Division of Labor 5p playtest

 I finally got a 5p test in of Division of Labor last night! It went alright. There was one brand new player, and the rules took us almost 30 mins for some reason - I sometimes think teaching a game is harder to do on TTS than IRL, but that did seem excessive. Then the play took a full 2 hours, which is on the high end of the range I expected. I'd prefer a little shorter duration, but I don't think 2h is out of the question for 5p. Also, I think that game took longer than average due to the new player, but of course, every person who plays after publication will be a new player at some point! 

I got a lot of feedback about certain aspects of the game, all of which is useful, but my goal for this test was specifically to see how 5p worked, and what changes would need to be made to accommodate the 5th player. Here are some observations I made specific to 5p:

1. Turn order compensation 

For 5p, I reduced the number of rounds from 5 to 4. This is mostly to keep the duration down, and I think it was fine, but it also means the player that goes last in round 1 (arguably the worst position) also never gets a chance to go first, which seems like a clue that turn order compensation would be in order. This came up in our last 4p game as well, and I just haven't gotten around to trying it yet. My thought is to give late turn order players (maybe just the last player) a random cube from the bag... or if that's not enough, maybe 2 cubes.

2. Penalty tracks 

Because there is 1 fewer round (and relative to 2-3p games, you get your 3rd worker 1 round later as well), you end up doing approximately 4 fewer turns, which means about 8 fewer penalty track bumps on average... Which means players won't be pushing up against game end penalties-though the early game in-game penalties are probably fine). I might want to reduce the track lengths for 5p, probably taking a space out of the middle section (between the 1st and 2nd penalties).

I seem to recall having a similar thought for 4p, so maybe the penalty track board could be two sided, with 4-5p penalty tracks on one side, and 2-3p tracks on the other that are 1 space longer. 

3. Worker spaces 

I was afraid this would be a problem... In lower player count games, there has always been enough worker spaces to go around, we've never had a player be unable to place a worker (though if enough players earn their extra worker off the training track, I think it's not impossible). In 5p, the way I had it set up, in the turn you get your 3rd worker automatically, there will be 14 worker spaces, and 15 workers (or more!). So immediately this is a problem. For the playtest we said that if you are unable to place a worker, you get a consolation prize of 1 cube of your choice. 

That allowed us to play, but it's not an ideal solution. I think I need to make sure that there are always enough spaces for all the workers in play. However, in a rare case where multiple players train their extra worker, there will be situations where this problem arises, unless I add a LOT of extra spaces (which might not be so terrible, perhaps). So, I'll think about how many spaces I'd need at an absolute maximum and consider making that available (a fortuitous side effect is that means almost always there will be some islands where the cubes accumulate and then you split like 6 cubes instead of 3). Failing that, another consolation prize option could be a free Explore action in any island you want... That's not nothing. Maybe also a random (or chosen) cube. If the consolation could be useful enough, then that might be preferable to the setup getting out of control! 

4. Letter token limit 

I had been scaling the number of each letter token because I thought "naturally there ought to be enough to go around." My last epiphany was that maybe scaling those isn't actually necessary, mostly because not every player will be going for them anyway. So lately I have been using 5 of each token no matter the player count. That's more than the 3 I had previously used for 2p games, which means there can be more of a back-and-forth fight for majority perhaps, and also that blue cubes don't become meaningless so quickly... 

My concern for 5p was that despite that revelation, 5 players might just be too many for that number of tokens. In our game last night, 2 players went heavily into the set collection (1 got a complete set, the other got shut out of one of the letters, costing them 4vp), 1 more ended up with 3 of the letters, and the last two players only got 2 letters. That result wasn't too bad really, and if it's common, then maybe 5 tokens per letter is enough after all. I'm tempted to up that a little bit though, maybe just 1 more of each token... Though I'd hate to change setup for only one player count :/ So maybe I'll leave it as 5 for now. 

Also, we upped the majority bonus a tiny bit... Instead of 1 point per majority, we got 2 points for a clear majority, and 1 point for a tie. I'm not sure if this was any better, but at least it was a little more complicated :) I do kind of like the idea of majority feeling worth going for.

Another suggestion that has come up, probably instead of a majority bonus, is to allow players to *spend* the letters for some effect. I'm not sure what effect would make sense - boosting actions, I guess. Maybe I could color code the letter tiles, so you spend the red one to boost the red action, for example, making them similar to the cubes "in hand," only they don't cancel penalties, and they are potentially worth more points. Does that mean they're better, or worse?

5. Letters "over-centralized"? 

Not related to 5p, but a concern keeps coming up (from the same people, so it may or may not be a universal concern) that the letter set collection is basically worth too much, they felt like the winner did that, and if you want to compete, you cannot ignore the set collection. I am not sure if I 100% agree that it's a problem, but I DO 100% agree that it would be bad if that were true!

Potential solutions, if it IS a problem, include:

* Nerfing the points, especially at the high end (doesn't have to be exactly triangular)

* Boosting the value of other aspects (e.g. buildings score face value rather than 1vp)

Side note on the set scoring...

Currently I'm using triangular scoring for different letters plus majority bonus for each. I also liked the multiplicative scoring (number different x number same) with a majority bonus for each as well, which was out of control when the letters scaled per player count, but is ok with a max of 5, though it *can* get up to pretty high scoring. Someone recently suggested RA monument type scoring, where you get triangular type score for variety, and then for each letter you get a flat bonus if you have at least 3 of them (so nothing for 1 or 2, except the set scoring) - that's pretty similar to the majority bonus, but I like that you don't have to count everyone else's stuff to get your score, so maybe I should try that - maybe 0/0/1/2/3vp for 1/2/3/4/5 of each type (AKA 1vp for each letter beyond your 2nd of each type).

6. Also unrelated to 5p, a suggestion came up that I don't want to forget about, so I'll include it here. It happens to be something I'd considered initially. but haven't given any further thought to yet. The suggestion was to make the Island tiles more distinct, more different from each other, perhaps by adding some kind of effect to them. For example:

• When you Split here, take a letter tile from the Choose player
• When you Split here, take a cube from the Choose player
• When you Place here, take a [red] cube from the bag into hand
• When you Choose here, you may add a cube of your choice from the bag to the island

I think this kind of thing could give the islands a bit more character