Version History

• 0.7: Balancing and clarifying colonies and goals, Research IV allows any other Research IV
• 0.6: Colonies with Empire movement effects replaced with stacking effects
• 0.5: Empire ships removes players ships, stackings not allowed
• 0.4: Empire ships move in circles and all move after a round instead of player's choice
• 0.3: Trade takes place between matching planets and give up to two resources
• 0.2: Two actions per turn, research level determines starting action level, empire ships block adjacency
• 0.1: Draft edition

The complete rules are available in the PDF file to the right. In the following sections, I will describe how they came to be.

Implemented Rules

The Action Board

The game design idea behind the action board is the "bump mechanic". The ability to bump an action token upwards to a higher level is a double move that adds one action token to an action and improves a second action token. But what should happen with the bumping action token?

On a public action board, it would be natural to keep it on the same action, since this is the valuable action that attracted the bumping action token in the first place. But on a private action board, it would be pretty pointless to use a double move only to get an extra but inferior action of the same type.

Instead, why not let the bumped action token move sideways to a new action? In this way, a player may use a double move to give himself or herself two options for retrieving an action token and take its actions. With more action tokens, a player may set up a chain reaction of bumped action tokens to even more interesting actions, thus rewarding forward planning.

The Actions

The actions of Foundation are "natural" as explained in the game design idea. but some rule details are still necessary for them to work together.

The Space Travel action could have been "evil", either by blocking opponents or by removing opponents from base. The first option would permanently deny opponents certain resources and limit the strategic options. The second option would lead to a tug-of-war where the game state doesn't develop. The rule that bases may be shared by players is a more friendly and progressive option. But won't the game state be boring once all planets are connected? No, this was solved by the Galactic Empire as described later.

The Produce and Trade actions accomplishes two purposes. First, the player earns a resource. Second, the resources move around, opening (or closing) opportunities for the next player. But should a resource conversion require both trade (to move resources to planets) and production (to process the traded resources)? Technically it would work but it would be slow and cumbersome. Instead, a planet may process any connected resources for its production but only up to a limit, after which the resources must be either traded to a planet that demands them or processed by a higher level planet. This provides a faster and more interesting resource flow.

The research action could also have been slow and cumbersome if each new level would have required all preceding levels to be completed. Instead, only one preceding level was required, giving the players more freedom to choose their own research paths.

The many different planet abilities from the Colonize action was a simple (and fun) exercise of coming up with as many and different "rule breaks" as possible. Many of them relate to resources but there are also abilities that improve other actions or the action selection itself.

Last but certainly not least, the Military action gives the player the freedom to remove obstacles (and be rewarded with resources). This may sound powerful but the obstacles are removed for all players and in line with the design goal of positive interaction.

The Galactic Empire

The rule that the Galactic Empire blocks connections rather than removing them was a simple choice of finding the most friendly option but how about the movement rule? I needed to find a balance between freedom (to move them where ever you want) and predictability (to avoid take that). The simple solution was to let each player choose which empire unit to move in his or her turn but being restricted by certain path. In this way, the Galactic Empire will spread its tentacles across the Galaxy but at a different and player-driven pace.

The Goals

The rule that the goals are hidden and must be unlocked was another balance decision. Open goals run a risk of making the last rounds uninteresting if it's already clear who's winning. Hidden goals that aren't revealed until the end gives the players nothing to focus at. The solution to let the players research goals and peek at them keeps the game open until a player announces that he or she has reached a goal. I have seen games where players commit to open goals, which earn victory points if fulfilled, but I generally prefer instant victories, particularly if the add a unique touch to the game.

Rules (Video)

To be completed.

Rules (PDF)

... and Rejected Rules

To be completed.