I recently audited (Watched) a live 4 player game of Noblemen. I am pretty pleased with it although there were a handful of exceptions.
The rules they played were mostly what I played solo here:
http://noblemenboardgame.blogspot.com/2008/09/version-8-solidifying.html
I am pleased with how balanced the game is scoring-wise. Even though players took different tracks and sometimes switched tracks in mid-game 3 of the 4 scores ended up almost identical. The game ended with two players at 75 points, one at 74, and one at 66. The 66 player played a bribe strategy mostly. He never took the queen and for most of the game did poorly in the Balls.
Right off the bat we had some awkwardness with Scott and Andy not sure how to get more land. I believe they did not receive any more woods than the default two. After the game we discussed this and I believe this can be fixed by simply changing the initial lands a player gets. The problem is players that do not start with 4 woods are at a disadvantage. Scotts idea was that players can just put back some of their lands and draw new ones once at the start of the game.
The bag ran out of lands! Even though Tim seemed to be fine with this I was not. I added one rule at the start of this game that players could draw 3 lands as their action whenever they wanted. They only did this twice I believe. I will need to review the game log and figure out how many lands I need for a 5 player game. I will have to have a rule about the bag running out just in case.
Tim ran out of actions. Tim was also fine with this. He is an easy to please guy! To solve this I, unfortunately, think I need an action were players can take 1 VP if they don’t want to or can’t do anything else. This seems like a crutch to a bad design but in my defense other games do this too. I also don’t like it being one of the actions increasing the number of actions to 10.
Should the prestige track cap? During the last Ball Andy was ready to take the Duke from Scott with his hidden but trackable 12 bribe chits. But since Scott had the crown Scott pegged the track and stayed Duke. After giving this some thought I think that I could solve this by making the prestige track double in length and go to 36. Scott still would have been Duke because he had 22 prestige. So I am not sure if any change is needed.
Do players need the guaranteed turn at the end before a scoring round? To solve Andy’s inconsistency problem I could just describe a Scoring round as “At the beginning of a scoring round all players take one more turn then …”
I really like 9 turns per decade (before subtracting for the queen moving) and since everyone gets 1 turn at the end I have to start the decade marker on 2. If players didn’t need the guaranteed turn then I could start the marker on 1 which is a bit cleaner.
I think players do need this turn. You have a plan to do two things but then because of events the Ball is here and you didn’t even get one turn. That sucks.
I am not sure I liked the displaced castles from new palaces filling in the Castle queue. I t never seemed urgent to buy a castle or they might run out. Castles were always there.
The final thought is that its clear to me that I have not achieved the $1 = 1 land = 1 prestige = 1 VP. Its close. but its more like this 1 presitge > 1 land > $1 = 1 VP.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Version 8 solidifying
Recently I played what I am now calling version 8 which is a bit misleading because it’s technically version 0.8.3.
I played a 4 player game where each player had a specific goal. One player’s main focus was land, one was money, one was prestige, and one was all three. Here are the rules I played:
Play Land – I really like the new rule of you collect land and money as you go. You can play up to 3 lands on your turn and you collect random lands for wood played and money for farms played.
Acquire Land – Each player gets one Acquire land token per decade. They can spend it to receive 1 land per wood and 2 per forest. This worked pretty good once we got past the first few turns. The game still starts the same. All players play wood. I am not sure if this is a bad thing.
I think I will change the rule slightly adding: If you have spent your token you may draw 3 lands from the bag. Or “You may draw three lands from the bag instead of using your Token” Then players could do it early if needed and not use their tokens until later.
Taxes – This is a lot like Acquire Land. Each player gets one Taxes token per decade. They can spend it to receive 1 pound per farm and 2 per forest. This worked pretty well. Its takes work to get lots of money. Players used to get two tokens per decade but one is better. Now with the clock you often don’t have time to do taxes. Which is good.
Donate Land – the rule was each decade the area was cleared and players could take an action to add land at the rate of 1 VP for each. They could add as much as they wanted but once it was full it stayed full until the next decade. This worked ok. It was a bit too lucrative for the land player. I am guessing that real players will not let one player do that as much. As it was this player came in second even though he managed to oten be 2nd in the Ball.
Bribe Royalty – They are 2 pounds each. You immediately get 1VP for each. You can then later redeem them for land during Acquire Land, money during Taxes, or prestige during a Ball. I still love this rule but the money focused player came in last place when it was all done. I think he should have concentrated on castles and palaces first and Bribe tokens second.
Masquerade Ball – This worked pretty well. All players return their current titles to the pool. Then in turn players place their prestige markers starting with the player with the crown, deciding right then how much bribe chits or scandal cards to add, if any. Once all have done this they go in order of high prestige to low taking from the pool the highest title they can take that is still available. Finally all players score victory points based on the title.
Castles – These now increase in cost as they decrease in quantity. They were 3/4/5/6/7 pounds each. I started each decade with the number of castle equal to the number of players minus one (N-1). Three castles per decade in this game. As it turned out someone bought a Palace before a castle was bought and I decided to try putting the displaced castle on the board reducing how much the next castle would cost. I liked this. Of course if there is no room then the castle would have to go back to the supply. Of course Castles have nothing give you once again and I need to think about that.
Palaces – I am starting to think that Palaces should be N-1 too. I think 2 will be too few in a five player game. I would not have minded 3 in my 4 player game. Now that moving the crown as extra meaning of also moving the clock Palaces are more fun than they were.
Church – These worked fine with no new changes. N churches and they get more expensive as they disappear. They give one scandal card and points during the scoring round.
Follies – These are also fairly unchanged. You need two forest to build one, two plantations to build one, two gardens two build one, and one of each to build the 4th one. They immediately pay victory points; 12 for the 1st one built, 10 for the 2nd, 8 for the 3rd, and 6 for the 4th one built.
Decade Clock – Year marker started on 2 and the first ball started as soon as the marker reached 6 and 10. After the second ball each player got one more turn and then a scoring round occurred. This worked pretty well. One decade a player played the new Outmaneuver scandal card moving the year marker back one. This gave all players an extra turn and it really felt like a luxury. I am removing the Outmaneuver card again.
Men at Arms – I started with them near each player ready to be deployed. When a castle was built they would get a turn. There were no castles played for a long time. With the clock ticking down quickly I was often absorbed into my own machinations of each of the 4 players and thought if someone disrupted this now that would really suck. So I took them back out before the first castle was played.
All in all the game worked really well. I spent three hours playing this 4 player game and often was proud of just how fun and well it was going. Until the end. Near the end of the game it was becoming clear that players were going to run out of things to do or at least run out of “useful” things to do. Interestingly the first player to run out of stuff to do also won.
So to fix this I think I will add a rule where players can trade their turn / Action for 1 victory point. This will allow them to do something meaningful at the end. Also I will slightly change the Acquire land rule to allow players to draw 3 lands when they want without using their token.
The final scores were: Prestige-Guy 79 playing land and owning the Duke from the 3 Ball on, the Lands-Guy 76 Donating land 3 times for 12, 7, and 9 points, the All-Three-Guy with 72 points had the crown most of the game, and the finally the Money-Guy with 67 points.
Other thoughts:
Maybe I will make the free draw 2 random lands or one of their choice?
Maybe Taxes can work similar. Players can Tax when they want to for 2 or 3 pounds?
There are not enough Scandal cards. I think I will try you get one with a castle. Maybe.
There are not enough lands for a 5 player game. The bag gets close to empty with a 4 player game. It seems like there should be plenty. Players play about 25 to 30 lands plus can have 10 or so behind the screen. So that’s 40 x 4 = 160. I think I have 210. I must not have 210. Anyway Scott showed me his tiles which were made of Illustration board that were thinner. They are about 60% as thick as mine, I believe. So I could have 40% more and have the same volume? I could have more.
I played a 4 player game where each player had a specific goal. One player’s main focus was land, one was money, one was prestige, and one was all three. Here are the rules I played:
Play Land – I really like the new rule of you collect land and money as you go. You can play up to 3 lands on your turn and you collect random lands for wood played and money for farms played.
Acquire Land – Each player gets one Acquire land token per decade. They can spend it to receive 1 land per wood and 2 per forest. This worked pretty good once we got past the first few turns. The game still starts the same. All players play wood. I am not sure if this is a bad thing.
I think I will change the rule slightly adding: If you have spent your token you may draw 3 lands from the bag. Or “You may draw three lands from the bag instead of using your Token” Then players could do it early if needed and not use their tokens until later.
Taxes – This is a lot like Acquire Land. Each player gets one Taxes token per decade. They can spend it to receive 1 pound per farm and 2 per forest. This worked pretty well. Its takes work to get lots of money. Players used to get two tokens per decade but one is better. Now with the clock you often don’t have time to do taxes. Which is good.
Donate Land – the rule was each decade the area was cleared and players could take an action to add land at the rate of 1 VP for each. They could add as much as they wanted but once it was full it stayed full until the next decade. This worked ok. It was a bit too lucrative for the land player. I am guessing that real players will not let one player do that as much. As it was this player came in second even though he managed to oten be 2nd in the Ball.
Bribe Royalty – They are 2 pounds each. You immediately get 1VP for each. You can then later redeem them for land during Acquire Land, money during Taxes, or prestige during a Ball. I still love this rule but the money focused player came in last place when it was all done. I think he should have concentrated on castles and palaces first and Bribe tokens second.
Masquerade Ball – This worked pretty well. All players return their current titles to the pool. Then in turn players place their prestige markers starting with the player with the crown, deciding right then how much bribe chits or scandal cards to add, if any. Once all have done this they go in order of high prestige to low taking from the pool the highest title they can take that is still available. Finally all players score victory points based on the title.
Castles – These now increase in cost as they decrease in quantity. They were 3/4/5/6/7 pounds each. I started each decade with the number of castle equal to the number of players minus one (N-1). Three castles per decade in this game. As it turned out someone bought a Palace before a castle was bought and I decided to try putting the displaced castle on the board reducing how much the next castle would cost. I liked this. Of course if there is no room then the castle would have to go back to the supply. Of course Castles have nothing give you once again and I need to think about that.
Palaces – I am starting to think that Palaces should be N-1 too. I think 2 will be too few in a five player game. I would not have minded 3 in my 4 player game. Now that moving the crown as extra meaning of also moving the clock Palaces are more fun than they were.
Church – These worked fine with no new changes. N churches and they get more expensive as they disappear. They give one scandal card and points during the scoring round.
Follies – These are also fairly unchanged. You need two forest to build one, two plantations to build one, two gardens two build one, and one of each to build the 4th one. They immediately pay victory points; 12 for the 1st one built, 10 for the 2nd, 8 for the 3rd, and 6 for the 4th one built.
Decade Clock – Year marker started on 2 and the first ball started as soon as the marker reached 6 and 10. After the second ball each player got one more turn and then a scoring round occurred. This worked pretty well. One decade a player played the new Outmaneuver scandal card moving the year marker back one. This gave all players an extra turn and it really felt like a luxury. I am removing the Outmaneuver card again.
Men at Arms – I started with them near each player ready to be deployed. When a castle was built they would get a turn. There were no castles played for a long time. With the clock ticking down quickly I was often absorbed into my own machinations of each of the 4 players and thought if someone disrupted this now that would really suck. So I took them back out before the first castle was played.
All in all the game worked really well. I spent three hours playing this 4 player game and often was proud of just how fun and well it was going. Until the end. Near the end of the game it was becoming clear that players were going to run out of things to do or at least run out of “useful” things to do. Interestingly the first player to run out of stuff to do also won.
So to fix this I think I will add a rule where players can trade their turn / Action for 1 victory point. This will allow them to do something meaningful at the end. Also I will slightly change the Acquire land rule to allow players to draw 3 lands when they want without using their token.
The final scores were: Prestige-Guy 79 playing land and owning the Duke from the 3 Ball on, the Lands-Guy 76 Donating land 3 times for 12, 7, and 9 points, the All-Three-Guy with 72 points had the crown most of the game, and the finally the Money-Guy with 67 points.
Other thoughts:
Maybe I will make the free draw 2 random lands or one of their choice?
Maybe Taxes can work similar. Players can Tax when they want to for 2 or 3 pounds?
There are not enough Scandal cards. I think I will try you get one with a castle. Maybe.
There are not enough lands for a 5 player game. The bag gets close to empty with a 4 player game. It seems like there should be plenty. Players play about 25 to 30 lands plus can have 10 or so behind the screen. So that’s 40 x 4 = 160. I think I have 210. I must not have 210. Anyway Scott showed me his tiles which were made of Illustration board that were thinner. They are about 60% as thick as mine, I believe. So I could have 40% more and have the same volume? I could have more.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Seth was right. Again.
WOO! Played a great three player game last night. We actually played 2/3rds of a game and then reset the game, changed some of the rules and played 2/3rds of another game.
I learned several things about the new modifications and it was mostly good. In fact it was from good to great. Unfortunately I think one part of the game was too good. Meaning that it randomly worked out well last night and gave us all warm fuzzies about the game but after sleeping on it I realized that the random element could have not been so great and will need some more thought.
Game Clock –
In the first game we played with the game clock looking like:
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 /
5 BALL /
6 / 7 / 8 / 9 /
10 BALL -> everyone gets one more turn -> SCORING ROUND
This is Seth’s idea and once again he was right. Sorta. We started the time marker on 1 and when we first got to the crown the marker moved to 2 so it was really 9 turns plus the guaranteed turn at the end. It was fun but the decade played a little long as I thought it would.
In the second game we tried this
1 / 2 / 3 /
4 BALL /
5 / 6 / 7 /
8 BALL -> everyone gets one more turn -> SCORING ROUND
Here we started the Marker on ZERO and therefore the game was 8 turns plus the guaranteed turn at the end. This felt like a good length.
When all was done I asked the others if it was good that the Balls happened on schedule and they both thought it was good. It was something you could plan for. Also they said that there were so many other events in the game that were hard to predict it was good to have one that was not. Seth was right.
Masquerade Ball –
This is probably where the biggest breakthrough occurred. During the first game, during a Ball, Cameron expressed dislike toward the game when I took his title and he took mine. To make matters worse neither of us moved up the ladder and the 3rd player was able to zoom away from us with no hope of us catching him. Over the years that I have been developing this game several have had this same feeling about this rule.
Cameron said he thought the rule was different: that each Ball players in order of highest prestige players took the highest title they were qualified for.
For example in the second game we tried this new idea. I had 8 prestige, Cameron had 7 and Bill had 5. So I took the Marquess which is worth 8 VP, Cameron then could only take the Earl which is worth 5, and Bill took the Viscount for 2 VP.
To do this you would need to score the titles during the ball which may get out of hand. Or maybe only have one Ball per decade. The Titles could all be even valued VPs and you could get half in the first Ball and then half after the second. Another idea is that Titles could have two values on them; one to qualify it and one to score it and then they would score at the end of the Ball.
I liked this new idea because it felt like we were wrestling for over the titles more. The original idea was to try and abstract playing king of the hill. This felt more like that to me.
Acquire Lands –
In the first game we tried the juice lands rule. We started with 3 of each type and as people selected a stack they the remaining stacks were “juiced” with one more land each. Up to stacks of five. We kept a surplus set of stacks of five to do the juicing from. Each stack in the surplus was replenished up to 5 at the start of the decade. As it worked out, we always had enough lands from the surplus to do the juicing. This way worked ok. Not as well as I thought it would.
In the second game we tried the Acquire Land tokens and no lands on the board. This worked pretty good except all players started by playing wood to get more lands.
Both games we started with 2 of each plus 4 random lands.
When we were all done I asked the guys which way they liked more and they both said the random lands from the bag was better, meaning the Acquire Land tokens. I agreed. But it didn’t occur to me until later that it worked out because we randomly got enough woods to start playing forest and if we didn’t our experience might not have been as good. I need to play it more to see.
Men-at-Arms / Castles –
We played without Men-at-Arms. This was fine except I want something to do when playing a castle. One player suggested there should be more scandal cards. He wanted an action where he could buy them.
Also we played with N-1 Castles per decade. This frustrated one player. It was suggested that I; 1 – go back to N Castles, or 2 – Let the castle that a Palace replaces go back on the board, or 3 – Do #1 but let the castles go up in value as you buy them like the churches.
I think I will try number 3. Castles will go cost something like 3/4/5/6/7 AND maybe you will also get a Scandal Card with one. Not sure about that last part but I do wish they would give something.
All the other parts of the game worked pretty well. I really like that when you played a land you get got something right away if a wood or farm. I still wish you would get a prestige when you played a pond.
I learned several things about the new modifications and it was mostly good. In fact it was from good to great. Unfortunately I think one part of the game was too good. Meaning that it randomly worked out well last night and gave us all warm fuzzies about the game but after sleeping on it I realized that the random element could have not been so great and will need some more thought.
Game Clock –
In the first game we played with the game clock looking like:
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 /
5 BALL /
6 / 7 / 8 / 9 /
10 BALL -> everyone gets one more turn -> SCORING ROUND
This is Seth’s idea and once again he was right. Sorta. We started the time marker on 1 and when we first got to the crown the marker moved to 2 so it was really 9 turns plus the guaranteed turn at the end. It was fun but the decade played a little long as I thought it would.
In the second game we tried this
1 / 2 / 3 /
4 BALL /
5 / 6 / 7 /
8 BALL -> everyone gets one more turn -> SCORING ROUND
Here we started the Marker on ZERO and therefore the game was 8 turns plus the guaranteed turn at the end. This felt like a good length.
When all was done I asked the others if it was good that the Balls happened on schedule and they both thought it was good. It was something you could plan for. Also they said that there were so many other events in the game that were hard to predict it was good to have one that was not. Seth was right.
Masquerade Ball –
This is probably where the biggest breakthrough occurred. During the first game, during a Ball, Cameron expressed dislike toward the game when I took his title and he took mine. To make matters worse neither of us moved up the ladder and the 3rd player was able to zoom away from us with no hope of us catching him. Over the years that I have been developing this game several have had this same feeling about this rule.
Cameron said he thought the rule was different: that each Ball players in order of highest prestige players took the highest title they were qualified for.
For example in the second game we tried this new idea. I had 8 prestige, Cameron had 7 and Bill had 5. So I took the Marquess which is worth 8 VP, Cameron then could only take the Earl which is worth 5, and Bill took the Viscount for 2 VP.
To do this you would need to score the titles during the ball which may get out of hand. Or maybe only have one Ball per decade. The Titles could all be even valued VPs and you could get half in the first Ball and then half after the second. Another idea is that Titles could have two values on them; one to qualify it and one to score it and then they would score at the end of the Ball.
I liked this new idea because it felt like we were wrestling for over the titles more. The original idea was to try and abstract playing king of the hill. This felt more like that to me.
Acquire Lands –
In the first game we tried the juice lands rule. We started with 3 of each type and as people selected a stack they the remaining stacks were “juiced” with one more land each. Up to stacks of five. We kept a surplus set of stacks of five to do the juicing from. Each stack in the surplus was replenished up to 5 at the start of the decade. As it worked out, we always had enough lands from the surplus to do the juicing. This way worked ok. Not as well as I thought it would.
In the second game we tried the Acquire Land tokens and no lands on the board. This worked pretty good except all players started by playing wood to get more lands.
Both games we started with 2 of each plus 4 random lands.
When we were all done I asked the guys which way they liked more and they both said the random lands from the bag was better, meaning the Acquire Land tokens. I agreed. But it didn’t occur to me until later that it worked out because we randomly got enough woods to start playing forest and if we didn’t our experience might not have been as good. I need to play it more to see.
Men-at-Arms / Castles –
We played without Men-at-Arms. This was fine except I want something to do when playing a castle. One player suggested there should be more scandal cards. He wanted an action where he could buy them.
Also we played with N-1 Castles per decade. This frustrated one player. It was suggested that I; 1 – go back to N Castles, or 2 – Let the castle that a Palace replaces go back on the board, or 3 – Do #1 but let the castles go up in value as you buy them like the churches.
I think I will try number 3. Castles will go cost something like 3/4/5/6/7 AND maybe you will also get a Scandal Card with one. Not sure about that last part but I do wish they would give something.
All the other parts of the game worked pretty well. I really like that when you played a land you get got something right away if a wood or farm. I still wish you would get a prestige when you played a pond.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
second 4 player decade
I played another four-player decade. It went a little faster. It still needs to be faster. I want players to barely be able to surround a castle and do a 3 or four other things and be done. If that.
Game Clock - I started the game with the first player having the crown. “Hand the Crown to a random player and they go first”. The rule was at the end of your turn if you had the crown the marker moved one. But it was weird that the marker would move after the first turn or there would have to be a exception to the rule or something. I didn’t like it. So I moved the crown to the first players right. Giving it to the player that would go last. This made more sense to me after all players went the clock moves one. Plus it gave a benefit to the player that went last making up for going last.
So now the game take 10 turns minus partial turns each time the crown changes hands. It was much closer to being a good speed. So my new idea is to also move the clock when someone builds a church. I will try this and see how it goes. I really think that erring on the side of too fast is much better than too slow.
Acquire Land - Also this game I started everyone with one with Acquire Land token. The idea is twofold I wanted players to be able to reap lots of lands sometimes if they have been working hard at playing forest. Two players have more to loose from Men-at-arms now.
Players now get one Acquire land token and one taxes token per decade.
I started the Acquire Land area of the board with 3 of each land type. In the previous game it seemed too low to be the first to Acquire land and only get 2 while you are then paving the way for all the other players to get more. 3 felt good.
In general I still have a problem with the new Acquire land action. I don’t like having an extra pool ready to add to the lands. There is more that bothers me too I just cannot quite word it. I think next game I will try each player gets two AL tokens per decade and can take that action when they want with no face up lands.
Masquerade Ball / Scandal cads - The last thing I added was during Masquerade Ball players get one scandal card only if they have prestige (if they attend the ball). I like this for many reasons but its more clear now that the Scandal cards need some balancing and maybe just need to be more interesting. I also need to add some cards to reflect some of the new rules.
I have been doing some more research and much of the scandals were on a social level. In this game the Ball represents using your social skills. I think that it makes sense that in addition to the church scandals would be generated at Balls. The other half of it is you could then turn around and use your newly acquired scandal card to gain prestige at the ball.
More coming.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
The game is back and theres gonna be trouble
Woo I have the game back in great shape from Seth! I played a four player game trying some of the newly face-lifted rules. Some worked and some the jury is still out.
The biggest problem was the game clock. At first I tried my idea that clock would not start running until someone earned the crown. When a player first earns the crown the clock marker was placed on 1. Then when a player starts his turn with the crown the clock moves one. This enables the players to prolong the game because you could steal the crown in the middle of your turn and all players would have one more turn before the clock moved again. Which I thought was a good thing. It had another effect too but I will talk about that in a minute.
Quickly it was clear this was going to make the first round too long. Players don’t play ponds in the beginning but farms and wood. So people didn’t create gardens as right away and no crown.
So then I moved the clock to where it would have been and adjusted the scoring for the player that would have had it from the beginning. The decade still moved too slowly.
The other idea I started with was that after the first Ball the marker only move when the player with the crown started his turn. The decade track would look like this:
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / BALL / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / BALL + SCORING ROUND
The idea was that a decade would last a little longer. Silly me. I only played one decade but it felt like I had played a whole game. Players were running out of things to do, three of the follies were bought, players played about 21 lands each, most had 2 castles surrounded, all the churches were gone. It wasn’t a race. There was no urgency.
The other effect I didn’t like was you did not have enough control over when the Ball would start. If the player to your left had the crown when a ball started you may get screwed on the Prestige placement which doesn’t make sense to me. If I am working toward being Duke I want more control to race the other players to be the one to start a Ball.
Next game I will try someone gets the crown from the beginning. Then I will try players receive a VP and the clock moves at the end of their turn. Also I will use a decade track that doesn’t have a BALL. I will go back to the old way where players will have two opportunities to Throw a Ball per decade but will have to use a turn to do so.
If I need a little more time per decade I can allow the players to place the marker on the one on the first crown instead of starting there. Also I can make the 10 be the end where a scoring round would start immediately or I could make it happen the next time the players turn ends with a crown potentially giving players more time.
I feel Seth was right about more subtleties than I have wanted to admit. For example I now agree the Noble title ladder needs to be narrower. We had discussed this and I think he feels it should be N / N-2 / N - 3 / 1 / 1 for the Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquess, and Duke respectively. Where N is equal to the number of players. So in a 5 player game it would be 5/3/2/1/1. In a 4 player game it would be 4/2/1/1/1 and in a three player game it would be 3/1/1/1/1.
I liked the N-1 castles to start a decade.
I didn’t play with them but I think maybe the Outmaneuver Scandal cards are too powerful. I have no fix for them yet. The Tariff Scandal card is potentially too valuable. I will change it to be a fixed amount of 4 or 5 pounds collected.
I didn’t like the new Men-at-Arms rule. Their strength is greatly reduced. I like the timing of them but since they are much less frequent they need to do more. I think I will try letting players play both of their men-at-arms when they play a castle. Even then I need to think of a reason to play one on a Forest.
Since there was not enough urgency to decade I don’t have a good feeling for the new Acquire Land ideas of Seth’s. What I am hoping is that there will not be a need to limit how many times the lands are “juiced”. That since time will go by faster players will spend their time doing other things.
I played where each player got one TAXES token per decade and that seemed to work pretty well.
I was encouraged by the scores at the end. Three of the players were within 2 points of each other. One player was about 7 points behind 3rd place.
That’s all for now.
The biggest problem was the game clock. At first I tried my idea that clock would not start running until someone earned the crown. When a player first earns the crown the clock marker was placed on 1. Then when a player starts his turn with the crown the clock moves one. This enables the players to prolong the game because you could steal the crown in the middle of your turn and all players would have one more turn before the clock moved again. Which I thought was a good thing. It had another effect too but I will talk about that in a minute.
Quickly it was clear this was going to make the first round too long. Players don’t play ponds in the beginning but farms and wood. So people didn’t create gardens as right away and no crown.
So then I moved the clock to where it would have been and adjusted the scoring for the player that would have had it from the beginning. The decade still moved too slowly.
The other idea I started with was that after the first Ball the marker only move when the player with the crown started his turn. The decade track would look like this:
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / BALL / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / BALL + SCORING ROUND
The idea was that a decade would last a little longer. Silly me. I only played one decade but it felt like I had played a whole game. Players were running out of things to do, three of the follies were bought, players played about 21 lands each, most had 2 castles surrounded, all the churches were gone. It wasn’t a race. There was no urgency.
The other effect I didn’t like was you did not have enough control over when the Ball would start. If the player to your left had the crown when a ball started you may get screwed on the Prestige placement which doesn’t make sense to me. If I am working toward being Duke I want more control to race the other players to be the one to start a Ball.
Next game I will try someone gets the crown from the beginning. Then I will try players receive a VP and the clock moves at the end of their turn. Also I will use a decade track that doesn’t have a BALL. I will go back to the old way where players will have two opportunities to Throw a Ball per decade but will have to use a turn to do so.
If I need a little more time per decade I can allow the players to place the marker on the one on the first crown instead of starting there. Also I can make the 10 be the end where a scoring round would start immediately or I could make it happen the next time the players turn ends with a crown potentially giving players more time.
I feel Seth was right about more subtleties than I have wanted to admit. For example I now agree the Noble title ladder needs to be narrower. We had discussed this and I think he feels it should be N / N-2 / N - 3 / 1 / 1 for the Baron, Viscount, Earl, Marquess, and Duke respectively. Where N is equal to the number of players. So in a 5 player game it would be 5/3/2/1/1. In a 4 player game it would be 4/2/1/1/1 and in a three player game it would be 3/1/1/1/1.
I liked the N-1 castles to start a decade.
I didn’t play with them but I think maybe the Outmaneuver Scandal cards are too powerful. I have no fix for them yet. The Tariff Scandal card is potentially too valuable. I will change it to be a fixed amount of 4 or 5 pounds collected.
I didn’t like the new Men-at-Arms rule. Their strength is greatly reduced. I like the timing of them but since they are much less frequent they need to do more. I think I will try letting players play both of their men-at-arms when they play a castle. Even then I need to think of a reason to play one on a Forest.
Since there was not enough urgency to decade I don’t have a good feeling for the new Acquire Land ideas of Seth’s. What I am hoping is that there will not be a need to limit how many times the lands are “juiced”. That since time will go by faster players will spend their time doing other things.
I played where each player got one TAXES token per decade and that seemed to work pretty well.
I was encouraged by the scores at the end. Three of the players were within 2 points of each other. One player was about 7 points behind 3rd place.
That’s all for now.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Revised costings
Ok seth was right. Castles and Palaces can score more than once. So using my experience of how often someting scores, I have now adjusted the cost of things:
| $ | Other cost | VPs | scoring times | Other benefits | VP per $ | $s per VP | |
| Castle | $6 | Clearing | 3 | 2 | Men at Arms Action | 1 | $1.00 |
| Palace | $8 | Castle | 5 | 1.5 | crown / prestige | 0.94 | $1.07 |
| Church | $3.5 | Clearing | 1.5 | 2 | Scandal Card | 0.857 | $1.17 |
| Folly | $10 | Clearing | 9 | 1 | 0.9 | $1.11 | |
| Bribe | $2 | 1 | 1 | favor | 0.5 | $2.00 |
Castle – You are guaranteed 1 castle will score 3 times. On average you may buy one in the second decade that will score twice and one in the 3rd that will score once (If you get it surrounded). This averages to 2 scoring opportunities per Castle.
A Castle used to cost $5. But if it now cost $6 you will get one VP per $1. Which is the goal.
Palace – Typically you will get 2 Palaces. One in the second decade and one in the 3rd. This averages to 1.5 scoring opportunities per Palace.
So as I guessed before a Palace should cost $8 to get about one VP per $1. This does not account for the fact that you are replacing a Castle. But you do get the crown and extra prestige which could easily make up for it.
Church – Churches follow castles closely. You will often get 3 churches per game and they will average 2 scoring opportunities.
This shows that Churches currently cost too much. So I lowered the value from 2/3/4/5/6 to 1/2/3/4/5. Brining them closer in range of one VP per $1.
Folly – These of course only score once and therefore the math is easier. To keep the price at $10 I needed to raise the VPs from 8/7/6/5 to 12/10/8/6.
The Goal has been to get the following $1 = 1 land = 1 prestige = 1 VP. So the next question is how much should the Noble titles be worth to achieve this? When I play-test the game next I will keep an eye on how much prestige does it take to get say 20 VPs?
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
VP table
There has been some discussion about the balance of the game So made this table:
| $s | Other cost | VPs | Other benefits | VP per $ | $s per VP | |
| Castle | $5 | Clearing | 3 | M@A action | 0.6 | $1.67 |
| Palace | $8 | Castle | 5 | crown / prestige | 0.625 | $1.60 |
| Church | $4.5 | Clearing | 1.5 | Scandal Card | 0.333 | $3.00 |
| Folly | $10 | Clearing | 6.5 | 0.650 | $1.54 | |
| bribe | $2 | 1 | favor | 0.50 | $2.00 | |
| Donate | $0 | Lands | 5 | $0 |
Unless I am not thinking of this correctly you can see that Follies giving 8/7/6/5 VPs for $10 are the cheapest in the game and Palaces and Castles are close behind.
Now it might make sense to increase the value of the follies to simply make them more sought after. I could only do this alittle because what I do not want is to make getting a Folly a requirement for winning.
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