Delivery boy for the penultimate end
We’ve done four more 4 player playtests without much event. However the last couple 3 player playtests have been more interesting:
First session
After just over 15 minutes of rules explanation we played a 3 player game in a little under 150 minutes. The game worked well and generally as predicted and was well received.. Oddly almost 3/4 of market development stacked immediately. Unlikely. As a result scores were unusually high in the early game, and deliveries were scarce and aggressively fought over (turn order) Exchanging VPs for resources remained popular far later in the game than is usual and as a result the game never got into the mad struggle to convert resources into prestige that is desired. Yet…it worked. Perhaps not ideally in my mind, but it functioned and was more than interesting.
As a result of that playtest I added an island and a few routes to the Earthsea map to try and balance out the (highly thematic) advantages of c These are the same changes mentioned in the last blog entry.
Second session
This time the market distribution was equally unusual with almost no stacking and an extremely even distribution of market colours across the board and within development stacks. The result was a 210 minute game before three colours finally all ran out on the same turn. Aggressive play (as the leader) on my part could have shortened the game but I would have had to sacrifice positional advantage to do so. Prestige levels were absurdly high due to the continuously rich delivery field. Whereas games will usually end with the highest prestige in the high 20s to low 30s, I ended the game with 67 prestige with another player also above 60 and the trailer in the 50s. Not good. The game was clearly determined long before it ended (I ran away by almost a factor of 2). This suggests that an alternate game ending condition which would trigger at the early determination point is indicated. Functionally the game worked. Both players found it enjoyable with the second place player happily bemused and pondering at game end (a desired response that also occurred in the previous 3 player session).
With the current game end definitions play length is effectively a function of the normality of the market distribution. If the random market distribution tends towards clumping and stacking, then the game will run shorter. The more the random market distribution runs toward an (equally unlikely) even (and unstacked) distribution, the longer the game will play. The range is roughly from 135 minutes - 240 minutes assuming “typical” players. The goal is 150 minutes with new players. An obvious temptation is to end the game when a player achieves a prestige of 35 or more. That’s just far enough into the final multiplier bracket that a close competitor is likely to follow, but not so far that the game will exhaust. The result should be that only unusually even distributions invoke the end condition and that the new condition should curb the game appropriately.
Roke remains too strong. Much as I Like the idea of a specifically 3 player map, it is not clearly needed or clear that the default Polynesian map wouldn’t function equally well for 3 players. The problem is that Roke effectively sits in the centre of the map, doesn’t have the problems with draining too quickly like Havnor and is trivially connected to all the major lobes of the map. The real problem is that the map is roughly circular and asymmetric with Roke in the lynchpin position. I expect that I’ll abandon the Earthsea map rather than fix it. Much as I like Earthsea (I adored the books as a kid) the long term licensing fees and problems surrounding a licensed product are too large to bother with. I’m tempted to do a Science Fiction map set in the worlds of Perry Rhodan (an absurdly popular SF pulp series in Germany that I also like), or, more likely, in the more than 1,800 islands along the St Lawrence River between Kingston and Brockville. At least there the amerindians have something of a gift economy tradition to fit that oh-so-essential theme and the map is naturally long/narrow.