Players: Alan Paull, David Turczi, Richard Breese, Alex Churchill The basic mechanics - underlings, the "up one or down all" tension, the mission cards, the competition for geography and underlings - were deemed to work very well. The tableau building was described as "A deck builder without the annoying bits" :)
Problems: One of the biggest problems was the way all the un-bought underlings just clog up the table. Once there are 10+ of them there, people can't follow what's available. This is exacerbated by the problem that people still didn't want to buy underlings very often. Alan bought underlings rounds 5 and 6, David in rounds 1 and 6, Alex only in round 4; Richard did in rounds 1, 3, 5 and 7 but he had the lowest score by the time we stopped. People felt they couldn't afford to take time to buy an underling because it interferes with your resource gathering/building too much.
A second problem was that people's missions were very uneven in power level. The public missions were Flatland (CG5+ on desert and grassland) and Mr Rich (CG5+ inc city on a shield). David started with Sand Tourists (CG5+ half on desert, half not) and Linearity (CG5+ in a straight line), which were very compatible with Flatland. Alan had Keep It Tall (CG5+ on forest and mountain) and Alex had Rival Towns (Two disconnected groups 3+ one space apart) which don't fit with Flatland anywhere near as well. The cards like Trader and Crystal Seer are meant to allow you to mitigate this, but you do need to spend a turn buying them.
There is also something of a disadvantage to playing later in the turn order, even with rotating start player.
Other observations: The power of jumping is necessary in each game, to prevent people getting blocked in too severely. This is currently served by the Nomad Builder, Shanty Builder, Sailor and River Builder in Age 1, plus Teleporter and Levitator in Age 2.
Early placement is cutthroat. Just like in TerraMystica?, you absolutely need to be strategic in your initial placement, and factor in both the public missions and your secret missions.
Alan could have scored on round 4 either the public mission or a mission from his hand. The geographic competition/interference from Alex prevented him doing both.
Planned changes:
Underlings only persist for two rounds. In the turn they appear their price is as printed on the card. The turn afterwards, their price goes down by £1. If they're still unbought by that point, they disappear. So only a maximum of 8 underlings will be visible in any round. ✔
I'll also take the cost of most underlings down by £1. ✔
I'll split the missions into about 3 decks: something like "Landscapers" (care about specific terrain types), "Positions" (care about the shape or position of your structures), "Politicals" (care about your position relative to other players). Each player gets one mission of each category.✔
I'll start players off with one cube each of wood, stone and gold, to make it easier to hit the turn 4 target, and in particular allow players to build (without crossing terrain type) on round 1. ✔
Every Builder-class underling can, as an alterative Up ability costing no resources, build a Bridge on a water space. That grants you connectivity and adjacency across that river space. [Added, then removed]
Proposed changes I'm not planning: Other changes that were suggested:
Add variable scores to certain missions like Trade Route (I plan to just bin/redesign that one).
Move the scoring round boundaries to rounds 5/8/10 rather than 4/7/10.
Add resource cube 'bribes' to underlings that don't get bought (I think I'll try just a discount first).
Allow one of the basic underlings to produce crystal, moderately expensively.✔
Some people thought I should take down the big round 4 payout of WWSSGG. I think I'd rather try to enable people to hit it without needing to be quite so 100% focused on it as they currently have to be.
Monday 21st Sep 2015
Players: Douglas, Michael, Paddy, Stuart
Rules: Players received WSG to start with. Players got missions in three categories: one green (terrain-type-matters), one blue (geometry), one red (shields or opponents). The first public mission is forced to be green and the last is forced to be red. Underlings had discount of £1 the round they come out and £2 the round after, then they disappear. Builders can build bridges.
Observations: People enjoyed themselves. The reduced underling prices meant people were buying a lot more underlings, which is great to see. The purchase histories were:
Stuart was the only one who ever bought a cube. Illusionist was bought twice in the same round :) The discount on old underlings meant that the tension of whether to buy underlings early or risk someone else taking them applies not just within one round, but across the space of two rounds. Even bearing that in mind, though, only about a third of the underlings bought were bought with the increased discount (on the second round).
Round 7's double scoring round caught a lot of people by surprise. Douglas and Michael had both planned to build for "Local Diversity" but hadn't realised it was needed for this round. This might be because the round chart isn't as clear as it could be. The missions players scored were:
Bridges were used a few times, and worked well. Questions were raised about whether they count as a terrain type for missions which care, such as Local Diversity. I said no.
Shields were strategic spots which players were racing each other to get to, as desired. There was an exciting moment when Michael and Paddy were both trying to get to a shield first; Paddy could have used his Nomad Builder to jump halfway there then his Sailor to jump the rest of the way there, but he could see that Michael was going to win the race anyway.
In the final couple of rounds Michael and Paddy had no building work they wanted to do, and were just claiming underlings for points, while Douglas and Stuart were busily doing construction up to the final action. I quite like this. Total structures at the end of the game were: Douglas 4 settlements 8 cities; Michael 5 settlements 5 cities 2 bridges; Paddy 10 settlements 3 cities 2 bridges; Stuart 8 settlements 6 cities.
Douglas felt that the discounts on underlings weren't high enough in ages II and III. He proposed that the discount schema should be, rather than the current £1/£2 all game, something like Age I £0/£2, Age II £0/£3, Age III £0/£4. Encourage players to more normally pick up underlings during the second round they're available; the first round functions more like "here's what will be available next time" but you can heftily overpay if you want to.
People would have liked to use both Baron and Earl, but they only came up in round 10. People liked Sorceress's and Duchess's ability; Michael evilly took one with the other in order to prevent anyone else getting that benefit.
People enjoyed using the underlings with "[Up]: Gain 2VP". But they had little net effect, certainly relative to the effect of scoring missions. People's score from missions was 52/69/84/65 and final score was 63/76/97/72; total score from underlings' on-gain and [Up] abilities was 11/7/13/7.
Problems: There's still a drawback to being in last place. During the initial settlement placement you often care about where other people are going, and placing settlments 4th+5th out of 8 gives you *less* information that way.
There's still a problem with some players having missions that don't synergise very well. Dividing missions into the three decks is good as far as it goes. People wanted more ways to get extra choices of missions. They wanted 2-3 more underlings with Fate Changer's effect, but earlier in the game. I think instead I might try giving people significantly more missions... something like 1 green, 2 blue, 2 red. (There's a risk with 2 green that sometimes they'll synergise *very* nicely and other times they'll have extreme anti-synergy.)
Douglas could have fulfilled a mission in round 4, for 6VP 2W 2S 2G. He chose to wait until round 7, where he got 10VP 2W 2S 2G. I'd rather adjust the rewards to make it that it's worth fulfilling it early if possible.
People were spaced out all around the outside of the board: nobody used the Shanty Builder or River Builder to head for the central shield. Makes sense because almost all the missions want connected groups. By the end of the game there was almost a complete ring of all players' buildings around the outside, with nobody in the middle.
We ran out of cubes in all three colours! People had huge amounts of stone (15ish), gold (10ish), and even occasionally wood (8ish). At the end of the game Paddy had a huge pile of 11 unspent gold and 10 unspent stone. They either weren't spending them because they didn't have enough of the other resources to build cities, or because they were gaining resources faster than their builders could spend them, or because they saw no point building any more settlements. I don't know what to do about this. Each individual resource gainer seems fine. Possibly the cube reward payouts for scoring are a bit too high. I might try the cube rewards down at 4/2/0 rather than 6/3/0 for one game and see what difference it makes.
I'd like to make some tweaks to the physrep of the board and player mats (make them more rigid) and the underling cards (less flimsy).
Underling tweaks: Stone Builder is too good at 2S (stone is just as easy to get as wood). Nomad Builder should be able to jump water. Nomad Builder wants clearer wording. Douglas wants a couple of inefficient crystal-makers in Age II, so that if you missed out on magic in Age I you're not completely deprived. I think I might want one or two more "jumping" builders or settlement-teleporters.
Mission tweaks: Ugly Stepsisters was pretty hard. In fact all the blue/geometry missions were significantly harder than the greens or reds. Rival Cities isn't great because it's dependent on what your opponents do. Friendly Towns was a *lot* of work for Stuart to set up to score x2, using the Urbimancer to move his settlements around into disconnected groups of value 3. Rather than change the blue cards, I'd rather make it slightly easier for players to get their settlements into the right positions. A couple more "jumping" builders or settlement-teleporters should help here too.
Planned changes: Shrink the board down a bit, to squish people together a bit more. ✔ (And stick the board and player mats onto thick card.) □ Give people more missions to start off with. ✔ Tweak a few cards as above. ✔ Take down the scoring payouts from 6VP+6 cubes to 7VP+4 cubes, and 5VP+3 cubes to 5VP+2 cubes. ✔ Move Baron and Earl earlier. ✔
Ideas under consideration but no immediate change planned: Change the scoring round structure so r7 isn't followed by effectively 3 scoring rounds. □
Things people particularly liked: Finding spaces on the board where you can combine multiple of your missions. Scout to hop your settlements away once they're done scoring certain arrangements. The basic structure.
Things people found painful: Downtime. The default state of an actions round is players know what they're wanting to do - which underlings they're wanting to move up, and in what order, and when they're planning to pass and what they're planning to buy. It's just a question of whether anyone interferes with any of those plans. On the occasions when A does interfere with B's plans, that means B now has to make new plans, causing downtime for A, C and D while B does. When you buy a good card, that makes £2 rather than £1 and does good stuff when going up as well, there's a painful tension between using it for those two modes. I don't think I'm going to change that, but it's noted that it feels unpleasant sometimes. The end game is an anticlimax. There's minimal interaction. Relatedly, the endgame involves mainly upgrading settlements to cities (which nobody can interfere with), and building settlements in certain spaces that are mostly not in contention. There's not as much interaction as I'd like. Having Sailor + Vaulter + Urbimancer gave a confusingly large freedom of movement when I didn't actually want to move my settlements around (because I'd been building for the r10 public scoring mission). Crystals. Buying crystal-makers is a gamble on whether the good magic-users will come up early. It's sad that any table talk about your strategy or plans is a strategic disadvantage. Conversation around the table should be good. This is a downside shared with many/most worker placement games and other strategic claim-key-things-before-your-opponents-do games, but still a downside.
Balance issues - Underlings: V has 2x crystal makers and doesn't want the magic users. Beguiler is very funky, but appears too late. Move her earlier. Balance issues - Missions: Rival Cities is hard. Gaining cubes for scoring in r4, and even r5-7, is too much tailwind. Some missions it's relatively easy to triple- or even quad-score. Most of the green ones. Some it's very hard to triple: the disconnected group ones, Ugly Stepsisters on some continents, Conurbation (which is also unfortunately v hard to score early as well, giving it a rather narrow window of effectiveness). Kartik benefited significantly from having private missions Dry Spaces (2) and Wooden Sheep (6) when Keep It Tall (8) was public.
Big wacky suggestions: Allow trading cards (underlings, missions?) for resources. ✔ City upgrades make the endgame an uninteractive anticlimax? Bin cities. Replace all architects with other variations on builders. One starting builder can't cross terrain types at all, one can, they need different resource cubes. □ Could give people one initial builder (or resource-maker) and cut round 1. □ Could cut rounds 9-10, or rounds 7 and 9-10, or similar. I think those inclinations are patching symptoms rather than cause though.
Minor requests: Want a way to tear down bridges. [Bridges removed] Differentiate the grey for makes-stone and the light blue for builder. ✔ Remove scoring rounds for r1-2. □ Rename Teleporter. Materializer? ✔ Levitator is similar to Scout but worse. I think this menas Levitator is bad, but Kartik says Scout is too good. Tone down Scout. ✔ Move the underling-rearrangement phase later in the turn. [Later introduced "Change" action instead.] When explaining to new players, emphasise (1) Triple-scoring missions is necessary to win. (2) Get a good builder. Want an Age III Architect. ✔ Get rid of Crystal Seer's scrying ability. ✔ Start with 3 settlements rather than 2. ✔ Shave another ring of hexes off the board. ✔ Want mechanics that encourage players to play next to each other. Like Terra Mystica's friendly power and trading houses. Either underlings that like adjacency (like Social Merchant), or mechanics (when building next to other players, the other players get 1 of the cubes you spent?) ✔ Have the public missions drawn from a different deck. Move some things like Rival Cities into the public-missions deck. ✔ Have missions in the public deck that focus only on the central citadel/shield. □
Notes - Underlings: Clare had loads of fun using the combo of Abundant Builder to build on a shield, then either Abundant Architect to upgrade it, or Scout to move it off. Scout is very good; people want more like that! Beguiler is very confusing to read. Stone Builder might be too good at 3S for a settlement. Notes - Missions: Starting with 5 missions, from which you get to choose about 3 to focus on, is nice. Ambassadors is a lot easier than it used to be now that players have 3 starting settlements. The disconnected missions are really hard. 12 shields on the board is probably too many. Fishing Villages (CG5+ along a river) is nice.
Rulings made: Can Vaulter only leap directly 180° over the new settlement, or curve 120°? Said 120° is okay too.
Changes to make:
Make iconography consistent where the settlement icon means "a settlement" vs where it means "a settlement or city". ✔
Fewer shields. ✔
Clarify wording of Ambassadors. ✔
Wednesday 14th Oct 2015
Players: Alex, Rachael, Clive Rules: We were playing with the new "Change" action to swap underlings in/out; the new action "Trade" with other players (underling or up to 5 cubes), but only if you have a city touching them; and changes to most architects including the basic Architect to make (a) the city upgrade have a discount of N stone, where N is the number of different opponents the city in question will be adjacent to, but also (b) the city upgrade grants 1 gold to each neighbouring opponent. Also players got 4 missions - one each from the categories Geographical-Connected, Geographical-Disconnected, Geometrical, and Political. The public missions were drawn from a separate deck: Fishing Villages (two disconnected groups on the same river) and Local Diversity (CG5+ on a shield and 3 different terrain types). The map was even smaller than last time, with just 6 shields total.
Things people particularly liked:
I liked the way River Builder has great flexibility along rivers, but can't build inland at all. I was occasionally swapping it out for my basic Builder, which is an option I like people wanting to occasionally use.
The "Change" action to swap your underlings was an instant hit. A perfect way to let people fix their mis-plannings from the start of the round.
Things people didn't like:
On Clive's last turn he couldn't accomplish anything by building, so he just passed and bought an underling for 4VP. He didn't like this - it felt dull.
The way end-game resources aren't worth anything at all. There should be an automatic conversion of unspent resource cubes into VPs at some low rate.
Trading was an interesting idea, but was hard to use. If one player needs a resource, the other players often won't want anything that player has to offer.
Misc:
The new disconnected Sand Tourists / etc were pretty easy to score in rounds 3-5, by building out from two of your starting locations, exactly as I'd intended.
Meridian was hard.
Rulings made:
When you trade for underlings, they must be either in a player's archive of unused underlings, or else in the neutral position indicating they've not been used this turn.
Mission tweaks:
Diamond needs clear wording to indicate the value 5 must be contained within the 4 spaces of the diamond. ✔
Map tweaks:
Move shields further from starting locations. ✔
Central citadel should obviously be a shield. Citadels serve far more as blocking spaces than as strategic locations. ✔
Rivers felt about right.
Rules changes - Immediate:
Resource cubes in supply are worth something at end of game. Maybe 1VP per 3 cubes or so. ✔
Rules changes to consider:
What happens if players don't have to start next to citadels, but can place starting settlements anywhere? Probably I want it to be that settlement #2 can't be within ~5 spaces of #1, and #3 can't be within that distance of either #1 or #2. □
Tuesday 20th Oct 2015
Players: Alex, Rachael Trying the game with two players. Minimal changes from last game - just treating the central citadel as a shield. For a first two-player game, it went very well. I had been worried the map would be too big, but with the limited number of shields, the rivers constraining expansion, the start positions likely to have some adjacency, the discount for friendly cities, and the missions that ask you to be adjacent to opponents, we were still plenty in each other's faces. That said, when a given spot was actually contested it was obvious who would be able to reach it first.
Duration was about 1 hour 20 minutes.
We didn't buy so many underlings. Rachael skipped buying in rounds 7 and 8, and just bought for VPs in r9-10; I bought a cube r2, and nothing in rounds 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10. That might not be a problem. The only underling I bought after round 4 was the Master Architect in round 7. Passing with three underlings to gain £4 felt like a huge opportunity cost, but I did think it was worth it (and I think I was right).
Rachael was doing her building with Nomad Builder, Shanty Builder (including establishing clusters around three different citadels), and later Materialiser. I was using Stone Builder and basic Builder, plus Scout to build on same terrain then move 1 step off it.
The underling-frobbling at end of turn felt like the most time-consuming part. Several rounds we'd both spend at least a minute staring at the board, our available underlings, and our resources, making plans for the next round. Which is quite fun as far as it goes, although not very interactive.
It was a fairly low-scoring game. In Age II we each scored private missions 1x, 1x, 2x, and then only a total of 1x between both r7 public missions. In Age III Rachael scored private missions 1x, 2x, 4x, then nothing in the public r10, while I scored 1x, 3x, 3x, then 2x in the public r10. My 2 extra mission scorings were very closely matched by R's VP gains from underlings, though - she gained 7VP from underlings, meaning the final scores were 66 to 67! (With one tie-breaker cube left each as well.)
The predictable order of underling activation. It'd be nice if there was more incentive to diverge from the initial "Woodsman for 2W, Gatherer for WS" pattern.
Rules tweaks:
I might try starting people on WWS rather than WSG. That means Woodsman for 2W is a standard first move, but people could immediately build after that. □
Mission tweaks:
I'd like to have more Triangle Cluster missions like Ugly Stepsisters, so that Triangle Cluster can be a standard term defined in the rules explanation. ✔
Meridian is still very hard. Most of the Geometry missions are pretty hard - Conurbation and Ugly Stepsisters were low-scored too. I don't want to just bin Meridian though because it's fun, challenging, interesting to set up; but it feels like it ought to have higher payout. It would be nice to be able to mark some missions as giving bonus VPs or resources. ✔
We slightly prefer starting with 5 missions to starting with 4.
Underling tweaks:
Abundant Architect should really have the friendly city discount/reward. ✔
The Age III underlings do feel very expensive. I'm inclined to try slashing £1 off all their prices. ✔
The underlings which gain you cubes as an on-buy effect would be more interesting in Age II. ✔
R was mixing up the underlings' prices and "down" payments. I want to differentiate visually between "gain £2" and "pay £2". ✔
I'd like to add some underlings with more interesting on-buy triggers. "On buy: Move a settlement or city two spaces", kind of thing. "On buy: Move a settlement along its river." "On buy: Gain 2 cubes", "On buy: Trade 3 cubes for 3 cubes". Perhaps combined with high "down" payments but minimal "up" effects.
But this does need to be balanced against complexity, especially in Age I.
Wednesday 28th October 2015
Players: Alex, Clare, Vitenka, Paddy
The first 4-player game for a little while. We had a slightly unusual shuffle of the Age I cards which meant that, although 7 of the 16 are builders, no builders came up in round 1 and only one in round 2! I think this variability is quite interesting though. There were actually two that came up in round 2, but one of them was Shanty Builder, which is much worse in 4-player (Clive made good use of it in our 3p game) and much worse again now the central citadel is a shield. I wonder if I can adjust that somehow. Vitenka picked up a Nomad Builder r3 and a Geomancer r5, leading to the hilarious event of Alex trading to get Vitenka's basic Builder. I think in retrospect it probably wasn't worth it, but it did allow me to score an extra mission in round 6, and I did win.
This was the first 4-player game on the current board size (6 hexes along a side, 91 hexes, 7 shields total). It was pleasantly squished - as much by the river positions as by the total number of hexes. By the end of the game there were 60 buildings on the board (14, 15, 15, 16), pretty nearly filling it (once you factor in 14 water hexes and 6 citadels). People's total building value was very close - 22, 18, 22, 22 - even though the scores, and total missions scored, were very different.
The level of player interaction was about right. There were plenty of friendly cities built for a discount of 1 or 2; a few trades of one or two cubes; a fair amount of building close to each other, A getting in B's way, but not so as to completely scupper B's plans, but just to force B to have to adjust her plans slightly. "People were getting in each other's way, so they made new plans."
I liked Master Builder's minor reward for building next to other players. I'd like a few more effects like that.
Friendly Towns worked a lot better as a public mission than I had expected. It encourages adjacency, discourages the urge to link everything up, works well. Only thing is it doesn't mention shields.
Things that were imperfect:
People ended up with too much gold at the end because architects get more effective and city upgrades don't reduce the total gold in the game by very much.
The Age III underlings still didn't get bought much.
Paddy and Vitenka only bought 4 underlings each. Maybe that's okay?
Shanty Builder is very unpopular in 4-player games.
Vitenka scored a mission in round 2! By buying a wood cube in round 1. This seemed to work well, but he came last, mainly due to only scoring a total of 2 private missions between rounds 5-7.
Proposed changes I'm not immediately planning:
I could striate the underlings more. At one extreme, precisely guarantee the 4 underlings that arrive in round 1, the 4 in round 2, etc. Or preserving a fraction more randomness, sort them into 5 decks of 8, so that by round 2 we'll definitely have seen (say) 4 builders, and exactly another 3 by round 4.
As an alternative, I could striate the other way. So Age I includes 8 construction cards (6 builders 2 architects), of which 2 appear per round, and 8 resource gainers, of which 2 appear per round. Similarly in Ages II and III I could have there be 2 magic-users and 2 non per round.
Abundant Builder and Abundant Architect are notable and unique for being both builders (gaining value onto the board) and resource-gainers. This might make them a bit too good.
A suggestion was made to have one really good Age III underling with an effect something like "gain 8VP".
Underling tweaks:
Modify the Age II & III builders to accept gold as well as wood/stone. ✔
More rewards for putting settlements next to other players. Perhaps Scout+Crystal Seer+Levitator only give you (some of) their resources if the settlement is moving next to another player. ✔
Rethink Shanty Builder to allow it to do a bit more in 4p. □
Sailor's movement is normally not used. Consider if it's not worth the complexity. □
Mission tweaks:
More/most of the public r7/10 missions should mention shields! □
I'd like more geometrical missions; ideally enough to give everyone one geometrical-connected and one geometrical-disconnected. ✔
Wednesday 25th November 2015
Players: Rachael, Alex, Vitenka, Kartik
Players had 5 missions to choose from. The Geometrical-Connected and Geometrical-Disconnected ones gave 1 bonus VP and 1 bonus resource per matching set. This felt about right. Kartik scored Meridian in round 3. The new disconnected missions Triangulation and Hostile Hamlets (4dg5+) were good; Triangulation was pretty hard to multiple-score, but I didn't try doing it with all three of my starting settlements. Canal and Starburst were both tough - deserving of the extra resource - but reasonable.
In the past couple of games people have deemed Shanty Builder to be of rather limited use. But this game V got excellent use of the Shanty Builder (plus the Scout, which I do love) to set up a huge Hostile Hamlets score.
Scored:
R: -, -, Grass Alliance, Wood & Sheep, [Public Harbour Town], Linearity, Mr Rich, Wood & Sheep x2, [Public Harbour Town], [0x public Friendly Town], Divided Town x2, Divided Town x2, Grass Alliance x3, [Public Friendly Town x3]: Total 98 + 5 cubes
The game took slightly over 2 hours. This is partly because Friendly Town caused quite some difficulty understanding the requirement. But also the game is just long. Also everyone starts by going "Woodsman, Gatherer, Builder". Solution to both of these? Skip round 1, or rounds 1-2. Give people more starting resources and one nonbasic Builder. (Nomad, Abundant, Stone, Sailor; could also have ones that are terrain-specific, e.g cheaper on grassland but more expensive on mountain; or wood on grassland but stone on mountain . Also a Friendly Builder who gives significant discounts for building with neighbours. River and Shanty Builders stay in the deck as alternative options you need to pick up specifically.)
Want bigger denominations of VP chips. □
People want more flexibility with missions, even having 5. (I won because I bought Trader and exchanged Monoculture, which I could have only scored once given my board state, for Rocky Contacts, which I was able to triple-score twice, for a gain of 16 VP.) I think it'd be worth trying taking the on-gain effect of Trader and making it a separate buy: like you can buy W or S for £1 or G for £2, let people buy "draw a mission then discard one" for £3. ✔
I'm really divided on Friendly Town. On the one hand, it's confusing to understand, confusing to identify even when you do understand it; and fairly often when A builds towards B to make one or two Friendly Towns, they give B one as well. On the other hand, that's pretty much the definition of interaction; it really does encourage players to get on each other's way.
People don't really head for the middle of the map, they head for each other. (At least when Friendly Town is the public politics mission.) Heading for each other is good, but I'd also like to find ways to encourage people towards the centre more.
People like the look of the modular map (we didn't play with it today). They're not keen on the way the centre will always be full of mountains though (and that'll be particularly bad when Ugly Stepsisters is a public mission). They also want the citadels moved out of the corners into the middle of the tiles. That'd certainly make Shanty Builder significantly more useful, but it makes it much harder to keep the shields a decent distance from start positions.
I apparently need to play Takenoko to see how they did the "geometrical missions" thing. ✔
Planned rules changes:
Skip r1. R1 instead takes turns of placing one of three settlements, or taking a Starting Builder card, or taking a Starting Resources card (6W; 4W 2S; 4W 2G; 2W 2S 2G). ✔
Use the modular map. □
Maybe move the citadels away from the edges first. □
Add static buy option "£3: Draw then discard a mission." Trader now becomes superfluous, though Crystal Seer is still interesting. ✔
Underling changes:
Print out the changed Scout, Levitator, Crystal Seer. ✔
Flexible Architect's on-buy trigger is useless in the early game. Remove it ✔ and move it to a mid-game architect. ✔ - moved it to the Age III Relocator for now.
Scores: Quite astonishingly close. After adding 1/4VP per cube, the scores were Alex 97, Rachael 97 3/4, Jenny 97 3/4, Stephen 109 1/2.
Ruleset:
"Round 1" took the form of choosing one of the six starting builders, one set of starting resources, and three starting positions. I ruled that the two unchosen starting builders were then possible purchases in round 2, costing £2, so probably need printed cost £3 and to appear in the -£1 space.
This printing also removed crystals from the costs of all magic-users.
Although I forgot this during rules explanation, we did score 1/4 VP per cube.
Observations:
In general we were keeping pace with each other extremely closely. All of us fulfilled our Geographic Disconnected mission in round 3, which to be fair was one of the things the Geographic Disconnected missions were meant to do. Amazingly, each of the four of us fulfilled a total of precisely 17 mission matches through the whole game.
Nobody took the opportunity to pay £3 to draw-then-discard a mission. I'll still leave it in as-is, though... might take the price down 1.
The beginning of the game offered some tough choices, particularly hard for new players to make. I should provide some "scenarios" of suggested map layouts, initial builder choices, and maybe even settlement choices.
Fishing Villages keeps on confusing people. They want to use inland settlements as part of the value 5+ on the river. I need to rephrase it to be very clear that doesn't work.
People find the "group" terminology confusing too. It's suggested "grouping" might work better, making it clearer it's a conceptual idea that you actively choose to apply during a scoring round.
The comment was made that trading doesn't seem worth including in the game. It is a minor mechanic - possibly so minor that it's not worth including. I could move it to one or two underlings rather than every city.
Round 10 was feeling rather anticlimactic. At that point people could tell how many groups towards their final mission they were going to manage to fulfil, and although gaining resources is worth a tiny amount of points, it still felt like there weren't enough options near the end.
The suggestion was made to try cutting the game down to 6 real rounds rather than 9.
The comment was made that, unlike other similar games, you seem to have plenty of resources through most of the game. It may be that cubes are gained a little bit too easily.
Things people appreciated: It's nice to be able to choose to ignore one or two mechanics such as moving settlements. It's nice to have enough missions to be able to choose to ignore one. It's nice to be able to use 3-4 underlings then move your final one down for enough money to buy a useful underling effectively "for free" (since you weren't going to get anything useful from that underling this time).
Later notes:
It feels sad to buy a useful underling in rounds 8 or 9 knowing you'll only get 1-2 uses of it. And all the Age III underlings have on-gain abilities to make them do something when bought in round 10. Possible solution to consider: when buying an underling, you immediately activate its up ability as a oneoff. What would that do? Probably break some things, but could be worth adjusting stuff to make it work.
Changes to make:
Draw-then-discard a mission cost down to £2, possibly. □
Rename rounds 1-10 as rounds 0-9. ✔
Illusionist is way too good without crystal in the cost. Increase cost, decrease bonus, or make it return with an increasing cost each time. □
Rich Merchant is very weak on a board with just seven shields. Bin it, buff it, cheapen it or use it as inspiration for a new similar card. □
Shanty Builder could gain an on-buy ability to move a settlement away from a citadel. □
Vaulter and 1-2 other underlings need "you may". □
Reword Fishing Villages. □
Try removing the cube gain from geometry missions. □
I certainly need detailed rulebook explanations of every mission, with examples, so that people can look up details for how their mission does or doesn't work.
R: -, Divided Town x1, Grass Alliance x1 (nearly 2); 0x public Harbour Town; Grass Alliance x2, Divided Town x1; 1x public Harbour Town, 1x public Ugly Stepsisters
S: -, Twin Towns x1, Monoculture x1; 0x public Harbour Town; Conurbation x1, Meridian x2; 1x public Harbour Town, 0x public Ugly Stepsisters
P: -, Hostile Hamlets x1, Dry Spaces x1; 1x public Harbour Town; Key Points x1, Linearity x2; 1x public Harbour Town, 1x public Ugly Stepsisters
K: -, -, Triangulation x1; 1x public Harbour Town; Keep It Tall x2, Keep It Tall x2; 1x public Harbour Town, 1x public Ugly Stepsisters
Ruleset:
Round 0 was the interleaved draft of initial builders, initial resources, and initial settlement positions. Unpicked initial builders go into the "-£1" section on round 1, costing £2 (so they should have a £3 cost printed on them).
When buying an underling, you get its "up" effect at the moment you buy it. This replaces the on-buy triggers from cards which used to have those.
Crystals are gone.
After round 0, there were 3 rounds, 2 rounds, 2 rounds, taking the game down to 7+1 rather than the previous 9+1.
Observations:
The game was abandoned after 5+1 rounds, by which point it had taken 2 hours! I have no idea why. The on-buy trigger for every underling adds a little more to think about, but every round was taking 15-20 minutes where in previous games that's been 10 or 10-15. 2 of the players were new to the game, but 2 weren't.
Round 0 took 15 minutes, but people thought that was okay for people's first experience of it (round 0's structure was new to all 4 players) - that duration should come way down once you've played once or twice.
Despite abandoning the game at midnight, 2 hours in, everyone still said it was really fun.
A comment from one of the new players: "There are an overwhelming number of options for things you can do, or things you need to do, even for someone who's used to complex games."
Round 0 was deemed to be interesting, and offer a nice selection of choices. Especially, choosing your initial builder is deemed good.
There's a tension between "what to set up for scoring in 3 rounds' time" versus "I need to score something this round" - but that was also deemed a good tension.
Going down to 7 rounds (of which only 6 are realistically scoring rounds) means "it feels more required to score something every round".
Underling details:
Materialiser should perhaps cost £4 not £3. □
Nomad Builder's costs of 4W/5W versus Sailor's 4W/4W were queried, but might be okay.
Nomad Builder's "0-1" is completely wrong wording and needs rephrasing. □
Vaulter's wording was confusing. s/your/another/? "Jump one of your [settlement] over it" □
People want a similar but simplified version for your first game. One fairly radical idea: remove resources! Underlings are mostly just builders/architects/VP scorers, you ignore costs to activate them, and you have space for perhaps 3 active underlings.
People mostly don't like the name "Empire Builder". "Empire Works" was proposed.
K: -, Grass Alliance, Grass Alliance, 1x public Hydrophobia; Meridian, Meridian, 1x public Hydrophobia, 0x public Local Diversity; Wood & Sheep x2, Wood & Sheep x3, 1x public Local Diversity (total: 12)
V: Hostile Hamlets t1, Hostile Hamlets, Keep It Tall, 1x public Hydrophobia; Key Points, Keep it Tall x2, 1x public Hydrophobia, 0x public Local Diversity; Sand Tourists x3, Sand Tourists x3, 1x public Local Diversity (total: 15)
A: -, -, Mr Rich, 0x public Hydrophobia; Divided Town x2, Mr Rich, 1x public Hydrophobia, 1x public Local Diversity; Monoculture x2, Monoculture x3, 1x public Local Diversity (total: 12)
P: -, -, Flatland, 1x public Hydrophobia; Rocky Contacts, Rocky Contacts, 1x public Hydrophobia, 2x public Local Diversity; Trade Route x3, Trade Route x3, public Local Diversity (total: 16)
Scores: Recorded as K 68, V 99, A 72, P 79... but I think those might be wrong. Recalculating them the next day I get K 62, V 82, A 57, P 79.
Ruleset:
Identical to 4 weeks ago. 1+7 rounds, no crystals, on-buy effects replaced by getting the up effect of every underling you buy.
Observations:
There were a *lot* of "You rotter!" moments. At least 2 in Round 0, and quite a few throughout the game. Lots of gazumping what people wanted and forcing people to make new plans. This is good.
The game took just under 2 hours. Round 0 only took 8 minutes. Most of rounds 1-7 took about 15 minutes each.
The board was very full at the end of 7 rounds. 7 rounds with the up-effect-on-buy rule do seem to be about equivalent to 10 rounds without it.
Vitenka scored a mission in round 1: Hostile Hamlets. He was the only person to do so, and one of only 2 people to score in round 2. V said he felt he was fighting to keep up, but he did get 4/8/12 more Age I resources than the rest of us.
If cubes are worth 1/4 of a point (which is good), then a maxed Lumberjack or Miner is gaining 1.25 VP even if you're never using the resources. And that can get going in Age I. Possibly Lumberjack and Miner ought to max out at 4 rather than 5.
It's a bit of a problem if you completely fail to get any extra £2-makers. A note for the FAQ: be sure to bear in mind underlings' £ production when choosing what to buy. Hard to bear that in mind now that buying an underling is even more about the up ability.
Using direct VP-makers like the Marquis is good but boring. It's more interesting to try to create another scoring grouping for one of your missions, even if it's only going to score the same amount. OTOH, having direct VP-makers in the final couple of rounds is excellent for those players who can't generate another scoring grouping.
People did a little trading. The city restriction feels a bit fiddly and unnecessary. I'm still not sure if trading should be in the game or not.
Hostile Hamlets is very good with Nomad Builder. (That's how V scored it in round 1.) It was meant to interfere with your ability to score other stuff, but that doesn't apply if you score it in rounds 1-2 then link up in r3.
People like the bonus VPs on Master Builder, Master Architect, and Mover.
Planned changes:
Take Age I mission rewards down to 3 cubes. □
Take Abundant Architect's reward down to 3 cubes too (WWS) □
Urbimancer is quite a lot better than Expert Architect: Urbimancer should cost £4 and Ex Arch cost £3. □
Remove the "discard" from Seer and Fate Changer. □
Embrace the way resources are 1/4 of a VP. Make Marquis / Duke give slightly less score, but more use, by giving 1 VP plus WS / WSG. □
Try the modular map. □
And provide more choices by printing stuff on the flip side too. Maybe slight variation in the number of rivers, and maybe even shields?
I think the VP confusion probably came when making change with the 5VP/1VP tokens we were using. Print some VP chips for 6/5/4 VP for scoring missions. About 20/30/40 respectively. Still need plenty of bonus 1VPs for Marquis/Duke?/etc and geometry missions.
Notes added later: Vitenka: [09:40] I agree with the aim of making people cluster - I think it'd be nice if you had a bit more idea what other peoples private missions are likely to be, to try and intefere some. You do find out once they flip it - but it's usually too late then. Vitenka: [09:32] Cities for trading is dumb and stupid - but so is the "Who is my neighbour?" thing for the gold reward; it's un-earned since you cannot predict where people will want their cities - it depends on their private missions. (Well, apart from on shields, which is common, I guess). And the "Grab me some better missions" minions need to be early, if they ar to be used much. So I suggest maybe they should also give small resource gain?
Tuesday 1st March
Players: Alex, Rachael Ruleset: Trying the simplified no-resources game. Players have 3 underling slots. Public mission Scorings go -, -, A, AB, -, B.
Purchases:
Alex: Sailor, River Builder, -; Low Materialiser; Urbimancer, -
A: Hostile Hamlets, Hostile Hamlets, Forest Friends x2; public Harbour Town x1; Keep It Tall x2; public Harbour Town x1, public Local Diversity x2; Forest Friends x3, Keep It Tall x3; public Local Diversity x3 (avoided: Diamond, ?)
R: -, Grass Alliance, Monoculture; public Harbour Town x1; Key Points x2; public Harbour Town x1, public Local Diversity x2; Key Points x2, Grass Alliance x3; public Local Diversity x3 (avoided: Conurbation, Triangulation)
Scores: A 87, R 72
Observations:
The game took 40 minutes. Nice.
Building is by far the best action. There's no reason not to build as things stand. One possible fix once we get the modular board: use fewer board pieces with fewer players, so the 2p game would use only 3 or 4 of the 6 triangles.
Hostile Hamlets is really broken. It's far easier on round 1 than any other mission. Need to kill it.
My guessed costs for the underlings in this version need to come down significantly.
It might be interesting to try the full (resources) game down at 4 underlings.
There's definitely no need for trading in the simplified/family game.
Wednesday 2nd March
Players: Clive, Vitenka, Rachael, Paddy Ruleset: No-resources. Underling costs down a bit from yesterday; removed Hostile Hamlets.
Rachael: Seer (better than nothing), Nomad Builder, -; -, -; -, Space Shaper
Paddy: Sailor (on his first action), -, River Builder; -, Master Architect; -, -
Missions:
Clive: -, Grass Alliance, Wood & Sheep, public Harbour Town x1; Grass Alliance, public Harbour Town x1, public Friendly Town x1; Triangulation x2, Triangulation x3, public Friendly Town x2 (avoided: Ambassadors, Beach Highway)
Vitenka: -, Forest Friends, Forest Friends x2, public Harbour Town x1; Trade Route x2, public Harbour Town x1, 0x public Friendly Town; Rocky Contacts x3, Rocky Contacts x3 or 4, public Friendly Town x3 (avoided: Starburst, Flatland)
Rachael: -, Sand Tourists, Key Points, public Harbour Town x1; Divided Town, public Harbour Town x1, public Friendly Town x1; Divided Town x2, Sand Tourists x3, public Friendly Town x3 (avoided: Monoculture, Linearity, Conurbation)
Paddy: -, Mr Rich, Mr Rich, public Harbour Town x1; Meridian, public Harbour Town x1, public Friendly Town x2; Twin Towns x2, Meridian x3, public Friendly Town x3 (avoided: Dry Spaces, Canal)
Scores: C 71, V 81 or 85, R 70, P 72.
Observations:
The game took 56 minutes.
There were a lot fewer "Oh drat" moments compared with Monday. Not much interference with each other, so not much interest.
Because I removed Hostile Hamlets, I was down one Geometry-Disconnected mission. I gave V an extra Geography-Disconnected instead, but that was very bad - having both Forest Friends and Rocky Contacts translates into "settle on the big lumps of forest / mountain and win".
When people are buying after using 1 underling, being first player in round 1 is very good.
Building is still far too much the best thing to do. Vitenka wanted 4 builders. Want ways to encourage architecting instead, such as missions that care about compactness or the number of cities you have. Want underlings with down abilities like "£2 if you have a city, otherwise £1". "£3 if you have a city on a shield, otherwise £2."
People also want more underlings that care about the terrain you have, like Artisan's down ability (which is excellent), and the resources game's Lumberjack, Mason, Rich Woodsman etc. Or the cities you have. Like Wood Count & Stone Count except those are overcosted.
Friendly Town is a bit too weird as a public mission. It's too cooperative. Any way you get in someone's way you probably help them make a friendly town. Need a concept of "I neighbour you but you don't neighbour me". City-with-a-neighbour would do.
Earl and Baron need much better up abilities. Gaining 1VP is not good enough.
Want better terminology for "connected" and "disconnected", especially as the phrases referred to by those concepts are not opposites! "Group" vs "Separated groups", perhaps.
Monday 7th March
Players: Stuart, Vitenka, Alex Ruleset: No-resources. Unchanged from last week except public mission scorings go -, -, A, B, A, B (and added Triple Diversity mission).
Alex: Scout (for want of anything else), River Builder, Seer (for £0); Low Materialiser; Master Architect, Mover.
Missions:
Stuart: -, Twin Towns, Divided Town, public Fishing Villages x1; Dry Spaces x2, public Ugly Stepsisters x2; Twin Towns x2, public Fishing Villages x1, Dry Spaces x3, public Ugly Stepsisters x2
Vitenka: -, Triangulation, Triangulation, public Fishing Villages x1; Rocky Contacts x2, public Ugly Stepsisters x1; Mr Rich x2, public Fishing Villages x2; Mr Rich x3, public Ugly Stepsisters x1
Alex: -, Sand Tourists x1, Sand Tourists x2, public Fishing Villages x1; Meridian x2, public Ugly Stepsisters x1; Triple Diversity x2, public Fishing Villages x2; Meridian x3, public Ugly Stepsisters x2.
Scores: S 77, V 69, A 84.
Comments:
The game took 57 minutes.
Stuart likes the change.
It's easy to fall behind and have no real way to catch up. Scoring is very granular, and there's no catchup mechanic or stomp-the-leader mechanic (well, unless you completely sacrifice your own scoring to block your guess as to the leader's plans).
Scoring Mr Rich once is easy enough, but double- or triple-scoring it on a board with just 7 shields is really hard and feels like it wants to be extra rewarding.
Want to make it very clear that Urbimancer, Vaulter etc can't put settlements onto water.
To try in the next week:
Modular board.
VP chips in counts of 6/5/4, 12/10/8, +1s. - Or actually, perhaps the difference between 6, 5 and 4 isn't worth the faff, and it'd be better to just flatten mission values to 5/5/5.
Monday 14th March
Players: Rowan, Kartik, Alex Ruleset: No-resources. No scoring round in round 1.
Rowan: Meridian, Trade Route, public Fishing Villages; Meridian x2, public Local Diversity; Diamond x2, public FiVi?, Sand Tourists x3, public Local Diversity x2
Kartik: Rocky Contacts, Rocky Contacts x2, public Fishing Villages; -, 0x Local Diversity; Dry Spaces, public FiVi? x2, Dry Spaces x2, public Local Diversity x1
Alex: Triangulation, Triangulation, public Fishing Villages; Wood & Sheep x2, public Local Diversity x2; Twin Towns x2, public FiVi?, Wood & Sheep x3, public Local Diversity x2
Scores: R 72, Kartik 60, A 76.
Wednesday 15th June
Players: David, Iraklis, Alex Ruleset: With resources. No scoring round 1.
Alex: Meridian, Rocky Contacts, 1x FiVi?; Ambassadors, -, 0x Loc Div; Ambassadors x2, 2x FiVi?, Rocky Contacts x3, 2x Loc Div
Scores: D 80, I 58 (inc 2VP from 8 cubes), A 88.5 (inc 0.5 from 2 cubes)
Notes: Game took 1 hour 40 minutes. They liked it, a lot. Fix the wording on Nomand Builder, Sailor, Herald Bring in Philanthropist from the no-resources game More Heralds, but at 2VP per card, not 1. An underling to dislodge a settlement from a shield. Rulebook note to say choose random builders in your first game.
Things to remove: Trading. Buying cubes & missions (or allow multi-buy, 1 card N cubes).
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