Nuclear D12

I will keep it simple in this forum: My family and i have played the game for decades. Has been a very important family time game that still takes place every thanksgiving and christmas. We have played many many different twists. some are a hit and others obviously rather annoying. I've been on this site for around 2 years and have come to very much appriciate the player inputs and suggestions. I have seen many nifty things that once were ideas become very real and very fun alternatives. Thus i introduce Nuclear D12...... I will not give all details as i am assured it will be replicated and taken. Basically when a player has 5 cards and is forced to turn in, the set of all 5 is handed in a that player receives a nuke. Player chooses upon which territory the nuke shall fall and that territory(regardless of troop count or location) and all touching territories immediately turn to neutrals. Therefore nukes can be used to take out an entire player if he is to bottled in, or to hit 4 players simultaneously. The territories that turn to neutral have a half-life of their own. Starting with all 5's in affected area and each complete round that passes the neutrals numbers drop by 1 eventually leaving all 1's in 4 turns. This acts as the radiation and fallout from the nuke. It takes time to re occupy a nuclear area u know. So player has option with 5 cards to simply hand in 3 for his card bonus or he hands in all 5 cards and recieves only the base enforcements and a nuke. You do not get both the turn in troops and nuke it is one or the other. Anyway Fendi; if you like my idea please message me and i will happily help make it happen. This makes for an epic game. TY ALL and Go D12 [i]Edited by Matty to include some more whitespace and newlines to make it easier to read[/i].

Sounds like fun to me. cool idea. Deathmatch and Domination games it'll work for. And you would probably not want to load troops but spread them out I assume, otherwise you just get nuked when players start getting 5 cards. cool twist.

So, the premise sounds cool, but there are a few problems with this which I can see right now: First of all: ports. In quite a few maps we have ports that are all interconnected. This means that if you use a nuke on one of them, you will affect a very large amount of territories all over the map. Without completely changing the way of how map connections are stored, this is something that cannot be prevented either. Secondly, as Hoodlum already mentioned, this would have to be disabled for capitals, but it gives you a guaranteed kill, which you would obviously use on the strongest player, which makes the game type very unfair. Thirdly, we would have to think even more about interface changes. How to display the game type and adapt the card turn in dialog are relatively easy. The big problem is showing the affected area when selecting where to nuke and also the radiation poisoning, which ties into my last issue: There is a troop decay mechanic in the game right now: every neutral territory loses troops until it's back down to 3. The suggested troop decay is different. That may not sound like a big deal, but it's confusing, so we need a way to display this properly. As you can see, there's a lot to consider for a game variant that only works for some game types on some maps. For those reasons, I don't think this variant will make it to become a globally available variant, since I think there are equally interesting variants that would work on a larger set of games. Of course, feel free to prove me wrong by submitting solutions. Just sharing the issues I think we would run into if we were to implement this.

If we do implement the nuke option (and I like the idea), I suggest the following things: - Use the same neutral decay as we have now. - We should probably force these games (especially in the beginning) to be without points and stuff. - We can just mark all maps that have ports (boolean) and then disable the gametype for those maps. I wanted to have a marker for maps with ports for a long time already anyways, can as well do it :) And some more random remarks: - This is going to be sooo much fun in a fog game!!!! - This shouldn't be THAT hard to implement... right? - If we do make these games just-for-fun games (without winning/losing points), we can as well have a nuclear icon in front of the card turn in (next to advanced cards and stuff - come to think of it, that's a good place to store this option in the first place - normal, advanced and nuclear). - Could this completely change the stalemate nature of fixed card games? Even more random remarks: - http://xkcd.com/1626/ (which is the xkcd comic of today (and yesterday)).

5 cards for a single nuke looks too expensive, in most of cases a normal turn-in is more worth. Two things make the nuke specially unworth: 1st the high risk of being killed for your 5 cards before your turn comes; 2nd usually (with standard card rule) no chance for getting a turn-in after nuke and kill (unless another player holding 5 cards). All this is about increasing games, in case of fixed/capped cards the nuke would be more interesting. For example I'm playing a game capped at 20 where ppl stack 60, 80 or even 100 troops on their borders, in that case the nuke would be worth.

yeah, i think keep the neutral decay as it already is. What if possessing wild card within the 5 card turn in was the nuke play. We all hate it under normal circumstances when we gotta use the wild card with 5 cards, but in this case it would be a nice suprise, or a planned one if you got one early. To trade or blow stuff up??? lol. [spoiler=Blow stuff up!][img]http://www.cartographersguild.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=76514&d=1443875208[/img][/spoiler]

Note: we can do something like give them half the worth of their cards AND a nuke for all 5.

Some questions: If someone manages to get 8 cards is he able to nuke and get a standard turn in? In which order? Does the player get to place the turn in before or after the nuke? Is the nuke the first action of the attack phase? Can be used mid-turn? Can be saved for later? Should it be associated to gameplay to avoid nukecaps games? Or maybe in caps it just won't affect the caps, supposed they have a bunker or something...

This is really cool. Maybe try it on the World maps at first over on the beta site. Agree it should have the same decay rules in place now, Also funny to think of a nuke in solar system wiping out a few planets. Or Moron on Caribbean??? LOOK OUT! I have a better idea for implementation. Everyone gets 1, and only 1, and it can only be used after round number X. So say 8 rounds, that's typically a good jumping off point for end game - everyone has turned in at least once, some could have 5 cards, or have turned in twice. Decent turning point in every game. So make it separate from cards. You just get 1 nuke to use anytime after round 8. Also you cannot use it AND turn in to start a turn. So if you have 5 cards, ironically from OP, you have to turn in, and you can't nuke anyone. Use the NUKE ...OR turn in. Ok I'm just making this a pain for Matty and Cireon at this point :O)

I don't really see a reason to force postpone it to a later round number. If they want to waist it early, then let them. But the OP (JRok) has actually played this, so maybe he can tell us some more???

[quote=cbt711:]Also funny to think of a nuke in solar system wiping out a few planets.[/quote] lol, or dropping a nuke in the Bathroom on the House map! ^^

Not sure if it would be any good in team games either, Players that go twice before another player could nuke said later player twice before he / she could possibly recover. Then again... that's pretty cool haha

But if there were no points involved, this ^ could just be another fun way to play.

@ Cireon.... the nuclear blast does not transverse oceans so the one setting off the nuke would back up from coast at least one territory to maximize his area of affect. to the capitals idea i have not an answer; we never played capitals as a family so this was a non issue....however i can see a simple rule of nukes simply do not effect the one "Capital" territory. This would render nuking on top of a capital as all around that cap turning neutral 5's with no harm to the cap numbers itself...this simply (if once boxed in as in most cap games) a way out in a few turns as the fallout reduces the neutral numbers. This cap now would have a coushin and a small advantage as well as a decent neutral border until it diminishes. Honestly things like troop decay can be obviously altered in my "rule book" as it is my book lol so decay can and probably would remain the same. Maybe initial nuke drop posts 7 and reduces to 5 and 3 in next 2 rounds instead of the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 theme; less turns till total fallout and faster games are almost always a plus

Sure. Except for the code has no idea what an ocean is :)