Back to the Stone Age

I've come to like Stone Age.

As yet I've described Stone Age as a sort of watered down version of Pillars of the Earth. All the resources convert to victory points at the same efficiency for everyone, and at the same efficiency as each other - it costs 3 "pips" to get a wood, and you earn 3 VP when converting wood via a Hut. Similarly, it costs 4 "pips" to get Clay, and you get 4vp for the Clay when building a hut. The only other thing to do with resources other than build huts is buy Civ cards - which cost 1/2/3/4 resources of any type. Obviously it is best to spend Wood on these as it is the 'lowest value' resource.

Since everything's at the same efficiency when converting to VPs, it seems best to get Wood because there's less waste due to rounding. It's true that some huts require specific combinations of resources, but many are very flexible in what resources they accept.

In reality though, the different resources are not at the same efficiency, because you obtain them at different efficiency levels. Wood is the most efficient, while Gold is the least efficient. It's still true that these efficiencies are the same for everyone, but at least the resources are differentiated from each othre more than I was originally thinking.

In fact, with Tools it's not even true that the efficiencies are the same for everybody - tools can help you get the more valuable resources more efficiently - or at least allow you to get more of the more efficient Wood resource.

After having played the game a couple of times, I've come to think that I like Stone Age more than I originally did. I'm not prepared to say that it's deeper than Pillars of the Earth, but in a recent poll on BGG I voted that neither is any better game than the other. I think both have a lot to offer, and I'm still looking forward to playing Pillars of the Earth with the new expansion.

I Finally Lost At Yspahan

As yet I have not lost a face-to-face game of Yspahan... that is, until last night. I haven't played as much Yspahan as I have Pillars of the Earth, and I wouldn't say I was "as good" as it as I am at Pillars, but I was still undefeated. Last night I didn't fare so well though, and ended up losing to Eric (the same guy that beat me at Pillars!) by something like 9 points.

I must be losing my edge!

I Finally Lost At Pillars Of The Earth

There's a board game called Pillars of the Earth, based on a novel by Ken Follet. It's an efficiency game where each player gathers resources and hires craftsmen in order to "contribute to the construction of the Cathedral". The craftsmen turn resources into victory points, and as the game goes on you can hire better, more efficient craftsmen in an effort to more efficiently make that conversion and in the end, earn the most VPs.

I like the game quite a bit, and until last night the worst I've done is tie for 1st. Sadly, last night's game did not bode well for me. It ended up a very close game between Eric, Michael and myself - 2 points separated 1st and 2nd place, and 2 more separated 2nd and 3rd.There were several instances where Eric thwarted my play, either on purpose or incidentally, but I was able to hang on to a good game... I think the reason I lost boiled down to a particularly big mistake I made in round 5, when I hired a craftsman and had to fire one I already had. I had taken the Tool Maker in the first round, and should have chosen to discard him as he'd long outlived any usefulness he'd had, but instead I discarded the starting Woodworker. This was a huge mistake because I was employing 2 Carpenters, who could convert 5 wood between them. I should have known I would need to buy wood from the market, which I could not do after discarding the Woodworker.

It may have been a mistake to take the Tool Maker at all - that craftsman isn't particularly good... but we were playing with a house rule that he earns 2 gold per metal owned, as opposed to simply 2 gold if you own any metal, and Eric already had the first round Woodworker (who changes Wood into money, our house rule was that the exchange is for $3, not $4). Eric also went into the Tax Shelter space first (so he'd get a metal cube), and I couldn't bear to see him get the new and improved Tool Maker as well as the Woodworker. I stand by that decision as being "not that bad," though through course of circumstance I didn't end up getting any Metal until round 3 or 4.

It was actually a really good game of Pillars and I enjoyed it very much - even if I didn't end up winning. Unfortunately, even though he won, Eric is certain that he doesn't like the way the game works in some respects. He probably won't play it with me very often.

Time is money!

A couple posts ago I had begun thinking about the value of time. The balance between what things are worth and what your time is worth. I've expanded on those ideas as they relate to a game, and here's what I've got so far. You may notice a conspicuous lack of theme, or even title, but the important bits are the mechanics and the ideas behind them at the moment...

The basic structure of the game would be that each player has a set number of Action Points each turn - a constant Action income, if you will. They will also have some $ income, which will start out as a small number, but will grow over the course of the game as players build their income up. So in the beginning of the game, all players are cash-poor, and they all have the same number of actions (let's say 5 of them).

There would be at least 4 different things you could do with your action points:
Step 1) Shop for resources
Step 2) Upgrade your operation
Step 3) Process resources
Step 4) Profit!
The basic premise of the game is that in each step there is a trade-off of what amounts to money vs action points. In general you can spend money (or VPs) in order to conserve action points, or vice versa.

In greater detail:
Step 1) Shop for resources: As described 2 posts ago, the basic idea is that you can "spend time hunting for a bargain" by spending more action points to draw cards to choose from, and then only paying $1 per card you want to buy. These cards would have raw materials or resources that would be turned into something worth VPs later in the turn (step 3).

The current mechanic is that you can spend 1 action point to draw 1 card then decide if you want to buy it for $1. Or, you can spend 1 action point to draw 2 cards, then decide if you want to by either or both of them for $2 apiece. Finally, you could spend 1 action point to draw 3 cards, then decide if you want to by any or all of them for $3 each.

Thematically, when you can afford it you might be willing to pay more money for your resources, because you've got better things to do with your time than bargain hunting.

Step 2) Upgrade your operation: The game needs to have ways to change the resources from step 1 into something worth points in step 4 (via the processing in step 3). In Step 2 you'd spend some action points and some money (if you want) to purchase some form of upgrade - hire craftsmen, buy machines, build buildings, whatever. The net effect is that what you buy in step 2 will give you some abilities, income, or make step 3 more efficient in some cases (like if you hire a better carpenter, then you could do a better job of turning wood into furniture). I imagine the things you'd get in this part of the game would be on par with buildings in Puerto Rico, or Craftsmen in Pillars of the Earth.

Like step 1, the more action points you put into this action, then less money you'll need to spend.

Step 3) Process resources: Through this action you convert the resources from step 1 into something you can sell for money or victory points, using the upgrades from step 2. In this step, spending more action points (putting more time/effort into the conversion process) will yield a greater return per unit input. So if you take 1 Wood resource input, and rush through or do a bad job, you get 1 unit of Furniture. However, if you hired a better carpenter, maybe it takes him longer, but you end up with 2 units of furniture without any additional Wood resource input (like he makes a table, and a chair, instead of a table and a bunch of scrap).

I'm pretty sure the upgrades would have to indicate outputs per input, like the Carpenter could say:
1 ap: 1 Wood -> 1 Furniture
2 ap: 2 Wood -> 3 Furniture

Step 4) Profit!: Finally, you want to profit off of the work you've done so far. In this game there are 2 ways to profit: Money, and Victory Points. Depending on what you have done with your resources, you'd sell the products for money, or VPs, or some combination thereof. It seems logical to keep the same kind of game mechanic wherein you could spend extra time/effort (action points) in order to get a better deal (more money/vp per unit sold).

In the end, the player with the most victory points would win, and I think it would be much better to separate VPs from Money in this case. If it were just all about making money I think it would lose a dimension and be less interesting. I like games where you need to build money income, but eventually have to start generating VPs to win - if you just keep pumping up your income, you'll be rich, but you won't have won the game. I think it's far more interesting that way.

In the meantime

Those Strategy & Tactics articles are still in the works. In the meantime, here's what I've been playing and thinking about recently, in no particular order:

Fermat

Tom Jolley's a pretty nice guy, I've met him at a couple different game conventions. Last February at OrcCon in Los Angeles I hung out with him a little and checked out a couple of his prototypes. One in particular was very interesting... it's called Fermat, after a mathematician. The board is a grid of tiles, each with either a number or an operation on it (+, -, x, /). The game
is kind of like Set, but instead of racing to find patterns, you're racing to find an equation in the grid, made up of exactly 5 contiguous tiles, which equals a particular number.

At the con Tom was saying he didn't think he could sell the game, but it seemed wildly popular among the people walking by. I'm glad to report that last I heard, Tom has sold this game to a company specializing in educational games, which I presume means it will be published! In the meantime, I've made my own copy and have been playing it with my friends - we can't get enough!

Pillars of the Earth

I saw this game at BGG.con last year, and I spent the whole con trying to play it - to no avail. Since then I've talked to some friends who have played it, and they all think it's pretty mediocre. I finally got a chance to play the game a couple of weeks ago and I've found that I like it very much. I got a copy the day after it hit the shelf at Game Daze, and I've now played the game a total of 4 times - I can honestly say I don't know what my friends were talking about, the game is great.

Pillars of the Earth is all about efficiency. Everyone starts with the same set of Craftsmen, which give you the ability to convert resources into victory points. Over the course of the game you upgrade these craftsmen, get resources, and convert them. One friend's complaint with the game was that the conversion was so direct that he felt like the game was boring and the choices were obvious. What I think he missed was that the point of the game isn't to convert the resources into VPs in clever and different ways, the point is to do it efficiently. If you end up paying too much for your resources or the actions you want to take, then your score will suffer. If you don't pay enough, you may not get to do what you want (because an opponent will beat you to it).

The only complaint I've heard which I feel is valid is that at times there is a big advantage to being the guy who goes first - which in itself isn't too big a problem because for most of the game you can make a play which allows you to go first next round. However, there is a phase of the game where players turn order is assigned randomly, and while the first person to get to play during that phase does have to pay more, sometimes the cost isn't as big a deal as the valuable first action, and there's really nothing you can do about that.

A complaint my friends and I have come up with on our own isn't something that's ruining the game (for me anyway), but it's something that might cut down on replay value... in the game there are 4 new craftsmen that become available each round, and they are predetermined, and are always the same each game. We'd like to see 6 new craftsmen per round, only 4 of which are used. This would not only allow for more variety of what comes out game to game, but would also add variety to the types of things you can do (strategically) by adding different ways to convert resources to points, or to money, or to other resources. The main thing that drives your strategy is the capabilities of your craftsmen, so more variety there would do the game some good. We even have some ideas for additional craftsmen abilities that could be used.

I wonder if auctioning off each Master Builder placement instead of randomly assigning it would help remove that bit of the game everyone complains about...