The proa rush is largely an automatic, yes, but the tempering of kahuna resource production in the rules should bring that back to the purpose intended: to act as a short term drain on fish and shells and thus to prevent the kula cycle beginning before the network is actually capable of supporting it. If there is a concern, it is that the additional original expense of buying the second explorer has not been accounted for in the new model. I’m hopeful that this trifle can be absorbed in the largesse of the extra starting routes.

Kahuna are another part of that resource drain. I went back on the idea for teleporting kahuna as I’d forgotten the incredible value for accurate kahuna placement. It is very hard to place kahuna in their optimal positions and it prohibitively expensive to move them as those movements mean forgoing a kula-giving opportunity. This is also the reasoning behind having two kahuna. Just one makes the difficulty of getting correct placement too fragile, and more makes the value of correct placement too small as multiple nearly-good-enough placements are just as good and now everything (of note) has a kahuna on it!

I also lost the trade-kula for VPs notion as it deflates the fish/shell/kula economy. The discontinuity in the exchange matrix there makes the transactions actually interesting rather than so fungible that they disappear in the swarm of other infinitely fungible transaction types. I really really don’t care about players early in the turn order being screwed by receiving stale kula. Games are inherently and necessarily unfair. As you say, if they’d wanted to be later in the turn order they should have bid lower. So kula rots: get over it. This is not a game of storing or managing resources, it is a game of managing income flow and opportunities.

The limit of 7 proas is carefully chosen with analysis afore. It is slightly smaller than the map size and yet large enough to connect almost everything. This has significant implications for delivery dynamics as well as being slightly larger than most players will need in any given game and slightly smaller than some players will want in some games.

There also seemed to be some somewhat degenerate or obvious decisions like the way all players pretty much rush up the Proa track – no reason not to, etc. I see you’ve addressed some of this in this blog post.

1. Tone down kahuna: * 1.5x production rather than 2x. * When a market is delivered to an island over a player’s route that also has a kahuna on that island, the kahuna-owning player earns VPs for the delivery in addition to the moving player. This may allow VP doubling for one’s own kahuna. not sure yet (ie the models haven’t finished running) * Building a kahuna once both have been built teleports one of the pre-existent kahuna to the new location

I’m not sure what the reasoning is behind this one. was 2x resources too much? 1.5x is an odd multiplier and makes the math more fiddley, though it’s of course doable and fairly easy.

I don’t like the teleporting Kahuna much – not terrible, but I liked the idea that you had to cart them around once they were on the board. I might go as far as to say “why not start the game with a kahuna on the board?” – maybe players should only get 1, not have to buy it, but have to cart it around instead of a delivery if they want it in a better space.

This might cause too much early income or something, so other considerations would have to be made, but I’m amused by the notion.

2. Rejigger kula: * Rework all cost relations * Kula do not reward VPs upon receipt, but may be immediately discarded upon receipt for VPs or fish & shells

I like the idea of ridding the Kula transaction of VP track movement. It already moves Kula around the stable and Prestige track for 2 people, which I think is fine – further transactions I feel are “too much”.

I see your issue with the potential delivery of stale Kula to someone who’s already had their turn, and their not getting anything out of the deal, which is why you are associating VPs to the gift. Your new solution here is better than always giving VPs, because now it’s EITHER fish/shells OR future Prestige – giving VPs to all players receiving gifts still screws the same player who’s already had a turn and gets a stale Kula gift.

One question (which may not be answered yet) is “how many VPs/Fish/Shells?” Would it be the same number that were spent on the Kula to begin with? I’ll note that 1/3 of the shells would rot before they got a chance to use it. I would think a straight VP would be best (especially considering they can cash that for fish/shells later) – that’s the same number of transactions I guess (you’d move the VP track instead of the Prestige track)

The ultimate question might be whether it’s really important to protect the early turn order player from getting a stale Kula gift. As the early turn order player, they already got a benefit in the delivery phase (early turns), and whenever they get a gift they get to reciprocate anyway… I might suggest NOT allowing Kula to be discarded for anything. If you don’t want to receive stale Kula, perhaps you should try not to go first!

3. Gut proas.. Players proas increase by one every turn unless their proas are already larger than the turn count. Automatic proa increase may be refused in return for resources and players may buy ahead for standard cost. If they buy-ahead then the next free proa doesn’t affect them. This is a standard tide-that-floats-all-boats

I had made the suggestion that proas require an increasing cost, or else cost nothing and simply increase for everyone every turn. Your new “buying ahead” thing is interesting in that, as you say, people can make the decision: buy ahead for this-turn advantage or hang back for this-turn resource advantage. However, if you are allowed to buy ahead more than 1 proa then I fear there’s no point to the auto-increasing proas. It’s the same problem as before – players will purchase proas (heh, say that 5 times fast) at a rate which exceeds the 1/turn free one.

So with the auto increase, which is neat, I recommend either only allowing a 1 proa buy-ahead, or I continue to recommend an increasing cost. Without something like this, then the proa auto-increase is completely pointless.

Additionally, and I think this isn’t necessarily good for the game, but an auto-increase on the proa track implies other things that could be tracked at 1/turn – most obviously # of turns. There could be a set length of the game, measured by the turn track, and the number of proas everyone has is minimum Round#. but that would probably end the game too fast (or else give too many proas in the endgame)

Have you considered limiting proas to 6 (with a temporary 7th available for Prestige cost) or to 8 (with a 9th available temporarily)? I presume you have.