No-one has exact answers to questions like these, especially not for a game they've never seen and which presumably exists mostly inside your own mind. The only answer is: Every designer has these questions, but the only way to resolve them is to build a simple prototype (or two, or three, or a hundred) and test, test, test until you find the kind of gameplay you desire. That is how most products are developed in industry, not just games. You don't need fancy graphics, and you don't need complex rules, but what you do need to do is to _find the fun factor_. In this endeavour, it really is wise to follow [RAD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_application_development) principles and make the simplest thing that allows you to test those game dynamics you mention, individually and together.