Gladius the Card Game

Gladius is still in a good place. The core things that I believe are settled in are the event structure (not the events themselves), the influence cards, the gladiators, and the betting system. The event structure currently has 4 events, each event “slot” can have 3 events to chose from so that means there are 24 different schedules players can play through. Also now the first event will always involve theatrics. So there is a theatrics only, theatrics/luck, and theatrics/fight. The same for Fight in the second event and luck in the third event. The last event slot is still reserved for the finale, which is always a single stat either Luck, Fight, or Theatrics. I think this layout is what the final game will have. Another element that is locked in is the influence cards. We’ve experimented with a lot of different cards, but I think the current mix is a nice blend of simplicity and fun. Finally the betting system I think is the best it is going to be for Gladius. We’ve tried systems where you bet with your own money, we’ve tried systems when with death bets, but we keep coming back to this system. The medium bet is now a battle bet that adds +1 to a teams final score. This at least makes it interesting to play over just big betting every time. It also leads to an interesting risk-reward where a player can attempt to piggyback off of another player using the battle bet. Oh, and the Gladiators are pretty set in stone. I would like to add 2 or 3 more, but that’s still up for debate.

Here are a few of the changes that we have in development that will probably change later on.

Event specifics are still up in the air. There are some I like, and others I don’t like. While some of the comeback mechanics might be a little too punishing, I think they are needed now that we’ve taken away the doubling in the final round. Currently one of the finales still doubles the final round, but I think even that is unnecessary. We’ll be making adjustments but it is pretty close. Also for demo purposes, I believe we should have a simple “fake” event that is easy to understand. But this won’t be included in the final game.

Player Powers! Everyone loves player powers right? Well now they are in Gladius, I think they add an interesting element to the game. I think they need more playtesting and adjustment before they are in a place I will be happy with them, but some of them let you break rules in really interesting ways, and I like that. 

In the current build of the game, there is a system called underdog tokens. They basically give players bonuses for getting gladiators that are way behind to win. I think the idea of them is healthy for the game, but their implementation is still clunky. Also, the numbers on the tokens might still need to be adjusted. I’m considering a flat rate for the tokens instead of the current variable rate. As it stands, if a team trails the lead team by 1 or 2 stat points they get a small token which has an equal chance of being 200, 300, or 400, extra coins. If they trail by 3 or more then they get a large token which can be 400, 500, or 600. I’ve noticed the amount of randomness can turn off players, but in playtesting it really even out. Rarely are games decided by underdog tokens because they are so hard to acquire. But I worry about the perception of their existence. So while something like underdog tokens needs to exist, they might not exist in their current form.

Finally, the last thing that may change is how cards are distributed. Its pretty close to being there, but I think there might be slightly too few cards in the final round. People seem to throw away all of their cards in the 3 round. Which might just be poor planning, but there might be too few cards there.