Just an idea I just came up with. What if in a ffa game, there was one player who didn't have any territories, but could affect all other players? He would be able to give them cards or take cards from them, and alter their income by 10% (maybe more) from the income they should get based on their bonuses.
A round would go like this:

Chief plays his turn by assigning income and cards to the players.
After he has committed the other players can take their turn, and once they have all committed the game plays the all their orders like normally. If it's necessary, the chief could alter the income and cards of a certain player after committing, but only if that specific player hasn't given his orders yet.
Then the chief has to assign income and cards again, and so on.

The chief never dies because he doesn't have any territories or income, he is a completely different entity. If he gets booted the game either ends. So only fast players should get to be chief.
The chief doesn't have to be the game host.
The chief could also be accessed by some fancy program the players could script themselves if they wanted to (just like CLOT).

I see many new possibilities for role-playing and new game variants that could work using the chief system.

Downsides:
The chief has to be an active player, since nobody likes waiting very long before they can take their turn. So real-time chief-games are not recommended.
And you'd also need to put a lot of trust in a player before making him chief, as he basically controls the game.
And tournaments using chiefs would be impossible.

Upsides:
Much more possibilities for role-playing and game variants. The chief could, for example, punish players who attack without announcing it in public chat by lowering their income.

Please tell me what you think.

Why not make a chief using existing game rules?

Put the chief on a separate continent/bonus/etc, make lots of abandon cards/blockade cards so he can conquor a territory each turn... and make restrictions on card use.

Only chief can play the following cards: Diplomacy, Sanctions.

People can quasi play recon/surveillance cards by stating that they are playing the card in chat, and then the players owning that territory can say what's happening in those territories...


A lot of work arounds, but possible.

Otherwise, seems like a lot of gameplay adjustments to set up something that would be used by a small niche of players.

But a chief game would be optional of course. And in the example you gave there's no way to give someone cards other than the vision (spy/recon/survey) cards.

So how about this... Everyone Gets all the cards / turn, and they ask permission from the "Chief" to use them, and the Chief can only authorize people to use certain cards... make all card playing public/non-private.

But it would require a lot of non-enforceable rules. A real chief with the abilities I described would be a lot more effective.

Ah yes Moros ! This is what I was trying to accomplish with my game mode Terrorist ! I could show you it if you want