During the next revision of the game, the board game shape was kept, but made larger to encompass four A3 boards arranged in a rectangular pattern. This was done because as the game got larger in scope and complexity, it was felt that a bigger playing space would allow more freedom as well as giving the player more room to maneuver. The hex grid persisted and an attempt to have a proper way of arranging the planets and fledgling anomaly system was envisioned. Marked spots on the gameboard were arranged in a regular pattern and the planets were placed face down so the player could not see the initial set up of the board. This was the stage in the game where the scanning feature was devised. This was done to make exploration of the gameboard more interesting as well as to encourage the player away from defensive turtle tactics.
The bigger board worked a bit better and it gave the players more room to play. As this was ultimately supposed to be a 4 player game, it was also necessary to expand the playing area. It was felt that it would be better to have each player starting in their own section, each in a corner, so that they could have a turn or two where they could expand un-harassed so they could get some economic activity set up before the first fleets came into contact. During this phase of development, planets and certain larger ships were bigger than the smaller ones, with planets being the largest.
As an experiment, the hex's were removed and the game was played with distances in centimeters and measured with a ruler. This was abandoned though due to the extra complexity and time it took to complete the movement phase.
The rectangular game play area was then altered to a square shape, which meant distances were even between the players and resources. A nicer background image of a galaxy was also selected.
For convenience during the development of Dominion, the gameboards were printed on A3 pages. When the square shape for the gameboard was selected, this left us with a blank section at the end of each of the board sections. What to do with this space led to the development on the current HUDs. This balanced the board sheets nicely and gave us a good place to display useful information that would aid gameplay.
The next and most tricky problem to be addressed was the positioning of the anomaly counters. This had to be done in a fair way, but that would also add a random element to the game. With interesting counters like the derelicts to be placed as well as resource generating planets, this needed to be done very carefully. During early testing it was done by eye and evenly spaced within the hex grid. The hex grid was also increased in size and the counters were changed to be the same size. This was then done by placing the counters on numbered hexes within the board, and the player arranging the anomalies randomly along the board numerically. This worked somewhat, but was decided to be altered. A concentric ring system of anomalies was experimented with to allow the players to uncover the different anomalies in stages. This was partly kept and expanded to have a cluster of resource and anomaly points in the centre region of the map to give a players a reason to move in that direction, this was something that did not occur in the previous playtest. There were several regions of the board that remained empty and unused, so hopefully this new layout will encourage players to use the whole board, and to drive them towards conflict and domination. A permanent wormhole exit in the centre of the board can allow a player to reach the dense central region quickly, which will hopefully add some dynamics to the game.
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