In order to add replay value and fix balance issues with the Clash of Empires map of Europe, I am going to experiment with having a randomly generated map over the course of the game.

Updated Rules

The game will have terrain hexes as components instead of the game map. The map will start off as small and expand as players explore more terrain hexes.

Setup

Each player will place their capital hexes so that there are a certain number of unexplored hexes around it. Any territories surrounding a player capital will be considered “cores” for that player.

List of hex types present in the game

• 4 hexes to represent capitals.
• 15 water hexes.
• 30 grassland hexes.
• 15 hill hexes: These give extra defense.
• 15 mountain hexes: These are impassable.

New actions

• Explore:
  • A player choses a hex next to one of their units to explore and draws two hexes.
  • A player choses to place one hex and discards the other. The player may only place a water hex if the explored hex borders another water hex or if both the drawn hexes are water hexes.
  • If there are more no hexes available to draw, shuffle the discard pile to create a draw pile. If the discard pile is empty, then the explore action may not be taken.

I recently switched to using vector graphics in Clash of Empires to represent territories and troop counts. There were performance issues because I was previously using raster graphics, which required redrawing the game area too frequently. Also, there was confusion in the previous version over who owned a territory, and using vector graphics made it easy to change the territory color to represent a change in ownership.

Below is an updated map. There were issues in the previous version with Germany being too weak, so they have been removed from the game and replaced with the Turks. Also, the number of territories has been reduced in order to allow more rounds to be played while making sure that the game doesn’t take over 1 hour to play.

During each turn, a player can perform one of the following actions.

• Move:  A player can move troops from one territory to one bordering territory.
• Bombard: A player can remove 1 enemy troop from a bordering territory.

After 10 turns, each player will earn points and money and a new round will start. After 3 rounds, the player with the most points wins.

Other Rule Changes

• To prevent players from placing too many troops in a territory, each territory will be able to only have a maximum of 7 troops.

Yesterday, I playtested Clash of Empires with the updated map. Initially, we played a one turn game with 4 players. During the game, there was a problem due to the fact that players spent a large portion of time waiting for other players to take their turn.

In order to reduce downtime between turns, I decided to see what would happen if each turn was split into “micro turns”. With the new rules, each player made one troop movement during their turn. After 10 turns, each player would receive victory points and money and the game would end after 30 turns. Afterwards, I tested out the rules in a 3 player game and they worked well because the low amount of downtime between turns kept the other players more engaged. As a result of this playtest, I plan to continue playtesting with “micro turns” rules and work on balance issues.

Updated rules

The map has also been modified to improve Germany’s position to compensate for the disadvantage of being in the middle of the map. Also, several changes have been made to make sure that Russia does not have an unfair advantage.

England no longer starts with Belgium, Holland, or the North Sea. Instead, they control Norway and the Black Sea. This makes it easier for the British to attack Russia and makes it harder for the British to attack Germany.

Also, players will now have the ability to build forts. Forts have the same cost as armies, and give extra defense to a territory, but they cannot move. Germany starts off with three forts that make it harder for opponents to attack them.

I decided to work on a computer version of Clash of Empires in HTML5, which will allow people to play the game in a web browser without having to download a plugin.

I was originally developing the game in Java and Scala. I was at the point where I had a playable prototype, but I was running into difficulties because of extra work necessary have the application run as an applet or on an Android phone. I wanted to show it to other people for feedback, but many computers did not have Java applets enabled. By having the game in HTML5, it will be easier for people to play Clash of Empires because they will not have to worry about installing a plugin or making sure that it is active. Also, it might be necessary for me to develop on a computer that isn’t my laptop, and setting up an environment to develop HTML5 games is significantly easier than setting up an environment to develop in Java. For example, my laptop had an issue with its charger several months ago, and I did not have access to another computer where I had the ability to setup a Java and Scala development environment. However, I did have access to university computer labs where I could do JavaScript development.