Recent playtesting: Ground Floor, Eminent Domain, Belfort, and All For One

I've gotten a lot of playtesting done lately, which is great! I've been able to play several games each of several different prototypes. In no particular order...

Ground Floor
In the last game of Ground Floor I tried a few of the new tweaks I've been talking about:
Remodeling (for $5,i5) allowed at any time, not just at the end of a round
I'm not sure how much this will really get used, but it's certainly better than having to wait for the end of the round. I believe it was used twice this game. I think it's a keeper! I do wonder if ($5,i5) is too expansive for a remodel - mathematically it's not too much, but realistically I think it might get used more if it were ($4,i4). The question is whether that's "too good" or not. It would certainly be the thing to do at the end of the game - rather than pay ($3,i3) for a VP players would sooner remodel their rooms. Maybe that's OK though, as you only have so may rooms to remodel.

I'm probably full of crap - ($5,i5) is a fine cost - especially considering one of the other tweaks...

Boosts based on Popularity
David and I settled on some specific little boosts, chosen in Popularity order at the end of the round, like Age of Steam has. We decided to have 5 choices, and the least popular player in the game doesn't get one. You can choose between:
Temporary Employee: +(') next round
Money: +$2 ("Petty Cash"?)
Info: +i2
Supply: +1 Supply
Remodel Discount: ($1,i1)

The Remodel discount could be applied more than once in a turn, so that reward could be worth a bit more than the others if you set yourself up for it. Other than that, they're all worth about the same, but depending on your situation at that point in the game you might really rather have the $2 than the i2.

The point of this is to make Marketing more important, and in that I am not sure it's successful. I guess we were spending more time and money on Marketing, but then we were getting a little more [something] back in return... so what's the difference, really? Getting the rewards is kinda fun, and it helps differentiate people's income a bit, but I wonder if it's really worth the effort. It does take some time to deal with, and just 1 more thing to think about both when placing Time units (do I try and get popularity?) and when choosing the reward (should I take the supply, or do I need a little extra Info to do what I want to do next turn?). I expect it to add 15+ minutes to the game length all told, and that's the opposite of what I was trying to do (which was reduce the game length).

There were some questions such as when exactly do you get the boost. We did it at the end of the turn, after dropping popularity (should be before though - especially considering the "No Drop" TI). It worked fine, and people liked it, but I'm not sure I liked all that much. Maybe it helps give people a little income boost (customizable), which might help make up for the weakening of the Phase I TIs - but I think it will add a significant amount of time to the game. It's a decision point, and you don't always know just what you want. In Age of Steam it works better because it's a bigger portion of the game - in Ground Floor it's just "a little more income" and so I don't know if it's worth the extra effort or not. I guess we should try it a few more times and see how it goes, and how much time it takes.

Starting job market
Starting with the option of hiring an employee (at $5,i5) seemed a little overwhelming to me. It was certainly an interesting thing to consider, but I found myself missing the succinctness of the first turn where you had like 2 good options - either you buy a TI, or you start investing in income with Production and Consulting. This time I also had to consider Marketing, and hiring an employee... I felt like this bogged down the first turn more than it served to jump start the game. I would like to try it again, but I'm skeptical that I'll love it.

Hiring prices
For a 7 round game at least, I think the hiring prices should shift down a notch to 2/3/3/4/4/5/6/X and maybe the marker should start the game on the 5. This should make them a little cheaper so that they more likely pay off over the course of a shorter game, and get them in play sooner to jump start the game a little. Honestly though, I think I liked it when you couldn't hire in the first turn, it focused your first turn onto fewer options, which felt less overwhelming and kind of made the first turn go faster. Thematically it makes sense too that you're not hiring right out of the gate. So I'd also like to consider the cheaper track mentioned above, with the marker starting on X, so that you're hiring people on the 2nd and 3rd turn (and they're cheaper so they pay off better/sooner) rather than turns 1 and 2. But maybe it's OK to have a first turn option of hiring an employee. this would be especially attractive to the player with the Training specialty.

Merchandising price adjustment
I found the Merchandising price adjustment based on the economy to be too fiddly and annoying, and totally not worth it. Though it sounds neat to have the economy affect the price - the price brackets already sort of do that. I don't think I even want to try that change again.

Nerfed Phase 1 TIs
I'd have to try it again, but the weakened Phase I TIs seem so weak! The stronger versions really jump started the game more... the potential down side is that maybe noone ever buys a floor or TI in the first Phase over hiring or saving money for the better Phase 2 stuff. Needs more testing to see if that happens.

Belfort
We played 4p Belfort with Moneylender, Library, New Bandit, New Spy, and Recruiter guilds. I think the new spy ought to be 2 cards (everyone reveals 1, spy takes 2 of those) instead of just 1. The new Bandit's guild is a less directly interactive guild - instead of stealing resources from players, you get to choose Wood or Stone, collect 5 of it from the supply, then you have to give 1 to each of 2 opponents. New Bandit seemed OK... I personally thought it was boring. I suspect the point leaders will not get the freebie resources and the point trailers will, and I guess that held true. Often the freebies were given to players who had already taken their Action phase, so they couldn't use them that turn. Not sure how much difference that makes in the general case though. It felt more like a Resource guild than an Interactive guild. Not BAD, just not a game changer at all.

I'm not against including these various guilds, but I think I'm leaning toward leaving the old "mean" Thieves and Bandits guilds in as a standard. Maybe the setup for your first game should tell players to use the Spy or Wizards guild rather than the Thief or Bandits.

Otherwise, the game was great!

All For One
Playing All For One was nice, but it really just served to remind me how annoyed I am that all of my balanced and tweaked Mission cards and board layout have disappeared. I guess at some point I'll just have to go through it all again and re-tweak and re-fix everything, maybe it'll approximate what I had before that I was happy with. Let this be a lesson to all would-be game designers: Use computer files and keep them up to date (rather than hand changes on components), especially if you're sending the game off to submit to a publisher or something. More than once now I've lost prototypes or parts of prototypes as a result of submitting them.

Eminent Domain
I played a couple of 2 player games of Eminent Domain with Tyler last Sunday, and a 4 player game on Monday as well. I implemented the "combine Trade and Harvest into 1 card" idea and it seemed to work fine. In retrospect it really seems like that matches the power level (point-getting potential) of Colonizing and Warfare, with a higher top end - which is OK because it's limited by your capacity so it's really hard to reach that high end. When reducing to 5 actions though I put Warfare cards back in the starting deck because I like a hand size of 5 and a starting deck of 10 cards. I liked it better when you didn't start with Warfare though, so I wanted to replace it in the starting deck with something else. I thought about adding another Role to the game, perhaps Politics... but I couldn't think offhand of what it might do - then I thought hey, it could be a sort of wild... no action, but boosts all Roles. So I made 8 of those cards (1 for each starting deck) before we played on Monday. It was an interesting idea but ultimately didn't solve my problem because you still effectively had Warfare cards in your deck! I was going to try removing the Warfare symbol from the Politics cards, meaning you simply can't use them to boost Warfare, but I think I've got a better idea - they should have an action, but not boost any Role. In thinking of what that action might be, I came up with "Take any 1 Role card into your hand," making it still kind of a Wild boost (because you can take a card for the Role you're about to choose), but it costs you your action for the turn, and it puts a card in your deck.

Here are some tweaks and changes I want to try for Eminent Domain:
1. Try multiple pile exhaust as end game trigger (try 2 piles)
2. Make 1 Technology card into this: Action: Place up to 2 Colonies on any 1 planet. Or maybe Play 2 Colonize cards as actions (so you could add then flip, or add to 2 different planets). Maybe make it "Up to 3" since you have to have them in your hand. These would probably be the level 1 X/Colonize techs
3. Remove Warfare from Politics cards.
4. Reconsider Politics cards - maybe only an action and no boosts... where the Action is...
- Take any Role card into hand (which makes it effectively wild, but it uses up your action and fills your deck with that role) <- I think I like this.
- Reveal the top 2 (3?) cards from your deck, you can use symbols on those cards to boost your Role this turn
- Something else?
5. Specify on Harvest/Trade cards...
- Action: Produce 1 Resource OR Trade 1 Resource for 1 VP.
- ROLE: Produce 1 Resources per Harvest symbol OR Trade 1 Resource per Trade symbol for 1 VP each. (not 2vp anymore)
- FOLLOW: Produce 1 Resources per Harvest symbol OR Trade 1 Resource per Trade symbol for 1 VP each. (not 2vp anymore)