The first reasonable draft of the game rules. I am particularly interested in comments on any ambiguity or lack of clarity in the form of the current rules (inconsistencies are of course my fault and lapse).

I haven’t done the arithmetic yet to see if the game is numerically viable, but the basic shape and relationships seem about right if there are simply enough bits to support the economy. Intuitively it feels like the next stage, assuming the basic numbers work, is to start boiling out complexity and false decisions. This is exciting, not least because ‘Ohana Proa seems like the sort of game I like to play, but also because I have absolutely no idea what is required to play this game well. I’m quite sure there is a way to play it well, but I’m at a loss to see what even the primary constituents of good play might be.

My fear is that minimum kula trade elimination will force the game to be too tactical.

Basic assumption: The game should last no less than 8 turns and have no more than 12 turns for a 4 player game.

The current map graph has 36 nodes and 62 edges.

Gut sense suggests that no more than 75% of edges should be claimed in a typical game. ie ~47 edges. Across 4 players that’s 12 edges per player per game. If players have a maximum of 2 explorers and gain the second explorer by turn 3, that suggests a total of 13 routes per player per game, assuming no lossage and an 8 turn game (optimistic 8 turns?). So far this seems reasonable.

If claiming a route produces a cube on each end of the route (as is the current thought), a fully built network will contain 124 cubes. A 75% built network will contain ~93 cubes.

Assuming that explorers equals proas (which doesn’t work, but bear with me) means that an 8 turn 4 player game delivers 64 cubes or, ideally, ~5 satisfactions per player or a more probable 3-4 satisfactions per player. given partial inefficiencies. This is a problem. The average number of satisfactions should double that. The only real way to address is to decrease the satisfaction definition or increase the number of deliveries.

Moving to a DiscoInferno? (Ted’s AoS expansion) style delivery pattern (chained opportunism) delivery rule would increase the average number of satisfactions per player per game to 5-6, assuming that cube production keeps up (not clear). This is better but still within the range of a problem. Cube production rate seems the main throttle at this point. There simply aren’t enough cubes available fast enough to sustain the deliveries.

A possible solution is to put 2 cubes on each island during setup, plus one at the end of each route when claimed. I’ve not done the stats yet, but that smells about the right rate.

Assuming a similar proa growth curve to AoS Links growth (which breaks above assumptions) and assuming that all steps are bought with fish rather than passed deliveries gives ~82 fish transactions per player per game. Mapping that against claimed routes gives an average personal fish production of 26 fish per player per game. This is clearly a problem: costs are unsustainable. A possible address is sustained fish income. Certainly the extra drain of Kula items on the fish economy is grossly excessive. Approximately 4 times as many fish are needed in the game in the ideal case. Practically this should mean ~6 times as high a production rate in order to sustain kula trade as well.

Currently fish are earned when delivering over a player’s own route. The player produces fish when delivering over his own route and pays fish for delivering over other’s routes. This is insufficient given the current expenses model. Simply increasing production by 6x is uninteresting. Without an expenses model moving fish to a standard exponential growth curve makes the end-game uninteresting (at least WRT fish) due to largesse. Adding expenses ala AoS may be too derivative. More likely another modestly inefficient sub-game to generate fish is required.

This is going to require thought. If more fish are to be produced, what is to be sacrificed in order to produce fish? Advantage? Resources? Opportunity? Position? Tempo? Phase control?

Is the distinction between supply and demand tokens unnecessary?

Keeping the distinction has two results, both minor. 1) It is easy to ensure that there are 3 supplies for every demand while also having a somewhat random setup. 2) It allows a blocking tactic in which multiple demands are grouped around a small number of supplies without satisfaction, thus driving delivery traffic in that direction. While I really like the tactic, I’m fairly sure it is not enough to justify an entire mechanism and related complexity.

It seems time to write formalised rules.

Fish are a basic currency (shades of KaiVai).

VPs may be traded 2:1 for fish at any time.

When another player’s segment is used to make a delivery the moving player must give them one fish per segment of theirs that it used.

When a delivery uses the active player’s segment they receive a fish from the bank. This is the primary input source of fish to the economy.

The delivering player earns VPs for a delivery equal to the number of supplies of the delivery type present at the delivery location after the deliver (and before satisfaction).

After a delivery a player may create a kula ring trade item. Such items cost 3 fish and give the creating player 1 VP. Kula ring items are represented by 3 special tokens.

Upon making a delivery a player may give up to one kula ring trade item to each player who possesses a segment connected to the island delivered to. A player giving a kula ring trade item earns 1 VP.

When a kula ring trade item is given one of the three tokens forming the item are discarded.

A player possessing 2 kula ring trade items (possibly from different sources) may combine them into lots of 3 or more to make new kula ring trade items to give away. They earn 1 VP per kula ring trade item they give away.

A player may possess a kula ring trade item for up to two turns without loss. At the end of the second turn the player must discard 30% of all their kula ring trade tokens, rounded down.

Fish decay (more shades of KaiVai). Players must discard all fish they’ve had and not spent after two turns (enforce economy velocity). Fish received from other players via building bids start out “fresh” no matter how old they were when paid.

Two delivery opportunities per turn. Players must delivery on both turns or must increase Links or Explorers instead (limited by max). They must make deliveries even if it hurts their position. (Links and Explorers may also be increased without a passed delivery for a $fee of fish)

Odd notions of a third currency?

Clearly the city colour assignments will need to be adjusted. Probably the hills too, slightly. Meanwhile the first draft of the rules to give an idea of where I’m heading: AoS-Romania-rules.pdf (original file missing). These are of course untested and in fact unplayed beyond some vague mental maunderings done while typing. They are simply the base set of rule concepts I’m looking to throw at this map. It is likely that several won’t survive.

Two types of resources across N colours. 3:1 ratio across types. N is in the 4-6 range. ~15 more common resources of each colour (~5 of the less common).

Resources are distributed across the islands. Possible all of them, more likely a subset with more coming out later. Most likely more come out as routes are built to islands.

Type #1 resources (big) are demands and are less common. Type #2 (small) are supplies and are three times as common. Demands want to meet their suppies in a 3:1 ratio, at which point they mutually annihilate (kept by players as VPs?).

Demands and supplies may be moved over competitively built routes by players. When a supply coexists with a demand it may not be moved (or visa versa). Once a demand is satisfied (3:1) it is removed from the game.

Players have money and a number of explorers (initially 1). Players nominate routes to be built, one per explorer. They may then bid on who gets to build each route. Bids are money. Players may sell VPs for money. Players may bid on any number of VPs. Subsequent bids may only be equal or higher (or only higher?).

Player order is then ordered in descending bid amount. The route with the largest big goes first with the largest bidder having the option to build it. In the case of a tie on a single route the nominating player picks. In the case of a tie across routes it defaults to prior player order. Building is free but the nominating player receives the winning bid. A player may win and opt not to build. A player may build routes equal to the number of explorers they have.

A player may not build more routes than they have explorers. Once all the building is done (single pass through the routes), then each player may deliver a supply to a destination or visa versa. Player’s have an AoS-style? Links limit. They may pass on a delivery to grow Links or may buy a bigger Links for cash (first to a level most expensive, subsequent cheaper as it becomes more common?). Two rounds of deliveries. Only one pass tor grow Links. Players must deliver if they can (unless they pass to bump).

When making a delivery resources travel over built routes. Each player owning a route used gets $1 from the bank per route. The delivering player also gets money equal to the number of resources (not supplies) of that type present on the island after the delivery.

At the end of a delivery a player may make a gift of some multiple of $3 (limit $3 per target player?) to one of the players possessing a link connected to the destination island. In return the donating player receives 1 VP per $3. The receiving player receives only $2 of each $3, the other $1 is returned to the bank. This is a nod to Kula ring patterns. Such money can then NOT be spent on bids and may only be used for Kula?

At the end of their last delivery a player may buy an explorer for cash. A player may not have more than 2? Nominating a route with a second explorer costs cash?

Repeat for next turn, possibly inverting last turn’s player order? (They weren’t distracted by building/bidding much and so had first opportunity to explore).

Game ends when all demands of N colours are satisfied (N is ~3).

End game scoring: VPS gained during game for Kula-ring donations, plus 3 VPs per island with a plurality of routes, 2 VPs for second plurality, 1 VP for third? Ties round down. Plurality of satisfied demands of colour is 5/3/1 VPs across the pluralities?

Ultimately this is a sorting game (cf WayFinder). The basic problem of the game is to sort the supplies and resources in coexistant sets in a 3:1 ratio. VPs are scored for sorting, sorting satisfaction and network control supporting sorting.

Sadly, as described this game is 100% tactical.

Historical higration patterns across Polynesia as derived from genetic and cultural data:

![Polynesian migration](/images/dipping-a-toe-in-the-kava/migrate.gif”>

Very early draft of a potential board based on that:

I’m deliberately excluding Australia as a non Polynesian participant (not strictly true but good enough for this game’s purpose). I’ll possibly make some routes directional based on migration routes. This doesn’t make great sense however as once an island was discovered communication was bidirectional. Still, some link directions very difficult doe ocean currents and the prevailing trade winds. I’m probably also going to do some route adjustment to give a reasonable balance of islands with various numbers of connections (I’m especially concerned about odd/even balance). Will see. I want to play with the graph for a while and see how the things flexes…

First pass with towns, city colour assignments and terrain:

(Sorry, image lost)

Notes:

• I ultimately added another city in Timisoara (and moved it closer to where Resita really is) purely for gut-feel balance reasons
• I’ll price the hexes adjacent to Belgrade higher as foreign links
• I knocked off two half-hexes from the northern border in order to help it fit on the publisher’s paper (should have little to no game-effect)
• Most colours are assigned simply on census population reports. This Bucharest and Belgrade got royal purple etc
• Despite the note below I didn’t group the colours in the south east. I’m hoping that the terrain pricing, long gap to Bucharest and general absence of towns will sifficiently weaken that area due to production difficulties
• The rest of the cities, predictably, got a fairly normal distribution
• Yeah, there are only 11 cities, not the normal 12. This is deliberate
• I may yet lose 2 or 3 towns. Or not.
• I won’t allow urbanisation of towns adjacent to cities (only two cases this time)
• The urbanisation pattern for the centre of the map is going to be hugely significant. This is where the map and each game will make or break, but there are just enough towns off in the boonies to make defensive urbanisation viable. Hopefully I’ve helped move the town focus a little further west due to colour choices
• I don’t think I’m going to bother with rivers. Just hills and mountains
• This is starting to feel less like a 3 player map than like a 4 player map that plays well with 3
• For the obvious reasons I won’t be posting the exact rules here, but I will be discussing the rules development and implications.
• Blog name changed from Age of Steam: Rat Race (name relevant to desired mechanisms) to AoS:Romania (obvious reasons)

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!