Player Feedback requested - Edicts, propositions, and challenges.

[x4000]

Hi there.  Josh and I are stuck.  We have three interesting systems, each of which is individually good, but none of which hits all of our goals; and all of which TOGETHER are way too complicated for the game.  Let me outline them for you as we originally conceived of them, and then let's talk a bit about what we're shooting for, and see if you can help us come up with sideways ideas we've not thought of yet.

Note!  We've come up with a solution, with folks' help: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,13024.msg146032.html#msg146032

Edicts
This was a player idea in the first place.  Basically, you'd select two at the start of a campaign, and you'd have to complete these by the end of the campaign or lose.  Sounded good at first, but I don't like the fact that a) it makes players make a crucial choice that they may not fully understand before they even start playing the game; b) it thus encourages players playing the same things they already know over and over again; and c) it's complicated to track and store, and only ever gets so varied in general.

Challenges
This was Josh's and my idea for how to get up in profile levels.  These are meta-objectives that exist beyond just a single game, and which you are working on as you go.  You'd have 5 available at any time, and when you complete them they slide out and everything is happy.  Think meta-objectives like those in 10000000 or Tiny Wings or Jetpack Joyride or Valley 1.  This is cool, but a) it only lasts until you complete the 100 challenges that are fixed; b) that's all I can think of that's negative.  It's pretty cool actually.

Propositions
This was an idea I had after reading boatmurdered, and thinking about zharmand's desire for things that pop up during gameplay and eff with you.  Basically, it's kind of like "dwarf was taken by a fey mood" and then requires certain resources and space to do something random.  In our case, it would be something like a random fletcher suddenly demanding X in Y turns, or else he's going to go bandit.  This is neat, except a) it's already a hard enough game, and this can really be seen as something out of the blue random; b) it's something that we'd probably need to gate until a number of profiles in in order to avoid overwhelming players; c) we're kind of too low on time to do this full justice if we're also doing challenges or similar.

Biggest Problem
We need something that is simple and elegant and fun, and that won't take us days and days to implement.  We are relatively short on time (1.0 is in less than 2 weeks now, and we need to start showing this to press late this week or early next), and I don't want to distract from polishing up the actual core game in various ways.  Even if time wasn't an issue, I don't want to make something so complicated that it shuts out the midcore gamers.

Goals
1. I'd like this to be simple to implement and understand.
2. I'd like this to encourage experimentation and fun with various mechancis.
3. I'd like this to feel like the carrot rather than the stick to players.
4. I'd like this to potentially have a bit of an "ante" feel in the sense of card games where you bid how many tricks you're going to get and then see if you can actually take that many tricks.

My Current Thought
We could just do challenges, and that would be that.  It doesn't have long-term replay value beyond a few dozen hours, but assuming this takes off at all we can address that with post-release patches and expansions.  A few dozen hours is frankly more than an excellent value for $5, to put it really mildly, so it's not a question of value.

We also have the idea that has been proposed of the victory points, and that could inherently lead to interesting challenges for the players during the game.

We could also randomly hobble the player in various ways for various lengths of time during upper difficulty level games.  Aka, "archery ranges for norse are disabled for 10 turns!"  Or "no iron on the greek side for 10 turns!"  Etc.  That's certainly stick rather than carrot, but it's something that is only for the hardest difficulty and thus makes sense as those people want stick anyhow.  It gets at zharmand's desire for randomness in the scenario.

That's kind of what I'm thinking at the moment:
1. Challenges, as we originally envisioned them, for that fun meta aspect that also encourages experimentation.
2. No edicts or propositions (but we'll call the challenges edicts, most likely).
3. Random disablings of stuff on the hard difficulty levels in order to keep that interesting.
4. Victory points as a way to also encourage experimentation, since we could structure it such that victory is unlikely without a certain number of destabilizing powers being used (not enough victory points generated otherwise, etc).

Huh.  Just explaining the problem made me come to a solution I like pretty darn well.

Thoughts?

[Penumbra]

I think the Victory point system would work very well. My friends and I play a lot of Arkham Horror, and that game has different victory and scoring conditions. There are easy ways to win that end up in low scores, and hard ways to win that give high scores. There are various options to select when starting a game, as well as a lot of random elements that can occur during a single play through. These all effect which victories are even possible, or what kind of scores you can attain.

Instead of edicts defining your victory conditions, they could instead establish modifies for your victory points.  Some could even allow for new ways to gain them, while blocking access to others.

And, could the challenges be randomized once all 100 are reached?

[Cyprene]

I was a big fan of the idea of victory points, for the reasons I gave in that post.  I don't see how "No Iron for 10 turns, suddenly! For some reason!" makes the game more fun.  But yeah, if it's confined to hard difficulty, well that's what "hard" difficulty means. 

The rest of it sounds pretty good, actually.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I think challenges are okay, honestly. Okay, so...

1. I like edicts, if it can be done in a sufficiently awesome way. The whole 'do x of y within z turns' doesn't end up making particularly groundbreaking objectives, that's really the only thing that I don't like about it. The thing is, coming up with really awesome goals or challenges on the scale of, say, Bastion, would take far too much time. I'm not against throwing this out for some kind of future expansion or update. After all, it's always nice to do a playthrough of Bastion with the extra idols on that are only made available some time into the game.

2. I kind of like challenges, but the challenges can range from either too trivial to complete, to taking a hundred runs to complete, to being entirely based on luck. The viability of challenges is really completely up to how good the actual challenges are. In 10,000,000 the challenges got annoying sometimes, and were really luck based in other situations. Jetpack Joyride was okay, I guess. I really liked some of the challenges in Valley 1, the ones that involved getting to a certain depth or doing something otherwise outside of your comfort zone that were entirely based on skill. I'm talking the 'get to depth 10 in a cave' and stuff. The whole 'kill x of y' idea is a bit trivial, but not bad for early challenges I guess. And, well, definitely stay away from 'find a legendary x'. I'm not into luck based challenges.

3. There's another twist you can apply to challenges. Depending on how detailed the game is at tracking statistics, you might be able to have a stat menu where all of the 'complete x of y' sort of objectives are stashed. Look to Advance Wars: Dual Strike as an example of this. The game has 300 medals, and the 300 medals are tied into 3 levels of 100 objectives that encompass every single aspect of the game. Now, it's not always compelling, but telling somebody to go murder 200 infantrymen isn't really compelling either. You could have something purely based on reaching certain thresholds of these tracked statistics as a secondary set of 'challenges' for all of those easier 'get x of y' sort of things while coming up with awesome challenges for the main challenge set.

4. Propositions... I really don't like. I just don't like the fact that they arbitrarily come in out of nowhere. Pretty much every reason you described is what I feel. It puts this odd pressure on the player out of nowhere... and exactly, it would overwhelm me as it would overwhelm other more casual strategists. This could, however, be something of an option later. Maybe it's an edict if you work out edicts later on. 'Your people will turn against you if you don't appeal to them. Don't let more than x become bandits!'

5. Victory points. I like these as well. It's another thing that forces the player to step out of the comfort zone, and she can really do well for herself if she does. It also gives you more to work with for challenges and for playing with reaching different stat-based objectives if you do end up liking that idea. You may even be able to tie edicts to victory points. Complete the objective decreed by an edict, and you gain bonus victory points. Fail at it, and you lose victory points.

In conclusion, I do like the challenge thing. The easier to come up with challenges can just be tied in with some kind of stat tracking if that already exists in the game. I'm actually a huge fan of stats, so I'm a tiny bit biased there, but you've got a pretty decent idea in my eyes just on its own. Play with the idea of victory points and maybe some other simple objectives to go for, for the sake of coming up with challenges. As long as they're based around, like I've said, stepping out of your comfort zone, they will only add to the game.

[Mick]

Well here are my thoughts.

Challenges sound like those things iPhone games do that you kinda grind out. I think those can be fun, but I don't think they really *make* the game. So I'd say that the game should be designed as something that is fun to play as if they didn't exist at all, and when you put the challenges on top of the game, it's a bonus.

I think victory points basically serve as a "choose your own mini-edicts while you're playing the game", so I can see edicts being removed completely so the player doesn't have to choose from turn 0 how they want to play things out. So, I think edicts as they stand should be dumped.

When you start up a game, I think you should select sliders of difficulty. Bandit/Crime level, and how many VPs you need to achieve through the game. I'll get to what types of things I think VPs should be in a moment. I do think that normal difficulty and above should make crime and bandits way more of a problem then what I've seen in the beta. Strong bandits popping up serve themselves as a very good "unbalancing" mechanism because towns need to build up strong militaries (and maybe in extreme cases pull out myth tokens) to deal with them, and when the bandits are dealt with.. those armies and monsters are going to start attacking the other side. Now, I think only using this concept, you can make a challenging, fun, and fairly dynamic game.

Now, I say fairly dynamic, so I think you need a little bit more. I've mentioned before the concept of round events, and I think that would kinda fill the role that "Propositions" would handle.

So basically, I envision that the player sets out with an overall goal to build up these two civilizations without them killing each other. During the Age of Man, they are pretty much in a extended setup phase. They are building up their economies, dealing with crime/bandits/accidental war, and they are laying the groundwork toward fulfilling the goal of making both civilizations reach the level to achieve the VP goal they set out for.

Age of Monsters dawns with say.. a large number of deadly monster tokens that are bandit-factioned. THIS IS WHAT THEY"VE BUILT UP FOR. Hopefully at this point their towns are strong enough to push back this monster threat (so the bandits bring say.. ONLY 1/4 of their towns to rubble), and the age of monsters is spent killing these monsters and fixing all the crazy balance issues that were caused in throwing down myth tokens and powers to deal with them. Hopefully when some semblence of balance comes, they have enough turns to get read for the..

AGE OF GODS! RAGNAROK HAS COME! I think this age should start with some type of cataclysmic event that shakes the foundations of these fledging empires. That VP goal is just.out.of.reach. What is the catacysm? I dunno, maybe have the tiles in the world collapse, or maybe crazy artifacts appear along the landscape that turn various army units into walking destruction. Maybe it's not set in stone which cataclysm will actually happen and there is a list of events that will actually happen.

What is my concept for VPs? Pretty simple really. You get +1 VP for every matching town (matching means that both sides have a town), so if say the norse have 3 towns and the greeks have 5, you have 3 VP at that point.

+3 VP (or whatever, depending on how hard these are to make) for every enlightened town.

So that's my vision, players are not encouraged to both create imbalance AND fix it, they essentially want balance all the time, and the game is plotting against them.

[madcow]

Okay, I've a few thoughts on this.  The short of it is, propositions is my favorite of the three, followed by edicts - though the current list of edicts seems kind of bland to be honest. (I don't really like metagame achievements a whole lot honestly, but that's just me).

Now to branch off into the deep end

First of all, going by the board game nature - one thing that I think could be used is more randomization. Bandits are cool and all, but it would really throw things for a loop if we could get mythic creatures popping out. It would be even crazier if we had mythic creatures popping out -that were joining a specific side-. Basically really strong monkey wrenches that get tossed out. Arkham horror was a good example, every turn you draw that mythos card - and it could cause the game state to change dramatically when you have monsters surging out from everywhere, previously safe zones becoming dangerous, or even nothing happens. I don't necessarily recommend going to that extreme - but enough to mess with the equilibrium a bit more.

More on randomness, what you have access to. This is somewhat unrelated to goals, but I think another way to create interesting gameplay is to randomize what mythic/god powers you have at a given time.  Basically the equivalent of drawing a hand of cards. Every X rounds perhaps you redraw, so you aren't stuck with something, but at the same time if you have something you really like, you know you better play it on turn Y before you potentially lose it.

Propositions and randomness.  The game is set with us as middle management. You know what would add some randomness to things, and provide goals, and stay in the theme of middle management? Random mid-game edicts from on high. Perhaps the creator decrees, you have X rounds to build for the greeks Y villages. Or other similar tasks. Perhaps these edicts can be ignored, or failed without losing the game. But each time you do that, the head Power Honcho gets more and more upset and begins to punish you (smiting one side, throwing out gods/mythic creatures, or simply a meter that builds up and if it fills up you lose).

Anyhow, that's my 2 cents. Some of the things are a little off tangent maybe - sorry if they are, but it felt relevant!

[x4000]

A few thoughts in return:

1. Having random edicts from the master of "you must do x within y time" is actually basically the idea of propositions, just from the master rather than from the townfolk.  I forgot to mention that we were considering both things.

2. True on the metagame aspects of challenges.  Without those, I'd think that the way to level up your profile would be just accumulated victory points or similar.

3. When it comes to random cataclysmic events, I think those can be fun when done right... but enraging when done wrong.  If you're spending a lot of time doing awesome stuff, and then out of the blue something insane happens that causes you to just absolutely lose, that's a very Mario Kart sort of feeling, you know?  It would seem like rubber-band AI even though it's not.

4. The god powers are pretty extreme.  When it comes to bandits or whatever, there are powers that can kill them all or convert them all to your side.  There are ones that make enlightenment easy, and other various things.  These things are super unbalanced... and unbalancing.  One of the big things with them has been that Josh is worried folks won't use them because they are too unbalancing.

5. To me, I want to provide incentive for players to use the god powers.  Really, that's very much all that is needed here.  We don't need random cataclysms or whatever -- all of that sort of thing already exists in the god token design.  These things are freaking cataclysmic.  And I like it better when you can choose where and how to use them, rather than having them thrust on you out of the blue.  To some extent if most (ALL?) victory points come from using god powers, then the way to win would be "how do I use these powers without killing myself in the process."

6. #5 is interesting, and solves a lot of things, but it also can get formulaic.  People will find god and god power combos that are overall the best.  I'm not sure what to do about that.  Ambient conditions being off in other ways so that you have to compensate for them seem like the obvious choice.  Either that or the gods are not something you can choose.  Or a random god power triggers every X turns and then you have to use other god powers to compensate.

7. Basically, the only way to avoid #6 is if the scenario itself is not static.  Players always will find a best path if there is a static scenario.  It cannot be avoided, period, end of story.  So what we need are ways for the scenario to vary -- unexpectedly throughout the game, where players have to then react to things.  I think that "do x for y turns" is maybe not the right thing.  I think that maybe certain edicts from the master like "okay, here's a completely new red town just because you're such a good customer.  Have fun with that." Or "here's a yellow bandit town!"  Or whatever else.  I think those things are kind of like mini-cataclysms, and are something also that could be prepared for by saying... wait for it... "Yellow bandit town incoming in X turns."

8. Basically, #7 is getting back to that "waves" concept in AI War.  You are forewarned of a specific incoming threat, and have some time to prepare for it (but not a whole lot).  You get your house in order, and then use your cataclysmic powers to make things better.  An unstoppable force arrives, and thus there's almost no choice but to use Heimdall's Horn, etc.  It's the warhead from AI War, minus the AIP cost.


What it really boils down to is trying to make it so that the player doesn't always have the tempo in every game, and so that they have incentive to use their god powers.  Things that would normally harm them, but come to help them instead with their usage here.  To that sort of end, propositions, challenges, nor edicts are really correct at all.  Instead it's more about either a victory point structure where you HAVE to do strange things to yourself to win at all, and/or the cataclysmic events that you have to react to with god powers. 

I think that maybe the combination of both of those is the most powerful, and something that we can finely gate by difficulty, too.  With lower victory point bars on lower difficulties, you don't have to use so many destabilizing god powers.  And with basically no cataclysms, or very tame ones, at the easier difficulties.  And then on the hardest difficulties, you're trying to manage utter chaos as half the board is destroyed at once and entire towns go up in smoke several times a round, and you're just tussling with an absolute chaotic situation and making the best of it at each step.  But it's not blind chaos, it's chaos where you can look into the future a bit and plan, which is what makes the big difference to me personally.

Thoughts?

[madcow]

Regarding 5/6,.  The idea of random cataclysms as you can no doubt tell from my posts is one I rather like.  Another interesting idea is maybe providing having quotas to fill.  Okay mini-creator, we've decided the age of Man needs at least X heroes.  There shall be Y monsters in the age of monsters. And the age of Gods must have at least Z miracles.  The idea of doing Godly things not because you want to, but because its your job and you're just trying to meet the numbers amuses me.

[Mick]

I'll add that people brought up Arkham Horror, and I think that matches the feeling that I like. I see "catacylsms" as basically drawing of the rumor cards. Events that basically take your carefully laid plans and tip them on their head - often leading to the most memorable games. Like the one that causes a portal to open and a ridiculous amount of monster spill out and basically forces everyone on your team to try to be monster killers even if they are horribly bad at it.

Speaking of which, a cataclysm with endless monster portal sounds like a wonderful idea.

I like the idea of attaching it to the round starts because then you can actually know when they are going to happen and prepare, even if you don't know exactly what is going to occur.

I know you want to incentivize people to use god powers, but that just seems like a really weird goal to me in and of itself. Why am I casting this god power? To get points! But WHY am I casting this god power...

I like them as more of a double edged sword. You want to use them because the challenges you are facing pretty much force you to, but using them as consequences far beyond what you expect. If I was just using them to gain points, I would pretty much be picking the ones I know how to deal with every time.

It's of course your game, I'm just one voice. I just feel like I'd have more fun trying to accomplish a goal that makes more sense to me (like building as many towns as possible), rather than having the goal be "build some stuff, but try to make your life difficult, but not too difficult, but also stuff will happen, so sometimes making your life difficult will actually be making your life better, but you'll still get points."

[Misery]

Omigod more changes.

Okay.


Here's my thoughts on this:



First of all, as replay value goes.... in MY view, replay value wasnt going to come from the challenges and such.   My problem with challenges is that they're like typical one-off content in many games, in that you do them once.... and that's it.   It's like levels in a Mario game;  once you've finished each one, you've seen what it has to offer, and there will be no further changes.   You CAN replay them if you really want to, but it WILL be the same situation over again.   Once you've run out of these.... that's it, they no longer impact the game and may as well not be there.  I will always find content like this to be MUCH less important than always-there ideas like the VP bits.

The replay value, to me, is going to come from some of the basic in-game concepts.   The Victory point thing, for instance.   There's going to be SO many ways of approaching this concept that it's going to add ALOT of replay value to the game.  Particularly if the game is doing things like selecting these at random, as to which ones are available to me.  The more I think about the VP idea overall, the better I think it is, and I think you guys can do a ton of stuff with it.  AND, there's things like the constant land expansion, where even static maps will be different each time in the end, and I'm guessing there'll be random and player-built starting maps as well.   There's TONS to do here, there really is.   I understand that some players need that "meta" content, but.... I really think the core of everything wont be that bit.



Now, Edicts:   These are decent as sort of a framework, but they dont actually encourage that much strategy or chaos-causing or risk taking... because so far, they're the same for both sides every time.  One side mimicking the other can clear the conditions for these, so to me they're not adding all that much right now.   The idea, however, is very sound.  The implementation is just a bit off.


Propositions:  Actually I kinda like these.  It gives the soldiers and such a bit more.... personality?   If they do more things at times than just trying to explode/stab/burn/stab/chop/stab/shoot/stab everything.  And it makes sense to me too in a logical/thematic sense, as a big part of the challenge is supposed to be managing these guys, right?   Yeah, I kinda like this idea.


Also, as Madcow suggests:  A bit more randomization is not a bad idea here!   This is the sort of game that really works well with that idea.   Not just in terms of the maps and such, but more in a general sense.   This would be a very good thing.  It does NOT need to be cataclysmic in scale;  things along the level of bandits.... which ARE small, but CAN be big trouble.... are a good level to do this at.  The current problem are that bandits are ALL that there is here.   Alongside the awesome expanding land, of course.


Also, I agree with you on the idea that giving players much incentive to use the "bigger" powers in this game.... the god stuff and everything in the mythological menu.... is a good idea.   I dont at all think that the VPs should *all* be about this, but giving the players incentive beyond JUST the VPs is a great idea.   These things are FUN to use, they really are.   I was messing with stuff like the Midgard Serpent last night when playing this, and all sorts of hilarity ensued, and the game's strategic side really started to shine with this.   I havent found even one of these "big" items that's NOT a good idea to have in the game.    Though, I think it starts to fall apart if the player is forced to use them TOO often.... but somehow I seriously doubt that will become a problem, as I dont see anything pushing the player to use them every bloody turn. 


On the note of the gods:   I really like the idea of these guys being chosen totally at random.   They're freaking GODS.  It makes sense that you only have SOME control over them.  And their abilities, both passive and active, are going to be incredibly freaking strong;  no matter which is chosen, you're getting some crazy stuff with crazy potential.   They are right now the only part of the game where the players might find a "best" and select only that one, which is boring.   Randomize it!


Also I agree with absolutely everything in point number 7.   And I agree with point number 8 as a way to DO it, with the forewarning.

[x4000]

Regarding 5/6,.  The idea of random cataclysms as you can no doubt tell from my posts is one I rather like.  Another interesting idea is maybe providing having quotas to fill.  Okay mini-creator, we've decided the age of Man needs at least X heroes.  There shall be Y monsters in the age of monsters. And the age of Gods must have at least Z miracles.  The idea of doing Godly things not because you want to, but because its your job and you're just trying to meet the numbers amuses me.

That amuses me as well, and definitely seems like a potentially great thing.  I love giving players the freedom to figure multiple solutions to things (otherwise this is not much of a strategy game), but just giving a blank check for "do anything" leads to a single optimal solution and also thus nothing good comes of it.  Having quotas and such would help out with the freedom, but not the blank check part.  So with two parts, as you basically said:

1. The cataclysmic stuff happens every X turns, and you have to deal with them as you can based on your god powers.
2. You need to meet your victory point quotas anyhow, and that mostly involves god powers.
3. But you also need to meet other arbitrary quotas of the sort that you described above.  These would be the "edicts," and there would be one random one per round/age.

That way the combination of these three things leaves you with a lot of agency, but also one hell of a balancing act.  You're not really trying for balance at all, you're just trying to meet all your goals in 1-3 and keep either side from dying while that happens.  And keep from failing 2 or 3 above.

That strikes me as intrinsically interesting, and then victory points lead to the content unlocks and profile leveling and we're done.  I'm much more inclined to do one really strong mechanic (or set of small mechanics, like this) than to do three massive and weaker mechanics (edicts + propositions + challenges).

[madcow]

Another idea regarding propositions.  Quests for our sides to compete over! For example, one of the tiles that flips might reveal The Golden Fleece (or whatever Norse/Greek treasure/item you want). It may or may not have monster guards, but now soldiers from both sides may (or might decide not to) shift focus to grabbing that. With the side that claims it getting a buff.

Players could choose to intervene, help one side, or try to prevent either side from getting it as its just too powerful for mankind  Entirely based off their own choosing as well. Totally agreed with Misery on challenges being limited, part of the reason I listed achievements as my least favorite idea.

[x4000]

Mick: It's a good point on the VPs just being tied to god powers and thus playing it safe at all times.  And when it comes to Arkham Horror, it sounds like the cataclysms are what excites most people.  I worry a bit about this being something that just happens at the start of each round, because that's only three things.  I'd rather make the frequency be something that is based on difficulty, and which... well, basically this:

8. Basically, #7 is getting back to that "waves" concept in AI War.  You are forewarned of a specific incoming threat, and have some time to prepare for it (but not a whole lot).  You get your house in order, and then use your cataclysmic powers to make things better.  An unstoppable force arrives, and thus there's almost no choice but to use Heimdall's Horn, etc.  It's the warhead from AI War, minus the AIP cost.

Misery: Hey, these aren't changes to things that were even in the game yet!   Agreed on the limited replay value of challenges.  This is why we didn't add them in at the start, and why we focused on making the game fun without them.  Now that it is, I'm uncertain about doing them at all.

In terms of the Victory Points, can you explain to me what your conception of these is?  Because it sounds different than mine.  I'm picturing something like Princes of Florence, or a number of other Eurogames along those lines.  Basically, you accomplish X goal and get Y reward.  But you're talking about randomization and such.  Are you basically thinking that stuff like "Thor's Lightning is worth 10 points this game, and 1 point next game" for the randomization?  Or am I missing something.

In terms of small-scale cataclysms, that sounds good on paper, but bear in mind we have limited time and little-to-no remaining art budget.  So it has to pretty much be with assets we already have, or particle effects that I can cook up without too much hullaballo.  A portal to another world would be fine, as would various other things, but it takes a certain amount of creativity to not just have a bunch of same-y ones.  To some extent that also invokes Arkham Horror (which I have not played, but have played similar games to in some respects): there are only so many cards in general of that nature, so it's no like you have 100 things to choose from.  You have like 6-10 things, and which ones you get dealt from the deck (and when) make a big difference in the game.

Having a yellow god air-dropped on you and using periodic god powers would be one example of some pretty varied craziness.

[Cyprene]

I like the idea of "Orders from the master."

If only because if my fletcher starts getting whiny, I'm going to smite his tile and build a new fletcher.  I'm the creator, I don't take orders from peons. 

[x4000]

madcow: The ruins that flip up more or less accomplish this, just on a not-completely-overwhelming scale.  We could always up the ruins buffs to make things more unbalanced, though, if we wanted.  And in terms of the golden fleece, that's actually a god power.