I am playing around with adapting the Republic of Rome boardgame for a Sc-fi decline & fall of the Galactic Empire setting. So this involves:
- Eliminating mechanics I did not like in Republic of Rome
- Converting mechanics I do like
- Changing enough of the game so that its not a poor clone.
Mechanics I thought I could do without included:
- Bribing leaders to join your faction (especially the obnoxious bit about you keeping both the bribe and the money the leader already has)
- Events generated each turn by a random die roll – just too random when you already have most events generated by a card deck
- Provincial governors – just too fiddly
- Famous individuals sprouting up in senatorial families – too tied to a historical Rome
Some mechanics needed converting, especially in the voting part of the game, where many of the mechanics are tied to Rome’s historical quirks. Voting is a core part of the game though, because its how the players allocate common resources against common threats. So the role of Emperor will do much of what the Rome Consul did in game, but there will be other portfolios controlled by other leaders with some degree of influence over the Senate agenda. With no field consul, any leader can be sent off to quash rebellions as well.
Rather than concessions, the adaptation has sinecures, and these will use the catabolic energy system. So rather than a flat income each turn, they generate 2-6 income, and on a 1 they are destroyed – possibly to regenerate later in the game.
Probably the biggest core change is what ends the game. In Republic of Rome, there are a lot of ways ALL the players can lose. In fact, in over a dozen games I have only seen one player victory, which led to the nickname “Republic of Carthage” among some of my friends for this game. I have decided to focus on just one end of game condition – if the empire has no Atomic Power left, it falls. If a player gets to 100 Glory before this happens, they win.
I keep the Unrest mechanic, but I call it Confidence, and split it into Military, Elite, and Popular Confidence. Some of the things that were in the random events table are now worked into the Confidence table. Military confidence affects the cost of purchasing military units for the Empire (in +10 increments), trade income die rolls, and the chances of an Usurper successfully persuading military units to support them instead of the Emperor. Popular confidence reduces the amount of Atomic Power collected by taxation (-10 to -40), reduces Viceroy income and increases the number of mortality chits drawn each turn. Elite confidence affects the cost of purchasing leaders for the Great Houses (in multiples, x2 to x5), reduces Monopoly income, and the chances of Imperial Marines supporting a coup.
Some of the crises event cards will only trigger when a particular confidence level is reached. At 0 confidence anyone can try and overthrow the Emperor, at 6 confidence Strong Admirals can attempt to overthrow the emperor. Maximum confidence is 10.
Rather than Land bills I have Welfare bills, but they work in a similar manner – confidence improves short-term, at the long-term cost of having less power to deal with future crises.
While I do not want famous characters, I think I can work in some leader chrome with Weak Emperors and Strong Admirals. If there are 4+ crises threatening the Galactic Empire, then a Weak Emperor card is drawn. This is a debuff to the current Emperor (so yet another reason to overthrow them) making it harder to maintain confidence, and possibly changing some rules of play (e.g. an Insane Emperor might not be able to use all of their powers, or might do random things in some game phases). If a leader successfully leads an armada to victory, on the other hand, they gain a buff from the Strong Admiral card. This improves the leaders attributes, might grant a special power, and makes the leader eligible to start a Civil War or Palace Coup to overthrow the Emperor.
Combat – I don’t need the complexity of stalemates and disasters, so I can just say a natural 13 on 3d6 is an automatic defeat, otherwise any adjusted roll of 14+ is victory. In Republic of Rome, Legions were more important than Fleets. I could have reversed that for this game, but I am aiming for more of a balance. You want Fleets in a Civil War, but Marines in a Palace Coup. Plus imagine the second phase of many space campaigns is a messy ground war and/or counter-insurgency operation, for which Marines rather than Fleets are more useful.
I also need to add things that were not really in Republic of Rome at all, including decadence and monuments. For decadence, I plan to give each leader a decadence rating. In the mortality phase, leaders can be decadent and score glory for their house. they risk, however, perishing from overexertion (represented by the draw of additional mortality chits that only affect decadent leaders). For monuments, if you win victories, you get Monument points. These allow you to try and persuade the Senate to build a monument to the heroic sacrifices made by your soldiers in defence of the Empire, etc, etc. Each Monument point you have accumulated grants you +1 vote on Monument voting. If built, you then cash in your monument points and score glory (a bonus in addition to the glory scored when you won the campaign earlier). The catch … each Monument must be larger in terms of atomic power expenditure than the last Monument built.
Anyhow, should have something for playtesting the week after Christmas.
Mechanics Are Easy 