The Build Order

The first mechanic of the Factions CCG that I will visit is the Build Order. Build Order is a common term in Real Time Strategy (RTS) games like StarCraft or Age of Empires. It is present in Factions because my game is styled like a RTS in many respects, while still being turn based and played with cards instead of a PC. A Build Order in an RTS is like a road map for what you are going to make. Some units and buildings explicitly require another building, like in StarCraft, you need the Ultralisk Cavern to make Ultralisks. Other times, you don't explicitly require something, but that thing is strategically necessary. In the case of the Ultralisks, you don't want to be making them off of one or two gas, and often not even three. So the Build Order tells you that you need X and Y before you get Z, in order to maximize your strategy's effectiveness.

To represent the Build Order, Factions has a deck called, obviously, your Build Order (you have another deck too, which we will get to later). A randomized deck, like the deck in a more traditional card game, would not fit the function of the Build Order, so in Factions you stack your deck (well, this deck). You have a builder card that, every time it's your turn, allows you to pay for and put into play the top building in your Build Order.

Another important feature of Build Orders in RTS games is that they are fluid. If you see that your opponent is rushing you, you can put down an extra barracks early on to produce the units needed to defend. Your build order doesn't dictate your play, it is just your plan, and your play can deviate from that plan. To represent this facet of Build Orders, in Factions you get to stack your deck again every five turns. The five buildings you have selected to build in your next five turns (also up to 5 technologies, but we'll get to that later), are called your “Active Stack,” and are separated from your Build Order for convenience. Every time you stack your Build Order, you may add or remove any number of cards from it. This means both that you have the entire range of strategic options available to you in every game, and that you probably want to have most, if not all, of the cards.

Your Build Order is at the heart of the Factions CCG, and it presents a plethora of strategic decisions that need to be made. First and foremost, your Build Order must have a plan for how it will win the game. Of course it can deviate from that, but initially you must have a goal in sight. This is because, particularly at the start of the game, you want your Build Order to be a finely tuned machine, working at maximum effectiveness. If you are going for a midgame where you intend to build a lot of Knights, for example, it might slow you down unnecessarily if you go building an Archery Range in your first few builds.

Your Build Order is also hidden information, which adds another important strategic interaction. Your opponent can see every building that you have built, but not the buildings that you intend to build. They also are locked in to a set number of buildings, at most five, before they are able to respond to what decisions their opponent is making. This means that your choices of which information to reveal when can allow you to send signals and bluff. For example, I might get a barracks and a technology related to unit production at the end of my first Active Stack to scare you into putting lots of military buildings and technologies in your second Active Stack. I could follow this up with a couple of economic buildings, a fortification to defend against your response, and some more economic buildings, and come out of the whole exchange with an economic advantage.