Miscellaneous Loroi question-and-answer thread

[Arioch]

I gathered that it is much like chess in such a case I am mainly interested in how many tiles a board has, the number and type of pieces and how they move.

Those details are not finalized, so if you plan to describe a game in detail, I can't really help you.

Here is what I can say about Crossfire:

• The game has three sides: two armies and a fortified city on the hill surrounded by three towers. The city is neutral; the objective for each of the two players is to either capture the city or to wipe out the enemy force.
• The board is hexagonal. I'm not sure whether it's 9 or 11 hexes across.
• The three center rings are progressively elevated. Changing elevation ends the movement of moving piece.
• Each player can move multiple pieces on his turn, according to the number of command units he has remaining.
• Pieces are captured by surrounding them with a superior force. Each piece type has a different combat strength and movement allowance/rules.
• The player that moves first has the two towers on the hill facing him.

A possible board setup for a 9-hex version:

[dragoongfa]

Thanks, I can work with this. Not exactly how I pictured the game but I guess that Loroi like things to be complicated.

[dragoongfa]

After some mental playtesting here is how I picture it as a game, :

1) 11 hexes across with the same layout and number of pawns seem to be best in regards to versatility.

2) Taking into account Loroi social mores and etc, I wouldn't put in a promotion mechanism.

3) I guess that the naming scheme is: Pawn = Line infantry (LI), Horse = Elite infantry (EI), Bishop = Teidar (T), King = Imperial Guard/Diadem (IG), Queen = Emperor (E).

4) Movements: LI = 1 hex and only forward movement (the three hexes towards the enemy), EI = 2 hexes and all ranges of movement, T = 4 hexes, all range of movements and can jump over a single elevation, IG = 4 hexes, all ranges of movement, fully affected by elevation, E = 1 hex, all ranges of movement.

5) Pawn power: LI = 1, EI = 2, T= 3, IG = 6, E= 4, City Tower = 8, City holds no power.

6) To capture the city one must control all the towers and move the active Emperor to the city. To destroy the army one needs to capture the Imperial Guard and the Emperor.

7) Command mechanics: The Emperor and the Imperial Guard each give a single order, for a total of three seperate movement orders.

8) Emperor and Imperial guard special mechanics:

a) Should the Emperor be killed one of the Imperial Guard takes her place.
b) Imperial escort/assault: The Emperor and a single Imperial guard can stick together as a 'single' pawn (still taking over two hexes), requiring one move for movement and combining the pawn strength for a total of 10 but only having 2 hexes of movement to the direction that the Emperor is facing.
c) Imperial coup: If the emperor is surrounded by pawns whose combined strength is more than 4 then the player may elect to stage a coup, killing the current Emperor and having an IG take her place as if the Emperor was killed in battle. The IG can not be part of the coup force.

EDIT: Thinking about it some more, some balancing in power is warranted to be able to capture the towers if they are enveloped by pawns (ladder and sacrifice rule?)

[SVlad]

Some thoughts about current draft rules.

The obvious consequence of command units rule:
If all your command units captured, you automatically defeated.

The most interesting is lacking part of rules about figure capture.
Does capture phase follow each figure move or at the end of players turn?
What is order of capture by side?
For example, we have 4 figures in one line:

Code: Select all

w1 b2 w2 b1

(w - white, b - black, 1 and 2 - figure force)
In current situation there are two possible outcomes:
if white capture first, they take b2 and b1
if black capture first, they take w2 and w1.

[SVlad]

Does going down elevation also ends figure move? The ability to freely move figures downhill makes control of center more important. On other side, it can heavily break balance.

[dragoongfa]

Yes downhill should end the figure's move, to keep the game balanced.

On figure capture I would say that the capture happens on the player's turn with using a command point but one needs to have superior force applied againt the combined total of the enemy's pawns. If an elite and regular infantry are side by side then to capture any one of them you would need 4 points of strength leveled against the target hex.

Towers cannot move and attack but their power total should apply on adjustent tiles for defensive/offensive reasons. The city can only be moved on by the Emperor.

[GabrielGABFonseca]

What is that I hear? Did someone say forum-wide Crossfire play-testing...?

[Werra]

Hm...

3) I guess that the naming scheme is: Pawn = Line infantry (LI), Horse = Elite infantry (EI), Bishop = Teidar (T), King = Imperial Guard/Diadem (IG), Queen = Emperor (E).

I'd suggest Pawn = Soroin, Horse = Mizol, Bishop = Teidar, King = Torrai, Queen = Emperor. Or the land based equivalents and Telepath/Telekin...something for Mizol/Teidar
Seems more intuitive and easier to remember for the reader if we use caste titles.

4) Movements: LI = 1 hex and only forward movement (the three hexes towards the enemy), EI = 2 hexes and all ranges of movement, T = 4 hexes, all range of movements and can jump over a single elevation, IG = 4 hexes, all ranges of movement, fully affected by elevation, E = 1 hex, all ranges of movement.

5) Pawn power: LI = 1, EI = 2, T= 3, IG = 6, E= 4, City Tower = 8, City holds no power.

While that would work to create superior and inferior forces, it makes the game very complicated, unintuitive and prone for abuse. It would also make it super hard to come back from an early setback.

How about this? Numerical superiority combined with positioning is used to capture a unit. This way two Pawns can take down a King if they're positioned right.

My thinking is this. A unit that is in crossfire -flanked- is taken. Flanking is defined as two units of the same side being in base contact with one unit of the other side while not being in base contact with each other.



This makes the game very focused on positioning but it means every piece is useful and potentially deadly. We can then give each piece a different movement value. Say Soroin (P), Teidar (B) and Torrai (K) have 2, Mizol (H) and Emperor (Q) have 3.

A normal unit picks a direction and moves its movement value in that direction, Mizol, Torrai and Emperor can switch directions. Teidar can push units they meet into the direction they move in.

Let's say there is also a zone of control (ZOC) in a radius of one tile around each unit. Any unit entering this ZOC has their movement stopped. Mizol ignore this zone. Perhabs they nullify the enemy Mizols special rule too. (Teidar cancel each other then as well and or have a ZOC of 2)

This way the game would be about controlling area with Soroin and using special pieces for flanking and breakthroughs. Of course Mizol and Teidar would still be useful for their ZOC as would Soroin be useful for flanking.

Apart from movement no point values that need to be balanced and relatively few special rules.

Problems I still have with this:
- A row of Soroin could be rolled up from the flank with very few units. (maybe good as that was common in Phalanx warfare)
- Mizol could be too good at flanking
- no idea how to handle the towers
- maybe add a way for units to assist each other defending if they're next to each other

Edit:
Another way to handle different combat strengths would be to use a rock-paper-scissors system.

Mizol beats Teidar, Teidar beats Torrai, Torrai beats Mizol, each of those beats a Soroin, unless the Soroin has another Soroin in base contact, then Soroin wins - nullified by friendly Soroin in base as well. Emperor always wins unless faced with unit + Soroin or fighting two Soroin.

Towers require unit + Soroin. City can only be taken once all three towers are down and requires a command unit to take posession of it. Opponent has then one more turn to mount a counterattack on the city.

[Zorg56]

Any chances for human cloaking devices after technological exchange?
As i can see most of loroi weapons and tools is based on artifacts they obtained during space travels, not their own research.
They can just do not notice the possibility of creating thing like this.

P.s. sorry for my terrible english.

[dragoongfa]

I wanted to avoid giving most of the pawns caste names, especially the Mizol, because from what I gathered the game originated from Deinar. There were no Mizol on Deinar but there were Soroin, Teidar, Torrai and the Emperor. The Infantry are bound to be Soroin but the special pawns are bound to be something different. One has to be a Teidar and showcase the aptitudes but the other special (other than the Emperor and the Guard/Diadem) has to be something else. Hence Line infantry (phalanx) and elite infantry (highly mobile foot soldiers) since the Loroi didn't have mounts.

Also the Emperor has to have a role in securing the town, the prestige of showing that they are the boss and all that. From a gameplay perceptive it puts an incentive in protecting a slow and valuable unit while it marches to the city.

Personally I consider the 'strength' rule to be the more limiting factor. If a game is to represent tactical warfare then any unit should be able to capture/kill any other unit; a King's belly doesn't care who wields the sword that tries to cut through it, it wants no sword to run through it at all. Personally I would only use the strength values against the towers and for special rules like the 'coup' rule. Normal combat would be resolved via positioning and pawn exchanges alone, while also taking elevation into account; hence the need to have an elevation jumper like the Teidar.

To maintain some sanity with the movement and capturing in such a case then I would split the orders thusly: The Emperor can issue one order and that can be either movement or an attack. The Guards/Torrai can each give one order but it can only be movement. If the Emperor is captured then the one who lost it cannot attack for a single turn until an other Torrai is crowned. This should give further incentive in keeping the Emperor safe since you cannot attack without it and you need it to capture the city.

Adding in the 'Imperial Assault' special move (parallel to the castling move but since Loroi don't like using defenses it had to be an assault formation) would bring further incentive in using the Emperor aggressively but putting the whole game in a dire position if the Emperor is lost, limiting the player to a single movement.

[Werra]

I think you are getting too hung up on the Emperor part. For all we know the command unit could be a general or lower even, if the objective is one city. Just as Mizol aren't native to the time and place of origin of Crossfire, an Emperor didn't exist until the Loroi were spacefaring afterall.

There's a way to make the command units hugely important without making it impossible to win without them. That is to give a base amount of movements per turn independent of command units. A player without any command units would have one move, a player with all three would have four, for example.

As for naming...yes, Mizol didn't exist on Deinar. But surely some form of strong telepath did exist. It's likely that the names of the pieces are taken from Loroi antiquity anyway. Line Infantry and Elite Infantry are definitely not catchy. Maybe Soroin and Tenoin? Or did the Tenoin originate on Taben?

And I think Teidar are way too strong with 4 movement if the baseline infantry has 1.

Why move infantry at all if you could move your special units three times a turn? As it stands now, they seem quite useless, actually.

Edit:
I don't know a single two-player boardgame that had longterm success without being light on the rules. Any special rule that is not absolutely necessary should be avoided. A game piece should never be different by more than two things at the most from a basic pawn. Movement included. Otherwise the game is unlikely to be balanced or appeal to different generations.

[dragoongfa]

I picked Emperor because chess has a 'King' As for the name they did have imperial states before that from what I gathered from the insider, the unified modern empire happened late but before that there were other empires much like our own.

Command unit loss should be the way to lose via destroying the army, since the Loroi are so stratified it would make sense that the army would collapse without someone being in overall command.

For name I thought that we could call the elite infantry 'veteran Soroin'. Soroin means 'Fighter' after all, they are the rank and file but their century old veterans should be a force to be reckoned with even for a Teidar.

I would give the Teidar either 3 or 4 tile movements, mainly because they are able to fly telekinetically; a special rule that could be put in place is that jumping over elevation or an other unit as a Teidar would cost 2 tile movements. I gave them a strength of 3 because for all their powers they still are flesh and blood frontline warriors. Not commanders surrounded by an elite entourage.

As for the moves, each piece can move once and other than the Teidar they cannot jump over other pieces. The pawns screen the more valuable units that will be the deciding factor for taking the towers and city.

[SVlad]

Current table appears to be rather tight - there is no much space for maneuver and flanking.
Towers dominate all hill. If they attack nearby units themselves, it's impossible to even start climbing hill.



I think, rules should be as simple and general, as possible. Various special abilities looks fun at first glance, but it's very easy to break balance and create a game of one winning combo.

My suggestion:
At the end of player's turn she removes any opposite figures, that strength is less, than summary strength of her figures on adjacent hexes.
Figure strength and moves:
♙ - St: 2, move 1 hex any direction.
♘ - St: 3, move 2 hex any direction, can pass through other figures. Can't change elevation level more than once per turn.
♗ - St: 3, move any number of hex, but only by straight lines.

♔ - St: 4, command unit, move 2 hex any direction, can't pass through other figures.
♕ - St: 5, command unit, move any number of hex, but only by straight lines and diagonals, that allows partial pass through.

♖ - St: 6, can't move, can't attack.
city - St: 7, can't move, can't attack.

Strength of 2 and 3 allows 2♙ capture 1♘ or 1♗.
Strength of 7 allow capturing city at least by 2♔, and move two figures to adjacent hexes without taking ♖ is difficult.

[dragoongfa]

Nice SVlad, I knew that a Russian would have a better grasp of Chess stuff

Yeah, I think that an 11 hex board would be better for movement.

[Werra]

Sure, winning could be done by killing all command units. But the rules for inthronization of a new Emperor are only necessary because of the special rule that only the Emperor can take the city. If we change that to any command unit, the game stays the same, just lighter.

We won't make any headway on the names. Veteran Soroin is also not catchy at all. Loroi equivalents for Legionarii and Triarii could work. Arioch is the only one who'd know, however.

3 or 4 tiles of movement are huge, plus special rules for ignoring terrain and triple the strength of the basic unit...Teidar are too strong.

If we assume three command units and therefore three orders, then each player still has 4 powerful non command units to move each turn. There is literally no reason to move Pawns except in some very rare case where their body is needed to block somebody near their deployment zone.

Teidar can fly

But can they land?

@SVlad
Seems good. The table did seem tight. The 3d view shows it very clearly.

Just one thing about unit strengths. As your numbers now stand, to take out a command unit, you'd need literally three pawns. How about giving pawns strength 2 and special units strength 3, command units strength 2 and the King Piece 3 again? This way specials would be dangerous to pawns and command units but pawns remain a threat to everything on the field. They'd be further differentiated by movement.

The towers and town would need tweaking in this case.

[orion1836]

What if you took away strength entirely? Chess doesn't rely on it - I don't see a reason why this game couldn't be engaging without it. A pawn can capture a queen if your opponent is dumb enough.

What if the game board was extended to 13 hexes to encourage maneuver (and deception via maneuver) as the primary gameplay element? This would allow the city and tower rings to be larger and accommodate more pieces, and also allow army-to-army combat on them. A skilled player could develop her forces in a feint while building towards her actual strategy (such as pushing towards the enemy line when actually setting up for a push on the castle), all the while doing her level best to hide her intentions in sanzai.

[Arioch]

I can see that I shouldn't have posted the unfinished Crossfire information. I didn't really provide enough for meaningful feedback, and I seem to have left people with the incorrect impression that I was inviting them to design the game for me. Sometimes when I'm enthusiastic about an idea, it's hard to avoid saying more than I should about it. I will try to avoid repeating this mistake in the future.

However, since it's already out there, I suppose I might as well run with it.

1) 11 hexes across with the same layout and number of pawns seem to be best in regards to versatility.

I had a similar thought. The 9 hex version is clean but a bit cramped.

The piece names are somewhat abstract; it's an ancient game and traditionally the board and pieces are shaped to represent armies fighting around a hill, but modern versions of the game (and, it is suspected, the original version) represent the board and pieces as fleets fighting around the gravity well of a planet. I haven't figured out all of the piece names, but they are not "Teidar", "Mizol" etc., as the game predates these terms.

What if you took away strength entirely? Chess doesn't rely on it - I don't see a reason why this game couldn't be engaging without it. A pawn can capture a queen if your opponent is dumb enough.

Agree that the rules should be as simple as possible, but I am trying to achieve gameplay that is significantly different from chess. The two qualities that I'd like to have are 1) fleet movement instead of individual piece movement, and 2) to accommodate the central capture mechanism. If any piece can take any other piece, then capturing the city/planet in the center is either trivially easy (or impossible, depending on how the towers' rules work).

Avalon Hill had an interesting chesslike game called Feudal in which each player could move all of his pieces every turn. The existence of blocking terrain prevented this from being completely broken, but it did cause problems of turn order advantage, especially for more than two players (there could be as many as six). My idea was that limiting the number of pieces moved, combined with a surround system (in which pieces are captured at the end of the turn rather than piece-takes piece) could make it more tactical. Being required to surround pieces and only removing captures after your turn means that you might take casualties as well as the enemy (and allows the neutral towers to inflict damage without having to "move").

Any chances for human cloaking devices after technological exchange?
As i can see most of loroi weapons and tools is based on artifacts they obtained during space travels, not their own research.
They can just do not notice the possibility of creating thing like this.

Nobody has a functional cloaking device, so it seems unlikely to me that the humans could invent one with technologies that they had just learned.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Not trying to say how the game must be constructed, but I'd like to share some observations and thoughts.

With the idea that the game originates from fighting around a gravity well, it makes sense for the board to be cramped. In terms of the scale of space, going into a pitched battle around a planet is like jumping into a knife fight. Unlike chess, where people who play at high levels tend to make a lot of very cautious moves, I imagine Crossfire's opening moves would involve a lot more bloodletting, just on account of the board size.

Although, if anyone else here has played Banner Saga, there's a lesson you learn early on that depending on how the actions to unit count ratio is set up, a larger force can be sluggish and have difficulties responding to smaller, faster groups. In its own way, having a negative feedback loop like that is the kind of game design that I like. It makes it so that the winner isn't always decided in the opening moves, and makes it easier to put up a meaningful challenge throughout the entirety of play.

[SVlad]

I seem to have left people with the incorrect impression that I was inviting them to design the game for me.

Didn't even think that way. It's just a funny thing to play with while waiting for the next page.

Nice SVlad, I knew that a Russian would have a better grasp of Chess stuff

It's not about chess (or country), but about playing many different tabletop games. Actually, crossfire is far from chess because it has completely different mechanics for movement and taking.

Just one thing about unit strengths. As your numbers now stand, to take out a command unit, you'd need literally three pawns. How about giving pawns strength 2 and special units strength 3, command units strength 2 and the King Piece 3 again? This way specials would be dangerous to pawns and command units but pawns remain a threat to everything on the field. They'd be further differentiated by movement.

My idea was to make 1♔ = 2♟, so ♔ can't be taken that easy. It should be compensated by slow movement.
Also at the taking phase each figure can be used to take only one enemy figure, otherwise 1♘ could take 3♟ in one turn just by standing adjacent to all three.

[dragoongfa]

I can see that I shouldn't have posted the unfinished Crossfire information. I didn't really provide enough for meaningful feedback, and I seem to have left people with the incorrect impression that I was inviting them to design the game for me. Sometimes when I'm enthusiastic about an idea, it's hard to avoid saying more than I should about it. I will try to avoid repeating this mistake in the future.

However, since it's already out there, I suppose I might as well run with it.

1) 11 hexes across with the same layout and number of pawns seem to be best in regards to versatility.

I had a similar thought. The 9 hex version is clean but a bit cramped.

The piece names are somewhat abstract; it's an ancient game and traditionally the board and pieces are shaped to represent armies fighting around a hill, but modern versions of the game (and, it is suspected, the original version) represent the board and pieces as fleets fighting around the gravity well of a planet. I haven't figured out all of the piece names, but they are not "Teidar", "Mizol" etc., as the game predates these terms.

What if you took away strength entirely? Chess doesn't rely on it - I don't see a reason why this game couldn't be engaging without it. A pawn can capture a queen if your opponent is dumb enough.

Agree that the rules should be as simple as possible, but I am trying to achieve gameplay that is significantly different from chess. The two qualities that I'd like to have are 1) fleet movement instead of individual piece movement, and 2) to accommodate the central capture mechanism. If any piece can take any other piece, then capturing the city/planet in the center is either trivially easy (or impossible, depending on how the towers' rules work).

Avalon Hill had an interesting chesslike game called Feudal in which each player could move all of his pieces every turn. The existence of blocking terrain prevented this from being completely broken, but it did cause problems of turn order advantage, especially for more than two players (there could be as many as six). My idea was that limiting the number of pieces moved, combined with a surround system (in which pieces are captured at the end of the turn rather than piece-takes piece) could make it more tactical. Being required to surround pieces and only removing captures after your turn means that you might take casualties as well as the enemy (and allows the neutral towers to inflict damage without having to "move").

Any chances for human cloaking devices after technological exchange?
As i can see most of loroi weapons and tools is based on artifacts they obtained during space travels, not their own research.
They can just do not notice the possibility of creating thing like this.

Nobody has a functional cloaking device, so it seems unlikely to me that the humans could invent one with technologies that they had just learned.

I didn't take it as an invitation to design the game for you and I apologize if it came out like that from my end. I just took it as an interesting thought exercise and I wanted to offer some feedback that may have come out wrong. Also I understand the enthusiastic part, I fell into that trap more than one time on various projects I worked for.

In any case:

The names of the pawns being abstract makes sense, on chess the names are also abstract when one thinks about it. For example the Rook is meant to represent the raw straightforward hard power of the state, all reaching but always confined into a straight line. The bishop represents diplomacy and treachery, not straightforward and only confined to one avenue of accomplishing things. The horse represents human unpredictability and flexibility. The King represent the head of a state, the one who is obeyed, all powerful and moving but always visible to all and thus limited in actions. The Queen represents the best of all, the elite that a nation calls upon when they are needed. The pawns are interesting in their own ways, the average person, weak as an individual but can harm anyone who fails to take them seriously especially if they earn the experience necessary to be counted as an elite.

I also agree on the need for simplicity in the rules, I mentally approached it as a modern board game instead of a cultural defining classic (and my respect to anyone who tries to do this). Modern board games are a mess in regards with rules which is why none of them can reach the status of classics like chess.

My advice would be to not try to either avoid or imitate chess in regards to the rules of the game, there should be some similarity in regards to the games being strategic in nature but I think it is best not to unessecarily restrict the planning to avoid being seen as a chess adaptation.

The chief issue I had while thinking about it is the multiple movements of the pieces and how that would relate to capturing pieces but if the movement phases are different than the capturing phase then things can be different. I can picture that the players positioning their pawns in the respective movement turns while declaring at the end of the combined movement turn who the target(s) of the ensuing capturing engagement is.

If the engagement phase is different that the movement phase then there is no need to take measures on who gets to move first because for all intents and purposes the movement phase is simultaneous for both players and the 'engagement' happens after the fact. This would ensure that there are bound to be casualties on both sides while still ensuring a 'fleet movement' feeling.