Other Wise

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Commentary and processes of J C Lawrence: systems architect, contrarian, theorist, sailor, hacker, virtual world designer, linux-user, aquarist, disquisitor, cat breeder, raconteur, game designer, ludophile, bibliophile, numismatist, speculator and theologiser

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A failure of noodles and limited touching

1839 has been lurching forward somewhat like a dyspeptic hedonist.

Privates

In May I attacked the privates:

    • Cost: $20
    • Revenue: $5 (or $0?)
    • Blocks: One side of Amsterdam.
    • Power: Player can build an additional yellow track tile for $20 from their personal cash for any company of which they’re the president (any terrain costs must be paid by the company treasury), during that company’s operation and in addition to that company’s normal track build.
    • Notes: Closed if sold to a public company or if power used. Power can be used in yellow phase.
  2. 1
    • Cost: $40
    • Revenue: $5+
    • Blocks: ?
    • Power: Gets additional revenue of %20 of any terrain costs (rounded up) paid by any company. Terrain costs range from $80 – $120. Terrain tends to be where track wants to go.
    • Cost: $60
    • Revenue: $5+
    • Blocks: ?
    • Power: Additional revenue of $5 for every train certificate bought by any company. When owned by a company, can mark a train as obsoleting rather than rusting ala the VdL in 1843.
    • Note: Closes when its power is used.
    • Cost: $80
    • Revenue: $5+
    • Blocks: ?
    • Power: 18OH-style revenue of $5 for every revenue location connected to a token for the first time.
    • Cost: $100
    • Revenue: $20
    • Blocks: The teleport locations
    • Power: D&H style teleport for the cost of terrain at the target (one of which is $free but out of the way, other $120 and highly desirable).
    • Note: Can be bought in yellow for face value. Closes as soon as its power is used.
    • Cost: $120
    • Revenue: $20
    • Blocks: Connectivity to Rotterdam
    • Power: Either a 30% discount on a train purchase OR (exclusive) a token that can be placed under one of its station markers or on a dit. Every company that runs a train to/through that location pays half (rounded up) revenue of that location to the owning company’s treasury from the bank OR (exclusive, 3/4 player game only) may teleport/place a token in a space reserved/blocked by the discarded company for free.
    • Note: Closes when the power is used. Revenue token is removed in brown phase.
    • Cost: $150
    • Revenue: $25
    • Blocks: Blocks Afsluitdijk.
    • Power: Comes with a random %10 share (cf VdL/M&H). Owning company can place a station marker for free, or can place an additional/extra station marker (one more than normal for the company) for $100 (may be done out of order?).
    • Note: Closes when the power is used. Afsluitdijk is built when private closes.
    • Cost: $220
    • Revenue: $35
    • Blocks: Flevoland bypass.
    • Power: Comes with a random 20% presidency which is parred at $94 (cf PLM).
    • Note: Closes when that company buys a train. May not be bought by a public company. Flevoland bypass is built when it closes.

These are auctioned in an 1830-style auction. Everything, including the trigger, will block something of importance. Purchase price by a major can be from $1 to 200%. The random share allocations, as well as which company is out of the game in a 3 or 4 player game, are determined during game setup before the auction. All privates close in brown.

After that is done one 10% share of each of the 8 off-board companies is auctioned in an 18Neb-style auction with a starting price of $60, with the extension that when all players pass all bid items are bought for their bids and everything remaining gets $5 cheaper. Repeat ad absurdum, must “buy” if $free. Note: The off-boards are parred at the highest then-legal par the first time a train is run to them. Until then their shares are not liquid. Off-board shares do not count as paper.

Summary: 16 things are auctioned before the ISR.

Priority is then sorted in order of ascending cash for the ISR (not sure about this?). At the end of all subsequent SRs priority sorts in order of descending cash (cf ’43 and ’44).

Trains

In June I went to work on the trains, which as-expected, changed everything. I should have known better than to touch anything else first.

First, all of a company’s train-routes must intersect, and at least one of them must end in an off-board. But additionally, each revenue location may be counted only once, no matter how many trains included it as part of their run (ala 1873)2. This of course will require all the station marker counts to be revisited.

Additionally presidents may buy up to 60% from the IPO but may buy past 60% from the Open Market. If they reach 80% their paper limit goes up by one each time. 80% of a company may be in the pool, but no more than 50% may be sold in a single sale. Share distribution is identical to 1849 with the second 20% share always being heavy.

But back to the trains:

Colour Type Count Cost Rusted Est. Run Cost/Run
yellow 2 x5 $125 by blue $40 0.32
orange 2+1×2 x5 $200 by purple $70 0.35
green 3/5×2 x5 $500 by brown $160 0.32
lime 4×2 x5 $600 by red $210 0.35
blue 4/6×2 x5 $700 by red $220 0.31
purple 5×2 x5 $800 by gray $270 0.34
brown 5Ex2 x9 $1,000 by gray $360 0.36
red 6ED x9 $1,200 by black $360 – $480 0.35?
gray Double-D x9 $1,400 $500? 0.36?
black Flood x9 $1,600 $750?? 0.46??

In short the lower train ranks are split Poseidon-style with the last trains of the rank (eg orange after yellow) being over-sized and more expensive, but rusting one rank later than the first trains of the rank. Unlike Poseidon I’m thinking of not making the rust-later trains a choice: the half-new technology is the only thing available.

The definitions and prices of the upper trains are uncertain. I’m modestly happy up to red with maybe a $25 adjustment here and there on the prices. I suspect the big trains might get a bit more expensive(!).

Given the smallness of the map and the large number of tokens, a diesel-equivalent train seems a weak idea. Other notions are welcomed. I like the simplicity of running a Flood for the late game.

The estimated runs for the big trains are atrociously bad. They depend intimately on track development and I’ve a hard time predicting that far into the game. The lower estimates are fairly reasonable if a bit optimistic.

The train counts are likely also poor. The intent is that with trains running for a ~third of their purchase price and with no cheap single trains ala 1843, that trains will move quickly enough that the players are always under capital pressure.

It is also assumed that companies will run out of capital and that presidents will need to pay out of pocket for trains starting fairly early and likely 2-3 times per game for some companies. As trains are not cheap and revenues are not high until the end-game (when they can be huge) this is hoped to be interesting. In partial support of this I’m tempted to use 18India-style dividends of anything between $0 and $INCOME/10 with the stock price falling to the left if the total dividend is smaller than 50% of the stock price or rising if the total dividend is equal to or more than 50% of the stock price.

Game End

The intent is that the brown trains might be permanent (not often, but might be), the red trains will usually be permanent, and the gray trains will always be permanent (if they come out).

Stations

The new trains are causing the station marker counts to be re-examined. If some train types explicitly reward stations, then the total number of stations per company should not be as disparate as they are now (currently between 2 and 4 inclusive). The temptation:

Footnotes
  1. Since May I’ve become convinced that #2 is both overly powerful and excessively fiddly. A flat $20 per terrain built (or likely $15) would be simpler and as effective for the game. ↩
  2. The primary effect of this is to reduce early revenues and the importance of big-city tokens. ↩

Chain link fences on the prairie

A quick simulation run on a 9×9 board ran for over 2,500 turns. Repeating on a 7×7 board with a somewhat dumber greedy algorithm hit 900 turn before I got tired. This is clearly unreasonable for a tabletop game.

Some concepts for address:

  1. Keep the board size no large than 7×7. While 6×6 is tempting, the side-length being a natural multiple of 3 is overly pleasant. 5 or 7 are more attractive and 5×5 appears to be clearly too small.

  2. Give a marker to the start player. After the player with the marker takes a turn, they must place an unmarked level 1 tile of the highest level the player is qualified for1 on an empty square of the board, if possible without causing a glob. If a glob is formed, the resultant tile is left unmarked. After their turn they pass the marker to their right (against the flow of turns).

  3. Among the objects that can be placed during setup are a variously large number “rocks” which create dead squares on the board and thus break up object formation globs.

  4. When three ore more level 4 objects glob, the active player is awarded a VP tile…which is placed on the board with a player marker and otherwise acts as a “rock”.

  5. The game ends N rounds after the first VP tile is placed.

Footnotes
  1. humans > animals > vegetables. ↩

Making Ground

Making Ground:1 a placement game of terraforming for 2, 3 or 4 players. The 4-player game is a partnership game.

Components

A board of squares, perhaps 7×7 or 9×92. A large number of tiles in three families (vegetables, animals and humans) with four ascending ranks per family (eg grasses, bushes, trees and forests in ascending order for the vegetable family). Coloured player markers. (Optional) A small number of “rocks”, or tiles used to mark parts of the board as dead/unplayable. A bag.

Setup

First move

In clockwise rotation the players optionally accept a previously proposed first move as their own (must not have previously accepted a first move) and then propose a first move themselves by placing a level 1 vegetable tile with two of their markers on the board. A move is accepted by replacing the player markers on the proposed move with one of the accepting player’s markers.

There is then a second round, in the same order, of the players that did not accept a move on the first round (necessarily true of the first player, but may be others). On their turn they must accept a previously proposed move.

The game then starts with the player to the left of the player to last accept a move3. All subsequent turns are in clockwise rotation.

Basic gameplay

A set of three or more orthogonally adjacent tiles of the same family and rank glob and become a single tile of the same family and the next higher rank which is substituted for the tile that created the triggering glob. If the set of globbed tiles, including the newly placed and upgraded tile, was orthogonally adjacent to three or more tiles of the same family and the new higher rank of the placed tile, then the placed tile is globbed to the next higher rank etc. In this way multiple levels of globbings can occur with a single tile placement.

All the constituent globbed tiles of the final upgrade set are removed from the board and are returned to their owning players.

Special cases:

Player turn

On their turn the player must place one tile on the board along with one of his player markers4.

Any automatic upgrades are then executed, along with tiles being returned to their placing players and any resulting upgrades and tiles in player’s supplies.

If there are no empty squares left to place a tile on a player’s turn, the game is over.

Game end

The game ends when all players pass in rotation, or the board fills such that no further tiles may be placed.

Scoring

The player or partnership with the most points wins. In a 4-player partnership game, the score of the partnership is the lowest of the scores of the individual members of the partnership.

Footnotes
  1. Mostly a thought model at this point. ↩
  2. The size will likely vary with player count. ↩
  3. Questionable: May be the first player as nominated before the game started instead. ↩
  4. There’s a good argument that in the event of a player’s placement resulting in a glob/upgrade, that they then get an additional turn, but this may prove analytically overwhelming. ↩
  5. Yes, an odd number. ↩

Instantiated aliens

Introduction to the foreigners

Many of the Double O games have a concept of “foreigners” who buy trains at the end of sets of Operating Rounds. This not only keeps the trains moving in the presence of timid train buyers, but makes the distribution of available trains in a given game uncertain. I borrowed this idea in 1843, extending it so that the foreigners would not just buy a train at the end of every set of Operating Rounds, but if they bought the last train of a rank they would also buy the first train of the next rank as well, thus lurching the game forward and shortening the train distribution and speeding the train rush even more.

Extending the system

1843′s extension worked well, accomplishing most of what I expected in providing an addition tool for players to affect the rate of the train rush1. But for 1839 the abstract and infinitely well-funded foreigners didn’t sit well. I want a way to represent the hurdy gurdy jolting of how the Netherlands was tossed about on the technological and political waves of its geographic neighbours. Additionally, the 1843 model seemed as if the game were providing a control knob for only one half of the control system and that it would be inherently more interesting if player controls for both ends were somehow implemented, thus providing some level of tension between the two in influencing the train rush.

The specific thought is for:

  1. The foreigners to be limited in their train-buying by their capitalisation.
  2. Players to directly affect the rate at which the foreigners can buy trains by affecting the foreigner’s capitalisation.
  3. Company operations to affect the train rush rate in the normal manner through their train buying, but also by affecting the foreigner’s capitalisation.
  4. A lumpy rush/dawdle train-buying pattern by the foreigners which is yet deftermiistic and player-predictable.
  5. An implicit brake on the system such that if the foreigner’s train buying did rush and suddenly buy many trains, it would then slow down and some provide respite.

Proposal

First order effects

The general expectation is that some off-boards would be more popular in the early game, as they are (generally) the highest revenue locations on the board and route development to them could be shared, thus accentuating early revenue generaton. Additionally, the constraint of running at least one train to an off-board would encourage route and revenue generation near the off-boards first, and then moving inland as train lengths grew and the map developed.

The capitalisation of the off-boards should scale fairly directly with company activities. In the early game the off-board shares are severe under-performers and thus unattractive for player investments. However players could trash off-board stock prices, in the process marginally capitalising the off-board for the delta between the purchase price and the re-purchase price, and further reducing the off-board’s capital raising from future share sales.

Conversely, in the later game the off-boards become prime investment opportunities. Public shares are starting to become significant liabilities, and some off-boards may well have 4+ public companies running to them, lifting their average dividends above the average dividend of the public companies. And of course the off-board shares would not count against certificate limit — making them extremely attractive for increasingly flush and potentially paper-tight players.

The flight of capital from the public companies to the off-boards would initially accelerate the train rush due to the increased capitalisation from the share purchases (making public company shares even less attractive), but once the initial burst of trains have been bought, the capitalisation rate of the off-boards should slow due to the loss of the dividends from the purchased shares.

Train buying models

Assuming N operating companies, the off-board capitalisation should approximate 8, distributed across the participating off-boards. Assuming each company has 2.5 trains (reasonable after the first tranch), and that trains run for an average of one third their T purchase price, the rate of off-board capitalisation in terms of train purchase cost approximates . Or more directly, if 3 companies are operating, each with 2.5 trains, and are each running to the same off-board, then that off-board will raise ~enough capital in each OR to buy one train.

What about a late game scenario of 8 operating companies each with 2 trains, collectively running to all 6 off-boards, 4 of the companies are running to 2 off-boards, 5 companies are running to the Ruhr off-board (as it is the most valuable), and all of the off-board shares have sold out?

First let’s look at the Ruhr’s income (where T is the purchase price of a train): In other words, ignoring escalating train pricing, the Ruhr will be purchasing a train every other Operating Round, and two trains every third Operating Round. Ooof, train rush!

What about the ~three other off-boards with only one such active company? They’ll be buying one train every seven and a half Operating Rounds.

And the ~three off-boards being run by two companies? They’ll be buying a train every 3.75 Operating Rounds.

Summing the above: That’s just a smidge (13.34%) under an average of two trains being bought by the off-boards per Operating Round. But of course train-prices are not constant. The unpopular off-boards are going to lag and buy and lag.

The result should be that that train cost progressions should make the off-board’s purchases bursty. As rusting events progress, the base train-cost will rise faster than revenues and companies will run out of capital and be replacing their trains under the Emergency Train Buying Rules, and thus only running a single train rather than the two trains modeled above. At the crudest level this should not merely halve the train-buying rate of the off-boards to just under one train per Operating Round, but to somewhat less as the unpopular off-boards will tend to chase and miss the ever-rising train prices, thus delaying their purchases.

The actual train buying rate will be the sum of a number of wave functions with each off-board running on its own cycle, decelerating as the train prices rise and accelerating as the companies fill with and run fresh trains. When the trains rush quickly, the off-boards will lose their source of capitalisation and slow their purchases. However the accumulation of capital in their treasuries injects latency into this system, even as the revenues fall due to train rusting events, the marginal off-boards will increment over a purchase price threshold and buy a train. The result, I hope, should be an unstably punctuated equilibrium!

Footnotes
  1. Specifically: the doubled trains gave players the ability to exchange capital for increased revenue, and single trains the ability to exchange train rush for train movement flexibility and lower capital expenditure. ↩
  2. Shares would bought and sold for current market value with purchase prices paid to the company treasury and and un-bought shares paying dividends into the off-board company’s treasury. All the public companies however would be standard 1830-style with full capitalisation at 60%. ↩
  3. This fits thematically with the Netherlands transit/port role for its neighbours. ↩
  4. In this way a company’s routes as an evaluation function of a company’s network would somewhat model the Netherlands role as a transit port for raw materials and finished goods moving among the neighboring countries. ↩
  5. Rounded up to an even multiple of 10 for easier arithmetic. ↩
  6. This may be an unnecessary optimisation. ↩
  7. Thematically they would be members of foreign stock markets and thus not subject to domestic restrictions. However players would still be limited in their total holding of a single property. ↩
  8. Yes, part of the reason for this post was to play with the LaTeX module for WordPress. ↩

Adagio restart: 1843

Box top

For most of the last year I’ve been working on the development of 18FR-RCE in order to address an excess of False Decisions and degenericy with the 6-trains and 7-trains. Much was changed, not least the renaming of the game to “1843“, and more was learned in the process1. I also hope to release a ps18xx implementation in the near future.

End of a 3-player game

Footnotes
  1. Not least of which was around the discussion of can versus may in rules writing. ↩

A different horse’s gripping hand

Virtual graphs, virtual networks, connectivity expressed by derived relationships rather than represented directly… I last wrestled with these concepts in Corrupt Beneficence. In this post I’m waving an 18xx/route-building stick at them. The following discusses a possible mechanical representation of the operational side of 18xx as a card game.

Imagine cards. There are cards which simply represent railroad track and cards which represent revenue locations (cities and towns). Some revenue locations are also the home stations of various companies. Thus, for instance, the NYC card might also be the home station of the NYNH&H.

The director of a company, say the B&O, would have a card before them for Baltimore. On the Baltimore card they’d place a token for the B&O’s (home) station. Other revenue locations (non-home stations) would have spaces for companies to place stations ala the normal model. If player were running a different company than the B&O, they would have a different card of a different revenue location for that company’s home station if enough cards for that revenue location exist in the game

During the course of the game the B&O president would place track cards adjacent to the revenue location. Cards could be placed on each of the four sides (perhaps limited by game phase), forming a stack or route leading away from that location. The president might also place revenue locations at the ends of such stacks, assuming that the stack contains enough cards to satisfy that revenue location (eg the Lancaster card might require 3 track cards before it can be connected/placed).

And this is where the network enters. There are multiple copies of the revenue location cards. Thus for instance, the B&O may place track from Baltimore to Lancaster and thence to Chicago. Meanwhile another, say the C&O places track to NYC, and then Chicago and thence Scranton. There would be two Chicago cards, one on the B&O’s network, and one on the C&O’s network. Indeed a company might have the same revenue location on several of the routes that fan out from the edges of its home station.

This is where the network enters. All those repeated Chicago cards are the same location. Thus in the above example the B&O might run a train from Baltimore -> Lancaster -> Chicago (transitioning to the C&O’s network) -> NYC -> Scranton. In fact a route might transition across several different company networks as they connect shared cities into their routes. And in the above example the B&O might drop a token in Chicago (and thus on all the Chicago cards), thus allowing them to run trains out of every route in every company’s stack that contains Chicago. As companies acquire tokens in other company’s networks, they might also place track and revenue locations directly on those networks (where visible from their tokens) instead of onto the networks directly attached to their home stations. A virtual implied network, all build from cards!

The great affair is to move

Now that 18FR-RCE is getting publisher attention (more on this later), I’ve been working on two more designs: 1845 and 18RT. 18451 has been in flight for more than a year now, but 18RT has replaced it as the smaller, simpler vehicle for trialling some of the core notions of 1845 while also exploring its own area.

“18RT?” I hear you cry? 18RoadTrain, an 18xx-inspired game set around the road trains of Australia, although in this case many Baltimore & Ohio inspired notions have been sneaking in as well.

Map

The current notion is for the map to cover the area from Darwin in the Northern Territory, down through Alice Springs to Adelaide in South Australia, and thence Melbourne in Victoria, and across to Brisbane in Queensland2. Perth (Western Australia), Tasmania and the various major ports would be represented by off-boards, the Nullarbor Plains likely being implied by a token surcharge in the Perth off-board or extreme terrain costs for a single hex connection there. The primary focus of the map however would be a morass of dits and terrain surrounding the cattle ranches, metal mines and other bulk-export production centres.

ozmap.jpg

Companies

The general idea is for a slew of private companies with 1870-esque revenue bonus tokens, accelerated track-builds, terrain discounts and the like. The general idea is that these would either be assigned to major companies ala many David G Hecht games, or sold (at close to cost) to major companies ala 1846.

I’d like to also represent, if only partially, the excessively poetic GSR and Ghan. Wrapping them in a revenue-based private is an obvious route, but perhaps less interesting. Instead I’ve been toying with the idea of a president-less investment vehicle (akin to the bank of England in 1848) which pays liability-less revenues as a function of both the current train technology level and much of the connection between Adelaide and Darwin has been built. Something similar might be also done with the (recent) iron ore connections to China, the Tasmania produce connection, the vast emergent wine industry etc, but in those cases in a manner which more directly connects to major companies operating in those areas.

I’m currently toying with 8-10 major companies which can be incrementally capitalised or fully capitalised at the president’s choice3.

Trains, err, Trucks

A first notion is to change how trains are managed. Of course they’re not really trains, but bear with me as calling them trains makes the 18xx-relevant language easier:

Track

The next area of exploration is a tentative form of impermanent track combined with an inversion of normal revenue allocations:

Stock market

I’m interested in varying the rates of appreciation at different sections of a stock market, as well as stock markets which don’t have the traditional triangular shape5. What if the market had a different shape? What if the top-edge of the market weren’t flat? What if the rate of appreciation across the market were non-uniform in an interesting manner? What if navigating the marker’s new particulars were significant to gameplay?

A first toy idea is below6:

40 45 50 60 70 80 95 110 125 145 165 190 220 255 295 340 390 450 520 600 690 795 915 1050 1210 1390 1600
35 40 45 55 65 75 85 100 115 130 150 175 200 230 265 305 350 405 465 535 615 705 810 930 1070 1230 1415
35 40 45 50 60 70 80 90 105 120 135 155 175 200 230 260 295 335 380 435 495 565 645 735 840 960 1095
35 40 45 50 55 60 70 80 90 100 110 125 140 155 175 195 220 245 275 310 345 385 430 480 540 605 680
30 35 40 45 50 55 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 135 150 165 185 205 230 255 285 315 350 390 435 485 540
30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 85 95 105 115 125 140 155 170 185 205 225 250 275 305 335 370 405
25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 95 105 115 125 135 145 160 175 190 205 225 245 265 290
30 30 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 105 115 125 135 145 155 165 180 195 210 225
25 25 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 95 105 115 125 135 145 160 175 190 205 225 245
25 25 25 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 85 95 105 115 125 140 155 170 185 205 225 250 275
20 20 20 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 80 90 100 110 120 135 150 165 185 205 230 255 285
20 20 20 20 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 75 85 95 105 120 135 150 170 190 215 240 270 300
15 15 15 15 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 70 80 90 100 115 130 145 165 185 210 235 265 300
15 15 15 15 15 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 65 75 85 95 110 125 145 165 190 215 245 280 320
10 15 15 15 15 15 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 60 70 80 90 105 120 140 160 185 215 245 280 320 370


Market Details

Stock price movement

Game Events:

Footnotes
  1. And more on 1845 later as well. ↩
  2. ie everything except Western Australia. ↩
  3. This may change. I do want to provide a choice regarding capitalisation, but I want it to be a real choice where both answers are frequently correct. ↩
  4. I am also toying with using something like 1873′s train-multiple concept here. ↩
  5. After 1828′s market which has a large new triangular section bolted on the end-tip of what is otherwise a normal triangular-shaped market. ↩
  6. The gray sections are for calculations and are not part of the market. ↩
  7. eg $210/share should a stock reach $1,600/share ↩
  8. The notion is to have both incrementally capitalised and fully capitalised companies, at the player-choice per company, with the choice as to which to prefer and when being difficult. ↩
  9. Recently termed the stock anus or sphincter in local discussions. ↩

Arsenic, lace and the cost of death

The concept of the poison train is common in 18xx games. Commonly it is the poison 4-train: the last train before the permanent trains, and might never run before it rusts, and almost certainly won’t run for long. From a design-perspective, how bad can that poison train be before it becomes unreasonable?

In the particular case I’m looking at, the poison train is a little worse than the poison 4-train in say 1830 as there isn’t a nice cheap permanent train on the other side. Instead…there’s another poison train right after the first poison train. Oy vey.

Some explanation is in order. I’m looking at a fairly standard extended train roster: 2/3/4/5/6/7/Diesel. The 4-trains rust the 2-trains, the 6-trains rust the 3-trains, the 7-trains rust the 4-trains and Diesels rust the 4-trains and 5-trains (both). Yep, 5-trains aren’t permanent. Also, both the 7-trains and the Diesels become available for purchase immediately after the first 6-train has been purchased. What this usually means is that after the first 6-train is bought, the very next train bought is a Diesel which rusts all the trains in the entire game, outside of that first permanent 6-train. It is fairly dramatic.

The problem with this pattern is that nobody wants to buy the last 5-train, as it will get to run no more than twice and probably only once before it rusts, if that.. So, I copied a page from Lonny Orgler: At the end of each set of ORs the government/foreigners buy a train from the supply. Thus, even if the players pause, the trains keep moving and the game advances. The twist I’ve added is that if the government buys the last train of a rank, thus making a new train-type available, then they also buy one of those (with all game phases changing as appropriate). Thus, for instance, if there’s one 2-train left, then the foreigners buy a 2-train and the first 3-train, thus putting the game into the green-phase. Or, more topically, if there’s one 5-train left, then the foreigners buy it plus the first (permanent) 6-train, thus rusting the 3-trains and starting the rush for the permanent trains. So far the form in our games has been that the foreigners take the first 6-train at the end of a set of ORs, and the first first company to run after the Stock Round buys a diesel, thus causing every other company in the game to lose all their trains. It is, as they say, dramatic.

What this all means is that not only is the last 5-train a poison train, but the penultimate 5-train is also a poison train. If a company buys the penultimate 5-train, then the foreigners will buy the last 5-train and the first 6-train and VOOM! the game is moving fast and that 5-train the player bought is about to rust very soon now. Ditto of course for the last 5-train.

But…if someone doesn’t buy the penultimate 5-train, then there’s another set of Operating Rounds while the foreigners/government whittle away the penultimate 5-train, and then at the end of the next set of ORs the foreigners take the last 5-train and the first 6-train — which means that the first 5-trains probably get to run 5 times, which is pretty good, and maybe too good.

And there lies the rub. Having a company buy the penultimate 5-train is essentially throwing money away, in this case $4001. Who is going to buy it? The only player that has any incentive is the player that’s losing. They are losing, so they have to change something to have any hope of changing their position — except that in this case the only thing they can do also comes with a $400 fee. Ouch.

And yet players buy the poison 4-train in 1830 all the time. It hurts, they know it is poison, but they also know that if they don’t they’re really sunk. So they bite the bullet and buy the 4-train…and usually the first 5-train immediately after it (which softens the blow a little). And that’s fine, except that I don’t have any nice permanent train immediately after the poison train, just another poison train…

There are three basic cases:

1) The “losing” player buys the 5-train because if they let the non-permanent trains continue to run they will lose, but if they bring out the permanent trains then they’ll win (presumably because of their better diesel routes) Of course in this case they’re not really “losing”.

2) The losing player buys the poison 5-train because if they let the non-permanent trains continue to run they will loose massively, but if they bring out the permanent trains, then they won’t lose as badly. Thus buying the poison train improves their position.

3) The losing player buys the poison 5-train, brings out the permanent trains, and thus loses even more badly than if they had let the non-permanent trains continue to run.

The first case is ideal, and not a problem from a design-vantage.

From a design-vantage the second case is also fine and even somewhat ideal. However it requires unusually perceptive players in order to distinguish between the second and third cases a 3-9 Operating Rounds before the end of the game. That’s a pretty high competency threshold.

The second two cases are the more likely to happen in real games, and in those cases it may seem that the game-system is punishing the losing player by $400, and it is punishing them because they’re losing. They’re down, so the game kicks them. Worse, I suspect that many players will see everything but the first case as being the third case, and then they’ll often see that in the worst possible light as punitive punishment of the already destitute.

I don’t think that perception matches reality. The reality I’ve seen in games with players of mixed skill in our local 18xx group is that the first not-really-losing case is far from common (and is absurdly hard to detect), the third going-to-lose-even-worse is also not common and usually only happens after the game has spent an extended period in the already-losing-but-will-lose-by-less middle case, and the already-losing-but-will-lose-by-less middle case is actually the significant majority of all cases.

But, detecting that the middle case is actually the most populous case rather than the third case, requires a skilled and perceptive player. Just how high can, should, I set the bar of required player-skill for an already-losing player to make the Right Decision? It seems a significant question. I don’t want to design a hand-holding game for perpetual novices, but I also don’t want it to only be effectively playable by world-class players. Gah2.

Which, even ignoring that more interesting question, puts me right back to the initial question. How bad can that poison train be before it becomes unreasonable? If the poison train cost $10,000 it is clearly too expensive to ever bite the bullet. If the poison train cost merely $1, then nobody would even blink at buying all of them. Somewhere in the middle is the this-hurts-but-I-have-to-bite-the-bullet point that also provides for the most interesting game decisions, and I have very little idea how to determine where that point is. For now I’ve picked $400. It is as good a number as any and better than most (and perhaps worse than a few?).

Footnotes
  1. Okay, really 400fr, but dollar signs are simpler and more universal. ↩
  2. Inclusivity sucks. ↩

To be or not to be a cutlery, that is the question!

A few weeks ago I reviewed Corner Lot with Tom Lehmann. Tom asked abot the $2 raises. One of the reasons, asides from accelerating the cashflow management challenge, is that $2 raises greatly increases the rate of subsequent $1-off events1, or if you wish, Power Grid moments2. Tom ever so gently suggested that the $2 raises were an unjustified complexity as such $1-off moments were in fact something of a false decision 3.

After some thought I’ve concluded that he’s quite right, and yet not. The core notion is of the $1-off decision is that at the time of (fund) allocation a player is able to reasonably predict that spending $1 more or less now will control whether or not they’ll be $1-off for a later item. Tom is right, that’s a tall order and in the case of Corner Lot or Power Grid, or any sufficiently dynamic system, this is bogus. In Corner Lot such an estimation requires predicting not only the cards in the future markers, but the exact results of player bids — certainly not a reasonable question at the $1 precision level. The players simply have no way to predict that accurately. Instead the $1-off moments are effectively random events which simply happen to the players, randomly specifying that a given player does or does not have enough money for something. At this level the $1-off events, and their creation, are clearly uninteresting and the decision at the point the $1-off event was incepted (when the money was allocated) doesn’t really exist.

But that is not the whole story. When a $1-off event occurs, the subject player must decide how to respond and, if necessary, to recover. There are frequently real decisions at this point: The player can’t afford what they need or want, so how to marshal their capital to still support their victory? There’s usually a real decision there and that’s where the decision is. The decision isn’t at the time the $1-off event is created, not at its inception, but rather the decision is post-facto in the recovery from the random event. Additionally, this clearly identifies the real design question: Is the additional rules complexity of requiring a minimum $2 raise justified by the additional interesting decisions created by recovering from the higher rate of $1-off events? I’m tempted to say it is, but I’m clearly also biased. Hey play-testers, what do you think?

One of the other results of the conversation with Tom is that I’m going to be forking Corner Lot. I’m pleased with the current game and enjoy playing it, but auctions are out of fashion with the German publishers and the required componentry (chips, markers etc) make the more attractive lower price points difficult to realise. As a result I’m going to fork the design and create a different game, one still based on the same reservation bidding concept, but with considerable less arithmetic and with no explicit auctions (ie no round-robin auctions to resolve multi-bid cards). I’ve no idea on the game yet, or much idea about the theme (Ariel Seoane has suggested musical group bookings for a concert), but I’m working on it. Currently the numbers are just not working out…

Footnotes
  1. Occasions when players are $1 short of being able to afford a desired item). ↩
  2. Power Grid seems to be famous for $1-off events. ↩
  3. Assuming I interpreted his comments correctly. ↩

Time’s sweet paradox

To some degree games may be classified as reactive and predictive. it all depends on where the players act in relation to the progression of time in the game. In reactive games events occur in the game and the players respond. They may have prepared for such an event in advance, but their response is purely reactive when it occurs. In predictive games player act ahead of the game time, they make choices so that when/if certain matters should come true they are ready and (ideally) don’t even need to react. This is perhaps not a stunning insight, but it got me to thinking, What about a game in which the players are never in present time, a game in which the players exclusively operate in the future, both short and long term? What if players can only operate within the bounds of an increasingly uncertain future?

Imagine a planning game, perhaps a logistics game of some sort. Possible actions are arranged in a stack, perhaps represented by cards or tiles. The bottom action is NOW (ie present time) in the game sense. The bottom action card will be performed on this game turn, either by a player or by the game itself in some autonomous fashion or interpretation. When an action is performed it is discarded or perhaps recycled.

Each player has a number of markers, perhaps two or three which they can place on action cards (one marker per card) in the future. In fact this is the only decision afforded to a player: committing to a future action. If and as when such a card with a player marker becomes the bottom card, that player does that action, and they move their action marker to another action card (unoccupied by another player’s marker) in the future.

But things are not quie that simple. Actions have durations. As quick example a future action might be building a factory. However the action card reaching the bottom of the stack merely means that construction has started. Factory construction lasts 5 turns (ie 5 action cards off the bottom of the stack). If the factory construction card was 3 turns in the future when the player put their marker on it, then the player waited 3 turns before starting to build the factory, and then another 5 turns of actually building the factory (assume some cost for this) before the factory is finally built and the action marker may be used to reserve yet another action in the future. Game state could have changed considerably in that time. Perhaps the player carefully built a Q-Factory as Q-items were in high demand and commanded a price premium, but by the time their factory came online, not only had the Q-item market collapsed, but Q-items were obsolete and couldn’t even be used for any purpose! Then again, they might have started shipping T-items by slow boat over the ocean, a trip that takes 7 game turns, only to find that T-items are commanding a huge price premium when they arrive.

In short the player is constantly committing themselves to events which will only occur in the relatively distant future (in game terms). They have absolutely no ability to react to current events, only to setup changes that will be realised after an appreciable game delay. In short they are stuck in the future.

Some abstractions may be added. Players could be allowed to sell each other the actions they’d reserved in the future, or possibly the actions that have occurred but are still maturing (eg construction on the factory has started but not yet finished). In this way something of a futures market could be supported in which players not only speculatively commit to actions they think will be profitable for themselves, but also to actions they may be able to sell to other players. Of a sudden players are trading in what they imagine the game’s future will be.

Oooo my pretty precious!

As those who follow my Twitter feed know, Corner Lot did rather well at the Kublacon design competition, coming in the top 3 and quite likely being second. Julie, the organiser of the competition said that if it had player aids it would have won.

Several changes:

New rules. Playtesters will find that the file at the same magic URL has the new card images and rules.

Footnotes
  1. The increased cost of the Empty Lot cards is not cast in stone, the other two values likely are ↩

Canning teaching Corner Lot

I’ve canonised and rendered into PDF form the teaching script for Corner Lot as part of my Kublacon Design Contest submission.

Muck & Brass — Revision #71 release

Well that was fast!

Thanks to Tim Harrison, there are two substantive rules clarifications in this release:

Unless you’re likely to be playing 5 player games, and likely even then, there’s no need to print out a new map for either the #69 or #71 releases. Just grab the new rules and be done. Just remember that 5 player games have one more month than shown on the map if you’re playing with the older graphic.

The download file is in the same place as usual with 71 in the filename instead of the previous number.

Muck & Brass — Revision #69 released

Changelog:

There are no other rules changes. The download file is in the same place as usual with 69 in the filename instead of the previous number.

map-12.png

Again, please append commentary, questions, reactions, thoughts etc1 as comments below so we may all easily track exactly what is being talked about.

Footnotes
  1. Please upload images and other media to the FTP server and then mention the upload in your comment. ↩

Declaring a mysterious type

I’ve posted a first draft of the rules for the un-named game to give an idea where I’m headed. Please note that I’ve not checked or otherwise verified any of the game’s basic arithmetic (eg component counts, scoring values, map sizes, etc), so they are likely to be way off. However the rules should show the intended basic structure and character of the game and to hopefully help get the game name suggestions flowing!

Of uncertain name

I need a name, a name for a game, preferably a punish double entendre. Here’s the premise:

It is 1958 and pop culture is transforming London, life and society. It is the age of the young and the young want to party and to hook up and to disappear into the night. But first they have to get involved, find their ways to the parties and avoid the police who don’t quite approve of the new social order along the way.

Yep, that’s mostly ripped off from the truly wonderful Absolute Beginners, and yes, this is a game all about getting your’s and the other player’s pieces laid1. Structurally the game features network-building, pick-up-and-deliver, a very relaxed definition of player ownership2 and a Velano-inspired scoring system3. Intended playtime is in the 75-90 minute range, which feels about right but it is early days yet.

The other inspirations include the usual suspects:

The core premise is that of shared public actions, player actions which affect and move not only that player’s own pieces, but those of other players. The hope is to create a diffuse yet strong temporary emergent alliance/mutual incentive system that is based on spatial relationships and not partial-ownership via company shares (ie not like Wabash Cannonball, Pampas Railroads etc and more like Bridges of Shangri-La and Clans).

FWLIW previous themes and titles included Infection and Necrosis, but #bgdf_chat successfully persuaded me those titles and themes were non-starters4.

Footnotes
  1. Complete with boy bits and girl bits and disappearing into the night. ↩
  2. Players are colours but they may play any colour piece at almost any time. ↩
  3. I’d dearly love to own a copy of Veleno! ↩
  4. In changing the theme to teenage sexual exploration in the newly liberated London of the late 1950′s, only the names were changed. ↩

Trimming corners

New rules for Corner Lot. The only substantive change is to the starting capital for different player counts.

Change Log:

Sticker shock remembrance

A possible clean-ish address for the problem of remembering the value assigned to a wild card: 20 small chits, 4 in each suit’s colour, double sided with each side bearing a revenue value (3/4/5/6/7/8/9/12). When a player buys a wild card they place the matching chit on the card with the appropriate side up so as to record the revenue they assigned to the card.

Unfortunately it means not only an extra component, but an extra component-type. Oh well. I guess I can’t hope for an Adlung-Spiele small-box presentation.

Need help with that?

A few playtesters have requested player aids or cheat-sheets for Corner Lot. I may be too close to the game to see the wood for the trees: If there were to be a player aid, what would you like to see on it and how would that help you? Would a player aid have been useful to you? If you have played the game already, would it still be useful to you> Would it make teaching the game easier?

Only one of the 40+ players I’ve taught the game to locally requested a player aid, but didn’t have a clear statement of why they wanted one, how it would be useful or what data they thought should be on it (more likely a product of my bad questioning than their fault). My perhaps unflattering impression was that the player aid would provide comfort by re-assuring the player that they hadn’t forgotten any of the core game structures rather than providing data they’d forgotten. Does that about right? What do you think of the need and value for a player aid for Corner Lot?

Teaching Corner Lot

Reading between the lines, it seems that some of your players have had difficulty grokking some aspects of Corner Lot, especially the value and size of the bonuses, or how the stack will unroll etc. Below is a rough transcript (from memory) of the spiel I use when teaching the game. It has worked well for me. I wrote this originally in reaction to a session report. In case I forgot anything, I’ll update this version as needed.

This is a set collecting game. We’re going to be buying cards in a weird auction and collecting revenues for the cards we get. At the end of the game we’ll get bonuses for having certain patterns of cards. The player with the largest net worth wins.

There are 5 suits of cards with 8 cards per suit. (Lay out 8 cards, one of each value) Property cards have a cost and a revenue. The cost is the baseline of how much they cost to acquire and the revenue is roughly what they’ll pay you every round for owning them. With one exception the cost is always the revenue minus two times five. And the exception is…? (Wait for someone to point at the 40/12) Correct!

The deck will be shuffled and five cards will be laid face up to the side. (Lay 5 cards off to the side) These are out of the game and yes, you get to see them. Then 7 cards are laid in a sorted row as so. (Does this) This is the current market: the cards up for auction first. Then another 7 cards are set out, and make the future market: the cards auctioned in the second round. Later they’ll move down to become the current market, a new set of 7 will be dealt to be the new future market and so forth. As there are 40 cards in the deck, 5 are out, leaving 35, the game has 5 rounds of 7-card lots.

Okay, we’ll also pick a start player. They’ll get the first turn, then the player to their left and so on. Always purely rotational. That never changes.

On your turn you may bid, buy or pass. That’s it, just bid, buy or pass. Bidding! You may bid on any card in the current market that isn’t the cheapest/bottom card and that you haven’t bid on already. Just to keep the bids straight, make your bids by putting your chips on the corner of the card nearest you. So you get this corner, you get this corner you get this corner etc. (points) The minimum bid is the cost of the card plus $2, or $2 more than the highest bid on the card, whichever is more. Instead of bidding you can just buy the cheapest/bottom card for face value: this number on the card. Pay your money, take the card. And of course, you can pass. If you pass you’re not out: you can come back in later.

So why bid ahead and pay that $2 premium? Because the high cards are worth a lot more than their face value and the low cards, are well, not so good. (Quickly throws some chips on the various cards, some cards with a single bid, some two, some three, usually the penultimate card with none) Just pretend these chips are the bids by various players. When someone buys the bottom card we then look at the next card up. If it has just a single bid on it, then that player gets the card instantly for his bid. (Shows this) Then we do it again. Ahh, the next card has two bids! Those two players then go clockwise bidding for the card until only one person is left and they win the card for their bid and the losers get their money back. The minimum raise is $2. This next card has 3 bids on it: same thing happens, round robin etc, And this keeps on going, the stack keeps unrolling until there are either no cards left or you get to a card with no bids on it. Then it stops. Often all 7 cards in the market will go all at once! The key thing is that by bidding ahead you are securing the right to bid later. If you didn’t bid ahead on a card, you’ll have no chance to bid on it when the stack unrolls if someone else has bid on it. You are bidding for the right to bid!

Now all this unrolling and bidding and cards going places etc happens during the turn of the player who bought the bottom card. Once it is all done, the next player gets his turn.

Now of course with this card here (points to the penultimate card with no bids), say you (points) have the next turn, you can just buy that card for face value, you can bid on this last card if you haven’t already, or you can pass. It might be a good deal. Or not.

Okay, once all the cards in the current market are gone we get revenues! You get paid for every card you have. But you don’t get the full revenue! If the wild card for that suit hasn’t been bought, then every card in that suit pays $2 less. (I’ll talk about the wild cards and how to get them later) So this 5/3 card only pays $1 and this 25/7 only pays $5 and so forth. The key thing here is that cards pay back at roughly 22%. So you don’t get your money back quickly!

So we all get our money, a new future market is dealt and we do it all again. We do that 5 times and the game is over and we figure out how much I won by. Or not. Again. Bahh!

At the end of the game you get bonuses for the cards you have. There are four bonuses. For 3 or more cards in the same suit you get the number of cards you have of that suit times the highest revenue card you have in that suit, Then, 3 or more cards in the same suit in adjacent numerical order (and 12 comes after 9 as there is no 10 or 11) pays the number of cards in the run times the highest revenue card (so 4/5/6 or 7/8/9/12 for instance), 3 or more cards of the same value pays the number of cards time the revenue, and 3 or more cards of adjacent values but with each card of a different suit and each suit only occurring once pays the number of cards times the highest revenue. Sort of a “rainbow” run. It is always 3 or more cards and always times the highest revenue card in the set.

Each card can pay all four bonuses, but it can’t pay any bonus more than once. So 5/6/7 in suit will pay two bonuses, one for the suit and one for the run! But you you can’t take four 7s and say you have lots of sets of triple 7s as you mix and match them, and you can’t take two 5s, a single 6 and two 7s and say you have two rainbow runs.

So these bonuses are where the real money is in the game. And what you really want is for all of your cards to pay out multiple bonuses in different directions. Something like a 5/6/7 in 3 suits will pay every which way, for the suits, the suited run, the triples, and the three rainbows, see? See why the big cards are so much more valuable? (Get an answer) There’s lots of money there.

So we do all that and the player with the most money wins! It takes about 45 minutes.

Oh, the wilds! Okay, remember the bid, buy or pass business? You can just buy a wild card. It costs $20. It is just like buying the bottom card but it doesn’t start the stack unrolling. When you buy a wildcard you have to instantly say what it is. It is a 7! This is a 12! Whatever, just one of the card values: 3/4/5/6/7/8/9/12. But! But! When it comes to revenue time, the revenue for the wild card goes straight to the card and just piles up there. You don’t get it until the end of the game. Also, you have to pay the bank $5 for each wild card you own. You do get your revenue income first, so you can pay from that, but if you still can’t pay the $5, you have to put the wild card back and you lose all the money that piled up on it!

Now for the bonuses the wilds are just like any other card. They have a suit and they have a value. You can have the wild be a duplicate of another card you have, so you could have a blue 40/12 and have a wild blue 40/12 too. That’s fine.

And of course, once someone buys a wild, all the cards in that suit will now pay their full revenue.

There’s also a trick in passing. If everyone passes in a round, $5 is put on the bottom card. It is now $5 cheaper! However the first person to pass doesn’t get first dibs at the card at the new price. The turn marker moves forward and the next player does. Of course if everyone one passes again, it gets $5 cheaper again and the turn marker moves forward etc. If it ever gets to $free the next player has to take the card. Such a problem!

So we do all this: bidding, buying cards, moving cards about, vast amounts of money leap out of the bank and go to me, little small bits go to you guys, all that stuff. We do 5 rounds, then we pay out the bonuses, count up the money, and see that I won yet again. Hey gee, I’m the banker too!

Any questions?

Beating ploughshares into velocipedes

I’ve posted new rules for Corner Lot. The only substantive change is the requirement that all bid raises by by at least $2. There’s also an explicit statement that players may not increase their bid on a card prior to tis resolution, as there were as questions on that (this limit prevents the game from deadlocking as players dollar-up their prior bids in order to manipulate turn order).

I’m also working on new card art in order to resolve the colour problem some of you are having. With luck it will be ready in a few days. Meanwhile, please review and play by the new rules and post any thoughts, reactions and playtest reports as a comment to this post.

So ya wanna sniff?

This morning’s surprise was a playtesting request for Corner Lot. Colour me surprised (Oh, so that’s what colour surprise is! Ewwww.). I’ll get a playtest kit (ie a PDF of the required cards) put together later today for requesters1.

Producing the game is pretty trivial as it is just 45 cards. The only other component’s you’ll actually need are poker chips. We don’t bother with the player markers here as I have players place their bids on the corner of the property card closest to them, thus self-identifying the bids as their’s.

Please comment on this post to request playtest kits. Playtesters, please also append your comments questions, thoughts etc to this post as comments.

Footnotes
  1. Already done. Later is now. ↩

Straight shootin’ complexity cowboy

The rules for Corner Lot have been updated to reflect wildcards and the current concept of rainbow straights. Sadly that also also means that the rules now occupy 3 pages instead of the prior 2. Ahh, rampant runaway complexity threatens!

Regimental thuggery

We’ve played a slew more games of Corner Lot in the last days, all remarkably well received. The big concern is that the game is clearly a 3 or 4 player game and does not scale well to larger players. As such I’ve been pursuing avenues to increase player count flexibility. Most recently we’ve been trying the following changes:

This has worked well and has improved the game for all the players. I’ve found it a surprisingly strong improvement.

However, all is not rosy. Players tend to specialise in suits as the game rewards them heavily for that, leading to low contention rates for property cards once into the mid-game. In general each player will pursue bonuses in two suits, making competition for cards generally tepid outside of bid ordering details. The tendency is for there to be a round to a round and half of bidding for each lot before the trigger is pulled. If there were more contention for cards the trigger-pulling decision would be more difficult and interesting.

Two proposals have been made by the players:

  1. Add support for scoring bonuses for straights (not just straight flushes). This would need to be explicitly limited in some way else a player with the 5/6/7 of three suits could construct an ungodly large number of possible three-card bonus straights!
  2. All players, once per game to insert one of their purchased cards into the currently auctioned lot in return for the card’s revenue
    • A possibly slightly more interesting form of this instead adds a 6th round to the game in which players may (must?) put one card up for auction (in return for its revenue).

I’m tempted by the straights and in particular for allowing players to score bonuses for rainbow straights (3 or more cards in revenue sequence with each suit occuring not more than once). The notion of putting cards back up for auction is interesting but a little less compelling at the moment as almost every case would involve another player scoring more for the card than the contributor Hurm. Unless the winning bids on the property cards in that last round were paid back to the contributing player? I have numbers to crunch.

I’ll get updated rules including the wildcards posted Real Soon Now.

Old Age of Steam playtest photologs (Sun, London, SE Australia, Wales, Nitrogen)

I recently acquired Okay to post the photologs from some of the outside playtests of my Age of Steam maps:

Age of Steam: Sun

Age of Steam: London

Age of Steam: South East Australia

Game #1

Game #2

Game #3

Age of Steam: Wales

Game #1

Game #2

Game #3

Age of Steam: Korea (using Nitrogen rules)

 

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