a Three-Player Game

Eventually it came down to two design elements:

• The starting draft
• Variable Resource Allocation

The Draft

At the very beginning of the game, each person first places their starting pieces. Then the players participate in a card draft. For a 3 or 4 player game the process is the same. The draft consists of 2 rounds. In the first round everyone is dealt 4 cards, keeps one, and passes the remaining 3 cards to the left. This continues until all cards have been selected. Round 2 starts with 5 cards being dealt. The process is similar except that cards are passed to the right, and when a player has selected their 4^th card in the round, the 5^th card is discarded.

Sample Action Cards

At the end of the draft each player will have added 8 different cards which will affect their starting position. The 2 player game is similar except that it has 3 rounds using 3 cards in each round.

The 11 categories which will add a bonus to a players starting position are:

• Cost to build factories
• Number of starting factories
• Starting Resources
• Starting Population
• Increased Hand Size
• Increased number of Emergency Commands
• Increased starting forces
• Production Build Bonus
• Start with some nearby systems already explored
• Increased starting number of Action Cards
• Increased starting number of Investment Cards

Sample Investment Cards

To make the draft even more challenging, the five cards in each of the above categories have a different weight. For example, the five cards which increase the number of starting Investment Cards break down like this:

• 1@ +4 Investment Cards
• 1@ +3 Investment Cards
• 2@ +2 Investment Cards
• 1@ +1 Investment Card and two free Peace Dividends.

After the Draft, a player can only benefit from one of each type of draft card. For example, if at the end of the Draft a player had both a +4 Investment Card and a +3 Investment Card, they could only use one and would have to turn in the extra card from that category in for a Peace Dividend.

During playtesting we’ve found that the draft accomplishes what it was intended to–every player starts with a different position–and this has really lent itself to replayabilty and the asymmetric player start positions I was hoping to achieve.

The hard decisions start at the very beginning of the game!

Variable Resource Allocation

The map has three types of systems. The Core worlds, which are closest to SOL (the center of the map), they were settled first and thus have the highest Population (Pop) but have used the bulk of their Resources (Res). The Outer Rim world were those last settled, and tend to have low (if any) Pop but high Res. Then the Green worlds, which are sandwiched between the Core and Rim worlds tend to be the “sweet spot” with high Pop and Res.

At setup each system is randomly assigned a color coded resource chip (unique chips for Core, Rim or Green Worlds).  The chips have a variable Pop and Res value, which are hidden until a player explores the world.

This means that every game is different–sometimes a system which is highly desirable in one game, is hardly worthy of fighting over in another game–exactly what I wanted!

Conclusion

I believe that I have achieved what I set out for when started designing Expansion or Extinction, a game which at first glance may look asymmetrical, but doesn’t play that way at all! I find that every game is different, not only does the draft and the variable resources affect how the game is played, but with three different paths to victory, I have found that every game is unique, challenging and fun!

Thank you for your interest in Expansion or Extinction. Is there something you’d like to know about EOE? Let me know and it very well might end up as a blog article here at InsideGMT!

Articles in this Series: Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4

Author: Stuart Pierce