Fantasy Ideology war

Note 1: come up with better name.

Note 2: This is all very rough; just throwing ideas at a page

Inspirations: Handful of Stars, Study in Emerald, Mystic Vale, Twilight Struggle, Imperial, Pax Pamir, Aeon Flux

A social deduction deck building war game where players compete to flip the majority of the board territories to one faction ideology vs. another.

Every player is dealt a secret faction card: blue or red team. Equal # of players on both.
The "board" is made up of a series of randomized (hex, cards, chits, whatever) named planets/regions (based on theme. Will refer to as region). Each region has a corresponding sleeved card.

Some regions naturally produce different currencies. Some produce a war currency, some domestic currency, etc.
Each player starts with a set of 10 randomly determined regions of symmetrical currency generation. (ex. everyone gets 5 economic regions, 2 military, 2 tech, and one with one of each (homeworld).) Where they are located on the board however is a bit random.)

Pull a page from Concordia, and have regions start the game semi-random, with an eye to making sure players don’t start all clumped up and defensible.
Or pull a page from Twilight Imperium, and give all players a collection of starting regions, having them build out the board from the center.

When players gain ownership of a region on the board, they place a puck of their color on that region, and take the card related to that region from the supply to the top of their discard pile. If owned by another player, that card is immediately taken from them in the same manner, and placed into the new player’s discard pile.
On a player’s turn, they draw 5 cards, and may play cards from their hand for the card’s currency value, or location. All played cards are immediately resolved, and placed into that player’s discard. Star Realms anyone?

However, a player may choose to hold some cards back and save them for the next round, adding them to the next hand. (based on an upgradable side power)

Once all cards in a player’s hand have been resolved, they may place them into the discard in any order

When the deck runs out, they simply flip their discard pile over and draw from the top. Sequencing is important.

A number of transparent standard upgrade cards are available in the market: military installation, Farms, Monasteries, or religious monuments.

To purchase, a player must play cards that generate the requisite currency, and spend a region from their hand to be upgraded. The upgrade card slides into the sleeve of the chosen region card as an overlay a la Mystic Vale.

All upgrades are permanent. Each region may only have one upgrade. If the card is later taken by another player, the upgrade remains in place.

Note: It would be really cool visual design if the overlay cards featured art of what they presented that worked with the background of all basic land cards… kind of like Custom Heroes. Ex. the Monestary overlay card would feature a monastery that when slid over the land card would perch it on a little hill or valley or some such.

Would mean that all basic land assets would have to have homogenous placement of where a building/farm could be fit into the scenery.

Economic buys card upgrades, (Should roads exist that must be bought with economy to allow troops from region to the next?)
Military allows for the movement of armed units and can be used to produce armed units. (Should they only be deployable/movable to/from regions in hand?)
Religious allows for the flipping of regional influence

Military: Fights are deterministic: 3 armies fighting 2 win with 1 remaining. If both armies are destroyed, defender keeps control of region.
Religious: By spending two Religious currency, and the relevant region card, a player may flip a region’s loyalty to either team red or team blue. This cost is increased by 1 for every VP that region is worth.

Winning:

Players secretly (hidden identity) are divided into two teams in mostly equal numbers.
Each player has 1 vp for each neutral region they control, plus more for each neutral religious monument they control.

Likewise, each faction gains 1vp for every region loyal to that faction regardless of which player owns it, plus more for religious monuments in loyal regions.
The game ends when one faction has 10(?) points.

The player with the most victory points on the faction that ended the game wins alone. However, if anyone on his team is in last place, everyone on that team looses and the player with the highest victory points on the opposing team wins instead.

Extra ideas:

Apart from starting territories, most of the board cards should be red (military) regions.

This makes economic territories more valuable, and forces a strategy of development to develop select red territories into farms and such
It also allows for a military expansionist strategy to gather more red territories enough to operate and not shut down (as players can play gained territories to continue to move troops around and produce more units to cover the greater boarders.. but inefficiently, since the lands are un-upgraded.)

Hex spaces, with a single big hex in the middle that’s an important territory for everyone.

Upgrading a farm with a military outpost should "cover up" the green economy symbol with 2 red symbols. And vice versa.
A Church should cover up both red and green symbols with a blue
A Monument should blank out all resources

Regions upgraded with monasteries are able to change the loyalty of nearby regions at additional cost (4+vp?)
Additional tech currency for buying one time unique market cards

Advisors: Allow an additional card to be drawn each turn
Bureaucracy: Allow a player to set a card from their hand said to use at a later turn
These things should reward particular tactics:

Expansionism creates card bloat, so tech cards focusing on managing the discard and reducing hand bottlenecking are important.
Running a smaller empire more focused on upgrading can be powerful too, and cards that reduce the cost of upgrades, or allow the reuse of previous cards would be strong.

Tech upgrades require a combination of Military & Economic currency. (2M & 2E), or, maybe just a heavy dose of the primary currency that fuels it?

Perhaps 5 of each player’s starting cards have no board relevant counterpart? Can never be taken or lost?

This allows each player to start the game with a full 10 cards, without having the entire board start under player control.
Also makes it so that some cards are impossible to loose. (is that a good thing?)
Should they be un-upgradable?
Allows each player to have 1 starting empire card that gives one of every resource, and acts as a wild location for movement/deployment/development

Empire card could also have asym racial power? Or be upgradable with strong abilities?

Ex: the ability to upgrade your empire card to allow movement to and from any territory on the turn it’s played
Or A Empire upgrade that allows all military and economic currencies to be spent interchangeably that turn

A separate political track for world wide random events that crop up that players can vote on the outcome of by spending religious currency on. (A venue for changing the meta and spending excess currency)
Religious currency, unlike the others, can be stockpiled for later use between rounds?