The Maintenance Costs Mechanic

One of the features of Strategic Primer that dropped out of the game in the middle period and hasn’t (yet) been brought into the current campaign is “maintenance costs.”

Strategic Primer Fortress Plans

If a player’s orders include any non-trivial modifications to the landscape of the world (including building a fortress), that turn’s strategy should also include an (at least general) map showing what those changes would look like (in the case of a fortress, its floor plan, a map of its grounds, and a plan for where its defenses should go). This includes the first turn, when all players should submit a plan of their headquarters.

To create headquarters plans for the “AI” players, I used Tiled, but players can use any tool they choose, so long as the result is in a format I can read and that conveys the necessary information (primarily dimensions and relative positions of buildings). If a generic image format, such as PNG, is used, the plan must include a legend giving its scale.

For new players’ headquarters, unless instructed otherwise, I will provide a basic fortress plan to serve as a starting point for their design, or if time does not permit or the player is not interested in this aspect of the game as a workable if not ideal final design.

I will have to customize that design based on what map features are in the vicinity, so instead of showing such a basic-but-workable design, the example I’ve chosen to show is the original headquarters plan (which may have been added to since) of one of the “AI players.” I created this design (using Tiled) before I had a good idea of the logistics that players would have to grapple with, so I think it is safe to say it is a bad design: it provides very little cleared land for farming, and even less for building additional housing.

(The design was also created before I added rivers to the world map, so it doesn’t include the river and lake that is near each player’s headquarters.)

This design emphasizes protection more than flexibility: the fields (which are fairly small, only about two acres each) are enclosed by six-story wooden walls a half-foot thick, four-story barracks are built across the entrances to the narrow passages (one fifty feet wide, two forty feet wide) between the fields, and a four-story administration building at the intersection of those passages. The entire rest of the area covered by the plan, including the areas in the passages between the fields that are not covered by the buildings, is dense forest—which has created significant problems for this player.

In all, this design cost about 103,000 cubic feet of wood, about 16% of the amount players started the campaign with.

Delegation in Strategic Primer

In Strategic Primer, as in most games, the players begin in a fairly simple situation that then becomes increasingly complex. But unlike most video games, it offers “competent subordinates” (which I will explain as a “distinctive” in a later post), which help the game become simpler again, at least for the players.

The Food Spoilage Rule in Strategic Primer

Very early in the current campaign of Strategic Primer (after only the second turn), as a first check on the game-balance problem of population growth and food production reinforcing each other, I announced that food would be subject to spoilage (and go to waste) if not eaten or otherwise consumed promptly enough.

By the time the rule went into effect, two turns later, most players had begun to develop ways of preserving food, and the problem the new rule addressed also began to abate as players put their increased population to work in activities other than food production.

Logistics Mechanics in Strategic Primer

Ever since its initial conception (more about which in a later post), Strategic Primer has aimed to put at least some focus on logistics. In the current campaign, it is a major focus.