As you already know, World Order is a strategy board game for 2-4 players that simulates foreign relations between global superpowers, combining deck-building with area control. But how exactly does the game play out in different player counts? Who would be better fit to give insights than one of our game designers? Here’s a detailed explanation from Vangelis Bagiartakis:
With 4 players, each player takes one of the available superpowers: The United States of America, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China or the European Union. Each player guides their country and tries to spread their influence across the globe, through diplomacy, financial investments and military deployments. But what happens when one or more of those roles is missing?
This is a question that concerned us right from the start. One solution would be to just ignore the superpower(s) missing. Play just with ones you have and adjust the points for scoring or the availability of slots according to the number of players. We actually tried that early on but it felt very odd. We would play without the USA for example and it was very weird not to see America’s Influence in regions around the world. After all, our main goal was to provide an educational experience regarding the balance of those four superpowers. That’s when we decided to try a different approach. We would somehow emulate the presence of non-participating roles, in a way that would make sense both thematically and from a gameplay point of view.
The end result was what we called “the Auto-Influence deck”. A small deck of cards that we could draw from and which would indicate where Influence is placed by the non-participating players. Of course, this placement was not random but meticulously designed to make sure it simulates how an actual player would behave, based on their geopolitical interests, while at the same time allowing for some unpredictability to spice things up and create interesting moments. After playing around with the exact number of cards in the deck and the timing of when exactly they would be drawn, we found out that this worked best: Have 2 cards drawn every round indicating where the Influence WILL be placed later on. Players then get to play the round with this knowledge in mind, either avoiding certain regions or using their upcoming placements to gain an advantage. At the end of the round, the influence is added to the board, and new Auto-Influence cards are drawn for the next round.
What quickly became apparent was that apart from the Influence cubes, this mechanism should also include placement of Armies. After all, if there was an actual player playing, a lot of those cubes would be from military bases, increasing Threat towards other players. Once again, the cards were adjusted to give a feeling as close to what an actual player would do, based on the number of military bases they can establish and their preferred regions for expansion, according to their geopolitical interests.
This is the system that we continue to use up to this day. It has worked remarkably well in our games with 2 or 3 players, making sure that these superpowers are indeed represented and included in all of the games, not only providing thematic accuracy, but also enriching the gameplay and providing players with interesting choices.
With that out of the way, there was only one thing remaining to figure out. Would we put a limit to which roles the players would be allowed to take in lower player counts? In our previous game, Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory, we had very specific rules regarding the roles used in each player count. Here, we realized we could be more open with that. Not only could the game function equally well with each combination, the dynamics between the players would change depending on who played against whom, increasing the game’s replayability!
In the end, we kept only one restriction: In 2-player games, one of the players needs to take the role of a Western superpower (USA or EU), due to the NATO alliance while the other one takes the role of an Eastern superpower (China or Russia). So you can have USA vs China, USA vs Russia, EU vs China and EU vs Russia, with each of those combinations playing out differently since the geopolitical interests of the players end up being very different too.
In 3-player games, there is no restriction at all, meaning that any of the 4 players can be left out. Auto-Influence once again will make sure to simulate that role to a good degree while also allowing for a slightly different experience with each combination.
Soon you will be able to experience all that for yourselves! Don’t forget to visit our Kickstarter page and hit the Notify Me button to make sure you get notified so you won’t miss the World Order campaign!