Hmmm OK, just glanced over the recent rule set, and I have some questions I guess.
So on my turn, I could do the following things right now:
--Create one (and only one unit) somewhere on the map, but not on a treasure chest.
--Move it around pointlessly, considering I can't claim proximity or a treasure chest.
--Upgrade my unit to a soldier or farmer, or boost its speed or skill stats.
--Place a treasure chest, which is probably worth doing.
Questions:
--Are unit class and stats represented on the map right now? I see 2F for food, but no indication of soldiers or whatever. Or has nobody actually differentiated any unit classes yet?
--When it says "class may be assigned at placement", does that mean that I can create a unit and assign a class both with 1 IP, or would that still cost 2 IP?
--Let's say I wanted to be a jerk. If I placed a unit at D12, for example, and upgraded it to a soldier, does that mean that EFHW or nobody could claim the treasure chest at D13? And then somebody else could try the same jazz against me, and we'd end up at a standstill?
--Do multiple skill levels actually do anything at the moment for farmers or soldiers? Or is it just a 1/0 thing right now? Possibly the situation above could be avoided if there were the possibility for multiple soldier levels...a level 2 soldier could "overpower" a skill 1 soldier, allowing for movement anyway. Otherwise we might just get a few trollish soldiers floating around disrupting everything. Possibly it should also be the case that armies of different players should be able to combine their strengths to attempt to overpower each other. This is reminiscent of Diplomacy, which is the best game ever. Similarly, +'d up farmers could produce even more proximity points.
Maybe in order to avoid degenerate "arms race" and "farms race" type behaviors it should be the case that successive boosts in skill have increasing price tags, a la Cookie Clicker. This too might encourage people to work together more, seeing as how it would be highly cost efficient to combine two level-5 soldiers if the level-10 equivalent costs 32x as much or whatever.
--There are still no ways to obtain multiple units, correct? This is not necessarily a bad thing...I mean it could be more like Chess where we each have many units of different types, or more like D&D where we each get single characters of a particular class to develop more fully, and then work together with complementary players. Either way could be cool.
--Is there a way to produce food right now, besides creating a unit? Or is it just get created with 2 food, eat it, then starve? I don't want my units to starve! Possibly farmer skill levels should have something to do with food production?
So yeah, I'm thinking that my proposal will be something like defining skill levels beyond level 1, introducing food production, or both. Please let me know what you think, or if I'm wildly misunderstanding anything...as I said I haven't really been "in" to this game for the past couple weeks.
Which reminds me...we should also find some way to encourage greater player interactivity between turns. Because right now, I feel rather detached from the game most of the time.