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[Arkitekt]

preface
I think it would be find to bring this game out of original forum and present it for english-languaged community.
I'm from Ukraine, where english is almost not in use, so it can cause come minor difficulties, but I think all can be ok.
This game is originally designed by Alexandr Bokulev, developer of 'Eador the Genesis' game (highly recommended for HoMM-3 fans).
My edition is quite different, but the main idea belongs to him.

The fancy trailer here (2 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X8VAskWZAY

General information
7-12 players is fine. Up to 20 players is a bit challenging. This time we play demo with 5 players or more.
Turn based strategy.
Mostly PvE with PvP opportunities.
Diplomacy allowed (PMs and forum thread) and strongly recommended.
One player wins.

Setting
You are one of the Masters - astral gods that are creating worlds of shards floating in the void. You use energy to collect new shards, which will make your world more powerful. Basically, you use energy to incarnate as some kind of king, who recruits heroes to beat all other kings. But you can use more energy for getting some initiative and preparations. For example, converting energy to gold will give you great army much faster. Mortals see those events as the gods willing to fight for them. When shard population worship you, you gain energy, which you can spend to take more shards or simply defend from another masters and daemons.
Shards can have basic defense, but only masters can raise it. Unfortunately, more shards you have more expensive it is to increase defense for same value.
But the process is more complex than just expending. There are many thing you never know, that you can use to reach your goals. Some shards may keep mighty spells, rituals, artifacts, etc.
You can mainly use only humans to conquer the shard, but if you are lucky to help elves on one of the shards they give you a knowledge how to make elves on other shards help you back. Or even just when daemons come they can fight not on their own, but join your unite army.
Some masters are honest, some are evil, and all are different, but the goal is the same and the problem is the same. Joining the shards is the only way for world to survive. If one can create world strong enough to fight with The Chaos Eador can survive.

More straightforward description:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Classical fantasy world with magic, artifacts and medieval staff. Civilizations: humans, elves, orcs, goblins, centaurs. dwarves, lizardmen. Trolls, ogres, harpies, etc. are lower races. Some races are good-oriented, some evil-oriented, but all are the part of the world Eador. But there is also another side - daemons - willing to bring Eador to the Chaos. And at one day some guy construct the Destructor, that blows up the Eador and divides it in tonnes of small parts - shards. So now deamons can take shards one by one and bring the whole world to the Chaos.
So there are next metaphorical zones of universe:
Astral - the void containing shards
Chaos - kind of blackhole, home of daemons
Nothing - some place to be
So the idea is that some mortals (or elders, or dragons) some way can take control of own shard and become the Astral Master. Some of them use rituals, another use mighty artifacts, some looking for immortality, some for power.
And then Astral Masters discover that there are several of them, and there are more creatures in Astral, such as gremlins (they love nothing except machines and atrifacts). The bad news are that having the world is only possibility of not being taken to the Chaos by daemons. So Masters can conquer not only neutral shards, but other worlds.

Victory conditions - not working in demo.
1. Being only one active player is Astral.
2. Having the world of size 20 at the start of new turn.
3. Having the biggest world at the end of turn 30. If there are 2 or more players with biggest world, the player with more energy left will win.

General rules
Players can take information from Game situation thread, PMs with secret knowledge from GM and from another players.
Players send to GM the PM with his actions (one primary action and several additional if needed) by the deadline.
At the deadline GM process players' actions and post new game situation, then send all new personal information to players as PMs.
Actions can demand some energy - main resource in the game, which is generated by worlds.

Primary actions

Attack neutral shard
To attack neutral shard player should mention in his turn request following things:
- targeted shard
- total energy for attack
- tactic for battle
Energy is distributed into next points:
- 4e - basic cost of attack (if you don't have enough energy attack action will be canceled)
- logistics - if your world size is bigger than the shard's height, you have to spend X = WS - SH energy (if you don't have enough energy to rich targeted shard attack action will be canceled)
- additional energy - will be added to your score in battle
Tactics you can see in battle mechanics section.

Attack another player
To attack another player one should have two shards in own world and mention in his turn request following things:
- targeted player
- total energy for attack
- tactic for battle
Energy is distributed into next points:
- logistics - if your world size is bigger than the target's world size, you have to spend X = ownWS - tgtWS energy (if you don't have enough energy to rich targeted world attack action will be canceled), these values can differ from ones at previous turn end.
- penetration penalty - to bring your army into battle you need penetrate the defense, it will cost you Y = tgtDefense/tgtShardsCount (rounding to bigger integer), targeted player loses Y defense even if he wins the battle
If you have not enough energy to penetrate, attack action will be failed, but targeted player still lose defense.
- additional energy - adds to your basic score in battle
Tactics you can see in battle mechanics section.
Defender will have basic score of WS/2 (except bonuses from events, atrifacts, etc).
Default defender tactic is 'random, random, random', where random choose one of available units|magic|hero. This tactic can be changed. One also can have several prepared tactics.
If attacker gets higher score he has success, in other case - fail.
Successful attack gives attacker the last shard of defender.
Failed attack reduce attackers defense by Y = atkDef/atkShardCount (rounding to higher integer) and lose his last shard.
If at the start of battle defender has smaller world he will take attacker's lost shard.
Attacks are calculated in order of more total energy spent for attack.
During the turn processing it is possible that one world change its defense and size several times.

Enter Nothing
In Nothing you have all actions except exiting being canceled.
You can't be attacked. You have no energy income and no other effects applied to you.

Exit Nothing
You can't be attacked during exiting.

Resign
All shards and energy will be lost. Artifacts will be taken by gremlins and sold on auction.

Skip turn (default action)

Additional actions

Set the defense tactic
Spend energy for defense
Use artifact/secret knowledge
React to event

Battle mechanics
All players and neutral lords have tactics in battle.
Tactic consists of next three parts:
- units
- school of magic
- hero type
Default tactic is: random, random, random.
You can use tactics like: random, random, wizard.
Random will select one from the list below.
List of available units (can be extended during the game):
- infantry - give -2 to score of all tactics with cavalry
- cavalry - give -2 to score of all tactics with archers
- archers - give -2 to score of all tactics with mages
- mages - give -2 to score of all tactics with infantry
List of available magic schools (can be extended during the game):
- white magic - give -2 to score of all tactics with necromancy
- necromancy - give -2 to score of all tactics with elemental magic
- elemental magic - give -2 to score of all tactics with white magic
List of available heroes (can be extended during the game):
- warrior - +1 to own score, -2 to score of all tactics with wizard
- scout - +0 to own score
- commander - +2 to unit penalty, -2 to score of all tactics with warrior
- wizard - +2 to magic penalty, -2 to score of all tactics with commander
Neutral lords can have own units, magic and heroes with different effects.
Neutral lords do not change tactic.
There is also basic score value which accounts defense, additional energy, bonuses, etc.

Example of battle:
Alice 10e infantry, necromancy, wizard
Bob 14e archers, elemental, commander
Neutral lord 7 cavalry, white, commander

Alice 10 + infantry 0 + necromancy -2 + wizard 0 = 8
Bob 14 + archers -4 + elemental -4 + commander -2 = 4
Lord 7 + cavalry -2 + white -2 + commander -2 = 1

Alice wins.

Defense mechanics
All worlds have defense at the beginning. It can be raised by spending energy (1 defense point for 1e). Some events can affect defense value.
To start a battle in player's world one should spend Y = DefenseValue/ShardsCount (round to bigger integer) energy.
Worlds can also have guargians, that can be find in neutral shards. Most of guardians will serve you in only one battle. 

Join game
Post request in this thread.
It would be fine to mention the names of Master and his world, and to give some description to world.

-- If we have 7 players I will give you the date of start. Demo will start soon enough after 5th player sing up.
Any suggestions for deadline time? And about the time-format? Is GMT good for everyone?
Any questions?

[InstantHax]

Ummm

Is their a format to our posts or?

I'm a bit confused

[The Froggy Ninja]

Seems cool. Further judgement will be passed once more information is available.

[Arkitekt]

Oh no, the first post just telling you the rules and basic concept. It is structured such case seemed to me logical and simple enough.
The example of players turn might be like:

attack shard_13 20e infantry,necromancy,wizard
use artifact catapult-3
3e for defense
bet 10e on auction

I will done final variant of rules soon. I just need to build lots of text that describe exactly what I mean.
Shortly, shards have some attributes like size, energy income, some artifacts or secret knowledge, or other bonuses. You can see the list of available shards to attack in game situation thread. There you also can see the world size, artifacts list, energy income and energy available of all players. You send your turn as private message to me, and it will be processed. Resulting report will be shown at game situation thread.
You can also use forum to communicate with other players in diplomacy thread. There are no format, but it would be cool to have some roleplay. If I see the game can get started I wiil improve my rough setting description. At this moment I am interested whether such game can be interesting to this audience or not.
It have lots common with Diplomacy game, but this game does not demand PvP to win and oriented on decision making (short and long term). You can not have all goodies at once, you have to choose which of them will be more useful.
It also it is not such determined and balanced. So main idea is not to win but have fun of playing, collecting goodies, making allies and conspiracy, and also using your opportunities in spectacular combinations.

[qoute]Seems cool. Further judgement will be passed once more information is available.[/qoute]
I hope I could have it done tomorrow.

PS. I have some difficulty with game terms. Can 'turn request' or just 'request' be appropriate name for player turn actions list sent as PM?

[Arkitekt]

Now I call rules done.

[Arkitekt]

It turns unexpected way. Can someone explain what I'm doing wrong?

[AoshimaMichio]

Dunno about others, but I'm lazy player so this is a lot of information to take in just to start playing. Especially if it isn't a commonly known game system.

[Arkitekt]

this is a lot of information to take in just to start playing

I thought we are on DF forum, no?
Actually it looks more complex than it is.
I think we could start some demo game for 5 turns just to see how it works.

[scapheap]

this is a lot of information to take in just to start playing

I thought we are on DF forum, no?
Actually it looks more complex than it is.
I think we could start some demo game for 5 turns just to see how it works.

Yes, but in DF it's-
I got dwarfs, they need food, water, alcohol and beds. That it.
Yes, weapons and armours are necessities, but an iron breastplate is an iron breastplate, we don't need to think beyond which dwarf will wear it and point him in a direction.

In this game, to suit up to battle you have to-
-chose a target(fine so far)
-chose amount of energy(like troop, ok)
-divide said energy in basic power(ok), logistics(um...) and additional energy(what score even used for?). Plus penetration penalty(I need a calculator).
-then tactics, which is three sets of grass, fire and water. Which we all need to learn.

And this stuff is need to play, so that going to scare a lot of people off.

[Arkitekt]

OK. There is simpler variant.
If you spend 20e to attack neutral shard you will have:
20e - 4e [basic] - max(0, myWorldSize - shardHeight) [logistics = 1] + 1d6 [=1] = 16
That's all. No tactics, just d6.
At start you have world size = 6. All shards on height 5 will cost you 1e more (=5e), 4 height - 2e (=6e), and so on. 6 and higher - basic 4e.
As for defense it is a number simply added to defender's score. No dividing by shards count. Defense is decreasing half of world size each turn. With world size 8 you will lose 4 defense each turn.

When planning an attack you just calculate the cost of the target and add some energy above to lower risks.
For example, you have world of 6 and 12e. You want to attack shard on height 4 with 5 defense. It will cost you 4 (basic) + 5 (its defense) + 2 (logistics) = 11e. Spending 11e you have 50/50 chance on tactic. Actualy your chances are greater than 50%, because with even score you will win because you have spent 5e as additional, but neutral lord hasn't. With 12e your attack is pretty risky. And you should think about another player willing to attack this shard. You can use diplomacy, you can just risk or you can attack with large amount of energy. It is normal to lose half of your battles. The normal expansion speed is one shard per 2-3 turns.
Lots of players find it interesting to plan those attacks. As for me I'm just guessing. In example above I'll just wait until I have 17e (if nobody needs that shard) or I have more energy than others.

I have never learned those tactics. If you need to prepare carefully you just go to the rules thread.

I recommend just to try demo game.

[Arkitekt]

Come on, more strategies on this forum.

[Arkitekt]

We can start with 5 players.

Few worlds about setting.

You are one of the Masters - astral gods that are creating worlds of shards floating in the void. You use energy to collect new shards, which will make your world more powerful. Basically, you use energy to incarnate as some kind of king, who recruits heroes to beat all other kings. But you can use more energy for getting some initiative and preparations. For example, converting energy to gold will give you great army much faster. Mortals see those events as the gods willing to fight for them. When shard population worship you, you gain energy, which you can spend to take more shards or simply defend from another masters and daemons.
Shards can have basic defense, but only masters can raise it. Unfortunately, more shards you have more expensive it is to increase defense for same value.
But the process is more complex than just expending. There are many thing you never know, that you can use to reach your goals. Some shards may keep mighty spells, rituals, artifacts, etc.
You can mainly use only humans to conquer the shard, but if you are lucky to help elves on one of the shards they give you a knowledge how to make elves on other shards help you back. Or even just when daemons come they can fight not on their own, but join your unite army.
Some masters are honest, some are evil, and all are different, but the goal is the same and the problem is the same. Joining the shards is the only way for world to survive. If one can create world strong enough to fight with The Chaos Eador can survive.

[Squeegy]

This seems pretty well thought-out. I'll be an Astral Master by the name of Velkor, on the world Lamashtu.

[Arkitekt]

Some updates in the OP.
If you just join I'll count you to the main game. If you join in demo I'll count you only in demo.
5 players to start demo. 7 or more to start actual game.
The game is scale-able on number of players, so there's no problem someone to come or leave.

There is a trailer about setting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X8VAskWZAY
Actually the idea belongs to Adrageron who developed Eador the Genesis. Masters of the broken world is the remake by another studio. They failed the game but promotion was quite good.

[flame99]

This looks cool, but ultimately I don't really have time to read through the OP and keep up with posting actions, especially considering I'll be going on a road trip soon. However, this still looks really cool. PtW.