Gaming the Past

For those of you following my posts on my Dawn of Cities prototype on LinkedIn or Blue Sky I plan to write this up along with a design document, but I wanted to sketch out the basic gameplay for those interested. Basically the idea is there are 6 players each playing as an elite household head. They have a starting set of hinterland farming villages, 1 village providing 1d6 (six-sided die). They have a record sheet to keep track of a series of non-farmer tokens (meeples)

Up to 2 elites (start with 1)

Up to 4 admin (start with 0)

Up to 4 labor (start with 0)

1 herder (a die that provides meat for feast and sacrifice)

4 farming villages.

A level 1 elite house, elite shrine (I split it from the house for game reasons), elite granary (I made this up based on staple-finance)

The goal of each elite player is to gain as much prestige as possible with the highest winning.

The farming villages are represented as colored poker chips in the player’s color on a big hex map board of a proto-city center and a hinterland surrounding:

The proto-city has three buildings that can be constructed and leveled up

A assembly space for judging disputes and coordinate raid defenses; a community granary (reasoning that larger scale staple financing might be an urban function) to alleviate famines on a larger scale than the elite granary; a community temple (to counter the negative prestige effects of bad omens).

Okay so each turn a player: 

1. Rolls dice for grain from farms and meat from herders (grain can store across turns, meat cannot). If they roll a 1 on a die, that village has crop failure. I was toying with removing it from play but right now just have an additional grain penalty. We’ll see

This is one important place where a developed community (i.e. urban functions) helps elites. The community granary can relieve more famine dice than the elites can alone. To get those benefits, though, each player must contribute some grain to the granary Each time the community granary is drawn from by a player, the community gets community points. Enough community points during the game and the proto-city becomes a city!

2. Feeds their existing non-farmers (herders, elites, admin, labor) or loses them and takes a big prestige hit (for not supplying their household). Elite counters cost the most to feed, then admin, then laborers. (I had crafters in the worksheet once then realized the whole point of Ubaid staple-financing was no specialized crafters of prestige goods.

3. Draws a few action cards based on the level of their house.

4. Draws an event card

Events are

1.  bad omens and good omens (which do nothing at the moment except bad omens reduce prestige)

2.  3 levels of disputes within an elite extended household: minor, major, lethal

3. 3 levels of disputes between households: minor, major, lethal

4. 3 levels of raids in the hinterlands

Community temple lessens the effect of bad omens and the community gets community points every time it does so (making it get closer to being a city)

5. Takes one or more actions (plays action cards) based on their house level

So there are 3 action card types: Build; Expand in hinterlands; Feast and Sacrifice. Each must be powered/activated by the necessary resources and/or non-farmer tokens. Each has different levels. Build has 4 levels requiring 1 to 4 laborer tokens; each level generates 1-4 build points, and levels of elite and community structures require build-points. So essentially one can build one’s own household building or contribute to community building projects or both. Feast & Sacrifice has four levels and requires an elite token or an admin token and 1 – 4 meat. It builds prestige. Expand takes grain and (I forget, either an elite or admin) one gets to add one or two farming villages to player’s household by placing more chips in the hinterland hexes. More chips = more 1d6 dice to roll = greater surpluses of grain

6. Handles Disputes

With disputes between households, the two household players (representing the elites) are trying to resolve the dispute in favor of their household. Basically I tried to simply model a feud system where settling results in a lower payment. Feuding instead of resolving results in a larger payoff for the winner and prestige for dominating the loser. Dice determine. There are certain conditions (rolling some 6s) that cause an escalation in dispute from minor to major, then from major to lethal. The stakes increase in terms of penalties and at the higher levels, other households will lose some resources as collateral damage in the feud.

Disputes within are handled similarly except the player gets a bonus to an adjudication roll for each level of their house. Dispute escalate and increase in resources/life lost.

This is another big way that community institutions help. A sufficient level assembly can adjudicate disputes for disputants. Lower payouts, no prestige, but no collateral damage. Of course, if the assembly adjudicates it gets community points.

7. Handle raids

Raids target hexes and dice are rolled. If raiders win, villages in hex lose resources or in severe cases are destroyed. Adjacent hexes can help only if they have a sufficient level community assembly (representing coordination)

I’ll stop here for now but bottom line: if my design works sufficiently for the kids elites competing for prestige should find urban functions to be a convenient way to go about their staple-financing elite competitions and if they use urban functions enough, the community gains enough points to become a first city.

Let me know if you have been finding all these updates interesting by following me or connecting with me on LinkedIn or Blue Sky (or an email jmc.hst@gmail.com). If you are interested in trying this with your own ancient history students after I stabilize the prototype (which may be as early as end of week of 9/1) just reach out.