MTG Strategy Layer Proposal - Intro and Chapter 1

[Headrock]

Since the replies to my original post have petered out much sooner than I expected, I figured that to get the discussion going I should probably share at least some of what I have so far in terms of the design I had in mind.

The following is pretty much the summary of my MTG Strategy Layer idea, presented here with illustrations and a large amount of peripheral information. I will not go into too deep details (particularly stuff related to user-moddable content) or any of the complex algorithms, but will share enough to hopefully convince people that the idea is both good and viable.

DISCLAIMER: The images below are photoshop mock-ups only. There is no code as of this moment, nor will I start working on the code without guarantee that it could be plugged into MTG Forge (and the actual means to do so). Also, please forgive the low quality of the artwork, I had to do much of this by hand and did not put a lot of effort into making it look perfect - it simply represents the idea rather than how it would actually look.

DISCLAIMER #2: This is not, by far, any sort of finalized version of the rules or features of the proposed Strategy Layer. It is simply an idea that has received a lot of thought from me. It is also not a complete layout of everything I have considered - just what I think is important to mention. Don't be surprised if I already have answers to some of the problems you may spot here. Nonetheless, DEBATE IS ENCOURAGED. REPLY, REPLY, REPLY.

DISCLAIMER #3: I'm publishing this here in public because, quite frankly, if you steal this idea and run with it and actually make it happen, you've just saved me a lot of work. Of course, to paraphrase the old saying, "If you want something done, there's a good chance you'll have to do it yourself", as I have on many other past projects of mine. Still, if you can help, please do.

DISCLAIMER #4: Expect this post and the other parts of the article to be edited over time. I don't expect people to re-read and look for edits, but don't be surprised if something suddenly changes. This is NOT a finalized product.

Table of Contents
(These will be links as soon as I'm done posting all the chapters. Thank you for your patience.)


1. Concept and Basic Gameplay (this post)
2. Advanced Concepts
3. Invoking MTG Card Battles
4. Worlds
5. Challenges for this project


Concept

(Skip this if you want to get to the meat)

As I mentioned earlier, I played MTG Shandalar many years ago when it first came out, and a few years back I also acquired the updated Shandalar from the Manalink 3.0 project. I was very disappointed that, while the Manalink and match software was highly improved with thousands of new cards, the Shandalar portion was basically untouched in terms of content. I had considered perhaps looking into improving Shandalar so that could function with more cards and content, but then realized that a better idea would simply be to make a better campaign mode altogether.

Furthermore, while Shandalar is an enjoyable game that serves as a nice over-arching experience for MTG match play, has little to do with MTG in itself. It relies a lot on very simplistic mechanisms, like running around and dodging enemies, acquiring cards straight out of enemy packs (via ante), and basically acquiring more and more money and cards until you are strong enough to defeat all of the opponents. MTG match play, on the other hand, is a game of great forethought (both in constructing your deck and during play), and tactical prowess (reacting to the surprises that occur during a match, and to new enemy decks). I figured these should be reflected in the strategic play as much as in matches, and so the idea outlined below reflects that philosophy.

The Strategic play is designed to encapsulate many of the ideas and concepts appearing in an MTG card match, but taken into the realm of a turn-based strategy game. This was already done in Master of Magic (if you haven't played it yet - LOOK IT UP! Awesome game!), but was taken very far from MTG's concepts and is much closer to Civilization (whose engine was used in MoM). I am not attempting to make a MoM remake or clone, but a completely different experience that is directly related to MTG rather than resembling it or drawing inspiration from it.

Therefore, Strategic MTG will involve acquiring territory (lands), which in turn provide Mana, which is primarily used to enhance your capabilities (and your available decks), and slowly build up towards defeating your opponents. In this manner, it is closer to Shandalar in some ways, but the emphasis on land control makes it quite different from both Shandalar and MoM.

In a nutshell, it works as follows: The player starts with a set territory on the playing map. This territory provides some cards for a starting army, and slowly fills the player's mana reserves. Armies are sent out to conquer adjacent regions, thus expanding one's territory. Each region captured provides a number of extra assets and/or cards, and further increases mana accumulation. Capturing new regions is done by battling local forces in an MTG card match, using the cards allotted to the combating armies. The amount of Mana taken in by the player's lands determines the potential size and strength of the armies he/she can field, so more lands enables more (and stronger) armies to be formed. Of course, with more lands, more armies and assets are needed to prevent enemy wizards and even neutral roaming armies from retaking said land. Surplus mana can be used to fortify or improve one's occupied lands, and to cast certain spells that influence strategic gameplay. Mana can also be used to research new spells (adding them to your main card repertoire). Random encounters and other assets will provide alternative ways of acquiring more cards. The end goal is the same as in Shandalar, basically: defeat all of the opposing wizards, who are simultaneously trying to beat each other and the player.

With that huge block of text, I've basically described the entire idea in a nutshell. The following sections will give a small taste of what the game would probably look like in broad strokes, and how the above will be implemented.

Basic Gameplay Example

Instead of just describing the mechanisms in dry text, I've decided to make a simplified example of how the game will actually operate, accompanied by illustrations (photoshop, these are not real). We'll get to see a small bit of how the game would work from the first turn, and you can extrapolate on your own. Furthermore, the last chapter will outline advanced concepts that have been planned but not shown here.

The world we are about to play in is based on some 2ED content that I made as proof-of-concept. 2ED was chosen for reasons of simplicity - but there is really no reason this game couldn't work with ANY of the MTG sets, and in fact will strive to contain everything that MTG has to offer.

In this example, we will follow the very beginning of a game of MTG Strategy, just enough to get the general idea across.

Pre-Game Config

To start a campaign game, the player first will be asked to select a starting color (similar to Shandalar), as well as a world to play in (similar to Forge's quest mode), the size of that world, and the number of opponents. Additional settings may be added as needed, such as difficulty and so forth, but that is not important at this time.

The choice of color is very important, not only because it determines the kinds of lands and cards that the player will have in his/her repertoire at the start of the game, but will also have far-reaching implications throughout gameplay.

The choice of world will work similar to Forge's quest mode, in that it determines mainly what kind of enemies one will face during the game, and what cards will and will not be available to collect. Worlds will be defined
in external files, so that modders can add whatever they want. The implications of world choice are a little more complicated, and will be explained later on.

The size of the world, obviously determines the length and involvement of gameplay. Since MTG card matches can vary in length considerably, it is hard to estimate the length of a campaign based on size, but I figure the smallest world size will probably provide an hour or two of gameplay, while the largest world sizes should provide an almost-endless campaign, or at least one taking dozens of hours to complete.

The number of opponents is simply the number of AI players (or... human players?) present on the strategic map at the start of the game. They will endeavour to fight both each other and the human player.

With this set, the program will begin generating a new world for gameplay.

World Generation

The MTG Strategy campaign will be played on a hexagonal grid. The game world would, theoretically, be a large hexagon or square of a given size, sectioned into smaller hexagons (hereby referred to as "tiles"). Each tile represents a single "land" (I'll get to the meaning of that shortly).

The program begins by assigning each tile with a land type. For simplicity, in this example we will use the 5 "Basic Land" types which you are all familiar with. The algorithm will generally place Islands (or rather, "Open Seas") around the edges of the world map, place Swamps close to the shoreline, and will try to keep mountains further inland.

Below is an example of a small section of the map after generation has been completed. Once again, I apologize for the shoddy work in making this mock-up, so please assume that the map tiles continue up and left as can be expected. We'll focus on this part of the map anyway, so they just weren't important enough to fill in (it's a lot of work to do by hand!)


(Click image to enlarge)

As you can see, lands are assigned in patches (groups of similar lands next to each other) for several purposes, one of which will be clearer very shortly.

Lets get rid of all the fancy stuff and see this same piece of terrain in a different way, which will be more familiar and understandable (and somewhat less ugly):


(Click image to enlarge)

Each of these tiles will produce one mana of the corresponding color, to whichever player controls that tile.

Furthermore, each tile will provide its controlling player with the Basic Land card associated with it, which will be very important as we will soon see.

Regions

After assigning land types to each tile, the program proceeds to split up groups of similar tiles into what will be known hereafter as "regions". A region is a unitary piece of the map with its own properties, which can only change hands as a whole. Regions can be as small as 1 tile (though this will be very rare), or as large as 10 tiles.

Below is an example of region allocation which will be used for the rest of our example:


(Click image to enlarge)

I've chosen to keep regions above 2 tiles each for this example, even though 2 and 1 tile regions are both possible, for simplicity and visibility.

Again, regions will only change hands as a whole, so a region with more tiles will be quite coveted for the purpose of acquiring more mana and more land cards. However, as I'll explain in the Advanced Concepts chapter below, some tiny regions may be extremely valuable as well.

Region Capitals

The next and highly-important step for the program is to assign each region with special properties. Regions are not simply land, they often contain a central feature which acts as the "capital" of the region.

A "region capital" is a specific tile inside the region which must be captured in order to gain control of said region. The tile containing the capital is, by default, guarded by an enemy force which must be defeated, at which point the victor gains control of that capital and therefore the entire region.

The data files (in user-readable format, similar to decks, duels and challenges in MTG Forge) will define which regional capitals are available to be distributed, as well as a large number of important properties that distinguish them from one another. We'll get to that part soon.

For now, lets distribute some Regional Capitals around our map.


(Click image to enlarge)

We'll skip explaining what each of these is for now, and focus on the more basic-level ideas.

First of all, you can see that many of the regions on the map do not have a regional capital at all. These are "basic land" regions, and the rules governing them are a little more complex than military might - having to do primarily with the capture of regions surrounding them. In essence, you need to control at least 50% of the tiles around the edges of a "basic land" region in order to control that region, though there are many factors influencing how that number is actually calculated.

The regions containing regional capitals are the more important ones, and more valuable overall. The regional capital not only produces extra mana in many cases, but also provides a certain number of cards (as will be explained soon) to be added to the repertoire of the wizard controlling it. In essence, in order to make one's armies larger and stronger, regional capitals (and particularly those corresponding to your chosen color) must be wrested from the hands of enemies and neutral foes. The more of these you control, the better your options and the stronger your empire.

As I said, for now I will skip any in-depth explanations of regional capitals, but I do need to mention the big one in the top left corner that looks like an evil face. This is a "Black Sanctum", which will be the home of one of the players - in this case the human player which we will be playing in this example. The Black Sanctum will provide a hefty amount of Black Mana, and will serve many purposes. It is also the starting position for our player. The number of Sanctums placed on the map is equal to the number of players participating (whether human or AI), and are normally placed in the largest regions of the corresponding colors.

Starting Assets

When the game begins, the program will already give control of a few regions to the player, to form his/her starting territory. The selected regions are always ones containing Regional Capitals, and the program will endeavour to choose only ones that are very close to the player's Sanctum. It will also award the player any Basic LAnd Regions that would be necessary to create a direct uninterrupted link to the Sanctum, if necessary.

In the picture below, the red outline shows the extent of the player's territory after starting regions have been assigned:


(Click image to enlarge)

As you can see, the player controls the Black Sanctum region, as well as three regions around it. The region just west of the Sanctum is a small Swamp region containing a "Boneyard" capital. To the southwest is an "Elven Outpost" region of Forests.

The piece of ocean to the east does not have a Regional Capital, but has been awarded to the player by default because he already controls more than 50% of the tiles adjacent to that ocean region, as briefly explained earlier.

In addition to defining the size of the player's starting domain, the acquired regions already play a certain role in determining the player's starting assets.

Mana Generation

Each turn of gameplay, while this is the extent of the player's territory, he/she will accumulate an amount of Mana equal to the number and type of tiles under his/her control. In the example above, we can see that the player controls 13 Swamp tiles, 4 Forest tiles, and 6 Ocean (island) tiles. This means that each turn, the player will accumulate 13B, 4G and 6U.

Furthermore, based on the data files, each Regional Capital under the player's control will also provide a certain amount of Mana. The Black Sanctum provides 20B, the Boneyard provides 3B, and the Elven Outpost provides 3G, for a total of 36B, 7G, and 6U. The Ocean region does not have a capital, and thus does not give a bonus.

These values (36B, 7G, 6U) also dictate the limitations on the size of the player's armies/decks, as will be explained later (see Advanced Concepts).

The regional capitals (including the Sanctum) not only provide Mana, but also provide cards to the player's opening Repertoire. This is not the player's "deck", but rather the pool of cards the player can draw upon to create decks (i.e., "Owned Cards").

Initial Owned Cards

When the game begins, we need some cards in order to create our first deck. The cards we get for our "Repertoire" are dictated partially by the number and type of Regional Capitals we control, as well as some random factors.

For starters, each Regional Capital provides a set number of cards, of a certain spread of rarities, choosing from a limited number of options. These are all defined in the data file containing information about each regional capital. The varieties available to choose from will, ideally, be thematically compliant with the Regional Capital itself, in order to distinguish one from the other.

For example, the Boneyard will give us 2 Common cards which are selected at random from a specific variety of Black cards that are associated with bones - such as Drudge Skeletons and/or Raise Dead. The Elven Outpost will similarly provide 2 Common Green cards that are elven in nature - probably Llanowar Elves. The Ocean terrain, though not possessing a regional capital, will also provide a few Common Blue cards in a similar fashion, for instance a Sea Serpent or somesuch Common marine creature.

The Black Sanctum itself, being a high-powered and unique Region, will provide a few Uncommon Black cards, probably a couple of Black Knights.

In addition, as established earlier, each tile under our control provides our repertoire with a single Basic Land card representing it, so our player will have 13 Swamps, 4 Forests, and 6 Islands.

Finally, the game will fill up this starting repertoire to 40 cards, at random. The random process will generate cards only from the wizard's chosen color (in this case, Black), and according to the rules of rarity (i.e. more Common cards, a few Uncommon cards, and probably 1 or 2 Rare cards IF ANY).

It is important to note that the game will take into account the available casting strength (36B, 7G, 6U, remember?) when choosing these random cards. It will have to ensure that the total cost of all of the cards in our initial repertoire does not exceed the available casting power under any circumstances. It will drop cards from the repertoire and replace them with cheaper cards as necessary, to achieve this.

The Starting Army

With land control being the key aspect of this game, the player must be furnished with an army that will go out and conquer more lands.

To this end, the game provides a single "unit" - represented by a "commander". You can see him in the image below, indicated by the red arrow (sorry, he wasn't very visible )


(Click image to enlarge)

The player's starting Commander is selected at random from a list of available Black commanders, which are also defined as separate data files. In this case, it has chosen a Necromancer. That choice can have a serious impact on strategy, but we'll ignore it for now. At the moment we'll only mention that as a Black commander, the Necromancer has the ability to move two Swamp tiles per turn (but only one tile per turn on any other terrain).

The commander essentially represents an entire army - our only army at this point. We will be able to move him each turn, in order to make contact with enemies to take and/or defend territory as necessary.

The army accompanying the commander is made up of a deck of cards. By default, all of our starting repertoire is placed into his deck in order to make a legal deck (40 cards). As you gain more cards, you may be able to alter the deck as you see fit. However, the total casting costs of all cards in the army may not exceed the casting power of the wizard at any time! Therefore, our commander's army cannot, at this time, exceed a total casting cost of 36B, 7G, 6U. This includes ALL cards present in the deck.

As more and more lands are acquired, a commander's deck's total casting cost can be increased proportionally - or alternatively you may be able to create additional armies using surplus Mana, under new commanders, as necessary. All of this will be explained later.

Actual Gameplay

Now we get to the meat of the game - actually playing it. Gameplay runs in "Simultaneous Turn-Based" fashion (see Discussion section, at the end of this article). This means that we need to decide what we're going to do, give orders, and then "execute". Execution occurs simultaneously for all wizards and neutral forces, so a lot of forethought is required. However, a Simultaneous Turn Based system coupled with a time limit may be able to serve as an excellent basis for multiplaying - even in larger worlds with many players.

Therefore, during each turn, we will need to give orders for our commander to move - as well as perform some other, simpler tasks (more on that in the Advanced Concepts chapter). Every turn is valuable, since enemy wizards will also be moving each turn.

For starters, we'll want to take a look at the lands around our Sanctum, to figure out what we want to do. Lets see that same image again:


(Click image to enlarge)

To the northeast of our Sanctum is a Cloud City, which is quite a valuable Blue region capital - but our Necromancer cannot reach it (and would likely be trounced by the defenders even if he did). The Benalish Town to the northwest is an easier target, but since we are playing a Black wizard, that region is a lower priority (its benefits are not too good for us).

The obvious target would be to the south, a small 4-Swamp region containing a Flooded Cemetery. That region, when captured, will not only provide us with more Black mana, but also will likely provide a few Zombies which could come in handy. Plus, it's right on our starting borders, which makes it a good first choice.

In order to acquire that region, we need to get the Necromancer to the Region Capital's tile (the Flooded Cemetary itself).

As shown in the image below, this will take exactly 4 turns:


(Click image to enlarge)

Each arrow shows one turn's movement. On the first turn, our Necromancer can move 2 tiles, since he can move across 2 Swamp tiles per turn due to being a Black commander. On the next turn, he can only move 1 tile through the forest, and the same goes for the turn after that.

Finally, on the last turn he reached swamp again, and can move 2 tiles in the same turn to reach the Flooded Cemetery.

When this occurs, the game switches into MTG card match mode, wherein our necromancer (with his deck, comprised of all the cards we have, basically) will do battle against a pre-defined deck as detailed in the Flooded Cemetary data files. To preserve the theme, this will likely be a Zombie deck, though it will likely be a very weak deck due to the relatively low value of the Flooded Cemetary. For comparison, the Cloud City at the top-right corner of the map would be defended by a deck containing at least a couple of Phantasmal Forces and/or Phantom Monsters, and who knows what else (up to the content-writer's imagination, really), since it has a higher value. (The most well-defended region on this specific map, btw, would be the little island/tower at the very bottom...)

Outcome

For now, we'll assume that we've just won the battle (more on the actual battle below), and have gained control of the Flooded Cemetery.

Our territory now looks like this:


(Click image to enlarge)

As you can see, we now own the Flooded Cemetery's entire region, and also the open oceans to the east of that (since they belong to a non-capital region, and we control more than 50% adjacency).

This adds the following to our assets:
1) 4B and 5U each turn, from the land tiles captured.
2) 3B each turn, from the Flooded Cemetary itself, as defined in its data file.
3) 4 Swamp cards, and 5 Island cards added to our repertoire.
4) A couple of Common Black cards thematically appropriate for a Flooded Cemetery, such as Scathe Zombies, Plague Rats, and/or Raise Dead, added to our repertoire.
5) A couple of Common Blue cards from the open ocean region that we've also acquired.
6) A chance to get one or more cards added to our repertoire from the deck of the zombie army we defeated (essentially, an ante without an ante). The number and rarity of cards that can be awarded this way depends on the strength of the enemy force, so in this case we can expect no more than one or two common black cards. Lands cannot be acquired this way, though artifacts have a higher-than-normal chance of being acquired post battle.

Thanks to the extra casting power and cards added, we can now adjust our Necromancer's deck to remove a few Forests or Islands and replace them with Swamps, and probably remove a few Green/Blue cards to replace them with whatever we got from the Flooded Cemetery.

Moving on

Lets look at the Region map again:


(Click image to enlarge)

From this point on we will probably want to capture a few more "soft" targets around our territory to expand our power base. The Benalish Town to the north, the Samite Church west of the Flooded Cemetery, are both of little value to us, but more mana is usually better.

The Defiled Cathedral in the swamp at the bottom-left corner of the image above is the most lucrative target, probably, but may be difficult to capture so early in the game - though it is generally what we will try to acquire as soon as it is possible!

The most reasonable target would be the Dark Fort in the map's center left (the black mountain with a moon behind it). This is easier to take than the Defiled Cathedral, and will probably furnish us with a few more Black Knights and possibly some other near stuff. To get its benefits, we would first need to capture the Samite Church just to the west of the Flooded Cemetery. Doing so will also net us the patch of forest between the Dark Fort and the Elven Outpost that we already control.

However, as will be exaplained in the following chapter (Advanced Concepts), there are other things that we might be able to do in the coming turns in order to strengthen our Black powerbase and repertoire, which are an important alternative to just going around slaughtering things. Furthermore, this all assumes that our territory does not come under attack whilst we are organizing for expansion...

SUMMARY

In this "short" example, we've seen the basic gameplay involved in a game of MTG Strategy Campaign. I hope you agree with me that this type of game combines elements from MTG card play into a strategy-based environment, in a way that is at the very least intriguing.

Of course, as I'll explain in the next chapter, things can get a whole lot more involved - and a whole lot more interesting - beyond just moving around and fighting things to get territory and cards.

[Headrock]

Advanced Concepts

In the previous chapter I outlined the foundation of the MTG Strategy layer. The concepts described previously are pretty much immutable, as they are what makes the Strategy layer what it is, forming the basis for an interesting over-arching MTG experience. However, on their own they form a very simple game which does not require much more thought or strategy than Shandalar or even the Forge Quest Mode.

In this chapter, we'll explore some of the gameplay elements that make the game interesting and more complex. We'll see how territory is maintained and improved, how players interact with one another, and of course the many ways that a wizard's repertoire can be further expanded other than by direct conquest.

The concepts and gameplay elements outlined here are a less immutable than those in the previous chapter - they are much more open for debate, improvement, or even replacement. Discussion about the MTG Strategy Layer should probably focus on whether these elements make good ideas, whether they fit each other, whether they can be changed or improved, and whether other elements not listed here should be added in order to balance the game and/or make it function better.

Please note: while all elements described here add complexity to the basic gameplay, it is always important to keep the game PLAYABLE, going by the old axiom that complexity and playability can interfere with one another. Since the whole point of the Strategy Layer is to provide a more intelligent, involved experience, some complexity is not only required but actually desired - but not at the expense of keeping the game playable.

Please keep this in mind.

Other players

MTG Strategy is not played on an empty map where enemies simply wait for you to come and do battle with them. The whole idea revolves around enemies who react to your actions. Not only that, but they will actively seek to undermine your progress - as well as each other's progress. In other words, the enemy players play the same game that you do, attempting to take over the entire map and/or destroy all competition.

For now we will assume that all players except one are AI-controlled, since I don't suppose MTG Forge can be adapted easily for multiplayer just yet. Nonetheless, programming an AI capable of playing the game should be relatively easy, so long as we round some corners and give the AI some sort of advantage, to keep the challenge up.

For the most part, enemy players will be moving their armies around the map in the same way the player does. Naturally, since MTG card combat between two AIs is not currently available (though probably not too hard to implement), all battles between two enemy players and/or against Region Capital defenders will be handled using randomization (randomizing an outcome) with relative deck strengths used as a guideline (a more "advanced" deck would have a higher chance of winning such a match).

Enemy players will normally just attempt to expand their territory into areas that are likely to get them the cards they need in order to complete certain pre-constructed decks. The AI will compare its current deck to all available pre-con decks, to find the one that's closest to being completed. For example, if the AI finds that it has most of the cards required to construct a certain deck, such as the one used by Bart Simpson in the MTG forge quest decks (or any other pre-con deck we told it to check against), it will endeavour to complete its deck by conquering territories likely to provide the necessary cards. The AI will also be taught to seek the missing cards in other ways (as explained below in this chapter), whatever is necessary to complete a pre-con deck. The AI will continuously seek to improve its deck, by aiming for gradually better decks that are close to its current repertoire.

Enemy armies will generally move either towards territories it wishes to conquer, or to intercept and do battle with nearby armies belonging to opponents. Movement itself should be pretty straightforward, the AI doesn't need to be too fancy about it.

If the AI turns out to be too weak, there are plenty of easy ways to give it a certain advantage - such as by increasing Life totals for its armies, increasing the size of its initial deck and/or the benefits it gets from conquered territories, etc.

Neutral Armies

To add some challenge, I've also been considering allowing neutral Region Capitals (i.e. capitals not currently conquered by any player) to intermittently send out armies of their own, to "liberate" an adjacent territory.

Such an army will spawn out of the neutral region capital, outfitted with a full pre-con deck that is thematically suitable for its type, and head directly towards a nearby region controlled by one of the players.

If the player does not intercept and defeat that army, it will reach the intended destination, lay siege to that destination for a few turns, and then (if still unstopped) will liberate that territory (returning it to "neutral" state, as it was when the game started).

This will give the player more chances to do battle, and will make the game more interesting by requiring the player to construct armies simply to defend his/her flanks. It will also encourage the player to further consolidate his hold on regions that are not very strategically beneficial, but nonetheless threaten the stability of his empire.

AI players will also seek to intercept these neutral armies when they head into the AI's territory, just like they would intercept opponent armies.

Resources

As with any strategy game, the accumulation and use of resources is going to serve an important purpose here, or rather two purposes: resources can be used to acquire additional cards, and they can also be used to improve the strategic situation on the map in several ways.

The MTG Strategy Campaign has two primary kinds of resources: mana, and gold. They are accumulated differently, from different sources, and are used either together or seperately.

Surplus Mana Accumulation

In the previous chapter I explained how the Mana that is collected from lands and capitals determines the maximum size and composition of the armies under your control. Remember, the total casting cost of your deployed forces (including all cards added into the deck of all commanders you have) cannot at any time exceed the amount of Mana produced by your lands and capitals.

However, I also mentioned that these lands and capitals produce Mana on a per-turn basis, and that was no mistake. Each turn, the player accumulates all Mana that was not spent on maintaining armies. In other words, you can imagine that each turn you spend an upkeep on each card in each army deck that is exactly equal to the Casting Cost of that card, but you get to keep every Mana point you did not spend this way.

For example, in the previous chapter we were generating 36 Black Mana, 7 Green, and 6 Blue. Lets say that our commander's army, meaning all cards added to the commander's deck, have a combined casting cost of 35B, 7G, and 4U. This is the upkeep we need to spend every turn in order to maintain said army, which leaves us with 1B and 2U to spare. This is a mana surplus, which is accumulates in our mana pool from turn to turn. Therefore, at the start of the second turn we will have 1B, 2U in the pool. At the start of the third turn, we will have 2B, 4U, and so on.

Note that whenever cards are pulled out of a commander's deck, they no longer require an upkeep - but there will be another mechanism to ensure that players cannot simply alter a deck as they see fit to exploit this.

Accumulating Gold

Gold is accumulated somewhat differently than mana. A few capitals will be able to produce some gold (as taxes) from turn to turn, but most will not.

Instead, gold is awarded in bulk when conquering a capital, and more can be acquired in several other ways which depend on the color of your wizard. For example, white wizards get more gold per turn from gold-producing capitals, black wizards can convert mana into gold at an exorbitant rate, blue wizards get more gold each turn based on the number of blue capitals they own, red makes a LOT of gold per turn from certain capitals but has no other way to create it, and green has a massive discount on all transactions requiring gold.

This is just one example of how it could be handled, of course, but the point is that gold does not accumulate in the same way that mana does. Extra gold may also be acquired from special encounters (more on this later), or by selling artifacts in a way similar to Shandalar's card selling (more on this later as well).

Improving Regions

The primary use for resources is to improve one's owned regions. Each region has several levels of improvement, with most probably having no more than 4 distinct levels. Regions without capitals will normally only have 2 levels at most.

The cost to improve a region includes a certain mix of gold and mana (of the appropriate color for that region), with the exact mix being defined in that region's data files. Some regions will cost a whole lot more to go from one level to the next, while some can be upgraded rather cheaply.

All regions start at level 1, and will improve over time (a lot of time) if they stay neutral. However, wizards will want to upgrade their regions relatively quickly, to get the associated bonuses.

Each time a region is improved, it will add a few appropriate cards to the wizard's repertoire, just as it did when it was first captured. However, the quality and variety of cards will improve with each level. For example, that Flooded Cemetery we captured in the previous chapter gave us a couple of Common cards at first, probably a couple of Scathe Zombies and/or Plague Rats, but at level 2 it has a chance to provide a Scavenging Ghoul, and at level 3 it may provide one or more Bog Wraiths.

Some regions provide very little until the last level or so, such as that island tower near the bottom of the map with the symbol of an hourglass on top - it can provide one of the 2ED rare blue cards like Ancestral Recall or Timetwister when upgraded all the way up to level 4 - but until that time will only provide a scant few Blue common cards with each level.

Notably, each level will also require more gold and mana than the last - meaning that it may take a very long time to get the region to its highest level, particularly if it is a valuable region. The cost of upgrades is directly related to the value of the cards it can get you.

Upgrading a region also upgrades its garrison's deck - making it harder for enemies to take the region. Finally, regions may or may not provide more mana and/or gold with each upgrade level.

Special Region Abilities

Some regions, in particular the rarer and most valuable ones, may have an "Activated ability" that can be used by expending mana and/or gold. Said abilities have some sort of effect on the strategic map, or on one of your armies, whenever they are used.

The possibilities here are enormous, of course, allowing a very wide range of things that can be done with mana. For example, it may be possible to gain an extra turn, bolster an army's Life totals, change the lands of a region, and so forth. Region capitals will likely have only one such ability if any, though the player's own Sanctum may have several.

The mana and gold expenditure for performing this would need to be suitably high, of course.

Research

In addition, some regions' special ability would enable researching new spells. This would be the primary way to acquire new instants, sorceries and enchantments for your repertoire, as they are rarer than creatures. Most region capitals will award you primarily with creatures when they are captured and upgraded, and spells would be rarer as rewards for defeating enemy armies. Thus, wizards will do well to acquire regions that are capable of performing research (and may need to upgrade such regions until research becomes available).

Once research is available, the player will need to expend a copious amount of mana (proportional to the cost and value of the intended spell to research) in order to begin said research. Research also takes a good number of turns to complete. Once it is done, however, the wizard will receive a number of cards directly into his repertoire, as appropriate.

I'm not certain yet whether research should produce a random selection of spells and/or creatures (similar to a booster deck, but of a specific color and rarity distribution) or whether the player should be able to select which card to research - but this can be discussed and decided at a later time.

Terraforming

Naturally, most wizards will find the even distribution of lands on the map to be detrimental, as they wish to focus on just one or two colors; lands of other colors are somewhat useless to them. The way to overcome this is by doing terraforming on owned regions.

Each color handles this in a different way. For example, Black might be able to raze any non-black region capital under its control, spend mana to cause a nearby swamp to expand into that region, and then spend resources to erect a new region capital there. Green's forests may be able to expand on command, from one forest region to an adjacent one, requiring a great deal of time but little mana expenditure. Red might be able to raise a volcano, which destroys the region it's in, but over time transforms all adjacent regions into mountains or red lands. Again, there are many possibilities how this could be handled, and I'll always welcome ideas on this.

Given sufficient time and resources, a wizard could essentially turn the entire map to his/her color - but of course by that time the player would already have won the campaign. Still, it means that the original distribution of lands and regions on the map can be adjusted, given time and resources, to suit the player's needs.

Armies

As explained in the previous chapter, armies are basically comprised of a commander with a deck of his own, moving across the map. To start, the game does this automatically, to create your first army - but soon enough the player has to do this himself, whether to modify an existing army or create a new one.

The end result is, basically, what opponent wizards already did in MTG Shandalar - sending skilled commanders against the human player. In the MTG Strategy Layer, the human player will also do the same thing; but both AI and human players can now customize their armies' decks.

Commanders

To create a new army, it is first required to select a commander. Available commanders will also be defined by data files, one for each type, and would include Vampires, Elves, Time Sorcerers, Troll mages, and whatever you can think of, just as in Shandalar and frankly any deck in MTG. However, much like MTG's Vanguard playing style, the leader of an army has certain advantages and disadvantages. However, whether or not they affect MTG card play (life totals, at least, SHOULD be affected), commanders will largely perform differently on the strategy map itself.

For starters, all commanders of a specific color can travel quicker on tiles of that color than on tiles of other colors. Some commanders would have certain characteristics - keyword abilities if you may - to make them more valuable, and thus cost more resources to recruit. Some commanders may serve better as regional garrisons, acquiring or delivering certain benefits when they are in friendly territory - and others will be better on the offense. Some commanders can fly with their armies, moving at the same speed over any terrain, and some can see further away on the map. The options, obviously, are quite varied.

As the player's power increases, he/she will need to hire or create better commanders in order to gain superiority on the battlefield.

Army Decks

A commander's deck is the deck that this commander will use when entering any battle. This deck is malleable, so the player controlling the commander will be able to modify the deck almost at will, so long as upkeep costs are observed. To prevent exploits and maintain a level of forward-thinking, army decks can only be altered when the commander is either at a town or at the sanctum itself (I haven't decided which, yet). Another possible solution would be that adding a card to any army deck will cost a certain amount of mana to be spent, based on the card's value and/or casting cost. Sideboards may be possible too, and there are other possibilities.

A multitude of armies

Naturally, as an empire grows, its borders can no longer be defended by a single army. More and more armies would need to be created, and given orders each turn. This means both hiring more commanders, and also constructing new decks for them given the available cards. Most players will likely want to have one army that is very strong, to deal with the worst enemies or take the most heavily-defended territories. But at the same time, cards that didn't "make the cut" into your primary fighting deck can be added to the decks of lower-level commanders, tasked with defending your territory against more minor threats, such as the optional "neutral armies" discussed previously.

This forces the player to improvise with less-than-stellar cards even after he has managed to construct a great primary deck. Mana constraints also come into play, due to the rules of upkeep that have been mentioned previously in this article. Without a sufficient number of armies on hand, you may find that the enemy keeps biting off bits of territory just as fast (or faster) than you can retake them.

Advanced Map Rules

I promised that I will explain how non-capital regions are taken over in more detail, and I'll do that now.

Also I want to talk about random encounters and other map effects that might be interesting.

Non-Capital Regions

Some regions on the map, around 50%, have no capital within them. This means that there is no central location to attack in order to take control of the region. Nonetheless, these region can still provide mana, some cards, and even be upgraded a little, so control over these regions is still strategically important. Finally, new capitals can be established in Non-Capital Regions as well, given time and resources.

For starters, how do Non-Capital Regions (NCRs) change hands? It has to do with the amount of territory around the NCR, and which wizards (if any) control it.

Whenever any region changes hands, the program will run a check on each NCR on the map to see whether it changed hands. The check involves going through each Tile which borders the NCR, and awarding wizards with "Adjacency Points" based on how many of those tiles they control.

Therefore, for each tile, we check this:
1) If the Tile is inside a region that has a Capital, and is owned by one of the players, that player receives +1 Adjacency Point.
2) If the tile is owned by a player whose primary color matches that of the NCR we're checking, that player receives +1 Adjacency Point.
3) If the tile belongs to a neutral region, then the Neutral faction gets +1 Adjacency Point.

After running through all those tiles on the border, we tally up the sums. If any player has more than 50% of the total points allotted this way, then he/she has won control of the entire NCR in question so long as those 50% are kept. If the numbers ever change, the NCR may be awarded to another wizard, or returned to Neutral status.

If two or more players got an equal number of Adjacency Points, then the region becomes Neutral, serving as a sort of no-man's-land between these players' territories.

What all this means is that wizards of a certain color will find it easier to expand into regions that match their colors, as they need less adjacency in order to win those regions over. Also, since NCR regions themselves do not give you a lot of adjacency points into other NCR regions, it is less likely to win a large number of NCRs without a fight - even if they are all bunched up together.

If multi-color wizards are later implemented, then their handicap will be that they only get part of the bonus when considering their colors during the adjacency calculation.

Naturally, players will sometimes strive to erect a new Region Capital in a region that did not previously have one. Not only will add cards to the repertoire, and add more mana each turn, but it will make adjacency captures in an area much easier.

Non-Basic Regions

Naturally, since regions and tiles represent familiar MTG lands, it may also be necessary to model non-Basic lands in the same manner.

Non-Basic lands are suitably rarer than other regions, but add important and interesting effects. For starters, whenever such a land is captured by a wizard, it will add the corresponding land card to the player's repertoire, along with any other benefit it may give.

Non-Basic regions can be associated with more than one color, and/or with no color at all, adding to various interesting effects regarding strategic planning - particularly in matters of adjacency as explained in the previous section.

Non-Basic regions would therefore be highly coveted for various reasons, and a single one captured can have great effects.

Random Encounters

As in Shandalar, there really is no reason not to include random encounters into this world, and they can take different forms too.

For starters, all of these encounters will be defined by their own moddable data files, so that users can come up with new ones as they please. Encounters will largely fall into various categories and have various properties - but they are all geared towards either triggering a battle for the army that entered them (lucrative or otherwise), to present a puzzle with the chance of getting some reward, or to simply spruce up the game.

Encounters will be placed on the map at random, every so and so turns. An encounter may last indefinitely within its tile (essentially making it a re-visitable permanent location, somewhat similar to region capitals), disappear after first encountered, and/or disappear after an allotted amount of time.

Furthermore, some encounters will be clearly visible on the map to any army that approaches them, while others are completely hidden until an army steps right on top of them. Others yet might be advertised to all players as soon as they are placed on the map. It may be nice to link some of them together, such as finding a map that leads to a previously-hidden encounter, similar to how it worked in Shandalar.

Encounters that involve a battle can be a lot more interesting than simple battles with Region Capitals, neutral armies, or even enemy armies - just like Challenges are in MTG Forge today. Fights against two or more enemies - whether altogether or as a gauntlet - are something that MTG Shandalar touched upon but had no way to really capitalize on. MTG Forge, however, is already quite capable of doing all this.

With proper programming and/or scripting, a lot can be achieved with this system. In fact, a game world could be instructed to place a specific encounter on the map, at a specific (or partially-random) time during the campaign, to create a sort of scripted storyline unique to that world. If Weird Worlds has taught us anything, you can make pretty interesting scenarios of this even in a very simple game. In fact, if this is done properly we could then add encounters that are not even static - they spawn a neutral army somewhere on the map which starts to rampage around. Think of the possibilities!

Spellcasting on the Map

Beyond using mana to research spells and buy various upgrades, it should also be possible to cast certain MTC spells on the Strategy Map, to achieve effects similar to those that the card achieves in battle (but obviously not identical, since MTG card play and MTG Strategic play obviously work differently from one another).

This concept gets a little more complicated because we would have to decide, as a community, which spell card does what. Creating this feature would therefore require creating a lot of content to support it, so I expect this feature to be added on top of the game well after it already works.

However, I see this as a crucial part in order to make the Strategy Layer fully complete, so if the project does take off and the game does work, I will likely spend time to actually add this feature.

Personally, I don't think it would need a lot of imagination to "translate" most cards from the card-match scope to the strategic scope. Still, I expect that this feature may sound heretical to some here

SUMMARY

Most if not all of the above features are pretty much essential to making an MTG Strategy game interesting, beyond being just a way to get from one fight to the other. They are what makes the MTG Strategy Layer on par -- and beyond -- MTG Shandalar.

In the next (shorter!) chapter I will talk about how MTG card matches will flow from the Strategy Layer, and how the interaction between both layers will work.

[Headrock]

Invoking MTG Card Matches, and their repercussions

The whole point of the MTG Strategy layer is not to be a stand-alone strategy game - if I wanted to do that, I would go remake Master of Magic. Instead, the whole point is to serve as the over-arching experience to tie together a series of MTG card matches. That's what we're all here for, right?

This is why my first and foremost plea is for help "hooking" the strategy layer into Forge, so that the Strategy Game can invoke combat, with a given set of parameters, and to be affected by the results of the card match.

If this "hook" is built well enough, all sorts of types of matches can be invoked, against different enemies and with different conditions, much like MTG forge matches can do today (particularly, Challenge mode matches).

Therefore, the Strategic information affects the match, and the match in turn affects the strategic situation after it resolves. Below are some of the key aspects of this.

When do battles occur?

And MTG card match is triggered in the following cases, with different parameters as appropriate:
1) Attacking a neutral Region Capital
In this case, battle simply involves the deck of the attacking army, versus the pre-constructed deck belonging to the Region Capital. The deck chosen for the neutral garrison is replaced by a stronger, more valuable deck each time the region is improved, and starting life totals may vary accordingly.
2) Attacking an enemy army
Probably the simplest case, wherein the match involves the deck of one army vs. the deck of the other army. However, it may be possible to invoke battles between several armies if they all converge on the same place. I've already thought of ways this could be made even more interesting than a simple 1v2 fight (or whatever), but this is not the place and time to mention them. The life totals used for each army will likely vary due to the effect of the commanders of these armies.
3) Attacking an enemy Region Capital
Same as attacking a neutral one, except in this case the enemy may move his armies into that Region Capital in order to bolster its defenses. In other words, the enemy army deck fights alongside the local garrison deck, against any and all invading army decks. This makes it a match of at least 2v1, depending on how many armies each side brought to the fight. In either case, the defenders should have the advantage by being able to field a limited number of creatures and/or enchantments before the game begins - as often happens in MTG Forge Challenges. If a single invading deck is not sufficient to defeat this advantage, the invader would do wise to bring two or more armies in order to subdue this defended location.
4) Attacking a random encounter zone
This could be a fight of any type, under any given parameters, just like today's Challenges - including multiple opponents, cards already in play, a gauntlet of several decks, and using pre-con, random, or any other type of deck.
5) Ambush
This occurs when an army steps into a random encounter zone that was hidden on the map (or... a cloaked enemy army?). In this case, again, many rules can apply - but the ambushing army starts with an advantage of one or more cards already in play.

Aftermath

When the match is concluded per the rules of MTG, we return to the Strategy Map to apply the consequences.

The consequences of a match, and particularly of any match between two armies belonging to rival opponents, can be debated in depth - since there are many possible ways this could be handled.

The first option is that the defeated army withdraws several tiles, and can decide whether it wants to counterattack in subsequent turns, or retreat fully.

Another option is to "scatter" the losing army. This means that the commander will disappear and will only reappear at your Sanctum (or, a nearby capital?) after a short while. Upkeep is no longer paid for any cards in that commander's deck, but those cards may not be removed from the deck either until the commander reappears.

A harsher option is to actually lose some cards from a commander's deck whenever his army is defeated. However, I much prefer another system that I call "replenishment".

Army Replenishment

This system involves recovering from the loss of an army. It may be a little controversial, but I like it. Moreover, it may serve well as an optional feature for "extra challenge" that players may toggle on and off at will.

With this system in play at its "fullest" extent, at the end of any battle the game will check the graveyards and exile of all cards in each of the participating decks. All of these cards are marked as "depleted" in that deck. "Depleted" cards will not appear in any match played by that deck until they are "replenished", which is done by paying a certain amount of Mana and/or Gold - corresponding to the card's value.

I have not yet decided whether this should apply to all cards or just creatures, artifacts and so on, but that decision will likely come under a lot of debate anyway. The point of it, however, is that a strong deck will not simply be able to "plow through" an enemy's entire territory without stopping - you would have to pay for any losses incurred during the battle, using hard-earned resources.

Under this scheme, a defeated army would not only have its graveyard/exiled cards depleted, but also a certain percentage of the cards that were on the battlefield at the end of the match, and possibly even some cards from the library. Thus, a defeat would cause a serious setback.

A deck with depleted cards in it may still enter battle, but those cards are removed from the library prior to the battle's start. Such armies will be marked so that players know they are "weakened". An army with fewer than 40 non-depleted cards in it will be automatically defeated if it ever goes into combat, as per MTG's normal rules.

Theoretically, replenishment should only be possible when an army is inside friendly territory, or in an owned Region Capital, or whatever rule we decide to apply that balances this feature properly.

Commander Life Totals

Another possibly-controversial feature would be to keep a commander's Life Totals after a battle is concluded, allowing such commanders to slowly regain life over time (or thanks to spells/effects applied to them via resource expenditure to speed it up).

This may cause some problems for certain decks, and it may or may not be possible to avoid those problems using various kinds of strategic/commander-based effects, but overall I think this feature would be a good idea.

If life replenishment rates are set sufficiently high, this will only have the effect of making heavy assaults into enemy territory more difficult to accomplish, thus making for a slower and more strategy-intensive games.

Rewards

As mentioned earlier in this article, I think that there should be an aspect of "Ante" when playing these battles - in that the winning army can either take or duplicate one or more of the loser's cards. There are many ways this could be handled, and again I don't wish to go too deeply into these.

Suffice to say that this would make at least some battles - even against plain enemy or neutral armies - rewarding in and of itself.

SUMMARY

I hope that I have explained in this chapter how the MTG Strategy Layer will interact with the card combat layer. I think all of the above speaks for itself, and it really doesn't differ much from battles invoked in MTG Forge's current Quest mode.

In the next and final article, I will talk more about how MTG Strategy worlds work from a modder's perspective, and how they can even be tied together to many an even grander experience.

[Headrock]

MTG Strategy WORLDS

As we know from MTG Forge's Quest mode today, moddability can make for some very unique and interesting scenarios. Simply by deciding which cards and which assets (in Quest mode, the duels and challenges) are included in the game, we can make one game be quite unlike the other.

In addition, since the games are much more grounded in a set of physical rules than the current Quest mode, we can also integrate one world into another, essentially creating cross-planar gameplay or even simulating a "Block".

This article will first explore how world content is created, by official and non-official modders.

Creating a World

When we make a new world for MTG Strategy, our primary concern is to define to ourselves which sets will be involved. Ideally, a world should focus only on a few sets that are thematically similar (sets from the same block, for example, or from similar periods). Of course, it would always be possible to create worlds potentially containing all cards and all sets - though the size of the world itself may impact on this.

By indicating the available set types, we control not only which cards can appear and be used during the game, but also which Region Capitals and even non-capital regions (mainly, non-basic regions) can be spawned on the map.

In my example in Chapter 1, we saw a world that was confined to 2ED cards. If we wanted to, we could simply create some Regions and/or Random Encounters for Snow-Covered lands, which will add ICE cards to our repertoire, and thus be able to include some or all ICE cards into the world by including those regions in the random region distribution list.

Ultimately, it is the choice of regions that would have the greatest effect. Simply add regions related to other sets, and you've effectively made the world more interesting. Personally, however, I think it is more thematically appropriate to keep certain sets separate from other sets, in order to create an environment that more closely resembles MTG's planechasing and its many multiple blocks, sets and cycles.

One way to achieve this is by using portals.

Planar Portals

If all goes well, I would very much like to introduce portals into the game. These tiny regions, containing only the portal itself (a region capital of sorts), enables a player to expand into a different world than the one he is currently playing.

By using this feature, a player gaining control of said portal could start a whole new game on a new map, using some or all of the assets accumulated on the current world in order to take control of another one. The other world can be identical to the one just played (thus, potentially, allowing endless play even after a whole map has been conquered) or be very different - offering a very different selection of Regions and Regional Capitals as well as cards available for purchase. In the former option, it might make sense to enable the portal only

after a world has been fully conquered, to allow the adventure to continue. In the latter case, it may be possible for one or more armies to make a "foray" into another plane in order to gain assets there, and them maybe even move back into the original world in order to utilize those "extra-planar" assets. For example, an army could be sent through a portal from a basic 4ED world into an ICE or HML world to gather some important cards there, then move back to the 4ED world to complete its conquest with those cards.

The extra planes don't necessarily have to be as large as they original world - they can be either larger or smaller, it's all up to the modders and possibly the players too. Again, this could be a way to keep the game challenging (by moving into a world with more cards and new challenges, or a larger world than the one just played) or simply as optional assets waiting to be tapped (smaller "side worlds" visited only for gathering certain cards not available on any other world). In fact, it can be possible that the new world works with the same card sets as the previous one did, but is larger, or more dangerous, contains more enemy players, etcetera.

Once again, the options here are staggering with just a simple function. I suspect this one will raise a lot of debate, but I'm hoping it will also raise a lot of ideas too

[Headrock]

Project Challenges

Here I would like to discuss the challenges awaiting this project, primarily from a coding standpoint, as well as explain what I personally can and cannot do for it. If you're just interested in the idea of the MTG Strategy game, rather than the nitty gritty of making it work, you can stop reading now.

What is required to start

In order to make the strategy layer work, there are several "relatively basic" things that need to be done with the code. Unfortunately, with almost non-existent knowledge of Java, I will likely not be able to accomplish any of them anytime soon. However, the Forge coders certainly could, and I expect that other people with knowledge of Java should also be able to accomplish these.

1) MTG Strategy is a LAYER, not a stand-alone game. It should be accessed THROUGH the MTG Forge main menu, just like Quest Mode is accessed, and exist as one of the tabs across the top of the MTG Forge window. This means that the interface should be made to open it, the tab should appear across the top, and the current running Strategy Game and all its information be saved when Forge exits.
2) MTG Strategy needs a way to invoke battles, and to feed the combat layer with a wide variety of information. Challenge decks already do this with a LOT of info, but this also needs to be exposed to the Strategy Layer.
3) Also, DrDev has commented that it may be difficult to display a lot of graphical objects on screen using the Java Swing software that MTG Forge runs on. I am not familiar with its capabilities, I only know what kind of requirements the game would have in terms of graphics and interface elements, so I have no idea whether a different API would have to be plugged into MTG Forge in order to enable it to run the MTG Strategy Layer as well. And even if I did know, I doubt I would know how to plug such an API into Forge in the first place.
4) MTG Strategy's rules need to be DEBATED. Though I would argue that most of them are rock-solid, I am obviously very biased. If people do not like an idea, it needs to be discarded or retought, since the whole point is for people to enjoy the finished project.

Content creation is also a massive chore to be done, but I am far less afraid of that prospect because creating said content is part of the fun - creating new Regions, Capitals and Worlds is really enjoyable, and gives you a lot of acquaintance with cards you may not have been familiar with. In fact, I plan to create a lot of content myself to be released with the earliest versions of the game, if it does take off. I suspect that a lot of people will enjoy taking part in making more content as well. Furthermore, content can always come piece-meal, no need to start with a game that can include ALL 14000 cards or however many there are. Over time, more and more cards will appear, and with the Planar Portal option (discussed in the previous chapter), players may also be able to add new content to existing games.

Additional capabilities that would help

There is little that an MTG Strategy game would demand, in terms of Forge's capabilities, beyond what Forge can already do (as seen in Quest mode). Invoking battles under more complicated circumstances, such as battles between many opponents, would be nice. But really, I don't see that MTG Forge has to be altered in any significant way to enable this Strategy Layer to function - if at all.

Gameplay Coding

As far as coding the rules and behavior of the world, I am quite perfectly capable of doing this, even in Java, as it is all a matter of translating the rules already outlined in this article into algorithms. Though I'm accustomed to C++ rather than Java, in terms of rulesets they are not really different. As I mentioned earlier, I could program this in Javascript if I had to (but that is not a good idea), by which I mean to say that it really isn't all that of a big deal.

Interface may be a more problematic issue, though it too is far less daunting than the groundwork I described earlier - patching this layer into the MTG Forge program seamlessly.

Artwork

This is probably the most time-consuming part, and would require different people to work on it than the coders, people with good artistic skills. I do have some skill, but there are likely lots of people here with even more skill. In any case, one of the ideal ways to get a lot of graphics for the Strategy Layer would be to cannibalize MTG card artwork - such as cropping certain images for use as Region Capital indicators, army icons, and what not. This would still require a lot of work, and may or may not produce results pleasing to the eye, but can be used as a fallback in case we have a problem finding skilled artists.

[drdev]

May I be the first to say... Wow!

I wish you much luck in making this game mode a reality. Although my primary focus is the mobile version of Forge right now, I'm definitely open to and interested in contributing to this effort if I can.

Thanks.
-Dan

P.S. Can somebody sticky this thread so it's less likely to fall off people's radar. Non-stickied threads usually do on these forums sadly.

[Sloth]

Firstly i would like to say that i always had hopes that forge would finally get another layer above quest mode. And i'm very happy that you tackle this with so much enthusiasm.

But looking at your proposal, i'm confidant that your layer has too much going on. Imagine how long one turn in your world would take. One match of magic will last more than 30 minutes (at least for an inexperienced player). If i understand correctly multiple battles per turn are possible, so a turn could take more than one hour to finish. All stratetic thinking will be very hard with delays this long and game sessions can become frustrating because no big progress was made.

So my goal would be to keep the strategic layer much much more simple. Shandalar was a great game, because it was so simple (outside the magic matches), it had huge flaws, but it didn't matter so much that way (because the core of collecting cards, making a deck and playing magic is so great).

[moomarc]

I think it would be an awesome idea and have to say you've done a great job constructing the basic mechanics of play, and I think I'd have to disagree with Sloth to some degree. While a turn is likely to take almost as long as you initially envisioned entire short sessions to be, I think that the map strategy part of the game can be handled at a quick glance. Generally seeing the position of your Commander should remind you of where you were going, but perhaps to make planning easier you could do what a lot of turn-based strategy games do with multi-turn movements and allow you to use a go-to command. That would then indicate the shortest route graphically and perhaps with turn indicators on each tile along the path. You would then automatically move along that path when you end your turn unless you change the commander's destination.

And I'd be able to help with art asset creation. That's why I'm the pixel commander

[friarsol]

Note: I'm going to refer to Army Leaders as "Generals" instead of "Commander" since Commander has a different connotation in the Magic world.

I agree that there needs to be some spots that you can setup long term strategies, so player's aren't penalized for not being aware of a mid-turn/between turn actions.

Things that can help resolve that would include:
1) Long-term movement. Just as moomarc suggests, no matter what your army general current movement speed is, showing arrows of it's current path, where red arrows show how far it can move at the end of this turn, and in gray arrows the rest of a selected path in gray.

2) Queued researching. For cities that have more than one upgrade remaining allow one queue slot to allow you to select if you want to start researching the next step in line immediately after the current research is finished. I know for certain that any type of beginning of a turn recap, I skip half the time without actually looking if my cities finished researching without

3) Battle list. As the turn begins to resolve, you should have a list of all battles that need to be resolved. Can the order that games resolve effect other game events?


Here are some more specific comments, although it's a ton to digest, so I'll probably have more if I read through it again later:

1) Are full 3 game matches played? This matters for Sloth's point of: "full matches can take 30+ minutes, which can be a lot of time for a game who's primary focus is the TBS campaign aspects"

2) Movement points - You clearly covered that you can move up to 2 spaces with a single movement point if you're in your base land type. Can generals have more than one movement point in a turn? If so, at what speed does movement happen when creating conflicts? Similarly, say I have a triad of three neighboring hexes. One is empty, my general is in one and my opponent's general is in the other. These hexes are my base type. If my opponent moves onto my hex, and I move to the free hex and then the hex my opponent was on, would a conflict arise? Or do generals also have initiative, where even though the orders are simultaneous, so the general with the highest initiative actually moves first? Or do conflicts only happen if two generals land on the same square (this scenario could occur in 5 connected where both generals are trying to move through the same square that is of the same base type).

3) Multi-colored Planeswalkers. You state several times throughout the proposal that your planeswalker only gains bonuses for being in it's own color. This feels very.. old school Magic. Why shouldn't a Black Mage supplement his deck with awesome blue cards to control the game better? Why shouldn't a Red Mage add some Beasts and Enchantment removal with Green? I guess I'm fine with my special powers being linked to my original color decision, but I find single color decks a bit boring, and if they are penalized too much for wanting to do that, I think that's a bad thing. Maybe you could terraform for some type of non-basic land. It provides you some of each mana type, but less gold is earned from that land (or something).

4) Deck Construction and Mana Resources - I just wanted to clarify how controlled land influences deck construction. If I control 22 Black hexes, and 10 blue hexes. That gives me 22B and 10U. Does a card just count it's casting cost for it's mana reliance? So a Black Knight needs 2 B. But a Sengir Vampire also needs 2 B? Or does the Vampire need 5? What about colorless cards? Does an Icy Manipulator just take 4 of anything?

I have some more comments coming, but I have to run out, so I'll post those later this afternoon/evening.

[Headrock]

Thank you all for the feedback. I'll do my best to answer all the points brought up.

One match of magic will last more than 30 minutes (at least for an inexperienced player). If i understand correctly multiple battles per turn are possible, so a turn could take more than one hour to finish. All stratetic thinking will be very hard with delays this long and game sessions can become frustrating because no big progress was made.

Being that the idea is to play Magic battles, I don't think it really matters how long they take, so long as you rarely play the same battle twice. Plus, every victory you have should be quite influential on the strategic game (except, I suppose, invasions by neutrals?), so I don't see what you mean about "no big progress".

Also, I know from the article above, the strategy layer probably seems more complex than it would actually be. Remember, you'll be unlikely to have to move more than half a dozen armies each turn (and that's on a very big map, probably), and everything else revolves around getting the cards that you still need for your decks, much as in Shandalar. "Do I have the mana to upgrade such-and-such region that might give me a few nice cards? No? Ok, move this army here, this army here, next turn" would likely be the entirety of the thought process for the earlier portions of the game. Players who want to micromanage will likely put more thought in, but good micromanagement would mainly help them win the game faster, or at higher difficulties. And as the game progresses, you'll have a better understanding of your territory even if you are constantly interrupted by battles.

Also I should point out that there should be sufficient ways to adjust the number of battles you are forced to fight each turn (by reducing difficulty, adjusting the AI, reducing the number of Neutral armies, and so forth)...

Oh and I should also point out that much larger-scale strategy games in the past have had hour-long battles - and sometimes several - interrupting the strategic play. The Total War series is a good example

So my goal would be to keep the strategic layer much much more simple.

Well, as I said in the article, the Basic Rules (Chapter 1) are the absolute minimum - but they don't make for a very interesting game on their own...

perhaps to make planning easier you could do what a lot of turn-based strategy games do with multi-turn movements and allow you to use a go-to command

I'm sorry, I thought that was implied , otherwise I'd mention that. Yeah, you would naturally want to be able to send an army back home with one click, rather than having to remember where every army was going. And as with all games using this feature, the auto-go would be cut off whenever enemies are in close proximity to an army that is auto-moving.

Note: I'm going to refer to Army Leaders as "Generals" instead of "Commander".

Oh, sorry, you are certainly right about that. BTW all the terminology above is open for debate, this is the first time I've had to explain what had to this point just been ideas in my head, so I had to come up with terminology on the spot. I confused "land" with "tile" and "region" a few times up there as well.

Queued researching. For cities that have more than one upgrade remaining allow one queue slot to allow you to select if you want to start researching the next step in line immediately after the current research is finished.

Given the importance of earning new cards, I should say that you would have a full-screen prompt telling you which new cards have been acquired from any/all sources at the start of a turn - though I certainly am not against having a queue - of any size.

Also I should point out that I forgot to point out that research would be a relatively rare way of earning cards - I suspect more cards will come out of battles and/or random encounters. Research would mostly be a way to get very special cards that you just haven't been able to find anywhere else. At least, I hope that sort of scheme would work, since it would put more emphasis on fighting and simple collection than on strategy-like methods.

Battle list. As the turn begins to resolve, you should have a list of all battles that need to be resolved. Can the order that games resolve effect other game events?

A battle list is a very good idea. I don't think that sequence would be very important though, I can't think off the top of my head of situations where it would matter (there might be, just can't imagine it at the moment).

Here are some more specific comments

Excellent questions! I totally forgot to include all those parts (I think I promised to talk about them but didn't). I'll try to give a detailed answer to each.

Are full 3 game matches played? This matters for Sloth's point of: "full matches can take 30+ minutes, which can be a lot of time for a game who's primary focus is the TBS campaign aspects.

I'll answer this in reverse. First of all, this is intended as a strategy layer to connect the battles, rather than be a strategy game that has MTG card games instead of other types of battle. My original ideas had far less emphasis on the card battles - I had even considered allowing <40 card decks, with some creatures already on the battlefield, to allow battles that resolve really fast between relatively small forces. I abandoned that idea because I assumed people would be more interested in the classic card battles, since that's MTG basically, but if there is a greater demand for more focus on the Strategy portion, I have some ideas in the drawer on how to make that work too. Still, that can always be achieved later - and might make for a very interesting and complex game - just not one that conforms to all the rules of classic MTG.

As to "best of 3" matches, I think that Shandalar's "best-of-one" would be just fine for most battles, and as you say it will help keep the intervals shorter between turns. Some battles, certainly, could allow "best-of-three", but I don't think it's necessary for all of them. Perhaps only capital battles, or somesuch? Perhaps only limited to certain random encounters?

Movement points

Yes, I put some thought into this as well when I decided that STB would be the way to go, and it certainly isn't an easy problem.

First of all, to answer the first question, some generals would have more than 2 movement points per turn. For example, my current intention is that all blue generals will be able to move 3 tiles per turn (or even more!) on oceans (blue has a strategic deficiency because most of its lands are arrayed around the map, making its territory more vulnerable - extra movement would help offset that). Furthermore, higher-rank generals might be able to move great distances as well on all sorts of terrain.

As to initiating battles with several armies maneuvering around each other, there are several ways to solve this - but I'm not sure which one would be best.
1) Touching Combat: Whenever two or more free-moving armies become adjacent, they fight. This is perhaps the simplest way of solving it, since adjacency is much easier to achieve than getting the two armies to be in one tile at the same time. However, in this case it DOES become important in which order battles are executed. For example, if three armies belonging to three different factions are arranged in a line, the army in the middle would need to fight the enemy on one side, then the enemy on the other side. Perhaps they can simply get to choose which one to fight first, as soon as that situation occurs.
2) Orders to Engage: An army could be told to seek combat with an opponent instead of simply move into their tile. In this case, the two armies don't move simultaneously when the execution phase occurs: the "chased" army gets to move first, and the other will wait to see what happens, and then move into the chased army's tile if it can, or close as much of that distance automatically if it can't. If both armies have orders to engage, one army will move one tile closer to its enemy, then the other army will move one tile closer, and so on, until both armies are in the same tile or both have run out of movement points.
3) Prevent Adjacent Movement: This is the system that was used in Civilization games for a while. If your army is adjacent to an enemy army, it cannot move into a different tile that is also adjacent to an enemy army. This is simplest in terms of use perception. If, during the execution phase, an army would break the rule, that army instead remains motionless - having been "pinned down" by the opponent.
4) Keyword Abilities: "First Strike"! A general with this keyword ability would always move first during execution, to give it a much easier time of intercepting enemies. Of course, the problem is still what happens when two armies have "first strike"
5) Human player takes precedence. Yeah, it's a little cheap, but it's one solution, at least so long as this doesn't turn into a multi-player game (though that is a whole 'nother can of worms in and of itself).

The bottom line is that there are many ways to handle this, it just depends on which one the players find more comfortable to work with.

You state several times throughout the proposal that your planeswalker only gains bonuses for being in it's own color. This feels very.. old school Magic.

Well first of all, the example I gave was of a world constructed in 2ED, and I made a conscious decision not to add the multi-colored lands from that set to the map to keep things simple - though I did plan for them. Also, to keep the example simple, I focused on showing a single-color wizard. In the content files I've written, multi-color lands (while rare on the map) provide both color mana at the same time as well as creatures and/or spells from both colors when upgraded. This is up to the modder who makes the content files, too, so you could make a world where said lands are more common, provide more mana, and so forth.

However, there is really nothing preventing you from adapting your deck for several colors even without multi-color lands. Yes, you have an advantage on the color that you chose, but are not restricted to it. It is simply easier, at the start of the game, to focus on one color until you can acquire more regions from the other color. In Chapter 1, we already got two blue regions, giving us 11 Islands (I think) and a few blue cards, so we can certainly add those cards to the Necromancer general's deck and use them too. If one of the blue capital regions could be conquered, blue would gradually become more useful to us. The main reason that black is a "safer bet" in that scenario is because the Sanctum produces so much Black mana - but if we kept conquering the oceans around our territory, then at some point the extra black mana won't give that much of a bias anymore. And you might be able to find or recruit blue generals as well, to provide protection and faster expansion along the oceans.

Also I did mention that multi-color wizards MUST be possible, but am still unsure about how to properly make that happen. One idea I had was that every time you conquered the Sanctum of an opponent wizard, you could take over that sanctum (so that now you have two of them), gaining the benefits of both colors - but it could take a while before you could conquer even a single sanctum. Perhaps we could select multiple colors from the get-go as well, which would give us some benefits from each color, but also less overall benefit from the both of them combined.

Does a card just count it's casting cost for it's mana reliance? So a Black Knight needs 2 B. But a Sengir Vampire also needs 2 B? Or does the Vampire need 5? What about colorless cards? Does an Icy Manipulator just take 4 of anything?

Those are an excellent questions that I completely forgot to talk about - and if I did talk about it, it would be to say "I need help with this decision".

I think the simplest solution would be that the Sengir Vampire costs 5B - but that does not sit very well with me for some reason. This would certainly make it much harder to multi-color properly.

Another possibility is to give the player a basic slider set where he could pull and lock each slider to determine what percentage of the available mana from each color is spent to cover "colorless" upkeep costs. For example, you could use the sliders to say "I want 80% of my colorless upkeep to be paid using my Black mana, and only 20% to be paid using my Blue mana", in order to conserve Blue mana at the expense of Black mana. The game would automatically calculate how much mana of each color is spent. Such an interface is pretty simple to build and relatively easy for the player to adjust during the game. This would also solve the problem with artifacts.

If you have a better idea though, I would be very glad to hear it.

I have some more comments coming

I'll be waiting eagerly.

[Marek14]

I was thinking about these systems in the past. Some of my ideas were:

1) Using evasion to determine attacks.
For example, in the "adjacent locking" system, flying creatures wouldn't be locked by nonfliers, shadow creatures could freely move past non-shadow and vice versa, protection... etc.
2) Using creatures' stats to determine card battle power.
My idea was to give them 10 life per each point of toughness and have their hand size be 5 + power. This way, basic 2/2 creature would get normal stats (7 cards, 20 life), but fighting, say, a Shivan Dragon would have you battle against a 50-life opponent with 10 cards in hand - and maybe with a random chance that it activates firebreathing before the game starts and gets even bigger hand!
This was also tied with an idea of having the creature's deck size proportional to its mana cost, so milling wouldn't be disproportionally good against big opponents.
3) Creature deck composition
I was thinking of having a rule that a creature will always play the full 4 copies of its own card, and cannot have more than 3 copies of anything else except basic lands, though it could be also possible to, say, allow the creatures to play 6 copies of their own cards and/or make them automatically start with one copy in hand.

[friarsol]

Here's my last few questions, I thought I had some more, but now I can't think of it all:

5) Battle Consequences:
a) Replenishment - I'm concerned with this idea. It reminds me a lot of a Pay to Win/Pay to Play Model. Especially with the whole "Cards that need replenishment are picked from cards in Exile and Graveyard" part. This makes cards like Oblivion Ring way more dangerous, cards that sacrifice for their effect way worse, and cards like Feldon's Cane way better. I'd never want to play my fun Jokulhaups deck, just because it makes me so weak whenever I play it. I think I'd be ok if a random assortment of cards were marked at the beginning of the game. If you win, very few of these cards are "depleted" and if you lose, most (if not all) of these cards are "depleted". We'd definitely need to iron out, how much can be depleted, when do cards restore from depletion, and how long do cards stay depleted if they aren't specifically restored. I mostly worry about a player being trapped in a dangerous area, unable to withdraw from battles with all their key cards depleted.

b. Deck Minimum

An army with fewer than 40 non-depleted cards in it will be automatically defeated if it ever goes into combat, as per MTG's normal rules.

No. Please no. Shandalar had a great solution for decks that were under the minimum size. Just fill the deck with basic lands. If you get screwed enough where you don't have 40 cards available to you, and editing your current deck is limited so people don't abuse floating mana pools (What does floating mana even do? Cast world spells?), we need a way to get out of this negative feedback loop. This means we need to allow people to "pay tribute" in some cases, to allow players to withdraw without crippling themselves too badly, but we also need a way to allow just under 40 card decks to still play. We already know the percentage of mana types you control, I'd say we steal a good design decision from Sid Meier, and do the same thing.

c. Similar to 5a, I worry that a swarm can trap an Army with several opposing Armies, preventing them from winning and preventing them from escaping. This quickly cascades with depleting cards, since not only do you lose several games in a row, but you continue to get worse. Especially if it's a 3v1 scenario. Maybe in this case, you may choose to sacrifice some of your high value cards for a full withdraw (free move back to your home center, and skip your next turn.)

A battle list is a very good idea. I don't think that sequence would be very important though, I can't think off the top of my head of situations where it would matter (there might be, just can't imagine it at the moment).

Yea I wasn't sure if there was or not, but here's a scenario that I thought you were going to mention but didn't notice it in my read through (of course that was 6 hours and 2 beers ago, so maybe it was there): You have two battles occurring, both in the same region you control. One is for the center, and one is just a random battle. Now if you control a region, shouldn't you gain some type of bonus for any other battle within that region? Seems reasonable that you may get some type of small bonus just for having the backing of the locals. Not really anything major just something to think of.


As far as hooks with Forge goes, nothing you described suggests you couldn't use a very similar call to what the menu based Quest mode uses. Someone clicks on "Battle" you call a rough equivilant to the startGame() method in forge\forge-gui\src\main\java\forge\gui\home\quest\SSubmenuQuestUtil.java this would provide you all prematch information you need to setup the game as appropriate.

Then at the end of the game you'd have an equivilant of forge\forge-gui\src\main\java\forge\gui\match\QuestWinLose.java be called for Campaign mode. The switch statement for calling the appropriate "WinLose" file occurs in ViewWinLose.java in the same folder.

[Headrock]

I was thinking about these systems in the past. Some of my ideas were:

For idea 1, yes, that could be employed. But it still leaves the question of what happens when two armies with the same properties meet.

On your points #2 and #3, I'm not sure exactly what you are referring to. Are you talking about having rampaging monsters who are a single creature, but turn into a full deck when in combat? I... I don't get it, please elaborate on what you mean.

a) Replenishment - I'm concerned with this idea.

Yes, that doesn't surprise me ^^

Well, I did like your idea about having only a certain number of cards be lost, though that's basically just going back to the idea of Ante (even if those cards are not actually awarded to the enemy, just depleted). I was aiming for something that is more representative of the actual concepts of graveyard and exile. I do agree of course that some decks would have a harder time with this.

Perhaps a certain percentage of your graveyard/exile would become depleted, with a strict cap on how many cards (or the total casting cost, or their proportional value) could be depleted. Having it be just any random set of cards from your deck is a possible fallback, but maybe not the most sensible one.

Also on the point of being "stuck" in enemy territory - if you do actually lose then your commander automatically retreats to your territory (after a few turns where he is not available, as described in the article). If you win with heavy losses, you might be in trouble of course. But the idea would be to make your attacks when you have a reasonable chance of punching through the opposition, securing territory, and then replenishing immediately using the "war stocks" you've accumulated for that very purpose. In other words, you would have to attack when you have the mana to replenish and a good chance to gain territory or retreat quickly. And on the defensive, you'd be able to replenish straight after the battle, I suppose, again given that you have enough mana for it.

[EDIT]: Essentially, it would be something to the effect of "Damn it, I've been saving up mana to upgrade that cool region I have, but now that I've lost a battle and I need to get my army back up quickly, i'll have to postpone the upgrade for a few more turns", rather than "Oh, I've lost that battle over there, I've been totally bankrupted for the next 50 turns and my game is basically over".[/EDIT]

But yeah, replenishment is one of the more complicated ideas to try and work out, and like I said I would probably make that an optional rule. Not everybody would be pleased playing with it on, I'm sure.

An army with fewer than 40 non-depleted cards in it will be automatically defeated if it ever goes into combat, as per MTG's normal rules.

No. Please no.

Well, considering that again, a losing army would retreat (off map) to its own territory, then you can't get into a feedback loop with it - but it does mean that a particularly bad match can end up bankrupting you if you're not careful. I'm very much interested in having the card matches have a strong effect on the strategy game. Also, replenishment should not cost much, proportionally, so that it would be a setback in terms of resources but not utterly devastating - unless your empire is already on its back legs, so to speak.

Filling with lands could be an interesting solution to this. However, since land cards in MTG Strategy are actual assets that you need to own, I would still say that if you do not have a sufficient number of lands to fill those gaps, your army still loses automatically. Again, an empire on its hind legs should topple - that's kind of how a player would actually defeat his rivals - depleting their armies, and using the lull (before those armies can replenish) to make more assaults and win over territory.

What does floating mana even do? Cast world spells?

If that means what I think it means, then it is used to pay for pretty much everything, including upgrades for regions, replenishment (if used), activating regional abilities (including research), and hiring more commanders. Some of these will occasionally cost mana and gold together, some only gold, and some only mana.

I worry that a swarm can trap an Army with several opposing Armies, preventing them from winning and preventing them from escaping.

That should be a pretty viable strategy. But again, when an army loses, it disappears off the map, only for the commander to reappear with most of his deck depleted a few turns later, in one of your capitals (or, possibly, all the way back in your sanctum).

we need to allow people to "pay tribute" in some cases, to allow players to withdraw without crippling themselves too badly
[...]
Maybe in this case, you may choose to sacrifice some of your high value cards for a full withdraw (free move back to your home center, and skip your next turn.)

Tribute would be an interesting this to implement, I haven't given that any thought yet, and would love to hear ideas from people on how that might work - and who it might (and might not) work on!

As to sacrificing for a withdrawal, again that is basically what happens when you lose a match. Most of the army gets depleted, it is removed from the map, and reappears a short while later, elsewhere. That way a weakened army cannot be repeatedly trounced. You would still need to pay for the army to be restored to working order, but you do so with your accumulated resources rather than with any permanent losses. The only permanent loss would be if the enemy who defeated your army proceeds to take away one of your regions - but that's kind of how strategy is SUPPOSED to work

Now if you control a region, shouldn't you gain some type of bonus for any other battle within that region?

Ah! Absolutely correct, that's a very good example. So I suppose you do need a mechanism to decide what happens first. Do you suppose we should let the player decide, a-la the system used for determining stack priority in the card game? Or should it rely on... something?

As far as hooks with Forge goes...

Nice, I think these are the functions I was looking for. Thank you very much for that. I figured they must be somewhere, since Quest mode was obviously calling for card battles...

That still leaves the hooks for the interface (making a new tab) and for saving. Any idea where those are?

[Headrock]

Well all this is apparently moot, for now, because I can't seem to be able to install Subclipse no matter what I do. I'll keep trying to solve that problem, but damn...

[drdev]

Well all this is apparently moot, for now, because I can't seem to be able to install Subclipse no matter what I do. I'll keep trying to solve that problem, but damn...

Subclipse isn't necessary. I use Tortoise SVN myself and that works fine for me.