This would be a card-based game, possibly with tiles but I’m leaning towards no board or tiles. Basically, each player is an emperor/empress, king or queen etc. This could be historically based (Egypt, Rome, etc.) or fantastical. The goal is of course to ‘rule the world’. Essentially think of it as the game Civilization simplified to a deck of cards. You’d have armies that would be very crude (essentially just cards or chits representing units of 1,000 men). This wouldn’t be a game about military strategy or realism.
You would have cities (which could provide you troops), and could play event cards that affect your citizens and troops as well as those of others. You might have festivals that boost morale, taxes that drain morale. Perhaps it’s just a matter of who has the largest army to win a ‘battle’. For example: player A has five cities and a standing army of 12 (12,000 troops). Player B has three cities and 8 troop units, Player C has six cities and 10 units. Player A attacks C and wins (more units), and takes one of C’s cities.
Just thinking off the top of my head: each player in a battle loses one unit (keeps the big guy from getting too big). But, the winner chooses a city at random. If he/she wants a particular one, they have to lose an extra unit (troops had to fight extra hard to take a particular city). This infers different cities have different things to offer.
Each city will have a morale indicator (probably 4-5 levels on the side, a small chit will indicate current morale). The city can give more troops and maybe special bonuses in high morale, but can be a drain at low morale.
Cards like ‘tax’ may give you an extra unit per city, but will lower morale one level on each city.
Questions:
*I can see how all this could make for an interesting game of affecting your own citizens and troops, but how do you affect others?
*Can you play a maximum number of cards per turn?
*When do you play against an opponent?
*How many decks are there (city deck, event deck, etc.)?
*Obviously a powerful player will continue to grow, how do you check this?
*Can people be allies?