Autarch Strategy in WotA

I've blogged in the past about strategy from the perspective of the players running the Stronghold.  This post concerns the Autarch strategy in Wrath of the Autarch (what the Autarch player does to win).  Previously, I had developed a system where the Autarch would gain access to various threats based on the year of the campaign.  Basically, for every year of the campaign, the Autarch gained access to more powerful threats of various sorts (Warfare, Diplomacy, Infiltration, and Skirmish).

However, because the Autarch gained access to every sort of threat, there really wasn't any strategy on the part of the Autarch player - just choose the threat type that couldn't be defended.  It also wasn't that fun to be the Stronghold players, because investing in defense in one area just left another area exposed.

The further I get in design, I also have a better vision for what this game is all about.  Wrath of the Autarch is a competitive strategy role-playing game.  While there is a GM of sorts, there is no GM fiat, and the GM/Autarch player is trying to win.  In such a game, it's far more interesting if there are strategies for both the Stronghold players as well as the Autarch player (I may shy away from using the term GM in the book - not sure).  So, I came up with the following.

Threat Pools

The Autarch player allocates points into a set of four threat pools in order to harm the Stronghold in various ways.  There is one pool for each mini-game in WotA (Warfare, Diplomacy, Infiltration, and Skirmish).  Threats have various requirements in terms of threat pool levels, and not surprisingly the mini-game used in that threat is the same as the pool name.

Rather than have the Autarch player secretly track all of these pools, however, I use a method of revealing hidden information that I first saw in War of the Ring: the Autarch player only allocates points into pools when executing a particular threat or when forced to by the Stronghold players (via an Infiltration mission or something similar).

Note that the pools are not expended when a threat is chosen, rather they represent requirements for more powerful threat.  Maybe pools is the wrong word here?  Instead, the number of threats are restricted by current year (each year may only have a number of threats equal to 1/2 the current year) as well as by type (the same threat may not be used more than once a year).

Example

For example, here are some Autarch threats, along with requirements of different types:

Propaganda Campaign (Infiltration)
  Requirement  7:  -1 stability
  Requirement 12: -2 stability
  Requirement 17: -3 stability

Military Strike (Warfare)
  Requirement   9: Standard infantry, archers, and cavalry.
  Requirement 14: Advanced infantry, archers, and cavalry.
  Requirement 17: Elite infantry, archers, cavalry, and catapults.
  Requirement 21: Elite infantry, archers, cavalry, and cannons.

Turn Faction Against Stronghold (Diplomacy)
  Requirement  6:  -1 Disposition
  Requirement 11: -2 Disposition
  Requirement 16: -3 Disposition

Let's say it's the end of the Winter of the second year (8th season), and the Autarch player has not been forced to declare where points are allocated to threat pools.  In that case, during the declare threats phase (end of season) - the Autarch player may either choose to launch a Propaganda Campaign or to Turn Faction Against Stronghold, since both of those have options which require eight or fewer points.

If the Autarch player decides to Turn Faction Against Stronghold, they would be forced to allocate pools as follows:

Infiltration: 0
Warfare: 0
Skirmish: 0
Diplomacy: 6

This is because the Turn Faction Against Stronghold threat requires a Diplomacy Threat pool of at least six.  The Autarch player would also have two points left over.  Now the Stronghold players would know that the Autarch is going to use Diplomacy to bother them, so they better strengthen their relationships with allies!

Continuing with this example, let's fast forward to the Spring of the fourth year (13th season).  Assume the Autarch has the same pools as above, as well as seven points that haven't been allocated.  Five of them could be put into Diplomacy, gaining access to a better Turn Faction Against Stronghold threat, or the Propaganda Campaign could be used, putting seven into Infiltration.  Finally, in two seasons, a military option could be chosen, if the Autarch is comfortable waiting.  The Autarch decides to wait - preferring the flexibility of a future threat to acting now.

However, in the Summer of the fourth year (14 seasons), the Stronghold players decide to Infiltrate the Autarch in order to figure out future plans.  They succeed, and choose as the success condition to force the Autarch player to allocate the eight points which aren't allocated!

The Autarch player decides on:

Infiltration: 0
Warfare: 8
Skirmish: 0
Diplomacy: 6

So, the players know that the Autarch is changing gears, supplementing Diplomacy with naked aggression in the form of military attack!  And they only have one season to prepare!

Strategy

While this method of choosing threats will require tracking four more attributes on the Faction sheet, it makes for a far more interesting game in terms of acting and reacting  to different threats.  The Autarch player has a tension between acting earlier, giving away strategies, and acting later, while keeping options open.  Although, waiting too long will force the Stronghold players' hands, making an Infiltration mission more and more worthwhile, in order to determine what dark intentions the Autarch has in mind.

Sadly, it's going to take some more strategy game testing in order to get these values roughly balanced, but initial sentiment was pretty lukewarm regarding the way Autarch threats were previously handled, and this way will hopefully fix the biggest concerns (essentially, that there was no way to defend against what the Autarch was up to since they could do everything well).

The Wrath of the Autarch - Endgame

Another part of the game that I'm adding in is a "final Autarch threat" - the victor of which wins the game.  The motivation for this is largely to function as a timer.  I'm calling this threat, appropriately enough, The Wrath of the Autarch.

It will be triggered in two ways: when the Autarch's stability is low enough (down to one or less), or when a certain amount of time has elapsed (the Spring of year nine).  The key point is that the Autarch's power will grow significantly over the eight years, such that it greatly behooves the players to force this threat earlier rather than later.  This threat would probably be handled using Skirmish, with the Autarch unleashing a full arsenal of horrible onto the important people of the Stronghold.

I think adding in a narrative reason for this would be fitting (some long term ritual she's a part of, in order to gain power).

Embracing the Fate Fractal: Building a Fantasy Kingdom

After about ten or so really solid playtests of the Wrath of the Autarch, I feel like much of the play experience has come together.  However, the area that still might need some work comes from how to represent the factions, regions, and resources which form the backbone of the long term strategy in the game.  To this point, I haven't really embraced the Fate fractal for those elements - that is, the idea that everything can be represented as a character, with aspects, skills, stunts, stress, and consequences.

It's probably time to revisit how well the Fate fractal works with the strategic elements in Wrath of the Autarch (factions, regions, and resources).  I'll start with the most important part of a kingdom building game: the kingdoms themselves (also called factions in the rules, since they might not literally be fiefdoms).  For WotA, the two most important factions are the Autarch and the Stronghold (the faction the players will control).  Although, there are five other minor factions constructed in identical fashion.

Factions have aspects, which can be used in play as per normal - essentially functioning to help flesh out the society and give a global pool of aspects all the characters can access.  Fate fractal in full effect.  Other than aspects, they also have developments, which are very similar to stunts.  The provide benefits for all of the characters attached to that faction, in more or less concrete ways.  Sometimes they make getting other developments easier, or help in defense.  But, the parallel is definitely there - and I like the idea, so I'm not interested in changing that around right now.  That said - only the Stronghold really gains new developments over time, the other factions are basically static in terms of developments.

However, the last two key attributes for a faction are stability and population - and these aren't very Fate friendly.  Stability is very important - functioning as the lifeblood of a society.  If it drops down to zero, the faction collapses.  If such an event happens for the Stronghold or the Autarch, the game is over - one side is victorious.  This is represented as a number from 0-40.  Population is also represented on the same sliding scale, from 0-40.  It's pretty unlikely population will ever drop down to 0, but it would have the same effect of ending the game if it happens to the Autarch or the Stronghold.

These are the only two values tracked for all the different factions.  For the Stronghold, they function to determine how easy it is to build developments, and fluctuate somewhat independently.  Population can increase in response to a higher stability, and stability goes up and down in response to wars, threats, as well as successes in building certain developments and dealing with threats.  Besides these areas, population and stability determine how many units the Stronghold has available during military missions - or when using the military to deal with threats.  For the other factions, these attributes mostly inform units raised in warfare, and can be affected by the Stronghold.

So, taking a more Fate approach, stability and population could be modeled as stress tracks or skills.  Initially, I did take a skill-centric approach, and each faction had a number of skills (security, military, diplomacy, etc).  However, they slowly became obsolete, because of the mission based nature of WotA.  It didn't really matter what a faction's diplomacy was - because if you wanted to set up a deal with them, then that was a mission onto itself, not a roll.  So, I moved away from using skills.  Legends of Anglerre is a fantasy fate game which takes that approach, and it might work for a more abstract treatment of factions.  It may even work in a more limited fashion here, but I haven't fully embraced it - it doesn't quite create the effect I'm going for.

Another option is the stress track approach.  In some ways, this seems like a better fit.  After all, if losing your stability means the kingdom has collapsed, that does fit the stress track/consequences idea very well.  Maybe population and stability could be rolled up into one stat for all the other factions (just track stability).  After all, it's really stability that matters, not population.  That also allows the creation of consequences - always a fun way to narratively detail just how a kingdom is going into decline.

There are a few details, though, that get tricky:

• Taking Stability Stress: It seems like stability stress would only come in small amounts, for the most part.  It also isn't really variable - it's a byproduct of threats or war, and the way it's calculated is fixed.  Small, fixed amounts of stress don't seem to fit the stress track idea as well.  Warfare could feasibly cause a chunk of stability losses, though.
• Building Developments: Currently the stability score feeds into "build points" for the Stronghold to create developments.  By making it a stress track, I don't know how to keep that idea.  It functions more as a skill in that case - as in, rolling to make progress building a development.  Maybe population could be a skill for the Stronghold, and stress consequences can be freely invoked to lower the rolls somehow?
• Funding War: Finally, stability factors into how many troops are available for factions (including the Stronghold).  This again, feels more like a skill than a stress track.  I guess I could re-introduce a skill like Warfare for attacking with troops, and like in the building developments case, the stability stress would somehow impact it.

Anyway, I would like to really embrace the fate fractal as much as possible, but when I set about doing that, it seems like I might end up with something even more fiddly, which certainly isn't what I want.

Lessons from the Strategic Model

After playing through the strategic model a few times, it made me question some elements that I took for granted in Wrath of the Autarch.

One of those is attributes for the different factions (military, influence, arcana, and technology).  The more I thought about it, the more they seemed unnecessary.  These can probably be covered by developments.  The sorts of developments a faction has built effectively fills in those areas.

I think population and stability are still necessary, though.

With that in mind, I may need to tweak the model again, and just use the developments, somehow weighting them based on effectiveness in accomplishing certain missions.

I'm sort of alternating between a strategic model and zooming in on the mechanics of the actual missions.

Initial Strategic Model Playthrough

Played through the Strategic Model this evening, which went reasonably well.  It was a pretty easy victory for the Stronghold, although they rolled well and got a great region on the first turn.

There were a few clarifications, and the sheets could use some reworking.  I edited them so that it's possible to use a tracking cube to monitor the attribute values.  That should speed up play quite a bit, as there was too much erasing and rewriting.

My initial thought is that it's a little too easy for the Stronghold.  Which was the point of making this model to begin with.  But I want to play it through a few times in succession before I start the tweaking.

The other issue is that threats might need some work.  It's tough coming up with a balanced way for the GM to cause the player's grief, but it's important in such an adversarial style of game.  The tricky part is going to be not overwhelming the GM with all the details about how to create threats.  I'm thinking in the actual WotA game that I'll maybe just have charts of threats for the GM to choose from, rather than having to build them too much from scratch.

Strategic Model

Well, I've switched the project name to Wrath of the Autarch.  Like it better, but could change it again later.

Unsurprisingly, kingdom building games are very difficult to design.  There are two different scopes to the game: a mission scope and a seasonal scope.  Where the mission scope focuses on the roleplay during the session, the seasonal scope is how the results of all the missions affect the different factions and the Stronghold.

It's not really practical to play out a 25 or 30 session campaign to see if it's well balanced.  Instead, I'm interested in creating a strategic model, which abstracts details like characters and developments and aspects out, instead focusing on just the high level faction skills, as well as how all the missions interact with each other.

To that end, I'm going to create a model with the following features for each faction:

• Stability
• Population
• Influence
• Military
• Arcana
• Technology
• Characters
• Regions

With the exception of regions, these are all single values.  As much as possible, I'm going to keep the values the same as they are in the regular game, with a few exceptions.  One is characters, which is just a score representing how skilled the characters are.  Obviously, this is a major abstraction, but it's essential to facilitating a strategic model.

Developments also are abstracted away.  Instead, developments will just affect the key faction skills: stability, population, influence, military, arcana, and technology.

After creating faction sheets, I'm going to define the missions in terms of these new values.

Hopefully this view of the game will yield useful information.  Questions like, how long does the game take to complete?  Are all the missions equally useful?  How balanced are the factions?  Are there any clearly better strategies?

If I can build a decent model for the game, I can try to build the missions to reflect the difficulties in the model, and I should have a better shot at making a balanced game, without having to play through it multiple times.