Further Ground Floor thoughts

Nomenclature
I don't like the term "Recovery" as it doesn't sound right, and also it means I can't abbreviate the different Economic phases of the game. I'd like to rename that one Upturn or Upswing, and as such they can be abbreviated:
D=Depression, R=Recession, U=Upturn (Upswing?), B=Boom

Game Length
My biggest concern about Ground Floor at the moment is that it takes too damn long to play. I definitely would like to cut he time involved down, but I'd also like to make sure players have enough game time to get useful and interesting things accomplished. As an example, Factory Manager is only 5 rounds long, and while you do end the game just as you've gotten to the point where you are over-stuffing your factory, it always seems like the game ends just when you're getting started. You've finally built up a good factory and you don't get to see it run very much. I don't want to cut Ground Floor too short because I don't want people to feel that way about their business. I want them to experience the ups and downs of the market, because building a business is about sustainability - you want to make a business that will prosper in the economic highs, but also survive the economic lows. That said, I wondered this morning if 9 rounds wasn't more than enough game time to do interesting things. I'd like to try 7 rounds, divided into phases I, II, and III like so: 2/3/2 or 2/2/3, probably not 3/2/2. This means that you have 2 rounds to set up before buying a new Floor on round 3. Then you have 4 rounds to make use of that floor, 3 if someone builds out (ends the game by building their 6th new floor) in the 2nd to last round (which I think should be possible). Though maybe building out isn't so necessary, and players can just play all 7 rounds every game. If Building out is to remain in the game while the length is reduced, perhaps it out to change to the 5th new floor, which should be possible in round 6, maybe even round 5 in a really good economy if someone tries really hard (though I'm not sure that's really possible).

In light of that, it might also be good to adjust the pricing on the Construction Co to (3,3) rather than (4,4). I'm wondering if in fact the Construction Co shouldn't cost (3,3) to get in, then Floors cost (3,3)+(3,3)/floor rather than (2,2)+(2,2)/floor. These are just stream of consciousness thoughts at the moment, and many of them aren't necessarily valid until the game is tried at 7 rounds.

With a 7 round game, of course the Economic Forecast deck would have to be modified. Currently it's pretty nicely laid out:
4 Depression cards, use 2 - #Consumers: 0/0/1/1
6 Recession cards, use 3 - #Consumers: 1/1/2/2/3/3
6 Upturn cards, use 3 - #Consumers: 3/3/4/4/5/5
4 Boom cards, use 2 - #Consumers: 5/5/6/6

(that number of consumers is for 3-4 players, and is modified a bit for 5-6 players I believe).
This makes for a nice way to keep players from knowing the number of consumers even if for example a Recession already came by with 3 consumers. You can't say "well, there will be at least 4 this time" because there could be 3 again! As you can see, a deck of 10 cards is used, and there are only 9 rounds, so 1 card will not show up each game (the last one). I like how that works.

In a shorter (7 round) game, the deck would have to be modified, probably lie so:
2 Depression cards, use 1 - #Consumers: 0/1
6 Recession cards, use 3 - #Consumers: 1/1/2/2/3/3
6 Upturn cards, use 3 - #Consumers: 3/3/4/4/5/5
2 Boom cards, use 1 - #Consumers: 5/6

Or potentially a more varied deck like this (though I think I like the above one better):
4 Depression cards, use 2 - #Consumers: 0/0/1/1
4 Recession cards, use 2 - #Consumers: 1/2/2/3
4 Upturn cards, use 2 - #Consumers: 3/4/4/5
4 Boom cards, use 2 - #Consumers: 5/5/6/6

Again, these numbers are for 3-4 players. They would be slightly higher for 5-6 players and lower for 2 players.

Merchandising
On a completely unrelated note, in Recession/Depression economies I think it might be a good idea to outlaw the top/top 2 price brackets (respectively). If fewer players than demand are in Production, they should still suffer the consequences of the Recession or Depression rather than scoring an easy $16 or $12. It makes sense thematically as well as mechanically.

Alternatively, it could be good to have more Consumers in general (still a range based on player count), but change the payout in each type of economy. In a Boom, people will pay more for stuff in general while in a Depression they won't. In addition to this, players are still fighting for a set number of Consumers which would range from maybe N-2 to N or N+1 (N = number of players in the game). This could be accomplished by changing the Merchandising space to look like this:

|4|
|3|3|
|2|2|2|
|1|1|1|1|
And then say that the payouts for each slot are:
Depression: x1 | Recession: x2 | Upturn: x3 | Boom: x4
One problem with this is that the numbers get way too low on the low end. I guess I don't like this idea in this exact form, but maybe some variation of it could be good.

Then again, maybe pricing something at the maximum ($16) and having that 1 consumer who's out shopping in a Depression go ahead and buy it is just fine.

Edit: After a little thought on the subject, I think it's clear that the bit above is total crap. But I think limiting the amount you get in a Depression/Recession might be good.

In the game as-is, I think the Merchandising chart should be modified from the current:
|16|
|12|12|
|10|10|10|
| . 8 . | . 8 . |
| 6 .|. 6 .|. 6 |
To this:
|16|
|14|14|
|12|12|12|
| 10 .|. 10 |
| 8 .|. 8 .|. 8 |

Because the total cost to get a product into Merchandising is (')+(2,2)+Supply or between 7 and 8 units, so selling at the lowest possible cost shouldn't be a loss. A loss is when you don't sell and the product falls off the chart.

Further, as mentioned before I might like to see a Wholesale price that you get if your product does fall off the chart, in the amount of $6, or maybe $4. Either way it's a loss, but doesn't screw you over as badly. Lessening the worst case loss might serve to promote more competition in production, as players' risk is reduced, and more competition in Merchandising is really good for the game. I've never really thought it was so important to have a bigger jump at the top of the pyramid anyway. Although looking at just the top values of each price bracket I see that it was nicely distributed already. Either way, it's the bottom end I was worried about, not the top end.

Ground Floor - "buildings"

In Ground Floor, players purchase Room Remodels, Tenant Improvements, and Additional Floors in order to grow their business and earn Prestige Points. These behave like the generic "buildings" in other eurogames, such as Puerto Rico or Le Harve. Below I will list all of the current "buildings" in Ground Floor and discuss for each what the net effect is.

For starters, let's look at the currency in this game. There is Money: $, Info: i, and Time: ('). Each Employee costs $3 and gives you 3 Time, so it follows that (') = $1. Everyone's Ground Floor has a Meeting room which can convert 1 Time into 1 Info, so (') = i1. By the transitive property of mathematics, $1 = i1 - at least at the beginning of the game. Later in the game this changes for each player, because the whole point of the game is to upgrade your operation so that you can improve the relative values of these Units and make a profit, however at the outset I think it's fair to say...

(') = $1 = i1 = 1 "Unit"

That said, let's look at the buildings. Notation: (2,2) = $2 and i2

Ground Floor:
Each player has 6 rooms on their Ground Floor, each of which is resolved immediately during worker-placement ("Scheduling"), and each of which can be Remodeled at the end of a round for (5,5). A remodeled room flips over to the back side, which has an improved action and is worth 2 Prestige Points.

Assembly: (')(')('): 1 Supply
Remodeled: (')('): 1 Supply
It is difficult to explain or justify the actual value of 1 Supply. On one hand, you can get a supply for 3 units via the starting Assembly. On the other hand, you can buy a Supply at the Outlets for $2/i1 fir the first one. However the first Outlet slot is meant to be better than average, so a more realistic price for 1 Supply is $3/i2. Since info is hard to come by in the early game and money isn't, you might say that the $3 is the limiting number there. We should also look at Research and Testing, which allows you to trade a Supply plus 1 (') for i3, meaning a supply in that case is worth 2 units. Also, once Assembly is remodeled (and 1 player starts with Assembly remodeled), you can easily say that a Supply is worth 2 units. So it seems to me like 1 Supply is worth between 2 and 3 units, so let's just call it 2.5 units.

That said, Assembly (base) allows you to exchange 3 units for 2.5 units - not a great deal, but it's the most basic ability, and if you can't get Supply otherwise then that's OK. Upgraded Assembly is a slightly better deal, trading 2 units for 2.5 units. this seems weaker than some of the other remodeled Ground Floor rooms.

Suppose though that you assume a Supply is worth 2 in the early game and 3 in the late game (because the outlets dry up). In that case the basic Assembly is a bad deal (3 for 2) and the remodeled Assembly is a 2-for-2 trade. I think this seems fair. Does the gu who starts with the Assembly specialty get shafted? I don't think so.

Over the course of the game, you will use the Assembly some number of times, and if it's been upgraded then you net 1 unit each time you do it. It's probably safe enough to assume you'll use the Assembly about 6 or 7 times on the average, so flipping the Assembly nets you 6 or 7 (let's call it 6.5) plus 2pp (12 units worth per endgame scoring). So you're paying 10 units for stuff worth 18.5, netting 8.5 units total. Let's see how that compares to the rest of the Ground Floor rooms.

Storage Closet: 1 space to hold Supply
Remodeled: 2 spaces to hold Supply
The value of a storage space is pretty much nil. You could play the whole game with just the 1 space on your starting Storage Closet. Paying to flip your Storage Closet is probably not worth it, ever. This is not great.

Starting with the Storage Specialty however is good, as it means you start with an extra Supply, which can go directly into Production or into Testing for 3 info. One might say this is TOO good, but considering how bad the extra storage is after that, I don't think that's too good.

Perhaps this is fine, and many players will never remodel their Storage, but that's kinda boring. My only thought to improve it though is to offer some kind of other benefit when remodeling the Storage Closet... like maybe the remodeled side comes with 1 Storage. This makes it equivalent to having started with a remodeled Storage Closet, and gives some added incentive to do that upgrade. It's still expensive - (5,5) for 2pp and 1 Supply. According to end-game scoring, 1 PP should cost 6 units, and if a supply is 2.5 units then that means you'd be paying 10 units for stuff worth 14.5 units, so remodeling the Storage Closet nets you 4.5 units total. About 1/2 as much as remodeling Assembly.

Training: (')('): Train 1 Employee
Remodeled: ('): Train 1 Employee
This is a tricky one to evaluate, because in addition to the units netted, it allows you access to more units faster, which is a significant thing in the early game when you have only 4 Time.

Flipping Training saves you 1 Time for each Employee hired. You'll probably hire 3 employees most of the time, so that's 3 units saved (plus the benefit of being able to use that saved guy in the early game). When flipping this room you effectively pay 10 units for stuff worth 15 or 16 units, netting 5 or 6 units. That;s a little better than Storage (WITH a new Supply), but not quite as good as Assembly. Not sure how much value to assign the accelerated early game though. I suppose if it lets you get and train an employee 1 round before you would have otherwise, then it actually nets you a whole 3 units... so maybe that adds about 2 units of value to the total, bringing it up to 8ish, on par with Assembly.

Research & Testing: (')+Supply: (0,3)
Remodeled: (')+Supply: (2,2) or (')+Supply: (0,3)
The base room allows you to exchange a Supply for (0,3) - a pretty fair trade: 3.5 (because you have to use a Time as well) units for 3. Often times it's easier to get info than suppl, so you wouldn't need this ability, but in the early game the reverse might be true.

The upgraded R&T lets you trade 3.5 units for 4, and it also gives you a way to get $ on your ground floor, which is otherwise impossible (at least until very late game), so there's some unmeasured benefit there as well.

I don't think I can really calculate a benefit for this room, but in practice it certainly gets used, and it feels like it's on par with other rooms. It's possible the Remodeled version could be the base version, and then the upgraded version could be made a little better, but part of he point is that it's not easy to get money and info, and since this does both it shouldn't be too good.

Meeting: ('): (0,1)
Remodeled: ('): (0,2)
Meeting is a basic room which is helping to set the value of the whole game balance (the (')=$=i thing). Allowing a 1-for-1 trade is important, but really not a spectacular deal, you want to be upgrading our operation such that you can do better.

One way to do that is to flip the Meeting so you can trade 1 unit for 2. In order for this to be the same value as Assembly, you need to use it 6 times, which is you pay to remodel the room, you probably will. The fact that you can keep using it means it's probably better then Assembly. Let's compare it to other ways to get info...

Base R&T lets you trade 3.5 units for i3, so Remodeled Meeting is clearly better than that at getting info (as well it should be). Meeting also nets you more than the remodeled R&T, but not money, so maybe that's ok too. Consulting Firm allows you to pay money to get info. The first spot is intended to be a little worse deal than average, and that one is 6 units for 10. With 6 Time and an upgraded Meeting you could do better (i12). But if you look at the 2nd and 3rd Consulting Firm slots, you net the same (5 units gets you i10) as the meetings, but they only cost 1 of your limited placements - which is a better and better deal the fewer and fewer Time you have to work with. Later spots in the consulting fir of course get even better as you net 6 or 7 units as long as you can make it happen.

So compared to other GF rooms, it seems the Meeting upgrade is better - but maybe that's only true if you've hired many employees and have a lot of time to work with. Otherwise your limited by your Time capacity, and therefore it's not really too strong. It's also not very flexible, it only gets you info. Late game more info isn't necessarily what you need.

The upgrade on Meeting used to be 2 units for 3 info (and you could of course still do 1-for-1), but that seemed too weak. I'm thinking that the current version is OK, but if it starts to seem too strong, then we could go back to 2 units for 3 info.

Advertising: ('): 1 Networking
Remodeled: (')('): 1 Print or ('): 1 Networking
Advertising allows you to get 1 Networking without paying (1,1) to get into Marketing, however Marketing would get you 2 Networking cards. So to really compare you probably have to look at spending 2 time to save (1,1) - so each time is worth 1 for the base room. Compare to R&T and Meeting, I think that's exactly right.

Remodeled Advertising allows you to continue to do the same thing... I don't think should give you 2 cards because that would make each time spent there worth 2 units which might be too good (although, remodeled Meeting does that). So possibly that should be made better.

The other part of remodeled Advertising is paying 2 units for a free card in Print. Is that worth it? Well, 1 card in Print via Marketing costs a total of (2,2), or 4 units. So by giving this free card for 2 Time means your Time are being exchanged for 2 units each. that seems appropriate. Every time you use the space you net 2 units, so if you use the space 4 times then you're doing pretty well compared to other rooms. However the only benefit gained by Advertising is turn order, no tangible or fungible benefit. Also, since you resolve the action immediately, you have to telegraph your intent compared to players who go into Marketing. I think that's fair.

In light of that, I'm really wondering if the upgraded Advertising should give you 2 in networking rather than just 1. But if you think about it, if you spend 2 Time on Advertising, you should get the same thing you'd get if you spent 1 time in marketing... 1 print, or 2 networking. So never mind, the flipped Advertising should not get any better with respect to Networking.

Tenant Improvements (3pp):
T.I.s each cost (3,3) in addition to the (4,4) it costs to get into the Construction Company. That's a steep cost, but it's proven imminently doable. It's the main way to get points, so it's supposed to be kind of hard to do. So the full cost of a T.I. is (7,7) or 14 units. For that 14 units you get 3pp, which is 18 units worth of stuff (according to endgame scoring), so you net 4 units PLUS whatever benefit you gain from the T.I.

All of the T.I/s are available in Phase 1, though 3 of them are clearly better first choices than the other 3. This makes me think that perhaps those 3 should be Phase 1 and the other three should be Phase 2. We could even add a Phase 3 T.I. that was like a Bonus Floor (or simply make one of the Bonus Floors into a T.I.).

Network Admin: Income: +(0,3)
Assuming you buy this in the first round, you get 7 or 8 rounds of income out of it, which is 21 or 24 units of info. Certainly a good buy.

Human Resources: Hiring discount: (3,3)
HR saves you (3,3) for each hire, and you'll probably hire 3 or 4 employees if you buy this one... which means you save a total of 18 or 24 units over the course of the game. That's on par with the info, has the added advantage of getting you an employee a turn before you could otherwise afford it, but has the disadvantage of running you out of cash quickly as you hire people. So a player buying this should plan accordingly.

Internship Program: +(')(') each round
2 (') per round is less than the 3 info from Network, but it's very flexible where the info from Network Admin is not. Also, later in the game you've upgraded your operation such that 1 (') can net more than 1 Info, so you can catch up to the sheer amount of units gained pretty easily.

I think these 3 T.I.s are all nicely and similarly powered. They are the first picks in most (probably every) game.

Customer Service: +(2,0) per product sold
This nets you 2 units every time you sell, and you can probably use it about 6 or 7 times if you try, so it nets you maybe 14 units... not as much as network Admin, but (a) it's money, and therefore harder to come by and (b) it lets you worry less about turn order when setting prices, or gives you the ability to consistently undercut people, forcing them to lower price points, without giving up money.

It's possible this could be increased to $3, which should put it on par with the net gains of the other T.I.s, but I'm hesitant because I think it's still pretty good as is.

This T.I. could certainly use a new name!

Warehouse: 4 spaces to hold Supply
Arguably useless, except when going for Production Bonus - which is an easy bonus as nobody else ever wants it. Also potentially useful with Assembly Line or remodeled Assembly in order to store up supply during a down economy in order to sell a lot during a Boom. The benefit of the Warehouse is not really quantifiable.

If it turns out that people aren't buying this T.I. I have an idea... I might like to attach it to the Empty Floor such that instead of choosing your T.I., the Empty Floor comes with the Warehouse built in, and space for 1 more T.I. If both the Empty Floor and the Warehouse don't get a lot of play, I might try that change.

Emergency Meeting: ('): Move to the front of Consulting Firm
This is difficult to quantify as well, but if you assume that it allows you to bu into the first slot of the Consulting firm for $3 or $4 and an extra (') instead of $6, then it effectively turns 1 (') into 2$ or possibly 3$, probably no more than once per round. Maybe you use this 4 or 5 times over the course of the game, netting let's say 1.5 units each time and you're looking at about 7 unit profit from the building, not to mention being able to ensure a constant flow of Information (so long as you save the money and (') to use this T.I.).

This one is subtle, and seems weak to a lot of players, but most players are playing for the first time. I suspect this is stronger than it looks, and I intend to try it some more before giving up on it.

Phase I Floor (2pp):
Empty Floor: Comes with any T.I. and space for another T.I.
The intention here is a floor which gives you space to put T.I. without having to cover up your Ground Floor rooms. The first time I tried it it didn't come with a T.I. and so that was it's only benefit... that seemed poor considering it costs (1,1) more and more importantly, increases the cost of future Floors by (2,2). So the effective additional cost is (3,3), which means the benefit needs to be better.

Well, it's a floor, so it should be worth 5pp instead of 3. You might notice it says 2pp on there, but that's because you get a free T.I. (3pp) along with it. So it's still worth 5. and now for the extra (3,3) cost you get an additional space to put a T.I. without covering your GF rooms. Is that worth it? I don't know - I hope so because I like the way it sounds. I think it could go well with a strategy in which you build fewer floors and do a lot of remodeling, and aim for the Improvement Bonus floor.

It might seem too good to get your choice of T.I. - so I might decide to attach a particular T.I. to the Empty Floor. Specifically the Warehouse. Basically, those 2 T.I.s seem like they might be weak, so if they're not purchased then I might try combining them into 1 so you get both at the same time and see if that's any more attractive to people.

Phase II Floors (5pp):
Factory: (')(')+Supply: Place (') in Production
This effectively turns (')(') into (2,2), letting you trade 1 unit for 2. It has the added benefit of allowing you to go into Production even if you didn't save any cash from last round. This turns out to be important once you've hired 3 employees and are at 0 income.

(') for 2 units seems like a fair trade, and therefore a good power level for Phase 2 floors.

If you use this once a turn then you basically net 2 units a turn or 8-10 units total.

Investor: Income: +(3,0)
If you buy this in turn 4, then you net 12 or 15 units over the course of the game. A little more than the Factory gives, and it's cash which is good, but you could potentially use the factory more, and doing so leads to a bigger money gain from Merchandising.

This floor used to yield $2 income, but that seemed too weak. I think it seems good at $3.

I.T. Department: Income: +(0,5)
This one could net a whole lot of info (20-25) over the course of the game! However, it's very limited as there's no way to turn info into money. I think this could be reduced to 4 and it would still be good, as it is you net a whole lot of units.

Assembly Line: ('): 1 Supply (max: 2 uses/round)
Assembly Line used to be usable 3 times a round, and it turned out to be empirically the best building out there. Doing the math, it's no surprise, as we discussed the value (especially late game) of a Supply is 2.5 maybe 3, trading 1 unit for 3 is a super good deal compared to other things. Limiting it to 2 uses seems to have made it harder to abuse but still a decent buy. You're going to use it as much as possible (and here's where Warehouse or remodeled Storage might come in handy), which is as much as 4 or 5 rounds, 2x/round, netting 1.5 units per use... 15 units is reasonable. Before it was more like 22 units!

This further supports that the I.T. department should only give +i4 income.

Research Lab: (')+Supply: (3,3) (max: 3 uses/round)
Trading 4 for 6 nets 2 units. Maybe 2.5, depending on how you value Supply. Another way to look at it is that the Supply and (') could get i3 from the R&T room, so using this nets $3 over that. Or it nets (1,1) over the upgraded R&T. If you use it to capacity then you make out pretty well, but it's difficult to acquire all that Supply.

Basically you net 2 units per use, 3 uses per turn, for 4 turns, you could net 24 or so out of this, but it's really hard. In that light maybe it should be limited to 2 uses to bring it in line with the other floors.

Construction Administration: (')(')('): Place (') in Construction Co.
Trading 3 units for 8, nets you 3 units. Or you could say turns (') into 2.67 units. A better deal than the Factory for sure, so maybe it should cost 4... problem is that you run into (') limits, such a high cost in (') means it's difficult to use. It might need to go back to 4 (') if it turns out to be too good.

Public Relations: Do not drop in Popularity
No quantifiable benefit here, but you'll basically go first for the rest of the game, be stronger in the Merchandising aspect of the game, win the final tiebreak if it comes to that, and have an easy time scoring off of the Marketing Bonus floor. Seems fair in practice.

Conference Room: (')('): (0,4) (max: 2 uses/round)
This turns (') into 2 units, like the Factory. It's allowed 2x/round, so at a maximum you can net 16-20 units over the course of the game, which seems fine.

Does the game really need another source of Info? This floor might get cut if it isn't bought much.

Phase III Floors:
Accounting Department: (')(')('): (6,0) (max: 3 uses/round)
Getting large amounts of cash is very difficult during the game. This is a Phase 3 floor, meaning you get it very late in the game, You only get 1 or 2 rounds to use it, and even if you max out it's use you net 9 units for 2 rounds so 18 units, all money. If you're getting this, it's instead of a Bonus Floor, so that money will have to be pretty important as it's costing you about 3 points in opportunity cost. I like how this works here.

Marketing: (')('): 1 Broadcast
I haven't seen this used, but it seems like a decent buy... compared to Marketing on the street, this turns 1 (') into (3,3) - a REALLY good deal. But the benefit only helps turn order. If it never gets used then maybe it would need to become a Phase 2 floor and cost (')(')(') to use or something.

Marketing Bonus: +2pp per Popularity Level
Retention Bonus: +1pp per Employee
Improvement Bonus: +1pp per Remodeled Room
Production Bonus: +1pp per Supply
Executive Bonus: +1pp per "Bonus" Floor
Corporate Merger Bonus: +3pp
Corner Office Bonus: +3pp

All of these Bonus floors seem about right - they give you 2pp if you do badly, 3 to 6 if you do well. They reward various different positions, and they all seem doable. I like them as they are. Is there one that could become a Small T.I.? That might be neat.

2/22/10 playtest: Ground Floor

Last night I had a planned playtest night for Ground Floor. I liked the format and will continue to do this when possible - just a FaceBook invite, specifically to play Ground Floor. I'll set up another one for next week for Belfort, seeing as how that one is 'on the docket' so to speak (that is to say it's being published this year, and is therefore more pressing than other games).

Hopefully it'll go more smoothly next time. This time David (the designer), myself, and Wystan all confirmed, and we were all present at the scheduled time. Eric called to say he "might" come but would be late, which I took as confirmation. Mandy had been a "maybe," but had called at 3:30 to tell me she would definitely be there. That would make a good 5 player game.

Nate showed up (on time), but hadn't told me he was coming. This was OK because the game plays 6, but he couldn't stay long enough for the whole game and therefore was going to just listen to the rules and watch for a bit. Then Doug showed up, who I also didn't know was coming - again OK because the game plays 6. Eric showed up a little later than he said he'd be, but that was fine because we were still waiting on Mandy. After a while we decided to start without Mandy. Nate suggested he begin, and when Mandy showed up ("any minute now") then she could take over for him.

Mandy never did show up, and Nate had to leave after about round 2, so we dropped to a 5 player game. Further, Doug had to leave after about round 6, so we dropped to a 4 player game. Fortunately, the game is resilient enough to actually accept someone leaving in the middle, though it does screw the players up a little bit, for example if a player gets jacked by another player, then that other player leaves, it leaves a bad taste in the jacked player's mouth.

Next time I will make an effort to get more confident responses, and to start on time. Monday night is a rough time to try and do this kind of thing, especially when it starts 90 minutes later than the already lat 6:30 start time.

ANYWAY...

The game itself went really well. Wystan, who is always skeptical of prototypes, said he liked it a lot more than he thought he would. He hamstrung himself in the early game, buying a Blank Floor (new addition - place to put TIs without covering GF rooms) rather than something that gave him a direct benefit. He also misunderstood employees and opted not to hire any at first, but he did purchase an Internship Program (which is 2/3 of an employee which you don't have to pay). This left him with a lot of $ income and a reasonable amount of Time to spend on actions, and is generally not a bad position to be in, but somehow he was not able to translate that into Prestige Points very well.

Eric's reaction wasn't bad either. I expected him to complain a bit about the "random" number of consumers that come each round to purchase goods. Since one of the main ways to get $ in the game is through the competitive merchandising market, it matters a lot whether there are 2 consumers or 4. You know the range (in a Recovery maybe it's 2-4), but 2 is VERY different than 4. As a result, you have to make hard choices such as "do I price my product at 8 to ensure a sale, or do I price it at 12 with a 2/3 chance I'll get the sale and a 1/3 chance I'll get nothing?" Eric made this exact choice one turn, opting for the 2/3 chance of more money, and he got burned. his situation was such that he could not afford to get burned, therefore I would argue that he should have gone with the safe bet and accepted less money for a sure sale rather than gambling on more money. He didn't like this as it really crippled him that round, and his comments after the game were to the effect of "if you get shut out of sales, you should be able to wholesale your product if you want for less money than the other people made." While it's not a terrible idea, I think that option is already in the game - you just have to choose to whole sale your goods BEFORE you find out if they would have sold at a higher price, not AFTER. Kinda like in real life. Eric prefers games where he can perfectly calculate whether he will sell his good or not, and price accordingly.

A thought I've had before that is along the lines of being able to wholesale goods if they don't sell is this: Currently, if you don't sell, then your product drops to the next lowest price bracket. If it drops off the lowest price bracket, then you get nothing. I wouldn't mind seeing a rule wherein you get $4 when you drop off the bottom of the chart, which is $2 less than you would have got if selling for the lowest price. I happen to have had more goods fall off the bottom of the chart (over the course of all my games played) than anyone else, and so I have most often been affected by this, and I've been able to win or place despite those setbacks, but I still wouldn't mind seeing a small wholesale option in that case. However in all other cases when you don't sell, it's because you didn't price right or you weren't popular enough, two things which you have direct control over.

Eric and Wystan both had some other good comments about specifics of the floors, which I will ponder and incorporate where necessary.

Doug had to leave early, but said he really enjoyed the game and would like to play it again, especially in a game which wasn't a learning game. I'm not sure what Nate thought, but since he had to leave so early, I'm not sure he knows what he thought of the game either.

I will make a new blog post with each of the Ground Floor rooms, TIs and Floors listed to analyze their effectiveness and costs, in an effort to weed out the bad and tune the good.

MaBiWeb FAIL!

MaBiWeb is a really awesome website where you can play board games on line. It's turn based, with a super sweet interface. The system emails you when it's your turn, you log in, make your move, click done, and that's it. They have a handful of really great games on there, including but not limited to In the Year of the Dragon, In the Shadow of the Emperor, and Mykerinos.

About 6 weeks ago I joined a game of each of those, and somehow I lost track of them. I forgot that I was in those games, and I never received emails telling me it was my turn. I just remembered about them today! I logged in to find that the games were gone. I feel terrible about this, as they probably all stalled out on my turn (because I didn't know to log in and play) and the admins probably just deleted the games. I hate when other people aren't attentive to their games, and so I feel extra terrible that I caused all three of those games to stall. I remember thinking they were all really interesting games too, and was having a lot of fun playing them.

So I deserve an "Epic Fail!" for F'ing up 3 games on MaBiWeb. If you were in those games and are reading this, then I sincerely apologize! I suspect the MaBiWeb emails were going straight to my spam folder (thank you Yahoo filtering!) - a situation I'm trying to fix right now.

Again, apologies all around. Please don't think I'm one of those jerks who starts online games and doesn't finish them!

Eminent Domain - Trade and Harvest roles

I took a little walk today and on that walk I thought about how the Trade and Harvest roles could be represented differently in Eminent Domain. So far I've been unhappy with how they work, and the current "fix" is not perfect either.

A thought I had while walking was this: what if I combined the Trade and Harvest cards into 1 card... the Action on the card could be:

"Produce 1 resource."
And the Role and Follow could be:

"Produce 1 Resource per Harvest icon OR trade 1 resource per Trade symbol."
I'm not sure whether the icons would be shared or not actually - I could make just 1 icon for both... this would affect the technology cards - should a tech card help harvesting but not trading? Does that even make sense? Does it make sense to have "+1 Trade" or "+1 Harvest" anymore in this case? I think it could be nice to have the icons separate, but the card count for both.

It's worth thinking about anyway.

OrcCon playtests

I had a fun weekend at OrcCon in Los Angeles, hanging out with several friends from California, playing lots of games, and I even got a chance to playtest some of the games I'm working on.

Eminent Domain
I played a 2 player game of Eminent Domain with Andrew, using the new and improved Trade rule (2vp/resource). It seemed to work ok, and it warrants more testing. I probably need to adjust the number of VPs in the pool for it to work properly.

In the game we played, Andrew concentrated on Harvesting and Trading, and I concentrated on Research - trying to get to a level 3 Research card. While I did manage to get 4 Level 2 research cards into my deck, I did not reach that level 3 card. Further, the way they are organized now, the level 3 cards really needs to be in play for a while before they really pay off...

Maybe the Level *2* Techs need to be the stay-in-play ones... and the level 3 could be bonus scoring conditions I'd like to add such as "2vp per Fertile planet" for example.

Ground Floor
Later I played a 4 player game of Ground Floor with Andrew, Eric, and Grant. Grant had to leave before the game was over, so it turned into a 3 player game near the end. The game went pretty long, owing to rules, newbies, and the convention atmosphere - one of the things about the game I'd really like to tune better is the timeframe, but I feel like there are some game related issues that need work first.

I enjoyed how the game went, though I inadvertently messed up part of the setup. I did not properly set up the Economic Forecast deck, so our economy was not entirely realistic. However, it wasn't that bad and probably didn't make all that much difference to the game.

Eric and I were close in points, while Andrew was behind - owing largely to misunderstanding some strategy in the early game. Andrew had the Meeting specialty, and he spent a LOT of actions paying 2 Time units for 3 info. He also did a LOT of Marketing, and it didn't do him as much good as it could have because he wasn't also producing goods. We all observed that the Meeting specialty seemed like a pretty bad deal - the Meeting room seems bad, and getting it for free therefore isn't anything to write home about. We thought maybe it should be improved to what is currently the Teaming Room TI.

Anyway, after the game we discussed each of the Floors and Tenant Improvements. There were some that we all agreed were either too good, too lousy, or didn't come out at a useful time. I made some notes and will try some of those changes the next time I play.

Train of Thought
I played 2 games of Train of Thought over the weekend, and I still love that game! I saw a little more of the "give the required word, then an unrelated 2 word clue" dynamic than I'm used to, and that's a little disappointing. One guy who did that scored 10 destinations in 1 turn, which is pretty high. A "good" round is usually more like 7 or 8. I'm not sure there's any way to fix the rule, but maybe a simple thing like phrasing the rule as "3 related words, 1 of which is the starting word or a prior guess" - so the words could be related by being part of a sentence, or by free association even, but the unrelated 2-word clue would be clearly outside the spirit of the rule.

I wonder if the game should be tested with merely 2 word clues - one of which has to be the starting word. That would certainly eliminate this issue!

Eminent Domain - Trade role and Planet deck

I'm liking the way Eminent Domain is shaping up as a game. I've enjoyed my 2p games of it thus far, but I've only played a couple multiplayer games. The other night I played a 4 player game, and I liked how the game played in general, but I found Harvest/Trade mechanism underwhelming, as did other players. In 2 player games I have managed to do well with a trading strategy, but for some reason this time it didn't seem even possible.

I will note that it may well have seemed impossible because nobody was going for it, and if someone had gone for it then it might have panned out for them after all. However, I had the most face up planets out of the 4 of us, and I seemed to have very few available resource slots. This may be because when I revamped the planets I tried to make them more interesting and I removed some of the resource slots, especially from the Metallic planets. However I happened to have the 1 Fertile planet with no resource slots. I went through and added a few slots back in (in pencil), so I'll see if that helps.

I don't think more slots will fix the issue on its own, because I was already unsure if I liked the Harvest/Trade dynamic as it stood. On David's suggestion I would like to try changing the Trade Role effect to be "For each Trade icon, trade 1 resource for 2vp." The Trade Action would continue to be "Get 1vp."

I had what I thought was a new idea in the car this morning: What if the Trade Role were "trade in ALL of your Resources. Get 1vp per resource traded, PLUS 1vp per trade icon played." Thus, you could get decent rewards for specializing in Harvest, as 1 Trade role could cash in a bunch of resources for 1vp apiece, which you could get all at once with a single Harvest role; and you could get decent rewards for specializing in Trade, as 1 Trade role could cash in a bunch of Trade cards for 1vp apiece, so long as you have at least 1 Resource. If you specialize in both Harvest and Trade you could Harvest several resources at once, then trade them all for an effective 2vp apiece.

Come to think of it though that's not very different from getting 2vp per resource and trading 1 resource per trade icon. The latter case just puts a limit on the number of resources/trade icons you can score for because for each 2vp you need to have one of each (a resource and a trade card). So maybe the "Trade 1 resource per trade icon for 2vp" idea proposed above is a better idea. I'll try that next time I play. Now to update the player aid (again)!

Which brings me to Planets... this is really a different thing altogether, but I didn't want to make 2 separate posts.

I had considered reorganizing the planet deck in the same way I did the Tech cards - 3 piles by type, Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 planets... The cost of getting a planet in play in front of you would be 3/5/7 Survey symbols (mirroring the Research role). However, in that scheme there's nothing to stop someone with a ton of Survey cards from just grabbing all the high end planets, skipping the low ones. here are a few ideas about that, in no particular order:

* When Surveying a Level 2 or 3 planet, remove 1 or 3 Survey cards from the game (of the ones you're paying). This was something I though was neat when I considered it for Research - if you build up and grab an expensive item, it thins some Survey cards out of your deck. If you want another high end planet you'll have to build back up. If you don't care for another expensive planet, then you can be happy about thinning those Surveys out of your deck. However, thematically it doesn't make a tone of sense that you get worse at Surveying after you do a big Survey action. I'm not sure that matters though - there are probably plenty of thematic oddities in the game already.

* I could force players to go in order - you cannot Survey a Level 2 planet until you have a face up Level 1 planet of that type. Similarly, you cannot Survey a Level 3 planet until you have a face up Level 2 planet of that type.

* A variation of the last idea - there could be an additional attribute on some (or all) planets - some symbol, let's call it an X. In order to Survey a level 2 planet, maybe you need XX in play. In order to Survey a Level 3 planet, maybe you need XXX in play. In this way, planets could cross pollinate, imagine X is for Fertile, Y is for Advanced and Z is for Metallic... while some Metallic planets have Z's on them, maybe one Metallic planet has an X and one has a Y (since Metallic is the Survey type). Fertile planets would only have X's (or nothing). This would be in addition to potentially Action icons, Hand Size increases, or Resource slots.

Is that last idea too complicated? Maybe the "go in order" idea is the beast idea because it's simple. I kinda like the removing cards from the game idea as well though.

Is there another way to do it? Feel free to leave a comment if you think of something!

2/8/10 playtest: Terra Prime expansion

I mentioned putting together an expansion for Terra Prime the other day. Yesterday I got a chance to try it out! David, John, and Wystan came over, and after a game of Eminent Domain they agreed to give the TP expansion a go. John has played quite a few games of Terra Prime, but not since last April or so when I was putting the finishing touches on it. Wystan had played my prototype once before, and I don't think David had ever played the game before. So for half the players the expansion wouldn't be really different than the base game, since they didn't know or wouldn't remember the base game! but I would at least be able to see how the new elements worked, and that was the main point.

Almost all of the new features were accessed in the game, and for the most part I liked how everything worked:

2 new Upgrades: a Matter Converter which makes your resource cubes interchangeable, and Additional Module Slots ("Extra Deck"?) which gives you 2 new slots for modules - one Engine/Cargo slot and one Weapon/Shield slot.

David had a lousy start, but once he figured things out he collected some resources and bought himself a Matter Converter. I believe his thought was that it would make buying other upgrades easier. It was too late in the game to really take advantage of that, but I could see how it could work. I could also see the Matter Converter being huge in a delivery strategy - buy a Delivery Optimizer and a Matter Converter and suddenly quick trips for resources will rack up cash and points in a hurry!

Nobody bought Additional Module Slots, but I wanted to! I think a contributing factor was that there weren't convenient asteroids to colonize, so Brownium wasn't easy to come by. The "Brownium + 10 Credits" reward tile happened to be the one removed from the game as well. I could see this inexpensive upgrade being used either by someone who wants to carry a lot of stuff without having to pass up extra actions from an engine, or by someone who wants to have more alien fighting power - especially with the new modules which use Energy (you might want more Shields to store more energy).

I'm happy with these upgrades so far.

3 new Modules: a Pulse Cannon, which lets you roll 2 dice, but costs 1 energy to use; a Cryo-Chamber, which lets you carry a Colony marker but no cubes (upgrades to a standard 2-door module); and an Afterburner, which I've got two possible rules for...
1. 2 actions at the cost of 1 Energy, once per turn
2. 2 actions per turn, but only one non-move action can be taken that turn

I decided to go with option #1 for the Afterburner - spend an energy to activate the Afterburner for the turn and it gives you 2 actions. It worked great! I picked one up and fueled it with several Shield modules. John and Wystan also bought this version to try it out. I really like the Energy economy introduced!

Nobody bought the Pulse cannon, but I could see it being good for someone who wants to fight aliens without dicking around building up an arsenal. It could be tricky though, since heading into an Alien ambush means you'll lose energy, which you'll need to power the Pulse Cannon in combat - so it's still worth getting a Cloaking Device before taking on the big boys.

I was skeptical about the Cryo-Chamber - I didn't think anyone would ever want it. I took to an Explore strategy, and at one point I thought "hmm... I could collect Blue/Blue/Brown and upgrade my Carrying Capacity so I can carry 2 Colony markers - or I could save a lot of actions and just bu the Cryo-chamber for 1 action and 20 credits!" So I did. I was able to carry 2 colonies out to the boonies and drop them off for good points. I think that module will be underused, as using it well seems pretty subtle. You'd pretty much have to eschew delivering much or upgrading - but maybe a NavComp/Exploration/Colonization strategy could really use that well. Especially if utilizing the Additional Module Slots!

The energy economy worked especially well with the known planet locations, because it was much easier to find and colonize a Red planet (where you can refuel shields).

27 Exploration tiles: The setup for the expansion is to place the Space hexes face up, and these Exploration tiles are placed face down in the center of each in lieu of what's printed on the tile. In addition to Hostile Aliens and Stray Asteroids

As I set up the board for our game, I made sure the setup was "legal" under the base game placement rules (the ones I wish I'd done without). I don't know if that's so necessary. I think the only rule needs to be "don't place anything (not even an Asteroid Field) adjacent to Terra Prime" for setup. I think I'll try that next time.

I added a couple new features...
* Sunstar: makes planets on the tile uninhabitable. Thus you cannot place a colony on a planet or asteroid on a tile with a Sunstar. I'm considering making that "cannot place a colony in any sector adjacent to the Sunstar."
* Wormhole: there are several Wormhole tiles. With 1 move action a player can move their command ship into an adjacent wormhole, and with 1 more move action a player can move from the wormhole to any sector adjacent to any wormhole tile on the board.

John did NOT like the Sunstar at all - he was en route to colonize in a sector, but when he got there he discovered a Sunstar on that tile, making that particular Asteroid Field uninhabitable. Further, since it could not be colonized, it served as a severe roadblock, as anyone moving through that sector would have to take 2 dice worth of Asteroid damage! Because this ruined John's plans, he didn't like it - I on the other hand thought it was pretty cool.

The Wormholes worked beautifully. I'm not sure if there are too many, or too few, or a good number... but they were really neat. They did however bring up a rules question:
In the base game, it's simply not possible to use an action to move your ship into a sector with 2 face down tiles in it. However with the Wormholes it's not just possible, but easy to find a sector adjacent to a wormhole with both other tiles in it face down! So can players move out of a Wormhole to encounter 2 face down tiles? What happens if they do? Well, fortunately the way I worded it was airtight - it takes a MOVE action to exit a wormhole, not an EXPLORE action - therefore when exiting the wormhole you MAY ONLY move your ship to a fully explored sector. Now there's no question about moving where there are 2 face down tiles. David asked about moving where there's 1 face down tile, where an Explore action would normally be allowed. he suggested that allowing such a play but outlawing a move to 2 face down tiles would be consistent with the base rules because you are allowed to flip 1 tile per turn but not 2. But I don't agree that that's consistent, because the rule doesn't limit how many tiles you can flip, it limits the number of Explore actions you can take. So if you were allowed to take an Explore action from a wormhole, there would have to be an exception or special case allowing certain Explore actions (where there is 1 face down tile) and not others (where there are 2). I don't like that.

In the end, the purpose of the wormholes is supposed to be faster movement after things are explored, not faster exploration... so I am happier with the rule being that you may only take a Move action when in wormhole. Even if on occasion I really wanted to use a wormhole to explore a single tile. I'm happy with the rule we used, and I think it's thematically sound as well.

3 additional Reward tiles: I haven't made any new ones, for now I just grabbed 3 reward tiles from another copy of the game. I'm doubling up on the Greenium/Energy, the Bluium/Energy and the Yellium tiles from phase 3. Instead of the Yellium tile I think I'd rather add a Brown+Energy tile to Phase 2.

This seemed fine. The game dragged on a bit - lasting over 2 hours(!) I don't think it was just due to the extra reward tiles thought, I think that just let the game go about 2 rounds beyond what it would have (I'm not positive about that). I think a more accurate reason it took a while was because noone really geared up to fight aliens at the outset. Therefore aliens weren't dieing, and reward tiles weren't being handed out for them. When John finally did start attacking, he was a little underprepared and rolled very poorly, setting him back (and leaving the alien around). With no aliens dieing, there were also a number of sectors that could not be colonized. I believe this is what dragged the game out the most. The beginning was also slow as it was a learning game at first.

I'm happier with the idea of a slightly longer game, but I'm really not happy with 2+ hours. I'll have to watch that and see if I can figure out what is causing delays, and if it's to do with the expansion rules or some other phenomenon.

Now that I've made the prototype I'd really like to try it out!

I was really happy with the playtest. I had expected the expansion to be sort of Exploration-friendly, as I felt that strategy was weak in the base game, and I think in that respect it's successful. A longer game favors Exploration and Colonization as well as giving a boost to Delivery strategies. I think the foreknowledge of planet locations helps Explorers as well, giving them a target so to speak.

All in all I was happy with the playtest, and I look forward to doing it again. I did forget to award 2 points for exploring the red zone, and while I don't know if that's as necessary in the expansion I went ahead and updated my prototype to reflect that. I think perhaps though that with the face up planets you don't really need extra incentive to explore the red zone. It's also probably easier to get out there with wormholes facilitating movement, more certain Red colonies to teleport you back home, and a slightly longer game. I could go either way right now.

Terra Prime expansion

I've been considering what I'd want to put into a Terra Prime expansion for some time, and today I spent some time putting together a prototype of the expansion. Here's what it includes:

2 new Upgrades: a Matter Converter which makes your resource cubes interchangeable, and Additional Module Slots ("Extra Deck"?) which gives you 2 new slots for modules - one Engine/Cargo slot and one Weapon/Shield slot.

3 new Modules: a Pulse Cannon, which lets you roll 2 dice, but costs 1 energy to use; a Cryo-Chamber, which lets you carry a Colony marker but no cubes (upgrades to a standard 2-door module); and an Afterburner, which I've got two possible rules for...
1. 2 actions at the cost of 1 Energy, once per turn
2. 2 actions per turn, but only one non-move action can be taken that turn

27 Exploration tiles: The setup for the expansion is to place the Space hexes face up, and these Exploration tiles are placed face down in the center of each in lieu of what's printed on the tile. In addition to Hostile Aliens and Stray Asteroids, I added a couple new features...
* Sunstar: makes planets on the tile uninhabitable. Thus you cannot place a colony on a planet or asteroid on a tile with a Sunstar. I'm considering making that "cannot place a colony in any sector adjacent to the Sunstar."
* Wormhole: there are several Wormhole tiles. With 1 move action a player can move their command ship into an adjacent wormhole, and with 1 more move action a player can move from the wormhole to any sector adjacent to any wormhole tile on the board.

3 additional Reward tiles: I haven't made any new ones, for now I just grabbed 3 reward tiles from another copy of the game. I'm doubling up on the Greenium/Energy, te Bluium/Energy and the Yellium tiles from phase 3. Instead of the Yellium tile I think I'd rather add a Brown+Energy tile to Phase 2.

Now that I've made the prototype I'd really like to try it out!

Eminent Domain v2.1

I tried my last idea about the technologies, and didn't like it as much. I missed the interesting different abilities. But it is true that the Tech cards have to be better than the basic cards so I revamped them again. This time they look like this:

Each type (Fertile, Advanced, Metallic) still has 1 deck, of 13 cards now. 8 Level 1 cards which all cost 3 research symbols, require 1 planet of the appropriate type, and have 2 icons on them. Each of these has an action that is better than (basically twice) the normal action for one of the symbols. So for example, the Colonize/Survey card in the Fertile deck says "Action: Draw 3 cards" on it. On the other hand, the Survey/Colonize card in the Metallic deck says "Settle a planet, then Settle another planet or add this colony to a planet" on it. I've got a nagging suspicion that I should not have put "...Settle another planet..." on there and left it at Settle and add this colony, but we'll see if that turns out to be a problem.

There are also 4 Level 2 techs in each deck - they're the ones that have both symbols matching the deck type, so for example in the Metallic deck, the 4 level-2 cards are Warfare/Warfare, Warfare/Survey, Survey/Warfare, and Survey/Survey. Each of those cards cost 5 research icons, require 2 of the appropriate planets, and is worth 2vp. They also each have a unique action which I hope will be cool and useful.

Finally, each deck has 1 of the 3 Level 3 cards I'd mentioned before - a card that does not go into your deck, but instead sits on the table giving you a static ability. The Metallic one is "Play an additional card each turn," the Fertile one is "Draw an additional card when not following a role," and the Advanced one is "Remove a card in hand from the game before choosing a role each turn."

I have also been thinking of the Follow cost for the Survey Role - currently "Draw 1 planet card per 2 Survey icons, keep 1." It always seems like you get a maximum of 1 card to look at, which is kind of OK - if you're following the role you don't get choice of planets. However, I don't like it as much, so I'm going to try "Draw X-1 planet cards, keep 1" where X of course is the number of symbols played. So the player choosing the role has +2 symbols on a player following the role (assuming they have the same number of symbols in hand) - 1 from the Role card, and 1 from the Follow penalty. I updated this and the research role on the player aid to keep everything up to date.

I think that should prove better than prior incarnations. i just updated my prototype, now to find someone to play with me!

Eminent Domain - Technologies

I'm thinking of a potentially streamlined way to do the technologies, once they're split up into 3 levels of techs and you purchase the one you want:

Nomenclature
For the sake of discussion, let's refer to the 6 actions in the game as A, B, C, D, E, and F. Let's also say that any given Technology deck will be comprised of cards with 2 icons each, one of which will be one of the 2 associated with the type of deck (i.e. Harvest and Colonize for the Fertile deck). Therefore each card in the deck can be described as XA, XB, XC... YA, YB, YC... where X and Y are, in the case of the Fertile deck, Harvest and Colonize.

Now, on with the post...

Proposed technology deck format
Suppose there were just 1 Action/Effect/Ability associated with each of the 6 actions (A-F). Maybe each level of technology in a deck should have those 6 Actions/Effects/Abilities on 2 cards each:
XA, YA: Action/Effect/Ability A
XB, YB: Action/Effect/Ability B
XC, YC: Action/Effect/Ability C
... etc.

It could be that the Level 1 techs have no Action/Effect/Ability (just double symbols), or a weak one (maybe the same action as the Role card - thus a Harvest/Colonize card would be exactly the same as a Colonize card, but with a Harvest icon on it as well. The level 2 techs would have the nifty Action/Effect/Abilities on them*. Level 3 techs are probably going to be cards with strong abilities that stay in play, and are worth significant points.

* Ooh, just thought of this - the Level 2 tech cards could have BOTH actions - like a WS card could have "Action: Get 1 Army AND Draw 2 cards" (!) - this removes interesting abilities, but might be good anyway, and easy to try.

Updated ED Proto?

Despite deciding that I probably don't want to go with a 2D array of planet cards or tiles, I went ahead and made a set of tiles... each one has a planet type and one of it's associated icons (or a + hand size icon or +1VP icon). The intent is to lay them out in a hexagonal board. The center tile has all 6 symbols represented, making it good for all actions, and therefore more valuable. Player 'home' planets would be attached to 5 blank tiles in a sort of pyramid shape, and appended to one side of the large hexagon, so in order to get to any planet tile you'd have to move your ship 2 spaces from your home planet.

The idea here is that the Survey action moves your ship around, the Warfare action attacks the tile your ship is on (for a standard number of armies maybe 5), and the Colonize action colonizes the tile your ship is on for a variable price, which increases as you approach the center of the hexagon.

There are 4 rings to this board, the first ring would cost maybe 2 to colonize, the next ring would cost 3, the 3rd would cost 4 and the center tile would cost 5 (or something like that, maybe it would ramp up more, like 3/4/6/7). When you attack or colonize a tile you would take the tile in front of you so you could see what bonuses you've got, and you would place a player marker of some sort on the space... the VPs of the tile would be based on it's location as well, representing that you had to do more work to colonize a tile near the center. After colonizing or attacking (let's call that "claiming") a tile, your ship would jump back to your home tile, and you'd have to make your way out there again.

One benefit of this board is that it lets you aim for particular bonuses - if you want to go the warfare route, you might target tiles that give you +1 Warfare. If you notice a number of tiles near your base that have Harvest and Trade icons, maybe you'll decide to go that route. Maybe you'd prefer to survey your way out toward the center of the baord and try to claim tiles that are worth more points. Or maybe you'll eschew abilities and go for planets with +1VP on them. Another plus is that it could create more direct player interaction - the early Surveys move your ship in front of your own home base, but later in the game you might decide to move over to the area in front of an opponent and compete with them for planets. Most notably, suppose another player chooses the Survey role, moving to a particular tile, and you can follow and move to the same tile, then on your turn you colonize it out from under them!

On the down side, this idea is kind of bulky. Is the game a board game or a card game? Does it need a bunch of (60+) tiles in addition to a whole lot of cards? It might just be simpler to draw from the deck, and my latest ideas on that mechanism seem to be working out alright.

Latest Survey mechanism
In my last playtest I tried laying out some planets (face down) in a similar manner to what I described in a previous post. This time I said "If you pay 2/3/4/5 symbols you get to take the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th card AND EVERY CARD BEFORE IT, look at the back, choose the one you want to keep face down in front of you, and put the rest back in any order." This meant an opponent Following the role would do the same thing, but they would have to have at least 3 symbols as that would be the cheapest card available. that worked alright, and I realized afterward that that was almost the same thing as saying "draw 1 card from the deck per symbol, keep 1 face down and put the rest back on top." Except for the costs of things. The next time I'll try that, the Role action will be "draw 1 card per symbol, keep 1." and the Follow action will be "draw 1 card for every 2 symbols, keep 1." This is a little cheaper than the original rules for 1 card, the same cost to look at 2 cards, and a little more expensive thereafter.

If that goes well, I might consider redoing the planets a bit so some are definitely better than others, to lend more value to looking at more cards at a time. But will that feel like luck of the draw if I can only afford 1 planet, and it happens to be a good one? In any case, the planet you get goes face down, and you still have to Claim it via Warfare or Colonization actions.

I'm using the same format for Research as well - draw 1 card per symbol when you choose the role, 1 card per 2 symbols if you Follow the role. I'll see if that works. Of course, this would change if I ever get around to changing the technology system to one where you bu the tech you want with research symbols. Lately I've been thinking that while that would be good, I'm kind of wondering if it's necessary. Maybe I'm just getting used to the original system.

I also made player aides describing the turn order, and the Action, Role, and Follow effects for each of the 6 Role cards. I think that'll help, since some of the Role cards don't describe what they do.

More Eminent Domain playtests!

Wednesday night I got the opportunity to play a couple 2p games of Eminent Domain with Mikey - I hadn't updated my prototype for the new ideas I've been having, so we played by the old rules, with the following exceptions:

1. Starting deck DID contain Warfare but DID NOT contain Trade cards.
2. The Colonize Role could also flip a planet (if desired, instead of adding to it) - the Follow could only add icons still.
3. Used "Collect 1 VP from supply" as the ACTION on Trade role cards.
4. The Warfare Role could also flip a planet (if desired, instead of collecting Armies) - the Follow could only collect Armies still.

The games went well! The first one dragged on a little longer than we would have liked, ending with the VP pool running out. For the second game Mike removed 5 cards from each deck and I reduced the VP pool by 8 (from 32 down to 24). That one ended with the Colonize pile running out, and it was over too quickly so we put the 5 cards back in each pile and kept playing, and it was a little too long. The third game we kept the setup the same, and the game ended via the Survey pile running out, and again it took a little too long.

My conclusion is that 19 cards in each pile is probably too many for a 2p game, but 14 is too few. Maybe 15 or 16 would be better. The VP pool at 24 is probably fine for 2p. With more players I'm sure there will have to be more VPs in the pool and more cards in the stacks, but maybe not many more... for each player in the game, the piles of role cards begins with 2 fewer cards in it... so in a 4p game there's only 11 cards in each pile! Will that be enough?

Overall I kinda liked how it played out. I think I would still like to re-organize the technology decks and have players "buy" the techs they want as I've described before, but I'm not so sure about the 2d array of planet cards anymore. I might try a Stone Age style row of Planet cards, like I've mentioned, but maybe put them face up so players know which one they want, and the 1str one in the display costs 2 Survey icons, the second costs 3, the third costs 4, and the 4th costs 5 icons. Then you'd take the planet and still have to "unlock" it via colonize or Warfare actions.

I was liking the idea of taking abilities off the planets and simply having Action and + hand size icons on them, but there are some abilities that are really good which would have to be static, like "play an additional Action card each turn" and "remove a card in hand from the game before choosing a Role" and "draw an additional card when not following a role" which kind of have to be on planets - unless I want to make Tech cards that are Static. I suppose I could do that - they could look different (different color text/background), there could be just 1 copy, and it would go in play in front of you rather than into your hand or deck.

Eminent Domain, cont'd.

In light of the new structure of the game, here is a restructuring the actions and roles for Eminent Domain... now the Follow action is the same as the Role action - but having chosen the role you get 1 additional symbol (from the Role card you must take):

Survey

• Action: Peek at any face down planet tile.
  
  
• Role: Move ship 1 space per symbol played.

Colonize

• Action: Draw 2 cards.
  
  
• Role: Play symbols based on location of ship. Claim planet tile under your ship.

Warfare

• Action: Collect 1 Army.
  
  
• Role: Collect 1 Army per symbol played OR Discard 5 Armies to attack planet under your ship.
  

Harvest

• Action: Produce 1 Resource on one of your planets.
  
  
• Role: Produce 1 Resource on your planets per symbol played.
  

Trade

• Action: Collect 1 VP.
  
  
• Role: For each symbol played, discard 1 Resource from your planet and collect 1 VP.

Research

• Action: Remove 1 card in hand from the game.
  
  
• Role: Look at a legal Tech deck and choose a Tech costing no more than the number of symbols played. Shuffle all cards from that Tech into your deck.

Each player will have a ship pawn which will start on their staring planet site. Via the Survey action you can move your ship around the array of face down planet tiles, turning face up the one you land on. You can take this planet tile in front of you and claim its benefits by either the colonize action (cost in symbols depends on distance from start tiles), or the warfare action (cost is a standard 5(?) armies).

Each planet tile will have either an Icon for one of the 6 actions, a 1VP symbol, or a +1 Hand Size. All other benefits will be rolled into the technology decks, which should either be bigger, or there should be 6 (one for each action) instead of 3. I'm not sure if I want to split that up into 6 decks yet - if I do that I might also make 6 types of planets - 1 per action (rather than 3 types of everything, 2 actions associated with each type). I kind of like 3 types, each with 2 actions associated with it, so I'll probably keep it that way. I might make a 4th type - a generic typs - which has 1 of each icon represented in the set.

Eminent Domain - more ideas

I have not tried it yet, but the more I think about it, the more happy I am with my plan for the Tech decks in Eminent Domain, which is as follows:

Instead of drawing X cards and keeping 1, I would prefer that players pick up the entire Tech deck, and 'purchase' any card they want - using the Research icons they played. So if you choose the Research role and add 4 symbols to it, you can take a tech costing up to 5. Your opponent who Followed the action with only 3 symbols can take a tech costing up to 3. In addition, I think I'll make 2 copies of each card, and you get to take both of them.

The decks could be structured as such:
5 3-cost cards with 2 symbols and a decent ability
4 5-cost cards with 2 symbols and a good ability and worth 2vp each
3 6(?)-cost cards with 3 symbols and a good ability and worth 3vp each.

And again, 2 copies of each card. Or maybe 3 copies of the 3-costs, 2 copies of the 5-costs, and 1 copy each of the 6-costs. When you purchase, you get all copies of that tech card and shuffle them into your deck (not into discard, that way you'll draw them soon).

In other news...

I have a friend named Sebastian who is a great game designer. He lives in London, and works on games with the famous and prolific Reiner Knizia, and he's also published one of his own games, On the Underground (which I rate very highly, and not just because I know the author!). I really enjoy chatting with Seb about game designs, he often gives me an idea which helps me look at a game in a whole new light, or which helps me fix a problem I have with a game. For example he made a comment about All For One which led to the current version of the story tracks I'm using in that game. Today I was bouncing Eminent Domain ideas off of him and he made some great comments which, coincidentally, were akin to the thoughts I was having - only 1 step further. The funny part was that I had not yet mentioned the thoughts I was having on the subject!

Seb's suggestion was this: regarding the planet card display, instead of a row of cards like I was talking about, try a 2D array of cards which players move a Ship pawn around on.

The upshot of this is that the Survey action could move your ship, and the Colonize and Warfare actions could simply grab up the planet your ship is on. This adds a geographical element to the game, which I like. It also gives the opportunity for interaction (you could move over and colonize my planet before I get a chance). It also allows me to separate the costs for colonization vs warfare - the Colonize cost could be based on position on the board (just paid at once, no more hiding colonize cards under planets), while the warfare cost (generally higher) could be printed on the card.

And incidentally, I could turn the cards into tiles. I'm thinking they'd be laid out face down with only the type showing, and when you land on a planet, you turn it face up and learn it's ability and Warfare cost (Colonize cost is known already because it's based on position in the array). Thus, the ACTION on the Survey cards could be "peek at a face down tile."

I think I will try this next - now to update my prototype!

Prototype night!

Last night I had a few people over for the express purpose of playing All For One - the Three Musketeers game I had been working on with David Brain, which has been on Hiatus for about 3 years :(

Eminent Domain
Andrew, Ashley and Brian arrived first, and the 4 of us first tried Eminent Domain - I thought it would be short, as Tuesday's 2-player games went quickly (I actually thought 4p might go even more quickly!) - and while it wasn't as short as I thought it would be, it actually seemed to go pretty well. I had made some minor modifications since Tuesdays first attempt, and for the most part they were a step in the right direction, however there are definitely some aspects that still need work. The biggest of which is probably the Colonize and Warfare actions and how they flip over planets.

Since currently the Colonize cards get stuck under the planets until you flip it, players easily get to the point where they actually don't have any Colonize cards left in their deck. In a sense this is kinda neat, as you can sort of hide Colonize cards under planets and never have to draw them again if you don't want to. However, it led to a disappointing circumstance where in order to flip the planet, a player would have to take a Colonize role just to get a colonize card into his deck, then later draw it and use it. Then they're left with an extra Colonize card they don't really need, which is kinda lame too. By contrast, Warfare seems a lot better. you can simply aggregate armies little by little when other players choose Warfare, and eventually you can attack a planet to flip it, without filling your deck with a bunch of warfare cards.

Part of the problem is perhaps that I'd made the Role effect for each of those actions simply to accumulate Colonize icons under planets of pile up Armies, and the Action effect to actually flip a planet. Perhaps both the Role and the Action should allow either. Brian suggested that with the current mechanics, simply lowering the cost for Colonization and increasing the cost for Warfare might do the trick. I could easily test that by simply reducing the Colonize cost of all planets by 1, and increasing the Warfare cost of all planets by 1. There would still be planets that are 'easier to take over by warfare' and some that are 'easier to colonize' - but each cost would be 1 more/1 less than at present. Instead of 6/4, 5/5, and 4/6, it would be 5/5, 4/6, and 3/7 - not a ton of difference.

Another, different idea that I'm considering is putting the planets in a display like the cards in Stone Age, where the first one costs maybe 2 icons to colonize, the 2nd costs 3, the 3rd costs 4... in this way, perhaps you would see the front of the planet so that you'd know what you were going after to begin with. This would change the dynamics of the game a lot, and maybe take away some of the more original aspects, but might make for a better game overall - as I suspect players would be annoyed by the current system in which the benefit of the planet you get is unknown until you colonize it (though that hasn't happened yet). So in this scheme, the Colonize ROLE would be to colonize a planet, and you'd need the required number of symbols to do it. The other players would get to do the same, but they don't get a +1 from the new Role card. Warfare ROLE would be "Attack!" and would be similar - you attack a planet by discarding a certain number of Armies depending on the location in the display - maybe interesting if the costs were inverted - 2 warfare => 4 to colonize and vice versa...

So what of the Warfare ACTION? well, that's easy, collect an army. And maybe the ROLE should allow you to collect X armies instead of attacking if you like. Should the Warfare ACTION allow you to attack? Or should other players get to get a planet whenever you do (if they have Armies to spend)? I think the latter. What about Colonize? It seems there would have to be a way to get colonize icons into your deck, so what would it mean to Colonize without actually having enough symbols to take a planet? Maybe there should always be a planet which costs just 1, so you can always take it? Does that make it far too easy to obtain planets? And what about the Survey role, does it go away altogether? Or does it perhaps monkey with the planets in the display? Definitely things to think about.

Utopia
Andrew had brought a protoytpe of his own called Utopia, which I played once and recall it being inspired by Wealth of Nations (though not just a copy of that game). Since David and Steve had arrived we had too many for All For One, and since David wasn't interested in A41, he, Steve and Andrew played Utopia. I'm not sure how it went, but it seemed to go kinda long - a little longer than All For One did and I think they cut it off early. I saw that David had A TON of debt - I don't recall what that means for that game. I believe you pay $1 interest per loan each turn, up to a maximum of $5 - so while each loan also reduces your score I guess David decided to "go big or go home."

I believe that game has a nifty scoring mechanism in that the resources you have are worth points at the end depending on how many are left in supply. The resource with the most left in supply are worth 3vp each, 2nd most are worth 2vp each, and least left in supply are with 1vp each or something like that. I remember thinking that was cool from when I played it that on time.

All For One
While David, Steve and Andrew played Utopia, Brian, Ashley and I played All For One. I was excited to play it again since it has been over 2 years since I played! At BGG.con 2007 I played the game, then sent it home with Zev from Z-Man games. Sadly, it sat on his shelf for an entire year as he had other things going on and didn't get a chance to play it. When he finally did play the game, he thought it was "too Euro for a theme that screams Ameritrash," and so he was not interested in publishing it. I had him send the game to another publisher, this one in the UK, Jackson Pope of Reiver Games. I had a suspicion that he wouldn't have the capital to produce the game. It turns out I was right, but since the game was in England I thought it might be a good idea to have Jackson send it not back to me, but to my co-designer David Brain. It was David's original game idea in the first place, and I came on as a co-designer and developer way back in 2003! as such, we're coming on 7 years that this game has been around (since I got involved) and it's still not published! The theme is spectacular, and the game has been received very well by most players at conventions...

Sadly though, David seems to have lost pieces and was not able to send me back my prototype that I'd missed so dearly. I have not been able to play the game since I gave my copy up to Zev! In an effort to correct that, I set about making a new copy of the game. It's not as good, as the mapboard had changed by hand and I had to sort of re-create the changes. I had to make a whole new set of Plot Tokens as well. Luckily I had invested in additional Musketeer minis from Reaper so that I actually had another set to use. A months ago I finished putting together the prototype, but it wasn't until last night I got to play the game again!

So how did it go? I was hesitant because it seems like I wasn't liking the latest version as much or something. I also couldn't recall exactly how to play, but fortunately my rulebook was up to date and, if I do say so myself, well written! I taught from the rulebook as if it were a published game, and we got to playing in no time.

The basics of gameplay is that on your turn you activate one of the 6 characters in the game, and then you move them around, picking up plot tokens as you go. Your hand of mission cards informs which character you might want to use and which tokens you might want them to get. There is some route optimization, as over time the various missions get either easier or more difficult while characters, guards and tokens move around the board. You score points by completing missions, and you also progress storylines, and at the end of the game you score some bonus points for the storylines you have on your hidden goal card.

In our game some very interesting things happened. There was some blocking, there were missions being completed, there were duels fought... in fact, as Brian recognized that the Peace storyline was the one he did not share with either of us, he decided to fight a number of duels with guards in order to advance the Peach storyline and score bonus points that Ashley and I would not get. All in all it was a good, fun game. I ended up winning by merit of completing more missions than everyone else (I did 6). However, most of my missions were duels, so I only scored 4 points apiece off of them. Brian's 3 missions scored almost as many points as my 6, as he did several Special Deliveries (worth 6 points, as they have 2 required tokens) and a Standard delivery for 5. I believe Ashley and Brian finished within 1 point of one another, and I finished a handful of points ahead of them.

The best news is that both Brian and Ashley LOVED the game! It felt great not only to play again, but to have such a warm reception from the players! I definitely want to play this some more, including with Michael to see if he'd like it to be a Tasty Minstrel release!

Ground Floor
After Utopia and All For One had ended, Andrew and Ashley went home leaving Brian, David, Steve and I to play Ground Floor - David's game about Entrepreneurship. This 4 player game was a learning game for Brian, but Steve, David and I had all played before. Brian picks up games quickly, opting to "just do something and learn as you go" when playing a new game rather than trying to figure out all the ramifications of each play when not even familiar with the game (a strategy I'd like to start employing as well).

This game we used a slight tweak to the Economic Forecast deck to make it less predictable. In a Recession for example, there will be between 1 and 3 consumers... until now, once the first recession goes by and it has say 1 consumer, then the next time a Recession comes up we all KNOW that at least 2 products will sell. This was disappointing because the game is much better if you cannot be sure whether it'll be 1, 2, or 3 consumers during a Recession. To fix this, we created a double deck - 2 copies of each card. To set up the Forecast deck we shuffled the 6 Recession cards (for example) and used only 3 - now each one has a 1, a 2, or a 3 on it, but just because 1 comes up doesn't mean it won't come up again next time. A MUCH better mechanism, for just a LITTLE BIT of setup cost at the beginning of the game. In addition, we moved the top card down to the 'current' pile but left it face down (which informs you as to the range of customers but not the actual number), so that the FOLLOWING card is now visible, letting players plan ahead a little more. This tweak was well liked and is a keeper.

Steve began the game just loaded with money and information - I wasn't sure where it was all coming from! What I realized was that he had opted not to purchase any Small TIs or upgrade any of his Ground Floor rooms. Instead he saved all his money and info so that in round 4 when the better floors become available he could get 2 of them in one shot. He opted for "the big combo" as we've come to call it - Assembly Line (which lets you get 3 cheap supply each turn) and Research Lab (which lets you trade a Supply in for $3 and i3 3 times a turn) - so for 6 of his time units Steve could make $9 and i9, without having to compete with us for it. As a result however, we had less competition for Consumers and Consultants and maybe the rest of us were able to make more money and info that way than we would have otherwise.

I chose to purchase TIs that increased my income each turn, so in the end I was collecting $8 and i8 without spending any time units at all. I also opted for a late game Warehouse (the turn before the Small TIs go away) so that I could store up some supplies and score well off the Floor that rewards 1vp per supply. In the end I scored 6 bonus points off of that floor, which is pretty huge - on par with 2 Bonus Floors really, and for less money investment - but I DID have to spend time filling my storage space with Supplies, and I ran the risk of someone else buying that bonus floor (though it would have been pretty poor for anyone else).

In the end I scored 51 points, enough to beat Steve's 44 - he had somehow run out of gas despite all his riches midgame. In the last round he was unable to maximize his two Bonus Floors (2vp/popularity level, 1vp per remodeled room) and he had to choose between the two. Brian did fairly well in his first game, finishing with 38 points - no Bonus Floors at all, but I think in a future game now that he knows what's going on he'll likely do much better. David had a rough early game, and as such finished last. I'm not really sure what happened with him, but I wonder if it ad to do with his early game Emergency Meeting purchase - a TI which helps guarantee you Info from the Consulting Firm. It is a nifty ability, but I'm not sure it's as good as something that nets you info.

After the game we discussed a few of the buildings and I think I've finally gotten David to agree that a couple of them (Store Front, Office Admin, etc) are simply not useful and should be cut! Even better, we looked at some floors that seem like they'd be better in the early game (help getting employees) and made them into Small TIs so they're available when you need them. Finally, we strengthened a couple Floors and TIs that seemed too weak, like the Internship, which gives you 1 additional time unit per round (1/3 of an employee) - it seems good, but unless that 1 time unit can get you i3, then it's simply not comparable to the other options. We bumped it up to 2 time units (2/3 of an employee), and now I think it'll be really comparable, as it's almost as valuable but much more versatile.

A great game, and it only took about 2:15 minutes! I'd still like to see it go a little quicker (under 2 hours) - not sure whether that's feasible or not.

All in all a great night for prototypes!

Eminent Domain - Rules V0.2

EMINENT DOMAIN
by Seth Jaffee
A civilization building game for 2-4 players

Overview:
Survey the galaxy to expand your civilization... Will you colonize nearby planets, or take them over by force? Harvest resources for trade, and do research to improve your technology. Build the best civilization and win the game!

Components:
114 Role cards
31 Planet cards (including 4 Starting Planet cards)
36 Technology cards
40 Resource discs (10 ea. in 4 colors)
30 Black Army discs
30 White VP discs

Setup:
Separate the Role cards into piles by type and place them in the indicated locations on the board.

Give each player 1 of the starting planets (put unused starting planets back in the box). Shuffle the Planet deck and each

Technology deck and place them in the indicated locations on the board.

Each player takes 2 of each action card EXCEPT Warfare and shuffles them together to form their starting deck. To start the game, each player draws 5 cards from their deck into their hand.

Determine who will be the start player. That player begins the game by taking the first turn.

You are now ready to begin!

Player Turns:
A player's turn consists of the following 3 steps, in order:

• 1. Play Action Card.
  The active player may choose a card in their hand which has an Action: effect and play it. The card's action is resolved immediately.
  
  
• 2. Select Role.
  The active player MUST select a Role for the turn by taking a Role card from the board and laying it face up in front of him. The Role card indicates one of the basic actions of the game. The player may add additional cards bearing the same icon as the Role selected in order to boost the action. After the active player resolves the action, each other player in turn order (clockwise from the active player) may choose to either Follow the action, playing cards from their hand bearing the appropriate Icon as indicated by the Role card, or simply draw 1 card from their deck instead.
  
  
• 3. Cleanup.
  The active player places all cards they've played this turn (including the newly selected Role card) into his discard pile. He may discard any number of cards from his hand, and then he draws cards from his deck to refill his hand to the hand limit (base hand limit is 5). If the deck runs out of cards, the discards are shuffled to create a new deck.

GAME END:
The game ends at the end of a turn in which one of the following has happened:

• Any of the Role card piles are exhausted
  
• The VP supply is exhausted

At that time players count the victory points on the Technology cards in their decks, on their face up Planets, and collected via Trade. The player with the most points is the winner! In the case of a tie, the tied player with the most armies plus resources wins.

The Actions:

Survey

ACTION: Draw 2 cards.

ROLE: For each Survey icon played (including the Role card), take a card off the top of the Planet deck. Looking only at the BACKS of the cards, choose one to place face down in front of you.

FOLLOW: Pay X Survey icons to take X-2 cards off the top of the Planet deck. Looking only at the BACKS of the cards, choose one to place face down in front of you.

Colonize

ACTION: Turn up a Surveyed planet in front of you which has the requisite number of Colonize icons under it, OR place this card under a face down planet in front of you.

ROLE: Place any Colonize icons played (including the Role card) under a face down planet in front of you.

FOLLOW: Place any Colonize icons played under a face down planet in front of you.

Research

ACTION: Remove 1 card in your hand from the game.

ROLE: For each Research icon played (including the Role card), draw 1 card from a Technology deck corresponding to one of your colonized (face up) planets. Put 1 in your hand and the rest on the bottom of the deck.

FOLLOW: Pay X Research icons to look at X-2 cards from a Technology deck corresponding to one of your colonized (face up) planets. Put 1 in your hand and the rest on the bottom of the deck.

Harvest

ACTION: Produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

ROLE: For each Harvest icon played (including the Role card), produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

FOLLOW: For each Harvest icon played, produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

Trade

ACTION: Discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.
[Considering making the action simply "collect 1vp from supply" - but that might be too crazy]

ROLE: For each Trade icon played (including the Role card), discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.

FOLLOW: For each Trade icon played, discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.

Warfare

ACTION: Discard the listed number of Armies to turn up 1 Surveyed planet in front of you, OR Collect 1 Army

ROLE: For each Warfare icon played (including the Role card), collect 1 Army.

FOLLOW: For each Warfare icon played, collect 1 Army.

Eminent Domain - Rules

EMINENT DOMAIN
by Seth Jaffee
A civilization building game for 2-4 players

Overview:
Survey the galaxy to expand your civilization... Will you colonize nearby planets, or take them over by force? Harvest resources for trade, and do research to improve your technology. Build the best civilization and win the game!

Components:
114 Role cards
31 Planet cards (including 4 Starting Planet cards)
36 Technology cards
40 Resource discs (10 ea. in 4 colors)
30 Black Army discs
30 White VP discs

Setup:
Separate the Role cards into piles by type and place them in the indicated locations on the board.

Give each player 1 of the starting planets (put unused starting planets back in the box). Shuffle the Planet deck and each Technology deck and place them in the indicated locations on the board.

Each player takes 2 of each action card EXCEPT Warfare and shuffles them together to form their starting deck. To start the game, each player draws 5 cards from their deck into their hand.

Determine who will be the start player. That player begins the game by taking the first turn.

You are ready to begin!

Player Turns:
A player's turn consists of the following 3 steps, in order:

• 1. Play Action Card.
  The active player may choose a card in their hand which has an Action effect and play it. The card's action is resolved immediately.
  
  
• 2. Select Role.
  The active player MUST select a Role for the turn by taking a Role card from the board and laying it face up in front of him. The Role card indicates one of the basic actions of the game. The player may add additional cards bearing the same icon as the Role selected in order to boost the action. After the active player resolves the action, each other player in turn order (clockwise from the active player) may choose to either Follow the action, playing cards from their hand bearing the appropriate Icon as indicated by the Role card, or simply draw 1 card from their deck instead.
  
  
• 3. Cleanup.
  The active player places all cards they've played this turn (including the newly selected Role card) into his discard pile. He may discard 1 card from his hand, and then he draws cards from his deck to refill his hand. If the deck runs out of cards, the discards are shuffled to create a new deck.

Game end:
The game ends at the end of a turn in which one of the following has happened:

• Any of the Role card piles are exhausted
  
• The VP supply is exhausted

At that time players count the victory points on the Technology cards in their decks, on their face up Planets, and collected via Trade. The player with the most points is the winner! In the case of a tie, the tied player with the most armies plus resources wins.

The Actions:

Survey

ACTION: For each Survey icon played (including the Role card), take a card off the top of the Planet deck. Looking ONLY at the BACKS of the cards, choose one to place face down in front of you.

FOLLOW: Pay X Survey icons to take X-2 cards off the top of the Planet deck. Looking only at the backs of the cards,choose one to place face down in front of you.

Colonize

ACTION: Turn up a Surveyed planet in front of you which has the requisite number of Colonize icons under it, OR place any Colonize icons played (including the Role card) under a face down planet in front of you.

FOLLOW: Place any Colonize icons played under a face down planet in front of you.

Research

ACTION: For each Research icon played (including the Role card), draw 1 card from a Technology deck corresponding to one of your colonized (face up) planets. Put 1 in your discard pile and the rest on the bottom of the deck.

FOLLOW: Pay X Research icons to look at X-2 cards from a Technology deck corresponding to one of your colonized (face up) planets. Put 1 in your discard pile and the rest on the bottom of the deck.

Harvest

ACTION: For each Harvest icon played (including the Role card), produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

FOLLOW: For each Harvest icon played, produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

Trade

ACTION: For each Trade icon played (including the Role card), discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.

FOLLOW: For each Trade icon played, discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.

Warfare

ACTION: Discard the listed number of Armies to turn up 1 Surveyed planet in front of you, OR for each Warfare icon played (including the Role card), collect 1 Army.

FOLLOW: For each Warfare icon played, collect 1 Army.