Even More Eminent Domain playtests!!

I have had the opportunity to play Eminent Domain a few more times. We played a 4 player game at the inaugural meeting of the Gamesmiths game design club, and last night I played again with 3 players at my friend's game night. Both games went really well, and all the recent changes have proven to be good:

Combination of Trade and Harvest into 1 card
Ever since I combined the Trade and Harvest roles, that aspect of he game has been a whole lot smoother. It would be more accurate to say I combined the Trade and Harvest CARDS, not the Trade and Harvest ROLES, because the roles are still separate - when you choose the Trade/Harvest role you decide whether it's Trade or Harvest this time - players can only Follow the role you have chosen.

I did a little math to compare the approximate average number of points you get per action for Settling and Attacking planets and how many points you get per action for Harvesting and Trading resources. The current incarnation seems to have the following property, which I think is good (and that would explain why it feels like it works now): In the beginning of the game, Colonize/Warfare is a better deal (vp/action) than Harvest/Trade. As the game goes on, Harvest/Trade picks up in efficiency and after a point surpasses Colonize and Warfare to become more efficient. In the late game, Harvest/Trade can be much more lucrative than Colonizing or Attacking planets. It becomes a question of when the game ends, and how much trading a Trade player gets done before that time comes.

I like this dynamic, and the only challenge I have now about this aspect of the game is the main challenge I have overall - controlling the game end. Why are game end triggers always so difficult?

Game End Trigger - Pile / VP Exhaustion
I am happy with the trigger event of the endgame in Eminent Domain: When you run out of VPs, game over, or when one of the Role card piles is exhausted, game over. I like it because it is simple to track, no one has to remember anything, and furthermore every turn you progress the game toward the end because you are compelled to take a role card from one of the piles. The question is, how many cards should be in each pile (and how many VPs in the supply) to make for an appropriately long game? Also, how do you keep the game length from varying too wildly if everyone decides to use a Colonize strategy, and everyone is choosing the Colonize role frequently? A 4 player game could be over in 4 or 5 rounds if that happens! Too quick!

Another option I've considered is when *2* piles are exhausted. I don't like that as much though, for one thing, what do you do with the empty pile? Can you still take that Role? If so, do you still get a +1 to it (even though you don't get the card)? Ooh, here's a thought - suppose a card s printed on the space where the rest of those Role cards will be stacked, and when they're gone the printed card indicates the action you can do - and suppose that version of the card printed on the board is BETTER than the regular card actions - then you might really want to get to the bottom of the stack for your strategy so you can use the better version of the Role. That could be interesting...

The biggest problem with 2 piles exhausting is that I think it would be very easy for 1 pile to exhaust while none of the other piles are even close, and by the time the 2nd pile does exhaust, far too many turns have gone by. I'm very tempted to just stick with 1 pile exhausting (including VP as a pile).

The Politics card
Version 1: No action, contained all 6 symbols so could be used to boost any Role. This was a problem because having the Warfare symbol means that you effectively had Warfare cards in our deck, and the whole point of adding the Politics card was to remove Warfare from the starting deck! Oops! Easily fixed, I could simply not include a Warfare symbol on the Politics card... but I never tried that. Instead I switched to...
Version 2: No Role or Follow ability. Action: Take any Role card into hand. Thus, it acted kind of like a wild in that you could get the card you want to boost your Role, but it took up your action to do it, and it also put a card into your deck. I kinda liked that as it could be used later to push the game end trigger. After playing with it though, it seemed like players could really race through the decks and end the game before it should be over. The danger is that if I make the decks bigger to accommodate, then if players DON'T do that the game will go on too long. So I made a small adjustment for...
Version 3: No Role or Follow ability. Action: Take any Role card into hand and remove this card from the game. This seems best so far, as it helps a player customize their deck a little bit at the beginning, but doesn't put a continual drain on the piles. Unless something better comes along, I think this is the winner.

I made a game record sheet which makes it very easy to record what action and role each player chose, and how many turns the game lasted. Last night's 3p game took about 45 minutes and each player got 13 turns, which is just about what I want. Monday's 4p game took 1 hour and each player got 10 turns, which is also about right I think. The more players in the game, the fewer turns it could take - I'm OK with that. I suspect that a 2p game will last about 15 turns (plus or minus) and take around 30 minutes - that seems to be how recent 2p games with Tyler have gone.

To Do List
I would like to continue to think about the following items:
* Consider changing the Tech cards such that the Level 3 tech is just a big bonus in points, like Puerto Rico's big buildings. They seem to take too long to get the neat ability into play. However, they ARE worth 5 points (which is kinda a lot), and leaving the ability on doesn't hurt as long as in at least some circumstance (if you try really hard) you can reasonably get it into play and use it a few times.
* Consider reformatting the Planet draw pile to mirror the Technology decks - 3 piles by type, 3 levels of planet within each... Level 1 planets like what I have now, Level 2 a little better (maybe 2 icons, or more vps), and level 3 being the Big Bonus scoring things. Like Tech cards, Level 1 would cost 3 Survey icons, Level 2 would cost 5, and Level 3 would cost 7 - and to keep people from just getting a ton of Settle icons in their deck and going for a Level 3 planet every time, there would be a prerequisite of 1 L1 planet to get a L2, and 1 L2 planet to get a L3. In theory, the gu who only has a couple Survey cards in his deck and relies on following other payers' Survey roles to get planets in play will only get L1 planets, while the player who calls Survey more and has more cards in his deck ("is better at surveying") will be pulling down better planets. I like that this setup is symmetric with the Research system, but I keep thinking it sounds too complicated. Honestly I really like the system as it is right now.
* Consider alternate themes for the game. I don't like that as-is the game can be so closely associated with Race for the Galaxy, and I don't want all of my games to be space themed either. Eminent Domain is in the same category as games like RftG, Glory to Rome, Dominion, San Juan, and Thunderstone - I wouldn't want it to resemble any of those too closely. I'd prefer a theme that is significantly different than those themes. The front runners are...

• Classic Civ: I'd always intended to switch to a Classic Civ theme, but now I'm not so sure it sounds as good as I'd like. Maybe just too generic?
  
• 16th/17th Century Colonization: Anything you can do in space can also be done on the ocean, with islands instead of planets, right? So you find Fertile islands, Mineral Rich islands, or Inhabited islands. This might be about the same as "Classic Civ" (or close enough that a distinction is unnecessary).
  
• Business: Play as the Ruthless CEO of a company in the 1980's and climb the corporate ladder via Mergers and Hostile Takeovers... I actually like this theme, but I'm not sure if a "business" theme really sounds that FUN. My friend made an interesting comment: "If you're Freidman Friese you can design a game about managing a factory... you're not Friedman Friese yet." One more downfall of this is that I'm working on David's board game about Entrepreneurship: Ground Floor, and it's possible we'll work on a Ground Floor Card Game as well.
  
• Mafia: Tom Lehmann suggested a Mafia theme, which I noted could be combined with the business theme above. This seems promising, but the last time I tried to use a prohibition era bootlegging theme (which is similar to a mafioso theme), Mikey shot me down because it offended his Mormon sensibilities. So I don't know how he'd feel if the "types of planets" were illicit businesses such as Casinos, Brothels, Speakeasies, or Bootleggers.

In the end, I'm enjoying the space theme pretty well, so maybe before I worry too much about a theme change I should wait and see if the potential comparisons to RftG do materialize.

The Gamesmiths

The inaugural meeting of the Gamesmiths, a newly formed Game Design Club, occurred last night at Hat's Games at 6:30. Michael Eskue, David Short, and I were in attendance - we'll have to do some better advertising next month.

To start with we played Eskue's abstract game called Mosh Pit. MP is a bit like Hive in that you place tiles on the board and move them around in an attempt to assemble a particular configuration. In this game your tile types are each one of the stereotypical internet Memes: Ninja, Pirate, Monkey, Zombie, and Alien (which could be Robot instead). On your turn you can do 1 or 2 actions, and you get a total of 5 actions each round - so you can do more up front if you want, or stall and save up for a larger action later. Each round the start player shifts, so in a 2 player game you can actually get 4 actions in a row if you budget your actions carefully!

The 5 actions you can do are pretty simple:
1. Place a tile
2. Move a tile
3. Shove a tile (which is like moving actually)
4. Turn a tile face up
5. Activate a tile

Each type of tile has a different effect when you activate it, and activating the tile turns it face down. The effects will move tiles around the board or flip them face up or face down.

The goal is to make a contiguous group of your face up tiles including 1 of each type.

In general I do not like this type of game - I played Hive a couple times and I am not a fan - mostly I'm not too fond of abstract games and I'm also not fond of 2 player games. I have to say I was skeptical going in that I would like this game at all. However I'm happy to report that I did like Mosh Pit, a lot more than I thought I would! I don't know if it's because the chaos/craziness of the abilities allows for more sneaky, tactical play, or maybe it's the ability to take more than 1 action in a row that allows for setting up a chain of moves to surprise your opponent. It certainly wasn't the theme! I am not a fan of Hive's theme, but I also don't care for the internet memes much, nor the pasted on "galactic concert at which these characters are moshing, and want to mosh with their buddies." It's not like I could think of a better theme though, and it didn't kill my enjoyment of the game or anything.

I think if using the internet icons, it would be good to somehow include that in the theme (and title) of the game. I ended up suggesting Meme Mosh Pit, which sort of does that, and phonetically sounds kinda funny, like imagine the title in a talk bubble from one of the Zombies, sounds kinda like he's stuttering or something. I don't know, it's a lousy pun that kinda amused me.

After Mosh Pit, we set up Eminent Domain. Simon Stump showed up just in time to get in on the game, which was perfect timing. We played a 4 player game and I used a record sheet I'd made to record each player's turn.

For those that don't already know, Eminent Domain is a civ building card game with a deckbuilding central mechanism - as you take actions, cards for that action go into your deck, making you "better" at doing that action (or at least, more specialized at it). The theme right now is sci-fi/outer space because it was initially supposed to be a sort of card game version of Twilight Imperium. I would like to re-theme it to a more classic (ancient?) civ theme.

In Eminent Domain, your turn consists of a Action phase, a Role phase, and a Cleanup phase. For the Action you may play a card from your hand for it's Action effect. For the Role phase you MUST choose one of the 5 roles in the game, taking a card for that role from the respective stack. You can boost the Role by playing additional cards of that type from your hand. After you resolve the Role effect, each player has the opportunity to also partake in that role by "Following" it - playing cards from their hand of that type and receiving the Follow effect (mostly the same as the Role effect). If a player does not wish to Follow the current Role, he may draw 1 card instead. Finally, in the Cleanup phase you discard any unwanted cards from your hand, then reset your hand to 5 cards. There are some planets which you can eventually get that increase your hand size.

This game may have been the most interesting multiplayer game of ED yet - 2 players were using Warfare, 2 were using Colonize heavily. Only 1 person (me) did much Research (ended up with 2 2vp tech cards), and 3 people were harvesting and trading. The game ended via VP exhaustion, and the final scores were all very close: 22-19-18-16!

David continues to be disappointed in the randomness of the Survey action, but everyone else thought it was fine. I am still on the fence about changing the system out for one which separates the planets into piles by type, and sort of mirrors the Technology/Research part of the game.I see pluses and minuses both ways.

I'm still struggling with/worried about the game end conditions. I think they're evolving toward something good, but it's not easy to figure out how many cards should be in the Role card piles or how many VPs should be in the supply!

All in all a good test I think!

Afterward, David and I chatted about how a Ground Floor card game might work. Sounds like it could be very doable!

Politics in Eminent Domain

I got a chance to play Eminent Domain again tonight, 3 players this time. I tried out the stuff I talked about yesterday - namely the Politics card switching to say "Action: Take 1 Role car into hand." That's it, that's all it does. Well, maybe that's misleading as it has some other implications... the biggest of which may be that it gives players a way to help rush the game end by digging through a pile of cards faster. This sounds like a neat thing, but it also means the potential of a MUCH faster game. I don't know how often it would be the case, but if players use the Politics card a lot then it could either make for a short, unsatisfying game, or else require a bunch more cards to maintain a decent game length.

My current thought on the matter is that the Politics card should be removed from the game when used - so the player can replace it with an action card of their choice, maybe customize their starting deck a little bit. I think I'll try that next time.

The combination of Harvest and Trade appears to be working well. Mathematically I think it's the right way to go - in comparison with Warfare and Colonize. I tried removing the "Action: Collect 1vp" (Trade action) and making the Trade role exchange resources for VP at a 1-to-1 ratio (rather than 2vp/resource). I think that's the right way to go now that the Roles have been combined. The only remaining issue I have with the Role is that it seems VERY easy to have too many Trade/Harvest cards. It seems like you only ever need 3 or 4 cards at a time, and you start with 2 in your deck and get 1 every time you choose the role. So what can I do to make having more Harvest/Trade cards more interesting???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Otherwise, the game was great!

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

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

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

Eminent Domain playtest

Two weeks ago I had an idea to try and improve Eminent Domain by combining the Trade and Harvest roles into 1 card. Tonight I finally tried the game again - 2-player with Tyler - and we used that new rule. I think it worked very well.

Instead of having to fill your deck with a bunch of Harvest cards AND a bunch of Trade cards in order to execute a trading strategy, we could simply get 1 card in your deck that did both. I liked the dynamic. I didn't make any change to the symbols - they still either help Trade OR Harvest, depending on the icon. I think that's probably OK.

The worst part about this change is that in order to maintain a starting deck of 10 cards (2 of each action) then I have to include Warfare in the starting deck. I have been playing with just Colonize, Survey, Research, Trade, and Harvest in the starting deck, which I thought went a long way toward balancing Warfare with Colonize (otherwise Warfare seems much easier to use than Colonize). So now I either have to reconfigure the starting deck (but I like 2 of each card - it's simple and symmetric), start with only 8 cards per deck (not sure I like that because a 4 card hand would probably be too small, and a 5 card hand doesn't mesh well with an 8 card deck), OR... maybe come up with another 6th action to add to the game.

So what action, if any, could be added? Maybe Politics... but what would it do? I like Politics being in the game, but I don't think I like Politics being another route to victory. I almost think maybe Politics cards should be sort of Wild, counting for any action... is that crazy? Should there be an action for the card? If so, what would it be? I'm open to suggestions...

Playtest night!

Last night I had a Tasty Minstrel Playtest night, and about 10 people came over to play Belfort, Ground Floor, and another prototype that was sent to me... I had intended to play Train of Thought (with slightly different rules) but it didn't work out that way.

Train of Thought - new rule:
Train of Thought is a great game, and the only complaint I have about it is the possibility for a player to shortcut the rules and subvert the game by structuring their 3 word clue as follows:

Say the required word, then give a completely unrelated 2-word clue
Last post I said "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!"

Until now I've been of the opinion that forbidding this "cheating" type behavior would be bad, because some people have had problems being able to come up with a 3 word "sentence." I don't want to tell potential players "Sorry, you're just not creative enough to play this game. Go play something else!" However after OrcCon's playtest I would really like to try that 2-word clue idea, it sounds better and better all the time.

I had intended to test that last night, but the way things happened it didn't work out that way. Jay and Sen, designers of ToT and Belfort, are meeting this week and promise to try it out and let me know what they think. I should be able to give it a try later this week as well.

Belfort:
I ran a 5 player game of Belfort, using one of the guilds I'd changed but not used yet. I chose for the interactive guild the Spies Guild, which reads as follows:
Each opponent discards 1 Property card. you may take one card discarded this way into your hand.
The original Spies guild was "Look at 1 player's hand and steal one of their cards." I didn't like that very much, and thought this modified one would be better. As it turns out however, I didn't consider what would happen as soon as players ran out of cards (due to playing cards and being Spied on)! It was extremely difficult to ever build another building because if you buy a card during your turn, it will very likely no longer be in your hand by the time you would be able to play it.

This was a very interesting situation, and the purpose of the Guilds (especially the Interactive Guilds) is to change the game a lot so it's different every time... but in this case, no matter how interesting int might have been, all 5 players did not like it. They all seemed to like the game, but they all thought that guild was broken, and that it broke the game. I have an easy fix though, which I still think is better than the original guild... instead of discarding, each player should reveal a card from their hand, and the spy can steal 1 (maybe 2?) of them. That will keep the parts I wanted, without causing the game to lock up. John suggested a corollary: that you cannot steal a player's last card. I'm not sure if I like that or not. I think if the Spies Guild is in play, you probably want to keep your hand well stocked with cards by buying them frequently and by trying to get and build a Library - I think that would be a good effect for that guild to have on the game.

The Belfort game only took 2 hours and 15 minutes, including rules explanation - which is pretty good! However I think that's in part because there were a lot of turns when nobody could really do anything, so that might have sped some things up.

Sebastian's Prototype:
I don't know how much I should say about another designer's prototype (which is currently being reviewed by a publisher), so I won't be specific at all. I printed out the stuff and made a copy of Sebastian's game the other day, and Sunday night I was able to play a 4 player game of it. It went OK, and I communicated my biggest concerns to Sebastian that night. Last night we played a 5 player game, and it didn't go nearly as well. Too chaotic, not enough actions/turns to do anything, and a problem we had with the 4 player game got exacerbated in the 5p game. I sent our comments to Sebastian, hopefully he'll find them helpful. I'm afraid that game simply isn't a 5 player game.

Ground Floor
We ended the evening with a 4 player game of Ground Floor - modified down to 7 rounds. I was hoping this would shorten up the game length (on the clock) without really impacting the feeling of getting stuff done. We also implemented a number of tweaks to the T.I.s based on a lot of analysis and thought (as chronicled in my prior posts).

The long and short of it was that while I liked the shorter game, David was less convinced. I went with the complete opposite strategy from last time - I hired NO employees, just got an Internship Program first turn, bought all of the 'drip income' floors (Network Admin for i3, I.T. Dept for i4, and Investor for $3), and made do with my $12 and i7 income each turn. I used my 6 (')s fairly effectively in Merchandising and at the Consulting Firm in order to make some good money and info when the economy was up. I was able to churn out floor after floor, and finished in the lead by about 10 points (a huge margin). I'm not entirely sure why I was able to do so well, but we attributed it to a couple of things:

1. I was playing like the game was going to be over in 7 rounds... it's possible other players were playing as they would have if the game still lasted 9 rounds.

2. I started with the Meeting specialty, which has already been shown to be "too good." I used it about 2x as much as "average" (the numbers I based the balancing on in the previous post) and therefore gained probably 8-12 extra units worth of stuff compared to other players.

3. The Internship Program, Network Admin, and Human Resources are demonstrably better than most of the other Floors and T.I.s out there. They are nicely balanced against each other, but it's highly possible that all three of them are too powerful. I had 2 of these from turns 1 and 2, while other players had 1 or none of them.

4. It's possible the I.T. department yields too much info, but I'm skeptical about that because it's just info - as Eric pointed out after his last test, there's no way to turn info into money (well, not directly) but there are ways to turn money or Supply into Info. Thus there's a diminishing return to getting a lot of info, in that you need a lot of money to use it all. I might want to reduce IT Dept to i3 to match the Investor's $3, but I kinda like the asymmetry.

Other than that, I just played a pretty good game - the couple mistakes I made were minor, and I had some advantages from my buildings that were a little too good. David got Human Resources, went the Employee route, and got Construction Administration (also under-costed for its ability), but he didn't get it until late game and only got to use it twice. I am still surprised I finished that far ahead of him.

After the game, Tyler and I looked at the possibility of buying the following buildings, which you could do without ever placing a (') anywhere except on your ground floor meeting room (even un-remodeled) and the Construction Company (and one time on Research and Testing to sell your starting cube)...
Turn 1: Network Admin
Turn 2: Internship Program
Turn 3: Construction Admin
Turn 4: IT Dept
Turn 5: Investor
Turn 6: Executive Bonus Floor
Turn 7: Either one of the +3 Bonus Floors, or 2 T.I.s (one of them the Bonus T.I.)

That adds up to 38-40 points (depending on what the Bonus T.I. is worth - we're knocking it down a few points to start). It's worth noting that this completely boring strategy is NOT a winning score! I managed 45 points in yesterday's game - though this 38 points would have beat all the other players. That just illustrated how the Construction Admin and/or Network Admin and Internship are too good.

David made a good point - while it's nice to see a competitive strategy wherein you don't have to hire a single employee, David does not want that to be a winning strategy. A player winning this game should have to have employed at least 1 person, that's his view. And I can get behind that, because the game is about growing your business - not NOT growing your business.

Floor and T.I. tweaks
The resulting tweaks are as follows:
Remodeled Meeting: (')('): i3 (not ('): i2)
Network Admin: i2 instead of i3
Human Resources: discount of $2, i2 (not $3,i3)
Internship: (') (not (')('))
Construction Admin: (')(')(')(') to activate (not (')(')(')) <- mathematically this is right, but with (') limits I'm not sure it's such a good idea*. Another option is to leave the activation at (')(')('), but move the floor back to phase III - then it would be mathematically sound, and might be just the right time to buy it (round 5, in time to help you afford your last 2 floors)

* Alternate idea - rather than make the Construction Admin worse, what about boosting ALL the floors to be worth as much as CA? Then anything you buy instead will net you just as much... Not sure that helps though, because one issue we don't want to see is players becoming completely self sufficient - the Street is supposed to be better than even your good floors.

Other building tweaks which are unrelated to that power discussion...
Marketing: move to Phase 2. This one might be undercosted, but since the benefit is indirect maybe that's OK? I guess we'll see if it gets used now. Makes sense though - no need for much advertising in the last couple of turns.

Public Relations: Make it a T.I. instead of a Floor - it's simply not being used, a TI would be cheaper and that might see more use.

Warehouse: Cut! It's simply not needed... that prompts another change though...
Production Bonus: +3pp per Supply (not +1). So it's 3 or 6, but for 6 you have to flip your Closet.

Customer Service: New name = Premium Product.

Bonus T.I.: 0pp +1pp/T.I. (not 3pp +1pp/T.I.) <- I'm not sure I like this... I think it needs 1 or 2 pp on it. It's a minor point though. My reasoning is that any player will have 1, maybe 2 T.I.s on their board, so buying this late game will be worth just 3 points - no more than any other T.I., though you could build another one after that (or along with it) and get 1 more point out of it. I guess that's reasonable considering how easy it is to afford a T.I. in the first place. For the price of your 4th Floor ($4,i4 + $10,i10) you could get 2 T.I.s - the Bonus one and 1 other... which is probably 4+3=7pp. your 4th floor if it's a bonus floor is probably worth 7-9pp So I guess it's about right, but I think it could use 1pp on it rather than 0. If that 2 TI turn was your 2nd and 3rd T.I. then you're only getting 6vp, just like buying any other T.I. for the same price as that 4th floor...

Rules tweaks
Like I said, I liked the 7 rounds, David didn't. Tyler mentioned that he felt like there might not be enough time for your Employees to pay off, which is a valid concern. Employees turn $3 (3 units) into 3(') (more than 3 units based on building powers). So an employee is probably worth 6 units a turn (so you're paying 3 to get 6, or netting 3 units a turn). They cost a hefty amount (6, 8, or 10 units). This means to break even, you really have to get that Employee by round 3, any employee after that will be a waste unless you get it cheap, or eke out more than 2 units per (') by doing a good job on the street. Currently you can't really afford an employee until round 3 because they start off so expensive. So one Rules Tweak is to start the Employee track with some employees available (at $5,i5), so the first player, and maybe the second player have an interesting choice - they can actually hire on turn 1, spending almost all their money. Another option is to build a T.I. first turn, also spending all your money. And you're other good options are Production and Consulting.

Another tweak is to help make Remodeling more attractive. We considered reducing the cost to ($4,i4), but I'm not sure that's necessary - is it good for the remodeling to be a better deal than the T.I.s in the late game? Or should people want to get into the Construction company? Instead I think we'll try this: David suggested that maybe you
should be able to do a Remodel any time you want - not just at the end of the turn. I think waiting until the End of Turn to do it introduces an unwelcome lag, and by the time you can make use of your newly remodeled room, you don't really want to anymore. If you could remodel and then use the new room right away, then there would be a lot more reason to do it (this is feasible because you get income AFTER you have to remodel - hence the lag).

David had another idea, that the price become ($4,i4) and the action be done at a standard Ground Floor room which costs (') (... so (')+$4+i4: Remodel a room) - which could also work, but I'm not sure I like it as much as just paying ($5,i5) whenever you want and not having to spend a ('). I think the reason is because you want people to remodel in the early game, and at that point they don't have a lot of (')s to be throwing around.

Popularity tweak
Tyler suggested that the Popularity fight wasn't a big enough deal. I was hesitant to agree, because in just about every game I've played there has been some contention for turn order. Some games more than others of course, and in some games there's the guy who ignores it altogether... which is OK too. Popularity matters for 3 things:
1.) Merchandising sales when supply exceeds demand
2.) Turn order - this is a worker placement game, and at times it's good to go first. however at other time's it may be better to go later in turn order, but not usually.
3.) Endgame tiebreaks - the most popular tied player wins. This may not metter very often though.

Tyler had an idea, that there could be some 'roles' which players would choose in turn order and they would gain that role's benefit for the round. This is very Wallace-esque, just like Age of Steam or Automobile. It's not a terrible idea, and in fact some of the Floors/TIs that are unpopular could easily be made into these Roles. We may try that at some point, but what we're going to try next instead is this, and I'm not positive if I like it or not...

We've attached a little income boost to being more popular. At the base level, where everyone begins, you get nothing extra. Each space above that on the popularity track yields a better item...
i1, i2, $1, $2, $3, Supply, Supply, Supply+$1+i1
Thus there's an incentive to fight for popularity even if you don't want to go first. I'm interested to see how this works. I'd also like to see how a Role Selection type of thing would work (and that could reduce the number of Floors/TIs in the game).

Red Colony... revisited

I've been revisiting my old idea for a game about colonizing Mars in a realistic way, according to the Mars Direct project or The Case For Mars. I would like to work on this game and see if I can't get a ruleset and maybe a prototype of it going.

Today in BGDF Chat I was talking about this idea, and Scott Slomiany had some suggestions on the topic. Some of his suggestions would really take the game in a different direction that I wanted to go, but one of them seemed very interesting. His main point was that the game should focus on the time involved getting things to and from Mars. Now, my vision for the game does not revolve around that, however it does include that aspect because in my game one of the major concerns is what resources you will be receiving from your rocket each turn, which automatically makes trips between Earth and Mars... these trips do take time, and a major aspect of the game is supposed to be configuring your ship so it brings you the right stuff, such that you have to change that configuration (and you will have to change more than once) as few times as possible. This is related to the time and effort it takes to get back and forth between the 2 planets, but it's fairly peripheral.

Scott suggested also that the game be about the political machinations involved in getting such a project going. Maybe you need a country's government to support your project, and over time that country's interest in it will wane, which would be bad - so you have to keep them interested over time. Now a variation of this idea I could see fitting nicely into my game as it comes together. Here's how I think it could work...

I mentioned resources that your rocket will cart up to Mars for you on a regular basis. I expect there will be several resources (7 or 8 maybe), and at any given time you'll only be able to bring up 3 or 4 different types (and some limited number of each). Perhaps those resources cost money, and you have investors who are funding your project. So your investors' interest in your project is directly related to your resource income. Over time, as the investors start to lose interest in the project, their investment lessens - either they give you less money with which to bu resources each round, or you simply get to take fewer units of resources (abstracting the money out) each round. In order to re-invigorate your investors' interest in the project, you have to hit certain milestones... Oh look! You've finished the Terraformer and have successfully started to warm the planet! Oh, now you've begun to grow crops on a Martian farm! Hey, you've successfully mined some Deuterium — an extremely expensive but essential fuel for the nuclear power industry! Whatever. When you achieve these milestones, whatever they are, then your investors reset to full value, allowing you to collect more resources each round to use.

To complicate matters for the player, to some extent I expect there to be something of a race to upgrade your operation and start hauling people up to the colony. However with the way the investors work, you may not really want to hit several milestones all in a row. Doing so may 'waste' the investors' interest, and later in the game you might take so long to hit another milestone that you will be resource starved for a while. So in order to maintain an efficient resource income, you might need to pace milestones - but at the same time, you might be racing your opponents.

Hmm, I just thought of something else to add to this - perhaps the Milestones are a first-come, first-served sort of thing, so you are literally racing your opponents to the Milestones, while also trying to pace them out to maintain your income.

One last piece of this puzzle that I think would fit well is this...
"Mars may be a profitable place... it may contain concentrated supplies of metals of equal or greater value to silver which have not been subjected to millennia of human scavenging and may be sold on Earth for profit"
That quote from the wikipedia article I linked earlier implies that perhaps a player could invest in mining these metals, which wouldn't otherwise help his position, but the profits from those metals would insulate that player from the ill effects of losing investors.

Ok, this just popped into my head, and might be worthwhile or might be garbage:
Suppose each player begins the game with maybe 4 investor tiles. Each investor allows a player to collect 1 type of resource, and their individual interest level indicates how much of that resource you can collect. I suspect the types would not be directly connected to the investors, just that each player can collect 1 type of resource per investor.

Let's say there are 7 or 8 different investors, and each player has 4 at random, so some will overlap. Each investor could have an Interest Meter track or dial, and over time it will slowly go down turn by turn. Each investor could have it's own preferred Milestones that will reset the track for that investor - therefore some but not all players will be interested in any given Milestone! Also, this ought to get players' incomes to be nicely differentiated. It also showcases the desires of 'interested parties' (Scott didn't want "investors" in his view of the game) as well as the main milestones it would take to actually build a martian colony.

I really like this idea, and will wrap it into my thoughts on this game - which I hope will materialize in physical form before too long!

Ground Floor - things for next test

Just to recap from my last post about Ground Floor, here are the things I'd like to try for next time...

7 round game, phase 1 lasting 2 rounds, phase 2 lasting 2 rounds, and phase 3 lasting 3 rounds.

I'm not sure about this, but maybe the "build-out" game end should be at your 6th total floor (5th add'l) rather than 7th (6th add'l). I don't know if that would be too easy to do too early - I wouldn't want people building out too often in round 5, but maybe once in a while, more often on round 6 or 7.

Cut the Economic Forecast deck down a little bit by removing the extra copies of the Boom and Depression cards - since there's max 1 of each, there's no worrying about seeing the first one and therefore knowing the second one. Keep the Recovery (Upturn?) and Recession cards the same.

Also, during a Recession I think the $16 Merchandising slot should be off limits, and in a Depression maybe the top 2 price brackets should be off limits.

And I think the low end values for Merchandising should bump up to 8/10/12/14/16. Mostly this is so you aren't LOSING money when you have to price at the lowest bracket.

And I wouldn't mind a "wholesale" consolation for when your product falls off the chart ($4 or maybe $6). I could probably live without that, but it might be nice to have. You'd get it at the END of the round, so you still couldn't use it that turn...

OR, maybe the chart should be adjusted right away so you don't have to revisit it at the end of the round, in which case you would get the consolation right away, which might be OK anyway since it's such a bad deal.

One last thing, I would like to phase the T.I.s as well - with the 3 obvious early game buys in Phase 1 (Network Admin, Internship, Human Resources), the other 3 in Phase 2 (Warehouse, Emergency Meeting, Customer Service (do we need a new name for that?)), and maybe add a phase 3 "Bonus T.I." - which is worth maybe 1pp per T.I. you've built. Could be interesting, would count toward Executive Bonus floor (Because it's called "Bonus T.I.") - might be fun. Plus it could be a good endgame play for someone who can't afford a Bonus Floor (which would be better). In fact, a normal Floor might be as good or better than the Bonus T.I. unless you concentrate on T.I.s anyway.

Oh, and I almost forgot, Conference Room seems bad, as Andrew pointed out to me (it's like the remodeled meeting room, only more limited). Maybe it should get better (i5?) or get cut.

Edit: And 1 last thing I also forgot, when Remodeling your Supply Closet, I think you should find some Supplies hidden away in there (+1 Supply when remodeling Supply Coloset) to make it equivalent to the Supply specialty.

For the back burner - Role Selection mechanism

I was discussing something with Sebastian today, and the topic of role selection came up. I thought it would be cool if a game had Puerto Rico style Role selection, but with 2-sided role tiles.

Sebastian suggested that could be an alternate way to 'juice' the tiles, rather than Puerto Rico's "add 1 coin to the unchosen roles" - make the back side a more powerful version of the role, and if no one chooses that role in a round then flip it to the more powerful back side. If anyone does choose a role (front side or back side showing), reset it to the front side afterward. This could be a good way to modify the Role Selection mechanism seen in Puerto Rico, but it's not what I had in mind.

My vision was of Role tiles with 2 different roles on either side of a tile. When a role is chosen and carried out, it's flipped to the other side, revealing the other role. Thus, a particular role could not be taken 2 times in a row, and depending on the game action, any particular role may not be available at any given time.

I like the notion, but I have no further thoughts on a role selection game such as this at the moment, so it's going on the back burner for now.

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!