Bastion, Game development thread

Updated rules as of 9/11/2009
http://diehrstraits.com/gg/bastion/playtes...astionRules.rtf

Updated spoiler as of 9/12/2009
http://diehrstraits.com/gg/bastion/playtest4/cards.html

How this game works is that each player drafts 16 cards out of a big-ass pile of cards that look something like this:



After you build a 12-card deck you fight it out using your pitifully small starting army.

Every card gives you two options from the outset. You can either keep it in your hand to play as a tactic, which fires off all of its abilities, or you can play it onto the field to let it sit there and take damage. The trick is that to play a tactic, you need a unit on the field of the same type.

Whenever one of your units is destroyed, you lose 1 of your starting 10 morale. First to zero is the loser.

====================================================================================================
================================

LIKELY TO BE OUT OF DATE STUFF:

http://bastion.wikia.com/wiki/Rules

http://bastion.wikia.com/wiki/Cards

Here are some old cards that used to be in the game:



Waves of attackers show up to try to breach your fortifications. You can hire troops too, and you'll need them, because an undefended wall isn't going to do anything against an invading army.

Note that these card images were made before I started changing the terminology. Assist is now called Flanking. I may have changed some of the stats around, too.

The main help I am looking for is a way to simplify the combat rules, because right now they are getting pretty unwieldly, and the balance between attackers and defenders doesn't seem quite right.

I've already orderd a print-on-demand copy with the version on these jpgs, so I'll be testing with that, but I already feel as if they are super out of date.

EDIT: Since there has been some developments since this post, here are some new updates:

New card art!


New goals!
There is now a defending and attacking player. The defending player starts with 1 Rampart and 1 matching Combat card (Structure 1).

The goal of each player is to complete missions to get Victory Points. Every turn, both players pick a mission from a pair that they draw randomly from their mission deck.

Each mission card also gives a training bonus to the attackers, and this is cumulative over turns, so that the attacking waves will be successively larger and larger. The players want to pick their mission based on a balance between how many VP it's worth, how difficult it'll be to complete, and how much +Training the attacker will get.

Once a player gets to 15 VP, the game is over, and whoever has the most is the winner! If there is still a tie, which can happen due to the simultaneous granting of VP, the players will keep playing rounds until one of them has more VP.

New Rules!
Whenever a player trains a guy or builds a structure, they pick a combat card from the pool. The combat card has to match the type or name of the unit they got.

After both players are done training/building they shuffle up their combat cards and use them to fight eachother.

Also, here is the full spoiler:
http://diehrstraits.com/gg/bastion/playtest3/cards.html

This post has been edited by Basilisk on Sep 12 2009, 08:01 PM

So, on defense, is there ever a reason to train any combat units other than musketeers? You might want to consider giving more expensive units better than 1P+1R per 1T spent.

Good point. I had them at 2T originally, but even then the defenders don't get any advantage from them. For the attackers, they clearly want better single units to allow them to set up a point beyond any trenches they come across.

I think this mainly means that my combat system isn't very suited to the cards. Equal numbers of Musketeers just resist eachother's attacks, which isn't how things worked back then.

Normally, on an open field with equal forces, both will be ground down until there is one lucky guy on one side who survived. If one side is bigger than the other, then it will be much different - a force twice as big will lose on average 1/4 of their guys while destroying the entire smaller force, since the relative power of the armies is the square of their size.

You can take how good individual fighters are into this method, but it has little effect. If army A has 400 guys, and army B has 100 guys who are twice as good, then army A will still win while only losing 100 guys.

The factor you can add to this to make it more realistic is how many troops can fight eachother at the same time. If army A and army B are fighting again, except they are restricted to a column 25 guys wide, then army B has 4 ranks of 50 power, while army A has 16 ranks of 25 power. Each time the ranks clash together, A's rank is defeated while B's rank loses 1/4 of its men. Then, B's rank is boosted back up to 25 men. They can do this a good number of times, and the result is that both armies pretty much obliterate eachother.

I guess I need a simple way to reflect this in the cards.

This post has been edited by Basilisk on Jul 25 2009, 11:51 AM

Ideas:

limit the number of units per side in each tile (more attackers than defenders?).


change resistance to health/HP on units, and possibly give each unit more HP.


change the structures to either reduce damage from each attacker, or simply reduce a higher total damage. A corollary to this would be allowing the miners/artillery units to either have a chance of reducing the effectiveness of the fortifications, or to spend their attack on grinding down the fortifications instead of attacking the defenders.

Mostly, I'd just recommend removing resistance from most units (though adding a unit with personal armor might be interesting as a counter to musketeer spam), changing it to HP, and possibly doubling HP values from what they started at.

This post has been edited by Reiss on Jul 25 2009, 12:08 PM

Ok, so here are some test stats:

Worker units: 1/1
Musketeers: 1/2
Riflemen: 2/4
Field Gun: 4/6
Mortar Crew: 6/2

Defense will absorb 1 damage from an entire attack. So if two Riflemen attack a 1 Defense fortification, their 4 damage is reduced to 3.

Rampart: 0/2 1 Defense
Lunette 0/4 1 Defense 1 Flanking
Redan: 0/6 2 Defense 1 Flanking
Bastion 0/8 3 Defense 2 Flanking

Ravelin 0/4 1 Defense 1 Flanking
Hornworks 0/6 1 Defense 1 Flanking
Priest's Cap 0/8 2 Defense 1 Flanking
Crownworks 0/12 3 Defense 2 Flanking

Well, these numbers are starting to get big, and that'll be a TON of damage counters. I guess toning everything down a bit will be part of the balancing process.

I am going to be retooling how the combat works.

Rather than doing a bunch of combat math, each player plays cards out of a combat deck filled with actions and tactics that your troops can do.

Every time you train a unit, you get a combat card of the same type as the unit. The units will only have a health, how much damage they deal will be put instead on the combat cards you are allowed to pick when you train them.

http://bastion.wikia.com/wiki/Combat

When you train a Musketeer, you could grab a combat card that says Musketeer or Infantry on it, or a combat card with no type.

When you get into combat, you can choose up to 2 cards per unit you have. Keep in mind that when you play a card, it has no effect if you don't have any units that match its type.

This post has been edited by Basilisk on Jul 26 2009, 07:26 PM

Here's an example unit card and a fortification. Structures are going to look similar, except perhaps use stonework instead of scrollwork for the sides. Also, they use a different resource than the Training in the upper left, and there will be a Flanking icon next to the health.

Combat cards will also have a text box, and are probably the only cards that will need it. This way the art on the cards is completely maximized, while hopefully remaining useable.

I'm using Vinque for the headings and Georgia for the text box right now, and the art is stolen from GIS.

This post has been edited by Basilisk on Jul 28 2009, 07:46 PM

I exported out the card spoiler as images: http://diehrstraits.com/gg/bastion/playtest2/cards.html

This post has been edited by Basilisk on Aug 19 2009, 11:48 AM

awesome

I wrote down all the cards on notecards and did a playtest.

Some feedback:

6 Columns of things going on is bad.

• Takes up a ton of space on a table
• Intimidating to learn or explain
• All the combat decks are tiny
• Requires foreknowledge of the rules to do decent in the first game

This became apparent immediately, so we cut it down to a single column. The defender starts with 1 Rampart and the associated combat card. The attacker gets 15T instead of 4T for the first turn, and this increases by 5T each turn.

To simplify things I played only attackers and Janel played only defenders.

With these new building stage rules the first turn had decks of 10 cards for the defenders and 6 cards for the attackers, and there was a single combat to deal with. I lost after killing a couple of light infantry units, which I guess I can be happy with as any sort of slowing down the defender is good. I had an Escalader to deal with her trench, but the other troops I brought couldn't bring any big damage to bear.

After the combat, Janel dug a moat in front of her trench, trained up a Cannon and some infantry, and I attacked with 2 Cannons, 2 Miners, an Escalader and a Rifleman. I managed to punch a hole in the Redan she had (rendering her Medium Structure combat card useless) and pick off a couple more laborers. My deck ran out though, and she was running a couple Restocks so her deck never ran out. Since I never got a chance to shuffle up and play more cards, she repelled the attack.

We stopped playing here, but there needs to be a better way of judging just how good someone is doing other than simply surviving a certain number of attacks or not.

So here are the revised and simplified rules.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Bastion
The enemy is sending waves of troops to lay siege to your country! Only a single line of defenses stands in the way. They have to weather the assault for 5[?] turns.

Setup
One player is the defender. The other player is the attacker. The defender starts with:
1 Musketeer
1 Rampart
1 Musketeer combat card
1 Rampart combat card

Turn Order
The defending player gets 10T to spend on troops. After this, they can use their Laborers and Masons to construct fortifications, earthworks, and other structures.

The attacking player gets 15T to spend on attacking troops. Each successive turn, increase this amount by 5T. Thus, during the second turn the attacker will have 20T to spend, and then 25T for the third turn, and so on.

Buying Troops
When a player trains troops, they get 1 combat card per troop they train. The combat card has to match the type on the troop. For example, when you buy a Musketeer, you get a Musketeer combat card.

Making Structures
Structures have a cost such as 2L 3M. This means you need 2 Laborers and 3 Masons to build it. Laborers and Masons can build only one thing each turn, so if you want to build additional structures you need to train more Laborers and Masons.

Like troops, you get a combat card for each structure you build. There are three types of structure combat cards - light, medium, and heavy. These correspond to the light, medium, and heavy fortifications and outworks.

You can have only one Fortification and one Outworks, but you can have as many obstacles (Trenches and Moats) as you wish.

To build a Medium or Heavy structure you have to construct it on top of a structure one level below it. For example, you go from Light to Medium and Medium to Heavy. When you upgrade a structure, leave the previous structure beneath the new one. If the new one is destroyed then you still keep the old one.

Combat
Once both players trained all their troops and the defender built their structures, it is time to fight. Combat is separated into sorties. During each sortie the players will draw cards from their combat deck, play them, and eventually run out of cards to play. Once both players run out of cards in their hand and deck, they shuffle their discard piles into a new deck and play another sortie.

At the beginning of each sortie, the players start with 3 cards in their hands.

• Each player plays a card face down.
• Flip up both cards.
• Do what the cards say.
• Each player draws a card.
• Repeat this process.

If only one player can play cards, they keep on going while the other player waits. Eventually, they will run out and a new sortie will begin. It is a big advantage to have a lot more cards than your opponent, because you will be doing things while their troops are sitting ducks.

The combat will end if one side's troops are wiped out. Once this happens the next Turn begins, and the defender gets another 10T to spend on troops while the attacker gets 5T more than they had the previous time.

Ending the Game
If the defenders successfully fend off 5 attacks, they are the victors! If the attackers every wipe out the defenders, then they are instead the victors.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Things I need to work on:

How the game ends is purely theoretical right now, since I've only played 2 rounds of attack (and had both repelled). It might be really hard to balance all these numbers so that there is a fair chance for either player to win as long as they have the same skill level.

One thing I am thinking right now is having a quest for the defending or attacking player to complete. This quest might be secret, or revealed to both players. Completing the quest gives points to the completer, while it may give a different number of points to the other player if they fail. The game will then continue until someone reaches a set number of points.

In addition to this, the quest card's difficulty could be balanced by having them affect how many troops the attacker gets to send. So on the first turn the attacker could have 10T plus whatever the quest cards say. The bonus from the quests to the attacker's requisition would be cumulative, so their army size will be growing each turn.

Each player gets a new quest each turn.

Example quests:

Defender's Monument Mission
Construct a Monument and have have it last the turn.
Attacker gets +4T.
Defender Victory: 4 points.
Attacker Victory: 3 points.

Monument Obstacle - 3 Masonry, 4 Health

Attacker's Pinpoint Mission
Destroy one of the opponent's Laborers.
Attacker gets +2T.
Attacker Victory: 2 points.
Defender Victory: 2 points.

With cards like these I could have the game end at 10 points or so, that should take about 4 rounds to complete.

Thoughts? Commentary?

One column!?! It won't even look like a castle anymore!

But I guess if that's the way it has to be ;_____;

We gotta get this thing working on some online thing. If TGO is still giving you inf. problems, we could make an MWS set.

This post has been edited by paz on Aug 3 2009, 07:39 AM

It'll be a lot better for the game in the long run to consolidate everything that's in combat.

I am probably going to have a playtestable version ready this week, as a module for OCTGN. If anyone wants to help playtest, find me on #goodgamery during the evenings eastern standard time.

Updated the rules to be more comprehensive:

http://bastion.wikia.com/wiki/Rules

The main changes:

• Attacker and Defender get the same VP from missions.
• After 3 sorties, combat is over even if neither player was wiped out.
• The attacker gets to keep any troops that survive for all 3 sorties.
• The combat steps were fleshed out. Play cards; Assign damage; Repair damage; Set aside destroyed units.

I am still trying to simplify how the combat works, since you can end up playing additional cards, but they are reactive in that damage isn't actually put on any unit until after all of the extra cards are played. Then, the damage is adjusted by any +- Defense cards, and the damage is placed on the appropriate units.

Then, any type of repairing action goes off, so you can put a damage on a structure and immediately remove it. (Maybe this isn't a good thing to do - perhaps the damage repairing should happen before damage is assigned)

Finally, any units with enough damage to destroy them are set aside.

This post has been edited by Basilisk on Aug 10 2009, 02:39 PM

Ok, I am ready for playtesting

OCTGN program:
http://www.octgn.net/downloads.php

Bastion Game Definition

Bastion Cards

When you run it you go to "Manage Installed Games" then "Install a New Game", and browse to the game definition. Then you select "Install New Cards" and brows to the bastion cards file.

You can check out what's going on if you start a new game and play by yourself. CTRL-L lets you load either of the mission decks, for attacker or defender. All of the other cards show up through a right-click menu where you can add units, structures, or combat cards.

Anyone who's in for playtesting, let me know.

Also all of the cards are here: http://diehrstraits.com/gg/bastion/playtest2/cards.html

Monument and Citadel are going to have their own combat cards, but until then they will be Structure 3 (so you can grab any structure card you want).

This post has been edited by Basilisk on Aug 19 2009, 11:48 AM

Playtesting with Myself: Attackers vs. Defenders

Forums Famousperson Llarack was going to help playtest, but the .NET destroyed his will to do anything. Instead, I opened up Bastion on my laptop and began to play with myself, despite the urgings of Duke Nukem.

Turn 1

The missions opened up with:
Attacker - Breach the Defenses (4VP, +2T, Attacker must destroy an enemy Fortification)
Defender - Fortify the Field (3VP, +1T, Defender must last the turn with at least one Fortification, Outworks, and Obstacle).

The defender hired 4 Laborers and 2 Masons to build a Lunette (1L,1M,3H), a Ravelin (2L,1M,2H) and a Trench (1L), along with a Riflemen to total 10 Training for the turn.

The attacker had 13 Training and hired 2 Miners, 1 Cannon, 1 Veteran Officer, and 3 Musketeers, probably because I miscounted how much Training was being used. This should have cost 15, and the extra musketeers were pretty helpful.

The Defender build a very defensive combat deck with Bags of Earth and Repairing the Wall, plus some small but quick damaging Structure combat cards - Defensive Fire and Fortified Fire. Also in there was the key hand-denial card, Trenchfoot, which does 1 Damage and forces the opponent to discard 1 card.

The attacker focused on killing buildings, with an Undermine and Camouflet for the Miners, Repeat Volley for the Officer, and Fire Cannons! which does a plain 4 damage. The attacker also picked up two Reloads with the hope of firing off the Undermine/Camouflet combo three times in the first sortie.

Combat happened, and the Attacker was able to kill off all of the Defender's troops except for a single Mason, while remaining unable to deal much damage to the structures through a combination of well-timed defensive cards and repairs. Trench-foot was able to take out Camouflet on the same turn that Undermine was being played, preventing any big damage from being dealt to the defender's structures.

Combat went through all 3 sorties, and the attacker had a remaining Cannon - very lucky to keep between rounds, as it costs 5T normally! Because all of the structures made it through the round, the Defender picked up all 7 Victory Points.

Results:
0VP Attacker: 1 Cannon
7VP Defender: 1 Mason, Rampart, Lunette, Ravelin, Trench

Turn 2
The mission cards chosen are:
Attacker - Prolong the Siege (3VP, +3T, Attacker must make sure the Combat has at least 3 Sorties)
Defender - Flooding the Plains (1VP, +1T, Defender must construct the maximum number of allowable Moats and have them last through the attack.)

This means the defender has to build a single moat. The attacker gets +4T for this round, for a cumulative total of 17T.

The attacker at this point needs to start picking up VPs, or make an effort to cripple the Defender so that they can't pick up any more on later turns.

Building a Moat here replaces the Trench card and the Trenchfoot combat card. The combat card for Moat is very powerful, though!

The defender trains 1 more Mason, 3 Laborers, and a Cannon, then builds a Bastion and a Moat. For combat cards, I chose Bags of Earth and Reload for their Restocking ability, Fire Cannons!, Wet Troops, Bricklaying, Defensive Post, and Enfilade.

The attacker gets a Miner for Drain Moat, 3 Musketeers with 3 Volleys, another Cannon for Raking Fire, and a Field Commander and Veteran Officer for 2x Rolling Barrages. I will probably need to change the card since you can spend 8 Training total on a 4 damage card and a 6 damage card.

I shuffle up to start combat! I will post more after I am done resolving it.

During one of the combat rounds, Attacker played Rolling Barrage (6 damage, 2 defense) and the Defender played Fortified Fire to get the extra play, then chained an Enfilade and Defensive Fire into Bricklaying to stop all of the damage from Rolling Barrage. I noticed after playing it out that it was kind of a waste of damage though, due to the +Defense the attacker got from the Rolling Barrage. The attacker picked up a single damage.

First sortie ends with the attacker losing 2 Musketeers and the Miner. The defender lost 1 Laborer and has 1 damage apiece on the Bastion and Ravelin.

Attacker opens up with Rolling Barrage, Defender plays Defensive Fire into Wet Troops. The attacker removes their Musketeer. The attacker continues to play high-damage cards, and the Defender throws Laborers into the cannon fire.

The 2nd sortie ends with the attacker losing a Field Commander and putting damage all over their other guys. The defender lost their last Laborer but has no new damage anywhere else.

At this point the attacker at least has completed their mission and prevented the defender from completing theirs. Alright!

First round of the sortie has the attacker's Volley against the defender's Trenchfoot, which will prevent the attacker from actually making any choices this round, since they will only have 1 card in hand each turn.

During one of the rounds the attacker has Rolling Barrage, but the Defender played Fortified Fire, then plays an Enfilade into Bricklaying to completely nullify the Barrage. The attacker has only 2 artillery and the officer at this point, but has to take 1 damage so loses an artillery. Next round, Wet Troops has the attacker setting aside the Officer. The rest of the attacker's forces are wiped out, but they get to keep the Officer.

Results:
3VP Attacker: 1 Veteran Officer
7VP Defender: All 5 structures and a Cannon

Turn 3
The missions this time are:
Attacker: Sabotage the Supply Lines (2VP, +2T, Attacker has to destroy all Laborers)
Defender: Fortify the Field (3VP, +1T, Defender must survive with a Fortification, Outworks, and Obstacle)

I'll continue after I play out the turn.

The board state:


This post has been edited by Basilisk on Aug 14 2009, 07:54 PM

After buying stuff:

After third turn:

I put my solo game on pause because my brother wanted to play.

Beginning of turn 2:


We had a really defensive 1st round and I got stuck playing the Decisive Attack mission, so I will probably lose the mission. At least I have a bunch of troops!

Might be too good!

EDIT: Turns out on the 3rd round I had exactly 24 Training, so I made 8 Veteran Officers and gave them 3 Repeat Volleys and 5 Rolling Barrages. Eric made a bunch of laborers, masons, buildings, and Reloads.

I rolled over him and we decided he wouldn't be able to recover.

I made a bunch of changes to my spreadsheet, and here are some new rules:

The +Training bonus on missions doesn't just go to the attacker. It doesn't do anything until the mission is completed - and then, the person who LOST the mission gets the +Training. This is to be a sort of self-balancing thing, so the player who is ahead gets less +Training compared to the other guy.

The one big thing I need to work on is the build phase. It's way too long and cumbersome, there should be some sort of minigame going on to keep things from getting too complicated. Starting a turn with 24 training, or 10 training and a bunch of workers means you have a lot to think about before you do anything. And then after you have everything built, you have a lot of combat cards to pick. So klunky.

This post has been edited by Basilisk on Aug 16 2009, 05:13 PM

Here's the full spoiler right now. It's also at this site: http://diehrstraits.com/gg/bastion/playtest2/cards.html

I merged laborer and mason together, but didn't change the type on those combat cards.

Units and their Combat Cards

Generic cards for anyone:

Structures and their Combat Cards

Attacker Missions

Defender Missions

Definite problems:

Too many generic/laborer combat cards.
Too many Tactician combat cards.
Too many Miner combat cards.

I want to try to keep it at 2 combat cards per unit.

Probably going to cut Bags of Earth and Drain Moat.

Bags of Earth is already covered by Reload and Repairing the Walls. Drain Moat is covered by Undermine, which is more fair anyhow. One-shot cards that kill a specific named card seem lame in principle, too.

Repeat Volley will probably take Rapid Fire's place, though it will gain the restriction of requiring one other infantry (instead of just any infantry, since Marksman itself is Infantry).

I have been trying to think of a better way to do the buy phase of the turns, since right now it's like plain old deckbuilding, or like making a certain point army in Warhammer. Other ways to do it include Drafting, Auctions, and taking turns buying.

Drafting & Auctions:
Doesn't work well with the several units that are useful for one side but almost blank for the other, like Laborer, Miner, and Escalader. These types of buying only work when the sides are symmetric. (Maybe they should be symmetric? Then all the mission cards would go into one deck of 20 cards, and the balance of the game might be easier)

Turn-based buying:
The players just buy one thing at a time, instead of having a free-for-all. This doesn't accomplish that much, but it regulates what happens during buying, so new players don't get overwhelmed.

Speaking of all this, one of the solutions to buying may be to do a draft/auction, and just make the game symmetric. All the players are attacker AND defender, and get either type of mission. All the players start with a Rampart.

You could even add additional players, which would affect combat in a couple ways. For one, any card that deals general damage would deal it to each of your opponents. This makes defensive cards slightly more powerful in a couple cases. For example, in 1 on 1 if a player plays +4 Defense vs 4 Damage, nothing happens. If a player plays +4 Defense vs two other guys who play 4 Damage, the other guys take 4 while you take nothing.

There could also be some new types of defense cards (if there is room) that change based on how many players there are, like this:

Wall That Absorbs Cannonballs +2 Defense per card played by opponents this turn.

Ragged Earthworks +2 Defense. +1 Defense per effect on the field.

Once it's symmetric like this, maybe that opens up some better ways to buy cards.

Another option is the way the LotR card game did it, where the good player played whatever he wants, but each card contributed a cost to a pool the evil player could then spend. I'm not sure which way around you'd do that though.