One of the small things I like, especially as a game designer and player for whom theme is not very important, is that all the candidate mechanisms being considered for this map can be neatly plugged in against Romania’s history and various political systems. With a very little work it could be hard bound to a very specific period of Romania’s history. Ultimately I likely wont directly consider theme until the rather late days of the rules writing, and then I’ll pull it out for the introduction, flavour text and any nouns and verbs I’ll need for the rules changes. The result will be a rather heavily themed game, one with all primary mechanisms consistent with and tied in against the theme..

I really like that. I like that the game can be designed in themeless terms and then retroactively themed in a consistent and supportive manner. I find it pleasing. I’ve done this for all my other Age of Steam maps (published and prototype). Let’s see how well it pulls out with this more public design process!

Some of this early attempt exploits a prior attempt at an AoS:Romania map:

That prior version of the map however was far too large for publication and had crippling rules problems. However it fed ideas into this new attempt. A basic hex grid that will fit on a 24”x18” map sheet superimposed on a map of Romania:

(sorry, image lost)

Now to tag in some potential cities (tan) and possible town locations (blue). The locations are primarily selected on the basis of population census data for Romania and secondarily influenced on the basis of historical railway paths (some shown on the background map).

(sorry, image lost)

Until writing this entry I wasn’t aware of quite how much work and past experience went into getting to this point. For instance I’m going to have to be particularly careful with city colour assignments. specifically I’m going to have to put multiples of the same colour in the east near Constantinople. Additionally whatever colour I put in Belgrade will greatly affect the standard patterns of development through the towns North of Bucharest and West of Galati. No matter what I do, those towns will tend to be the lynchpin towns of the map, just like AoS: Wales is similarly controlled by the fate of the towns of Dinas Mawddy, St Harmon, and Culmington.

As a result, Urbanisation will be immensely powerful (and possibly the most desired action in the game). AoS:South East Australia certainly has this pattern and is similarly based on a network-growth-through-urbanisation pattern for most of the late game.

The next step will be to sketch in terrain and city colours and towns. A few hours over that should show that the map is viable as an Age of Steam basis. After that it is simply a case of writing the first pass rules. It is at that point that the real work begins:

1. Write a spreadsheet which simulates the game as played by the new rules
2. Play somewhere between fifty and a few hundred games on the spreadsheet and see what I can make work or break
3. Tweak the rules
4. Repeat from #1

During this process the map probably won’t change much at all (asides from the odd city colour assignment). Only the rules will change.

NB Larger images and related discussion of the above finished Age of Steam maps can be found on BoardGameGeek:

• AoS Romania
• AoS Wales
• AoS SE Australia

Many of the Polynesian societies used gift economies. Idea:

– A player may “give” money to another player and receive VPs from the game, possibly with a better than linear rate of return. In this way a player may enhance their score by enhancing another selected player’s tactical position.

cf Kula Rings

Notes:

– Map rather similar to Clippers’ map (prob minus double routes and keeping directionality in a few areas). Possibly more islands and more linkages.

– Resources come in 5 or 6 colours and occur in two types (which we’ll call big and small). There are far fweer big than small. Big are demands, small are products. There are thrice as many small than big in each colour.

– One random big is placed on each larger island along with one small. Two more smalls are placed beside the island in an ordered sequence. Ensure that smalls are not placed on islands with bigs of the same colour.

– Game starts with players in a random order.

– Each player in turn nominates a linkage by placing their player marker on it (each player has only one of these)

– In rotation in player order players may bid on nominated routes by placing money beside a player’s marker and placing an ownership token atop the money. Players may only bid if their bid exceeds or equals any other individual bid on that route. Players may pass.

– Once all players have passed the player whose nominated route garnered the highest bid goes first. They may either take (their choice) of the higest bid, thus allowing that player to build/claim that route, or they may build/claim the route themselves. Repeat for other players, tie breaker for ordering is passing order. (Nash equilibria problem here)

– Possibly limit nominations to those connected to starting locations or to prior built routes.

– Cost of routes? Preset?

– When a route is built connecting two islands, the top small on each end (if any) is produced onto the island. If there are none left, or the island is too small to have any, none are produced.

– Possibly re-order players to match build order.

– Once all players have had the option to build/claim, each player may perform two deliveries (AoS-style). Smalls may be delivered to bigs and bigs may be delivered to small. Smalls may not be delivered away from an island containing one or more bigs of the same colour, and likewise for bigs. (ie this is a sorting game)

– When delivering over a route the owning player receives one income on the income track.

– The delivering user is paid in income equal to the number of smalls of a matching colour there are on the target island.

– Three smalls of colour matching a big are removed from the island and the big given to the delivering player. (Figure out a reason later)

– Players may pass on a delivery to increase their AoS-style? Links.

– Nice to blend in something like a Business Development action to seed more bigs and smalls on islands. Not sure how to add SP&R.

– A delivery through an empty major island (can or has contained bigs or smalls) costs an income.

Repeat until No deliveries are possible and N or less bigs are left on board.

– Scoring looks like bigs are worth a lot of points with money being a minor source (possibly requiring an action to trade in).

– Income might be traded for VPs at the time of generation, 2:1 (figure out what to do with rounding?). Ditto later in the other direction. Players should start with ~10 VPs? Better ratios? 3:1 and 2:3? Asymmetry?

This design effort was inspired by the thought experiment surrounding Age of Steam: Rat Race.

The Polynesian game based on the Clippers board has been spawned off into its own listing at ‘Ohana Proa.

I’ve been playing with a modified version of the Clipper’s board, simply adding price weightings to the island connections and changing the graph slightly Not sure yet whether directionality really works, but the ideas are cute. While still pick-up-and-deliver, it is clearly not an AoS derivative any more.

If it gets anywhere I’ll start another blog for the Polynesian thing (Pineapple Equilibrium?) and continue the AoS map (likely under Romania) here.

The income reduction pattern of deliveries through empty cities will change the value and balance of long deliveries significantly. Running a 6 train through 4 empty cities is no better than running a 2 train and in some ways is worse. If track building/network growth opportunities are also larger, then this will afford interesting zero and negative sum decisions. Certainly the current race of Grow-Links-Fast? will no longer be automatic. I expect that this dynamism will require this to be a 3/4 player map.

Map-wise the pattern of cost containment of empty cities suggests one of two forms, either a roughly even distribution of cities and towns (towns having the advantage of never deducting income), or a circular map with the cities looped around the outside with the towns clustered in the centre (or visa-versa). AoS:South East Australia already uses a similar patten to good effect with the empty morass of central Queensland’s towns.

Candidate locations:

• New South Wales — cities clustered on the coast and back towards Adelaide (ie where the Murray gets fat). Map also tends to be too large for a good 3 player game.
• Portugal — Nicely long-skinny, cities mostly on the coast, can cluster foreign links heading into spain and via sea routes
• Belgium — Overly baroque shape fits poorly within desired hex grid size
• Netherlands — Conflicts with Alban Viard’s and Bohrer’s maps as well as my won Scheveningen
• Turkey — Nice rectangular shape with reasonable city distribution, interesting terrain, but probably builds a larger map than wanted
• Romania — More of a cup-shaped city distribution, may have excessive clustering at the scale I’ll need to use, entertaining mountain patterns
• Polynesian Islands — Map most of the Pacific Islands, everything is a sea route, possible directional routes, link-specific costs, possible very fast start to game.

Winners: Romania and Polynesian Islands. Romania would be more traditional. Polynesian Islands would be more interesting and therefore more difficult to sell.

Conclusion: Do both, pick later.

I played Age Of Steam: Wales with a new group last night (and was so out of it that I made a utter mash of the game — quite embarrassing). (AoS: Wales is a prototype map that I hope to have released later this year — implements both standard and narrow gauge track). Perhaps more interesting is that last night’s game prompted some thoughts about a possible new Age of Steam expansion. I don’t know if there’s enough there to really pull a map out of, but I’d like to try.

Basic ideas:

1. Goods cubes are produced on cities only when a track segment is compleated connected to that city. There is no Production Phase.
2. Passing through an empty city during a delivery costs an income for the moving player.
3. Production Action replaced with Business Development action which allows N random goods cubes cubes to be bought for $Q (linear or exponential cost?) and placed on the production chart.
4. A delivery through a city with a developed goods cube produces that cube and does not deduct income
5. No income reduction

For now I’d like to not use the simplified Peroxide economic system, though it is tempting.

A significant portion of the game surrounds efficiently meteing out token resources over the duration of the game. While this is interesting, it is a single pass decision space (there is no opportunity to revisit investment decisions or change gross investment patterns). Perhaps it should be multi-pass (ie support more adaptable and responsive strategic structure depths).

I’ve a fondness for games which allow exchange of victory points for in-game advantage. The best ones (for my tastes) support giving specific other players (potential) victory points. The more general case involves sacrificing personal victory points for position (equivalent in the zero sum view). I generically prefer the targeted distribution simply as it allows players to competitively position themselves for handouts and I have a particular fondness for games in which players can create emergent dependencies; positional structures in which it is in a player’s positional self interest to help another player win as the most effective (or even only) method of improving their own position (KaiVai makes extensive use of this pattern and it is a common feature of good Age of Steam and 18XX play). A possible application to Pax Mongolica could allow VPs to be sacrificed to re-acquire previously spent tokens. A more(?) entertaining form which hews closer to my interests might allow a player to resurrect tokens by simultaneously resurrecting a larger number of tokens for another player. eg PlayerA resurrects N tokens for cost X, which results in PlayerB also receiving 2N resurrected tokens for free (rations and costs TBD). As a result players would explicitly (plan to) position themselves for positional handouts from other players…positional prostitution.

Thematically this is a mess. I’ll probably have to change the tentative Viking/Varangian theme again. A small loss. I’m a more concerned that the game is too mechanically rich, too many layers in the mechanical layer cake: network building, combat, player-elected scoring, turn order auctions, area influence, resource (exchange) management., special powers and roles (which I’ve never felt good about). Time to start pruning again?