Games where you do everything at once (trade, move, attack, build) and then the next player goes are considered old school. The downside here is that you have to wait a long time before you get to do anything. Especially if you are playing a game like Supremacy with lots of players.
The new way is to break this up into smaller phases where everybody plays together. So, each player trades. Then each player moves. Then attack, etc. This helps keep players involved and participating in the game more frequently. The new Supremacy 2020 follows this format but this method isn’t always good. There are down sides to it.
In many ways, Supremacy works better with the old school method. This is how you can easily Retro Fit your Supremacy game with old game tech:
Combined Turn Sequence
Salaries
All players simultaneously pay salaries and collect new resources, etc. as usual.
Player Turns
Randomly determine the next player to go by pulling chits as usual. During your turn, you Trade, Combat, Redeploy and Build all in sequence. Once you have finished all Steps, draw a new chit to determine the next player to go.
Note that launching Counterattacks, can still draw you in and give you something to do during another player’s turn.
Advantages to Using this Variant
Better Strategic Planning
A downside to playing together in broken down, incremental Steps is that it is hard to create and implement a coherent strategic plan. Everything is always changing. Often times your plan is ruined by time you get to move. It is almost better not to make any plans until it is time for you to do something. This variant allows players the time they need to think and operate more strategically. This is a much better fit for Supremacy.
Social / Diplomacy
In many ways the best part of Supremacy is the diplomacy: alliances and negotiation. With the new rapid fire format, there is almost no time to conduct this effectively. Instead of sitting around bored, waiting for your turn, this time gives players the perfect time needed to conduct diplomacy. This also gives you more time to socialize. Bringing people closer together to bond and connect is what games are about. Go with it and enjoy!
Teaching / Policing
Are people cheating? It is harder to track this and enforce the rules if everybody is moving at once or in rapid sequence. If you are the only person moving and everybody else is watching, you have to be on your best behavior. If you are a new player, this is a great time to learn and get coaching advice from other players. Players are usually too distracted to help in the current system.
Faster?
This may be counter intuitive but I suspect that the game will actually play faster this way. At the very least you are saving time by only pulling chits once per Turn, not every Step. I think players will also spend less time ‘thinking’ during their turn time. They have plenty of time to think while other people are moving. When they get pulled, they know exactly what they are going to do. They just jump right in and crank out their whole turn at once.
Try this out and let us know what you think. Do you like it better?