TaxIt/Playtest04Discussion

Notes taken by Douglas during play

Tolls go to the person controlling the city the tollbooth is associated with, so if the controlling player changes, then so does where future collected income goes (unlike the production spots, which stay with the player who placed them).

Players are not allowed to build cities on river hexes.

Instead of using clear/white for open auction and black for closed auction, use clear/white for open auction and one of the player's own coloured markers for a closed auction (so they can just move it down the row, on fulfilling the contract).

River travel makes it quite expensive, during round 1, to get goods out to cities on the rim that are not near other cities. Possibly an argument for 0 river toll to start with.

Challenging auctions to force closed ones open should be done in reverse player turn order (the person who challenges last has an advantage, because one they would have paid to challenge might get done by someone else for them, so that ought to go to the losing player, not the player who is winning).

In the first few turns, nobody had 5 money left to be able to challenge. Bug or feature? We could reduce the price of challenging from the current cost of 5. Possibly start the price at 1, and make it go up each year. Or give each player a finite stack of challenge markers, they can use each year (or through the whole game).

If we are using coins on tollbooth to indicate how high the toll is, a red road for the tollbooth itself is superfluous /PhysRep?.

The rules we tested were all cities being a tollbooth of fixed toll=1. And all production spots and cities being roads.

Vitenka's Feedback

Too slow, not enough fun, but you'd expect me to say that. It takes more than 15 minutes. This isn't my style of preferred game to play.

: Yes indeed, and thank you very much for helping playtest it despite that. --DR

Too many components!

: Comment made after the notes were taken: You don't have a tech tree; I'll give you that - but I think you have more board-state and phys-rep than advanced-civ. --Vitenka

Board is too large

: Alex comment: half of it not used, though that was just the first 2 rounds.

First pick of what to drop from the game : toll booths

Once you get to an income of 50 per year, players have no motive to increase it any further, as 50 will let them build anything they want to.

: That answers the question of whether more money sinks are needed. --DR

I don't like that you have forced to rely upon others. If you have exhausted your food production, and your food producing city needs food in order to grow, if other players refuse to ship food to you, you're stuffed.

There needs to be a way to turn money into goods (expensive enough that it is usually worth interacting, but possible to buy maybe one or two goods without losing the game).

Possible money sink : 'ship' money to the capital in return for victory points (like building the castle in Caylus).

The /PhysRep? of megahexes should make it clearer where the border between megahexes is, since that's of game significance (where you can build cities, and river travel)

The game felt like FantasticContraption, with everything in tension and likely to fly apart, but somehow holding together, due to player cooperation.

There are too many ways for a player to shoot themselves in the foot. There's no mechanism to allow a player who is behind to catch up.

You are horse trading for VPs. Too much potential for king making

It might be worth a playtest of having the number of cities a player can have not be limited by anything other than position restrictions and paying for them.

: The price per city might increase, either with the year, or the number of cities the player has already built (or an annual rent the player pays upon cities, or upon cities that don't grow - auction off a control marker to other players, making it easier for them to take over the city?) --DR

Allow players to pay to refresh their production spots. Possibly zero all production spots at the end of each year.

Everything is about producing stuff then selling it. Geography and roads just alters the price.

There's too much fiddly upkeep. Completing a contract involves altering three things (auction marker, income dice and good spots dice), which you potentially do three times per city, for three cities.

The over riding requirement on city placement is to put your cities where other players will WANT to ship goods to it and won't mind it increasing in size.

There's something wrong with the comparative incentives, when more often than not the other players could complete your contracts but choose not to.

: How about a production spot automatically fulfils its associated city's contract of that type, without being diminished? --DR

Don't penalise unspent production. Sometimes you can't spend it all, and it is better to use a carrot rather than a stick

Suggestion of what to drop from the game : zones of control (except when it comes to giving permission for building roads, because that's harmless and good flavour)

Suggestion for a money sink : I'd pay a lot (eg 30 cash, in round 3) for moving my city to be earlier in the auction queue

Having toll booths charge a good makes them a cliff - I just wouldn't go through one.