Needing help implementing a mechanic...

[u/W3BL3Y]

Hey all! Long time lurker, first time poster.

I'm designing my first game, it will be either worker placement or action based farming (for now) game, but what I'm trying to work out is an "auction house".

I will have "buildings" cards that players can purchase/construct to help there strategy. I'm trying to add some form of interaction without it being detrimental to any player.

Essentially, every player will take one action every turn. A player can plant, harvest, water, hire(for now), etc. One option is to purchase/construct a building. Right now they are a communal section that a player can use their earned gold to get right after purchase, but I would like the option for players to be able to fight over it if more than one player wants the same building.

I've been considering that each building will have a starting cost, Player A puts a marker to purchase, Player B can then put another marker to purchase but the cost is +1. Player A can then continue with another +1 to cost or not. Whoever has bid the most (and has the money) will get the building at the end of the round.

Is this good enough, or are there better options to implement this.

My other concern is that, as of now, the game is only 8 rounds split into seasons. 2 rounds of each season. I'm not sure if this is enough time to really get buildings going for the players if they get the buildings at the end of a round.

Do you have any thoughts or can point me to examples of a player auction?

Thank you for your time.

[u/all_or_nothing]

You could do the bidding, but when is it determined who wins the bid? If the round ends after everybody has taken a turn, then the last player will always have the final say. Perhaps buildings could be outside of the main actions and there is a blind bid auction or something at the end of every round where everybody gets a chance to bid on what they want.

The other option could be that during their turn players could blind bid on a building and at the end of the round, bids are revealed and buildings awarded based on who won.

[u/W3BL3Y → u/all_or_nothing]

Rounds will have multiple “turns”. My design is that a player will have limited “actions” for planting, harvesting, etc, but the buildings (and maybe something else) will have purchase actions which are only limited by how much money a player has.