By Other Means

About the Game

By Other Means is my first attempt at a game built from the ground up for more than two players. Points of Conflict has a 2v2 team mode, but it's still experimental and wasn't part of the original design. By Other Means, in contrast, has been designed from the ground up to be played by three or four players. While it could conceivably be played by two players, I don't think it would be good at that player count and the game doesn't officially support it.

What sets By Other Means Apart

On the surface, By Other Means is a military themed area control game with a straightforward win condition. Players, each representing a major nation, build embassies in minor powers to gain influence. Once a player reaches 100 influence the end game is triggered and whoever has the most influence wins.

However, in addition to the usual maneuvering of tanks and bombers and building an economy to support their military, players in By Other Means have to manage both their relationships with the other players and maintain the backing of their people. To represent this, By Other Means uses two unique mechanics: Popular Support and Regard.

• Popular Support is a measure of how happy your people are with your actions. Increasing popular support will give you more actions on your turn, while decreasing it will result in increased costs and, if it bottoms out, reduces you to a single action every turn. Factors that affect popular support include:
  • Attacking opponents will either decrease or increase popular support, depending on how your people feel about that opponent.
  • Losing units or buildings in battle will always decrease popular support, as will attacking opposing civilians (diplomats and trade representatives).
  • Your own diplomats and trade representatives can take actions in your home territory to increase your popular support.
  • Opponents' diplomats can directly reduce your popular support.
• Regard is a measure of how one player's population feels about each of the other players' nations. The main reason this is important is that it affects how your population reacts when you attack them. If your population is either neutral toward that player or, worse, likes them, your popular support will drop when you attack them, and the more they like that nation the more your popular support will drop. Conversely, if they dislike a particular nation your popular support will increase when you attack them. Of course, there are ways to manipulate regard outside of combat. This is primarily through the False Flag action that your diplomats can take.
  • In your own home territory, you can manipulate your populace's regard for other players by taking the false flag action to lower their regard for any other player. This will allow you to attack without fear of a large negative impact on your popular support, and may even result in increasing your popularity at home.
  • In an opponent's home territory, you can take this action to reduce their populace's regard for another player, incentivizing them to attack that player for the popular support boost it will give them.

The final innovation in By Other Means is emergent asymmetry. All players start the game with the exact same set of rules. However, once a player takes what's called a “trigger action”, they gain a Focus. A trigger action is the first significant action a player takes that impacts another player: destroying one of their buildings, sending a diplomatic envoy to another player, or initiating a trade mission. Each of those will gain the player either the Warlord, Negotiator, or Industrialist focus, respectively.

Taking a trigger action once will gain the player the Level 1 version of the focus, and taking it again will give them the Level 2 version. A Level 1 focus comes with moderate advantages, while Level 2 brings larger advantages, some disadvantages, and some significant changes to the rules for that player. Importantly, once a player starts one focus they're locked out of the other two unless they use an action and a diplomat to intentionally abandon their current focus. What this means is that your own behavior dictates how your nation evolves rather than choosing it at the start of the game or simply spending resources to “buy” a focus.

By Other Means' Development

By Other Means is still in the middle stage of development. The core rules are well set, but a lot of work remains to balance out the three focuses, determine if all of the units and buildings, both military and civilian, are functioning as intended, along with evaluating the three-player and four-player maps. I also want to see if the game can be played enjoyably at counts of five and six players.