Monumental exploration

You know I was talking about my Explore and Settle prototype and how it needed some sort of a spark?  Well, I think I have got somewhere on that front.

First I will step back and outline the game as it stands.  The main flow is that on your turn you draw a card, which is dominated by a terrain type, and you add it to the table to extend a growing map; you may then add a settlement to that location, move a settlement (people migrate sometimes), and use resources to develop cities and resource production locations like mines and farms.  You get resources to develop or build things by being able to trace a line of supply (of limited length) to locations producing those resources, and you pay other players if you need to transport goods through areas where they have a settlement but you do not.  Resources are produced according an icon on the end of each terrain card, but this can be covered over by other cards, after which the card only keeps producing if someone has added a production location to it.  Cities (which mostly provide gold) and production locations are not owned by any player, but can be accessed by anyone with a settlement marker in the same place.

The intent was that one of the things players can build is a monument, and these are the things that provide victory points. I had originally envisaged earning the most points for building monuments that stand at the edge of the map at the end of the game, so they mark the borders of the kingdom, as it were.

I figure players would be building things like this. Maybe giant statues and stuff too.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons, by Jim Champion, CC BY-SA 2.0

This is all well and good, and the basic mechanisms seem to work, but they don't really drive the game forwards and they don't yet provide that spark of excitement that is needed to make a game more than just a collection of rules.  To get through this, I think I need to figure out what the focus of the game is, and in this case, I think it is probably actually the building of monuments.  So I need to actually make people want to build those monuments and give them an appropriate boost when they do.

What I am working on now is that on completion of a monument, you get a special reward which includes victory points, but also some extra ability; maybe you can now transport resources further, build certain things cheaper, avoid paying for certain things, or gain an extra settlement marker to place.  Thematically, this would probably be a boon offered by the king to acknowledge your services to His Magnificence.  Probably these boons would be available on cards, and when you build your monument, you can claim one of the small selection on display.

(Of course, with this focus, my working title is looking more dodgy than ever, but it doesn't really matter at this stage.)

Balancing the boons will be a challenge, but that can come later. First test the concept.  And that's what I'm doing right now...